SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro Review

SteelSeries GG

For a long time, all SteelSeries’ peripherals were configured through the SteelSeries Engine software driver. It looked nice and worked without a hitch, so it was a pleasure to use. Unfortunately, at some point last year, SteelSeries decided to integrate it into an annoyingly elaborate software suite – SteelSeries GG. It still contains the good old Engine, but also has a massive commercial homepage where SteelSeries is trying to sell you their various products, as well as a separate Giveaways section and a Moments section used for gameplay capture. As if you don’t already have 17 other ways of doing the exact same thing.

Equally annoying is the fact that the Arctis Nova Pro uses two separate parts of the SteelSeries GG suite for its configuration. In the Engine section of the suite, you can access all of the options available on the GameDAC Gen 2, including a system-wide 10-band equalizer, an output gain setting, microphone volume and sidetone controls, line output mode selection, and so on.

However, there’s also the Sonar section of the SteelSeries GG suite. Here you’ll find a much more modern and significantly more advanced way of tuning the Arctis Nova Pro. First, you’ll be greeted by a mixer with a Master, Game, Chat, and Microphone slider. What Sonar does is create two separate virtual playback devices, SteelSeries Sonar – Gaming and SteelSeries Sonar – Chat. After selecting the SteelSeries Sonar – Gaming as your default playback device, you have to go to your voice app of choice, Discord, and select SteelSeries Sonar – Chat as your playback device. Then you can use the ChatMix feature on GameDAC Gen 2 to balance the volume between Discord and everything else. In practice, you’ll use this feature if the game is too loud compared to the voices of your friends (or vice versa). It’s a useful feature, made even better by separate Game and Chat volume sliders in the Sonar section of the SteelSeries GG suite, and dedicated equalizers for both virtual channels.

Both virtual channels, Game and Chat, come with their own equalizers. The Game channel has a parametric equalizer, which gives you the freedom to adjust the output of the headphones absolutely any way you like. You’re also welcome to use one of the many profiles offered by SteelSeries, including various game-specific ones. If you don’t feel at home with parametric equalization, you can opt to use the bass, voice, and treble sliders below the equalizer without ever touching the equalizer itself. The Game tab also offers a button to turn on the virtual surround sound technology (Microsoft Spatial Sound, 360° Spatial Audio, and Tempest 3D Audio are supported, depending on the platform), while the Chat and Microphone tabs have the ClearCast AI Noise Cancellation toggle, which at the time of my review was in early access and as such far from its final form.

SteelSeries even added a 10-band microphone equalizer, along with a handful of factory profiles, tuned to fix some of the potential deficiencies of your voice. Here you’ll also find two noise reduction sliders, a noise gate slider and a smart voice slider. Noise gate completely cuts off the sounds below a certain volume level, while smart voice aims to crush the dynamics of the voice in order to make it equally audible regardless of how loud or quiet you’re currently speaking.

As a whole, the Sonar section of the SteelSeries GG suite is quite impressive, but SteelSeries should look to integrate all of the features of the Engine into it so we don’t have to switch between the two to access all of the adjustment options of the Arctis Nova Pro. Also, if you activate Sonar, you can no longer use the equalizer found in the Engine section of the software suite, nor can you adjust the equalizer on the GameDAC Gen 2. SteelSeries should strive to make the experience more consistent through future firmware updates.

For a long time, all SteelSeries’ peripherals were configured through the SteelSeries Engine software driver. It looked nice and worked without a hitch, so it was a pleasure to use. Unfortunately, at some point last year, SteelSeries decided to integrate it into an annoyingly elaborate software suite – SteelSeries GG. It still contains the good old Engine, but also has a massive commercial homepage where SteelSeries is trying to sell you their various products, as well as a separate Giveaways section and a Moments section used for gameplay capture. As if you don’t already have 17 other ways of doing the exact same thing.Equally annoying is the fact that the Arctis Nova Pro uses two separate parts of the SteelSeries GG suite for its configuration. In the Engine section of the suite, you can access all of the options available on the GameDAC Gen 2, including a system-wide 10-band equalizer, an output gain setting, microphone volume and sidetone controls, line output mode selection, and so on.However, there’s also the Sonar section of the SteelSeries GG suite. Here you’ll find a much more modern and significantly more advanced way of tuning the Arctis Nova Pro. First, you’ll be greeted by a mixer with a Master, Game, Chat, and Microphone slider. What Sonar does is create two separate virtual playback devices, SteelSeries Sonar – Gaming and SteelSeries Sonar – Chat. After selecting the SteelSeries Sonar – Gaming as your default playback device, you have to go to your voice app of choice, Discord, and select SteelSeries Sonar – Chat as your playback device. Then you can use the ChatMix feature on GameDAC Gen 2 to balance the volume between Discord and everything else. In practice, you’ll use this feature if the game is too loud compared to the voices of your friends (or vice versa). It’s a useful feature, made even better by separate Game and Chat volume sliders in the Sonar section of the SteelSeries GG suite, and dedicated equalizers for both virtual channels.Both virtual channels, Game and Chat, come with their own equalizers. The Game channel has a parametric equalizer, which gives you the freedom to adjust the output of the headphones absolutely any way you like. You’re also welcome to use one of the many profiles offered by SteelSeries, including various game-specific ones. If you don’t feel at home with parametric equalization, you can opt to use the bass, voice, and treble sliders below the equalizer without ever touching the equalizer itself. The Game tab also offers a button to turn on the virtual surround sound technology (Microsoft Spatial Sound, 360° Spatial Audio, and Tempest 3D Audio are supported, depending on the platform), while the Chat and Microphone tabs have the ClearCast AI Noise Cancellation toggle, which at the time of my review was in early access and as such far from its final form.SteelSeries even added a 10-band microphone equalizer, along with a handful of factory profiles, tuned to fix some of the potential deficiencies of your voice. Here you’ll also find two noise reduction sliders, a noise gate slider and a smart voice slider. Noise gate completely cuts off the sounds below a certain volume level, while smart voice aims to crush the dynamics of the voice in order to make it equally audible regardless of how loud or quiet you’re currently speaking.As a whole, the Sonar section of the SteelSeries GG suite is quite impressive, but SteelSeries should look to integrate all of the features of the Engine into it so we don’t have to switch between the two to access all of the adjustment options of the Arctis Nova Pro. Also, if you activate Sonar, you can no longer use the equalizer found in the Engine section of the software suite, nor can you adjust the equalizer on the GameDAC Gen 2. SteelSeries should strive to make the experience more consistent through future firmware updates.