SteelSeries Nova Pro Wireless Headset EQ Tuning and Sonar Tips for All!

thank you hey everyone it's Joe from gadgetry Tech and today we're going to talk about the steel series Nova Pro Wireless EQ tuning that is a mouthful I've been asked this more than any other headset I've ever reviewed to talk about custom tuning to make this sound better or different or what I suggest to tune it um there is a this is a very deep conversation as far as how tuning impacts your performance what you enjoy Etc so I'm going to get a little sciency during this part of the video however I do want to start with the basics so there's two way to two ways to tune this you can tune this with the DAC which has built-in EQ bands you can also customize the built-in DAC EQ bins via steel series GG engine and then on steelseries Sonar that's PC only so all the crazy cool sonar features and customization only works if you're playing on PC so I did want to address both console players and PC now my tune is not going to be perfect for every single person because we all have different ears you all have different preferences that people want more bass some want less bass or more travel less trouble and then also the shape of your ear the pinna which is the cartilage of your ear also affects how you perceive sound and it amplifies frequencies in a certain way there's a lot of crazy sciency stuff behind audio so you can't this is why some people like different things um the way I tune it's I don't tune for perfect flat because in a lot of cases people will find that boring and you can only tune so much to get to Flat before you actually introduce other issues I also don't tune for extreme v-shape or I don't aggressively Target the harman curve which is essentially v-shape I do preserve some emphasized bass I do like relatively flat mids and I like a nice opened treble range or high end frequency or high frequencies because I like preserving some of the airiness and detail that a lot of people like for games in music so my tune does keep some of the bass it's not as strong as I think it is out of the box but it's a more accurate base and it also helps with Imaging in a Better Sound State so if you are concerned with FPS or MMORPGs open World stuff um the tune will help that now I'll also teach you how to customize the tune to better suit your liking but use this as a reference so I have a headphone measuring rig with custom calibrated microphones so I actually measure frequency response phase um I actually do driver matching to see how well the drivers have matched to each other all kinds of nerdy stuff in addition to what I listen to In Tune by ear and then I also compare my results at the end to come what I think is the best tune for my ear and based off what I'm measuring so with that being said I'm going to show you the stock frequency response graph of the Nova Pro Wireless so on this red line you can see here there's I've covered this in the past but basically on the flat EQ setting of sonar or the deck this is what it looks like you get a dip right about 50 55 Hertz it dips down and then relatively flat mid-range it dips down around 400 Hertz and then comes back up and then it just plummets at four to six K so four thousand to six thousand Hertz and then it gradually picks back up some things can sound overly dark or lacking in detail and presence but some things can still sound harsh and shouty like you're cupping your hands and it hurts the sound quality um every headset has some Nuance with how they measure whether it's a two thousand dollar headphone or a 50 headset um so the goal of this is to I guess preserve some of what makes the Nova Pro Wireless good and address a couple of the issues I've had now I'm going to start with the Dak tune because a lot of console players are buying this this is probably the one of the best wireless console headsets you can buy so I don't want to skip out on Console players now I took a picture of my tune because you can't customize the EQ on the DAC if sonar is active so disable sonar then go to your steelseries GG engine this allows you to customize the EQ settings on the DAC if you don't want to deal with the little touch wheel up front and then that will save the settings to the deck so when you unplug this from your PC you can plug it into consoles this particular one is connected to my Xbox and PlayStation 5 simultaneously whichever one I turn on it switches to which I love and I get to benefit from this tune so the 30 Hertz range which is what you see here on the 31 Hertz I guess on this band I leave it zero it actually carries bass all the way down to 20 Hertz pretty well however there is a dip at the 62 Hertz range at least these are fixed bands I can't change it and that's why I can't modify it too much but at 62 Hertz I boosted it at three decibels 125 Hertz I boosted it by 0.5 250 Hertz I boosted it by 0.5 and then at one thousand and two thousand Hertz so one and two k you I left it at zero four four K or 4000 Hertz I boosted it to 4.5 decibel over zero and then 8K I dropped it by 0.5 and 16k I added 1.5 decibels so you can take a screenshot of this if you want save it for later I'm going to switch over to the frequency response graph and I want to show you how this measures okay so I can't fix every single thing on the deck because the DAC doesn't let me choose which frequency bands I'm targeting and it also doesn't allow me to adjust the queue or how wide I'm targeting that range and I'll explain the cue once as I get into the sonar software however you can see here that on my tune I fixed the null in the base region so instead of Dipping down in the 55 Hertz range it's closer to flat and now I can't boost it much more than this because if you do one you'll either add some Distortion to the signal or it'll actually increase the bass around that region as well to a point where you still get the same you know McDonald's Arch if you will which can make the base muddy sounding so I don't go too hard on it but you can see it's it's flatter than it was before and then because of what I did with the upper treble it helps bring in some of the details up top a little bit more so you know looking at let's say between we'll just go to 2.2 kilohertz all the way up to about seven kilohertz we'll say it's just lifted slightly I can't lift too much because I don't want the Peaks to be too high otherwise you do something called or you increase what's called sibilance and sibilance is like if I have a hard s that can be ear piercing you know treble cannons is a term that gets thrown around with certain headphones so I didn't want to approach that because it hurts your ears which creates ear fatigue end up turning the headset down and then what good's the tune if you can't even listen to it so this is the Dak tune and I'm really happy with the results it actually sounds amazing on console you don't want to add too much EQ because if you do you can add signal Distortion and you can cause some phasing issues or phase Distortion which hurts your Imaging and ultimately if people are spending this kind of money you want to hear footsteps more than fully accurate frequency response um playback I guess all right so the sonar setup is going to be a bit more complex and I'm going to have to explain quite a bit so you can I guess help you fully understand how to use it so let's start with the default audio profile you notice it's flat it's only five dots we're going to click the three dots to the right and I'm going to hit duplicate duplicate and you can call it whatever you want um I'm going to actually just switch over to my tune but this is how you would start to implement my tune so we duplicated default to like you again you can label it however you want you'll notice there's only five dots on the line here if I click the little plus and place my cursor on that flat line I can add additional dots and it gives me up to 10 to work with once you have all 10 you can't add any more so you want to do this first label it accordingly and then you're just going to click on the leftmost dot and I'm going to teach you how to type this in to customize it so I'm going to switch back to my profile that I made this took me hours by the way I tuned the crap out of it so on the first dot you're going to do One DB like plus 1 DB at 20 Hertz set the Q to 2. now the Q is your Notch it's how wide or narrow you're adjusting it so to simplify things if I were to adjust 500 Hertz and I have a Q of 0.5 and this let's say the 500 Hertz is where my fingers touch a 0.5 Q is going to be like this I'm going to lift 500 but I'm also going to lift the frequencies around it it's a nice gentle roll-off if I set my Q to 7 like something crazy high instead of 0.5 now my Q is like this and I'm I'm aggressively targeting 500 Hertz but I'm letting it immediately roll off around it that's how you fix the little dips in frequency response to get it more flat so I have a huge mix of Q here so we click the first Dot and as you type it in so I'm going to do one you can type 20 for 20. so you want to hit enter every single time you enter a number if you don't need to enter it just kind of reverts back to whatever you want now that I've explained that process you're going to see the numbers on the left hand side here to make this easy to type in so you can always pause it screenshot it and then move on to the rest of this video um the next frequency I Target 48 Hertz negative 1.5 DB with a Q of 5. it's a little Notch that I take out at 48 Hertz then we move on 55 Hertz I do a 5 decibel lift um so plus 5 DB at 55 Hertz 1.6 Q Moving On Again at 229 Hertz plus 0.8 DB with uh at 229 Hertz with a Q of 1.815 390 Hertz I do a 3.1 DB gain a q of 1.815 we're going to move all the way to the right here the mid's relatively flat this addressed the only real issue I have with the mids and going into the treble region we have a six decibel boost at 4.04 kilohertz and when you do kilohertz just to warn you know you can't type 4.04 or it's going to go all the way to 20 Hertz because it thinks you're typing in hertz what you have to do is type 4040 because 4.04 kilohertz is 4040 Hertz so I type 4040 and hit enter and then I move on to my queue and the Q here is 3.715 so 6 DB 4.04 kilohertz 3.715 Q again going to 5.74 kilohertz so you would type 5740 six decibel game 3.557 Q going to the eight kilohertz frequency so 8.05 kilohertz minus 2.6 DB and then on 10 560 Hertz or 10.56 kilohertz I did a five point ad 5.8 DB gain with a Q of six and then also with a Q of six at fourteen thousand four hundred and ten Hertz or 14.41 kilohertz I did a gain of 6.5 DB I really don't like going more than six decibel on gains or or reduction what mainly gains because you can create Distortion and issues that really pushes the line um I just felt like it just sounded a little bit better with it lifted so um I want to I'm going to go to the charts I'll show you what this produces and then I'm going to go back to sonar because I want to show you how you can customize this more to your liking so let's turn off the Dak tune and now I go to my Sonar tune this is my favorite tune I did on the wireless one I I literally spent like six hours trying to I guess kind of perfect uh the output of it so you can see I addressed that null in the base region It's relatively flat um it's boosted slightly at 20 Hertz because I think a lot of people like that Rumble but you're only talking like one or two DB this is almost flat and then it's relatively flat from the base and uh 20 Hertz point the subsonic base Point all the way through your mids even flat at two kilohertz and then when you get to the three to seven kilohertz range it lifts nicely but it's not overly sharp I didn't want to lift it too much because the the way this headset performs on your ear if I went too aggressive here it actually made it sound worse and a harsh sounding like grainy and it can hurt your ears so I wanted to lift it slightly to preserve some of those details in that open airiness that I like for you know FPS and MMOs and all that stuff um but I didn't want to overdo it and then on the highs again I kept the lift a little bit more so some of that high frequency treble tuning you adjusted that's what lifted this somewhat and where those nulls are to get a more even frequency reproduction um at higher treble so I really like this tune some people may want more treble and some people may want more bass so I'm going to go back to sonar and I want to show you something you can tune this two ways from here you can leave all of those crazy numbers you just typed in as they are and use the sliders down at the bottom here to adjust in my preference I use I've added like 1 DB of bass and I pulled back I think it was like 1.7 of treble so that was more of my preference um I didn't it's really hard to explain I'm like oh why didn't you just tune it up top um there are certain things where I like it tuned exactly as the parametric EQ Works especially for games when I listen to certain music 1.7 at medium to higher volumes is just a little bit more safe I can listen to it at a louder volume without it seeming overly bright so you can fine tune it with this bass voice and treble vase if I drag up it's going to lift that whole mid-range you can see that going up and down so start with this parametric EQ setup that I did and again if you want to increase the base you can do this now the way steel series does the bass boost it targets like the 50 to 100 Hertz range it doesn't really touch the sub bass so if you need more Rumble just click the dot all the way to your left instead of a 1db game you can add two or three more and it'll make that headset hit just a little bit harder along with that slider try not to go up past like 5 DB because honestly once you really start adding decibels on these sliders it increases Distortion and even though you have more bass the bass doesn't sound good it's not accurate it's not clean and it frankly it sounds pretty pretty bad as always I do leave spatial audio off with this tune the immersion and openness is absolutely ridiculous so I don't need spatial audio and then I leave the gain at zero I would not suggest touching gain like the more you boost gain and all these digital signals the more you have a chance of increasing Distortion at the signal level which is not what you want to sound pretty bad so that's the tune now I do want to talk about a few other things so hopefully you got what you needed from a tuning standpoint and then go run with it and have fun and I strongly suggest depending on what games you play if you get bored go to YouTube and type in like Battlefield Atmos demo or Battlefront Atmos demo the Star Wars game and try this tune out and it really is insane how much openness and Sound Stage you get you still get the bass and everything but it's just so much more immersive with that setup so I want to talk about the implications of sonar and their presets this is like an extra bonus topic because I got kind of frustrated it's super misleading um on these presets that they make so I'm going to go back to my stock EQ okay let's go to this and let me fix my 20 to 20K uh range so when you do these presets in sonar so I'm going to go to I think the first one I did was Call of Duty so let's click on Call of Duty war zone and look how aggressive they EQ this they take out all the sub bass obviously they're boosting a notch up high and at eight kilohertz they did a seven a six decibel lift it's good that they stayed under the six decibel limit or at six or less however the result of That Tune gives you this and yes IT addresses so this this gives you this kind of frequency response with the Nova Pro Wireless not all headsets that's the biggest problem I have they don't know what headset you're connected to on Sonar it's the same preset for every single headphone you own so the reason why I have a Razer black shark V2 here is I'm going to show you the same preset for both headsets and how drastically different the output is so you can't rely solely off of these charts I don't like using the built-in ones um so just for fun that was war zone this is the fortnite by FaZe Mega tune a little bit flatter but he obviously targeted very specific notches for fortnite probably found the footstep frequencies and boosted that let's see FPS footsteps music clear vocals this is a boost in the mid-range you can see from the one to three k range and everything else kind of falls back we go to sonar the forza tune the forza has an amplified bass response a lot probably like five to yeah 10 DB boost at 100 Hertz which means the engines are going to have more of a hum to it and then now we get into the Razer headset so I'm going to show you FPS footsteps the built-in steel series sonar EQ preset on the Nova Pro Wireless using the FPS footsteps preset now if I go to the black shark V2 on the same exact preset look how different that measures so you can't assume especially up here when you look at the upper treble range it is a drastic difference the bass is kind of a mirror of each other but that's just because they have a similar bass profile the razors just have a lot more boosted bass but you can't buy a hyperx headset or Lucid sound headset or a Turtle Beach headset and then just pick your Call of Duty war zone or FPS preset on Sonar and think that that's the right preset for your headset in that game I would love to spend a ton of time tuning every single headset and giving you tunes for them all but it's it's a large investment in time so I don't know what's going to be possible but I really wanted to demonstrate this so you understand the importance of doing your own custom E2 EQ tune for your headset to make the most of it and just to show you the difference so the Pro Wireless measures like this and the black shark V2 measures like that do you see the this what is this uh 20 decibel boost in base just absolutely Bonkers level of bass boost in that 150 Hertz so I guess if you like playing Forza you don't even need any custom tuning just by the the Razer headset and force is going to just have tons of hums so anyway I hope you uh found this review or I I'm so used to saying review I hope you found this video helpful in understanding the nuances of sonar tuning your Nova Pro Wireless or any other headset if you just happen to watch this Channel and you're looking for some input that's the way it works the last thing I'll end with on Sonar is to choose your headset sonar works with every single headset and once your headset is plugged in either pick the headphone jack that's connected to it if that if you're using analog or whatever USB headset you have will show up here in sonar now sonar can control that headset and then on your Windows settings you click your little volume just select steel series sonar gaming and now everything will work it doesn't matter what headset you have so um I really hope you found this review or video helpful I did it again dang it please like And subscribe if you found it helpful I'm really trying to grow the channel but I want to still make videos like this to address kind of like the Grassroots of the EQ and audio community so uh yeah thank you all so much for the support as always I really love all the positive comments you guys have made it it's just we have such a good Community going now and with that being said I will see you next time [Music] [Music]

Channel: GadgetryTech

Views: 177,061

Keywords: nova pro wireless eq settings, nova pro wireless equalizer settings, arctis nova pro wireless eq settings, nova pro wireless eq settings ps5, nova pro wireless xbox eq settings, nova pro wireless dac settings, nova pro wireless sonar eq, tuning eq settings in sonar, nova pro wireless dac vs sonar, nova pro wireless eq settings xbox, arctis nova pro, steelseries

Id: uOrTMNRhAbY

Length: 21min 27sec (1287 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 06 2022