The Arctis Nova Pro range from SteelSeries was the culmination of four years of product development, hardware engineering, design, and software creation for the company. Coming from a brand known for delivering high-quality audio solutions for gamers it set the bar as high as possible, with audiophile-grade sound alongside wired, wireless, and lifestyle-like features. Which led to impressive ANC (active noise cancellation), a fully retractable microphone, a dedicated external GameDAC, hot-swappable batteries, and a sleek and stylish look and feel.

As per our review of the SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro Wireless X.

SteelSeries has created something that more than lives up to its Pro branding. A headset for every device, or just one, take your pick. And if that’s PC, well, you’ve got the bright nova-like explosion SteelSeries was clearly aiming for; where hardware, software, comfort, and audio quality comes together in a single impressive package. And blow you away.

The other half of the SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro story was the arrival of the company’s own software suite Sonar, which introduced a fully parametric equaliser alongside impressive surround sound and AI chat-based features designed to make the most out of games, movies, and music. Sonar’s development mirrored that of the Nova Pro range in terms of time and resources, with the result speaking for itself.

To dig into just what goes into the creation of a high-end gaming headset, recently we had the chance to sit down with Brian Fallon, Product Manager of Headsets at SteelSeries to discuss all things audio. A candid interview that also doubles as a bit of Headset Primer, going behind the scenes at SteelSeries to uncover some of that audio magic.

Creating a high-fidelity gaming headset that delivers high-end audio, what were some of the challenges, and was that the goal from the beginning? And how does that marry with appealing to a core gaming audience?

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Brian Fallon: This was a long project, it took us almost four years. Part of that was just thinking through how gaming has changed, who gamers are, and how they've changed. So there was a lot of work that just went into trying to see if there were new challenges we could address and wondering what people want. Everything we've done with the Arctis Nova Pro is around being this super high-performance gaming headset. All the connectivity, all of the features, things like the multi-system connect feature to connect to multiple gaming systems. The way we craft a microphone, everything about the way it works was gaming first.

Related: SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro Wireless X Gaming Headset Review

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The other piece was delivering high-performance audio because games have really, really detailed sound. And that sound varies from one game to another, so creating something that is high fidelity and detailed was a big focus of mine. No matter what type of game you're playing, you've got that level of fidelity and that level of clarity to start with. And from there have lots of clever ways to customise that audio, including Sonar and the ability to do the on-board equalisation. Then there is the quality of life features that allow you to take this headset, especially the wireless version, and make it more than your gaming headset. It's gaming first, but Bluetooth, ANC, and the fully retractable microphone allow you to take this headset out into the world and use it outside of your traditional gaming rig.

The coming together of hardware and software and other features are what make a great headset. Looking specifically at the high-fidelity Nova Pro Acoustic SystemAudio, the drivers, and speaker technology, what went into that? Of course, there’s a difference between a high-end headset and a more budget-oriented product.

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Brian: In terms of sound quality and acoustics, there are two key pieces. At the actual component level, you’ve got the drivers, and then there's all of the enclosure and tuning that goes around it. And you can have one without the other and get poor results. You can have a high-quality driver and not tune it the right way and not get good sound. You can have an average driver, and if you have the smarts, you can tune it to a point and get it to be okay. There's a lot you can do. We realised early on, when we set our target high, that there was nothing off the shelf from a driver perspective that would fit what we wanted to do from both an acoustics perspective and from a size perspective.

We custom-designed the driver from the ground up, to fit both our requirements and the physical space that we had there. So there's a lot that went into choosing the right materials and the right design, and then the enclosure around that with the acoustic cavities that would lend itself to our tuning. A lot of gaming headsets, people describe as having booming bass. And it's not deep bass, it’s this low to mid-bass. It’s unintentional too, a byproduct of the way that it’s tuned. We have a specifically designed tube inside our headset that is meant to flatten out and reduce down that low to mid-bass, so you don't get that boomy quality. Instead, you get lots of sub-bass down to the lowest frequencies to really give you that sensation of bass without muddying up all the other details in the sound. It’s details like this that deliver that level of fidelity we're after.

Nothing worse than muddied bass. Comparing music headphones to gaming headsets, often the latter is more bass-heavy. What’s the tuning philosophy at SteelSeries, in terms of how you want it to sound when someone puts on a headset for the first time?

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Brian: Great audio is great audio. I don't really ascribe to the fact that you can tune something specifically for gaming because games are just so different from each other. Take five FPS games, none of them have the same sound profile. Now throw in all your action-adventure games and RPGs and you have this huge range of different soundscapes. The focus for us is to deliver a sound that’s going to be great, no matter what you're listening to. Different types of games, different genres of music, watching movies. No matter what it is, you're going to get that level of clarity where you can hear all of the detail.

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The focus for us is to deliver a sound that’s going to be great, no matter what you're listening to. Different types of games, different genres of music, watching movies. No matter what it is, you're going to get that level of clarity where you can hear all of the detail.

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Also, we don't want it to be just kind of flat and reference grade. Our sound is a little bit more exciting than that. Here you have that sub-bass built into it. A lot of gaming headsets will either go for just lots of bass or they'll do the smiley face curve where they'll duck out all the mid-range. When you first put it on it might sound exciting, but then you realise that you're losing all the warmth, and detail. You can no longer hear footsteps because the midrange is where all of that happens. For us, it's about delivering that level of detail and then providing the equalisation tools to customise. In Sonar, we have the per-game profiles, which deliver honed-in cues for that particular game, especially if you want more of a competitive edge. Or, simply use the tools to suit your own personal preference so that you can hear the sound the way that you want.

At what point does software come into the development picture? That factors in quite a bit, especially with surround sound, which is software based. And then there’s the EQ stuff, ensuring that it communicates with the DAC and is as detailed as it can be.

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Brian: Sonar was in development for quite some time, alongside the hardware but also independently of the hardware. From the very beginning, it was built to be hardware agnostic in a lot of ways, a tool that anyone can use with any audio device. Of course, we want the tie-in with the hardware, and you’ll have a better experience if you're using them both together. That's why we've reserved certain features, like AI noise cancellation on the microphone, to SteelSeries hardware.

Things like having fully parametric EQ, that works on anything. You can use it on an analog headset and you still get all the benefits. The presets that we've created, we created while using our hardware so they're very much tuned with our hardware in mind. But it's all about having these really flexible software tools that can enhance our hardware products, as well as having them shine on their own. Hopefully, if people dive into our software tools, and get some experience using that, they'll have some confidence that SteelSeries knows what they're doing on the audio side.

The presets, there are ones for specific games. And then you have more broad presets, for genres of music, movies. With Apex Legends and other competitive titles, what's the process there? Are you talking to players, developers, and sound designers?

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Brian: We'll be adding more profiles and more games. Eventually, there will be easier tools for sharing, so influencers and esports players can share their profiles. The initial idea of having presets came about because we realised that a parametric EQ is not a necessarily intuitive thing for everyone. Not everyone knows about different frequencies, how to adjust a q-factor, and choosing the width of a filter. The presets give people a starting point, you know, for Apex Legends here’s where footsteps generally fall in the frequency range.

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It's all about having these really flexible software tools that can enhance our hardware products, as well as having them shine on their own. Hopefully, if people dive into our software tools, and get some experience using that, they'll have some confidence that SteelSeries knows what they're doing on the audio side.

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Use that as a starting point, and develop from there. Some of the presets we made on our own, going through and analysing clips from games and figuring out how to hone in on specific sounds. With Destiny 2, the preset was co-developed with the engineers who work on the game, and the sound designers. We've got relationships with a lot of game studios, and we’re hoping to do more of that in the future.

Sonar arrived with the Arctis Nova Pro range, is it something that the team will be looking at long-term?

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Brian: Sonar is important to our whole audio range, there's quite an extensive roadmap for it and a lot of people working on it. The nice thing about software versus hardware is that you can update it pretty regularly. More quality-of-life-type features are coming, and a lot more functionality as well. More ways to customise the way your audio sounds, and streaming tools. And all of that ties into future SteelSeries products we have coming out, where new features will integrate with new hardware.

Headphone surround has been evolving over a number of years too, and people are continually tweaking it and iterating on it, and trying to give a better experience. Part of it is the source audio and information that comes in, so getting access to better sources is key. The other piece is the algorithm itself and finding ways to better tune it. We are continually looking at ways to improve both sides and provide an even better surround solution in the long run.

Going back to the Arctis Nova Pro hardware, you’ve got the wired version and the versatile wireless versions. Traditionally wireless has sounded inferior to wired, and that’s sort of the case here too. What are the challenges there?

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Brian: The wireless chips we use are really high quality and can deliver high-quality audio, but the DAC you're going to have in a headset isn't going to the level of what we can deliver from the wired version. In terms of how different they sound, that comes down to your experience level and how critically you listen. Most people can notice a difference, but how much depends on the person.

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Sonar is important to our whole audio range, there's quite an extensive roadmap for it and a lot of people working on it. The nice thing about software versus hardware is that you can update it pretty regularly.

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If you care about audio quality over everything else, if that's the thing you're looking for, you can't beat the wired Archis Nova Pro. With the ESS Sabre DAC we have, it's fully in the audiophile range. Wired does afford you just a little bit of extra detail that you can only get from having a high-quality DAC.

Setting the bar high, creating the GameDAC, and adding features, how do you keep costs down? Do sacrifices need to be made along the way?

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Brian: We've been doing this for a while, so we've got a pretty good idea going of how much things are going to cost and what we can have at a given price point. It is challenging and I'm thankful we didn't have to cut anything for the Arctis Nova Pro products. We were able to deliver the full vision of what we outlined at the very beginning. It was challenging though, we had all these different things we wanted to do.

Having ANC, it’s the first time we've put active noise cancellation into one of our headsets. We didn't want that to be just a checkbox feature either, we wanted it to be like truly useful. A full four-microphone hybrid ANC solution adds cost, so we had to figure out smart ways to implement that. And still, make it work with all of the other features we wanted.

Thanks to SteelSeries for taking the time for this audio deep dive.