The simplest of installations
Installation, as you'd expect, is as easy as it gets. The speaker is roughly half the length of a standard CD-ROM drive, and it'll slide easily into a 5.25in bay - four screws are provided to hold it in place.
Add the unit to your chassis, in our case an Antec NSK2480, and you'll find it fairly pleasing on the eye - and a whole lot less "silly" than we'd imagined.
As simple as the installation is, it isn't achieved with the utmost finesse. Connecting a power source is straight forward, but an audio source requires a little work. The Kama Bay Speaker won't attach to any audio connections found on your motherboard itself, it'll need to be fed to a 3.5mm socket found on your motherboard's external connectors, or the rear panel of your dedicated sound card.
That, therefore, entails running the supplied stereo audio cable from the rear of your PC, back into your system via the supplied hole-filled PCI bracket, and into the rear of the Kama Bay Speaker. Fortunately, only a standard 3.5mm stereo cable is required - if the supplied cable is a little short for your chassis, you'll have no problem getting one that's a bit longer.
So, the big question, how does this little 1.5W + 1.5W speaker sound? Well, surprisingly good. Its audio is understandably a little tinny, and we needn't discuss frequency response or bass levels - that would be missing the point.
What it delivers is good general-purpose sound. One could easily be fooled by its miniature size, but the speaker's power output is surprisingly good. Listening to music, too, isn't beyond the realms of Kama Bay's possibilities. Crank the volume up and it'll pale in comparison to a good set of desktop speakers, but for a touch of quiet background music whilst you work, it does the trick.