Watching movies on a huge screen without leaving home is possible thanks to VR headsets, but the built-in speakers may pose some problems to the people around you. The Kabetec Sound Kit offers a solution and… a more immersive experience.

Built-in speakers used in modern VR headsets are generally good enough for audio, but some people will prefer to use a good pair of Bluetooth headphones, with low latency, like the Soundcore VR P10 recommended for Quest headsets. The alternative is either to build your own headphone adapter, if you’re good at DIY, or to search for the solutions available for the VR headset you use. There are many DIY options online, thanks to the magic of 3D printing, using different types of headphones and for different VR headsets.

The sound generated by the integrated speakers on the Pico 4 VR headset is perfectly fine, with surprisingly good bass for the tiny speakers on the headband. According to Pico, the binaural stereo speakers are equipped with sound field reconstruction technology, and the sound positioning is calculated from head motion data, resulting in a precise spatial audio effect. Using Virtual Desktop, the best app for connecting the VR headset to a PC (which offers everything from a home theater to a large cinema screen), to watch movies, makes the whole experience of watching cinema in your VR home theater easily accessible.

There is a problem with the built-in speakers: the people around you will also hear the sounds coming from the headset. In fact, there is another problem, which you’ll face if you use an app like Voice Attack to issue commands to the apps in your computer. VoiceAttack is the premier voice control and macro creation system for your Windows games and applications, and while it is great to use, it does not work very well with the built-in speakers and the microphone in a VR headset; the microphone picks the sound from the speakers and VoiceAttack tries to execute what it thinks is a command, and the result is that VA works poorly. If you use the headset for work and use voice commands, this can turn into a nightmare.

VR headsets are great to watch 3D movies

Speech recognition, which is used to train the computer to understand your voice, does not help here, as VoiceAttack is simply doing what it does: listen to sounds. Unfortunately, the microphone on a VR headset is close to the speakers, and in the case of the built-in speakers on the Pico 4 VR, their sound affects VoiceAttack. To solve this problem and get a more private experience when watching content, the use of an external headphone is the best option. Now, there is a problem…

As the Pico 4 VR headset does not have a 3.5mm jack for connecting headphones – the Quest 3 does, but not the Quest 3S – the only option available is to use the USB-C connection for external audio, which is fine for most users, as the battery on the Pico 4 VR lasts up to two hours. That solves the problem for most users. But if you’re using the VR headset for longer periods of time, you need to get a special adapter (with USB-C and 3.5mm jack) if you want to use external audio and charge the headset while using it.

Watching trailers for 2025 upcoming films using the Pico 4 VR headset is an amazing way to discover the magic of having your own home theater, which can simulate a huge IMAX-style screen. VR headsets also open the world of 3D content, films included, something that VR users know well since the first VR headsets for consumers made it to the market. The Oculus Rift DK1 model, for developers, was released on March 28, 2013, and the official consumer model, the Oculus Rift CV1, three years later, in March 2016.

The modicap soundkit from Kabetec

A good VR headset offers consumers an experience like no other for watching content. Using headphones helps to make the experience more immersive, as it allows both to keep the sounds from the content watched private and keep noise from other sources out. So, although the Pico 4 VR sound is quite good, I decided to look for an alternative. After all, watching a movie in VR resembles a theater experience, so why not try to achieve theater sound?

Unless you go the DIY path, there is only one solution available commercially: the modicap soundkit from Kabetec, designed to offer over-ear audio to the Pico 4 VR headset without the need for long cables, adapters, or unnecessary bulk. Specially adapted for the Pico 4, Pico 4 Enterprise and Pico 4 Ultra VR headsets, the accessory has an over-ear headphone design. Compared to in-ear headphones, over-ear headphones increase immersion by covering the entire ear and helping to block any external noise. In addition, over-ear headphones are more hygienic than in-ear headphones and provide greater audio privacy than the external speakers on the headset.

The modicap soundkit from Kabetec is available for other VR headsets from Pico, and models from Oculus and HTC Vive. The kit includes the speakers, a 3.5mm jack cable and the clip-on system. Kabetec also sells a 3.5mm to USB-C adapter cable, enabling audio streaming from your headset to the sound kit or, alternatively, an adapter to charge the VR headset and use the headphones at the same time.

The sound kit is easy to assemble and does the job. I would prefer to have more options in terms of adjustment of the position of the headphones, but they do work as intended and offer a good audio experience for the price asked (€79, VAT included). In fact, the speakers are the Superlux HD 562, which are usually known online as Sennheiser HD25 clones… for one fifth of the price!

Because the headset only has one USB-C connection, if you want to use it to connect headphones and a battery charger, you need to find an adapter that does both things.  Although Kabetec sells an adapter, I opted to look for another model online. Finding the right adapter is not easy, because many of the so called “adapters” that do both sound and power promise more than they deliver.

After much research, I finally found one model that others had used with the Pico 4 VR with good results and ordered it. It’s the BENFEI USB C to Audio Jack Adapter with 60W Fast Charging, USB-C to 3.5mm Female Headphone, compatible with iPhone 15 Pro Max/15 Pro/15, Samsung Galaxy S24/S23/S22/S21 Ultra, iPad Pro, Pixel 8 Grey… and the Pico 4 VR.

According to BENFEI, this USB-C to headphone adapter uses an advanced DAC smart chip to offer high-definition audio and powerful noise reduction, so you can get higher fidelity sound from it.  It does work as intended, out of the box, and I am quite happy with the results, having used it for over one month. The only problem with some of these adapters is long-term reliability, so I will have to wait for a while longer to see if it keeps working.  For now, I’ve found my solution for more impressive immersion when watching content in VR. The 4K trailers from upcoming films are so much more exciting when watched on a huge screen in my private home theater… with the Pico 4 VR.