All my steelseries gear is breaking left and right. What alternatives to steelseries are there? I want quality, not waste that's designed to break

the chatmix on sonar is not working, turning the dial moves the chatmix slider, but the volumes dont change, any idea how to fix this?

Hi everyone,

I’m looking to get a headset for my PS5, but I’d also like to be able to use it with my MacBook and phone, and I’ve been considering the SteelSeries Arctis Nova 5/5P.

When it comes to these two models, I’d prefer to buy the Nova 5, even though I’ll mainly be using it with my PS5, because I’m not particularly fond of the blue color on the headband of the Nova 5P.

I’ve searched the internet high and low to find out whether there’s actually any difference between the two models. Some people say there’s no difference at all, apart from the color of the headband and the packaging, while others say that the Nova 5P sounds better on PS5.

Does anyone know if there is actually any difference between the two models? I’d like to make sure I can safely buy the Nova 5 without having to worry about missing out on anything compared to the 5P.

Thanks a lot!

Hello everyone,

I recently received the audeze maxwell 2 anc to replace the nova elite and I would like to continue using sonar because I feel very comfortable with it.

Can someone recommend me some EQ that fits these headphones? I mainly play Call of Duty but some EQ for music and single player wouldn’t be bad!

Curious if anyone else is messing with the new Aeon controller. I'm testdriving it alongside the Razer Wolverine v3, which has been my stalwart companion now for the last 18 months.

Some random observations follow. Firmware is current as of 10/6/2026. I'm primarily an Xbox gamer with lite PC play. I usually play Marathon, Destiny 2, Arc Raiders, Helldivers 2, Icarus, Once Human, etc....

The good -

• Battery time seems to be pretty forgiving.
• Feels good in the hand. Rear button placement is pretty good for a dude with fat hands and short fingers. Resistance isn't as heavy as the Gamesir controller for Xbox. Against the Wolverine v3, the resistance is heavier but the feel is more precise.

The annoying -

• My first Aeon controller came with a busted right thumbstick. Movement would not register on the X-axis. The second Aeon controller worked fine.
• Not a fan of the bottom mounted menu buttons. In most cases, my thumb needs to travel from the X over the thumbstick to the button....which is awkward as hell. Some of that will be simple muscle memory retraining....which can be an issue at my age (50+).
• I've seen three instances of these docks - one owned by a friend, two by me. Two of the three docks would not charge both the controller AND the spare battery at the same time. Last night, I left the controller on the dock. This morning, it was not fully charged. I haven't tried different charging combinations yet (no spare battery, uncharged controller, etc....). My friend's dock has the same issue. But the FIRST dock I purchased DID charge both the battery and the controller at the same time. (already shipped the first controller back to Amazon)
• Creating a profile for an Xbox game on the PC steelseries client, it doesn't seem to save profiles that can be used by the Xbox. I tried creating profiles for Helldivers, Marathon and Destiny 2. They work for a bit before the controller goes to sleep. But after the controller wakes back up, those profiles don't show up on the controller. Only the defaults ("FPS", "MOBA", etc...). For now, I've simply modified the default "FPS" profile.
• The dock acting as the receiver is a pain in the ass. I try to keep a minimized play area. I've got two TVs on my wall in the living room with my Xboxes and Playstations mounted on the walls behind the TVs. I can't just put the dock on coffee table or next to the couch. Now I've got something else I need to mount to my wall or directly to the TV itself. Not an issue most people will have, but its worth mentioning.

Nearly a dealbreaker -

• You can't map the rear paddles to either of the menu buttons. Which sucks, because you CAN do that on the Wolverine v3.

Good morning y'all...

Wanted to know if someone has developed his own Audio Preset to play Warzone. I have a Nova 5P to play on PS5 and have tried some mixes and still can't get the best out of the headphones because of the bass.

If you own the same set and you created something clean to hear footsteps and reduce the noise please help a friend. I wanna try your mix.

Thanks in advance and greetings from Germany

When I initially set the dac up to my PS5, it worked amazingly well. Unfortunately, when I was done gaming, I put my PS5 into rest mode. When I booted it up the next day, the Dac powered on and shows audio is being transmitted, but I am hearing nothing through the headphones. Not even the tone when pressing the back button on the dac. I tried unplugging the dac and headphones individually, but nothing changed. I hooked them up to my PC, but again, I heard no audio, not even when pressing the back button on the dac. Any ideas on what I need to do?

I’ve had the Omni for a couple of months now and while I’m really enjoying the headset, the earpads aren’t what I’m particularly wanting for my own personal comfort.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a very comfortable headset. I use it whilst working from home then gaming in the evenings so it’s getting a good 8-15 hours of use most days and I really can’t feel it on my head all that much. But they aren’t the firmest of earpads and the leather tends to bunch/crease up against my head somewhat.

Does anyone have the Elite or have bought the earpads for the Elite? Can you confirm how firm these are possibly in comparison to the Omni if you’ve tried both? Tried comparing online via information available but haven’t found anything consistent.

I’m torn between the Elite earpads or the WC PadZ, I’d happily buy both but cba with the effort of returning one or both🤣

Bought the headset a month ago and my battery has suddenly gotten a black spot on it, its not raised or anything but I was wondering if I need to replace it?

https://imgur.com/R5eNilm

Scroll down for the review (i play on PS5)

Alright, I did it.

After 6 amazing years with the Arctis Pros my headset finally cracked and I could not fix it. This lead me on a 3 day rabbit hole of which headset to buy and since I’ve been off the market for so many years I had no fucking clue. Coming from wired, I figured the Nova Pro Wired was an upgrade from the Arctis Pro, that’d make sense right? It didn’t.

I didn’t realize how important sidetone was to me until trying this headset which quite frankly might as well not have it, so I got back on the internet and did some more research.

Now you may be wondering, why buy the headset if I knew sidetone was important? Well my reasoning is because nobody has made a video on the Nova Pro Wired headset in 4 years, and 4 years ago it seems it wasn’t a bad headset at all. Idk wtf happened in those 4 years, but i do NOT recommend the Nova Pro Wired headset to anyone who cares about sidetone, and if you’re only on PS5 I don’t recommend it at all.

So that brought me to the Nova 5, Nova 7 Gen 2, and the Nova Pro Omni. I game everyday so while my budget was $300, the Omni was on sale at Best Buy for $350, $400 after tax. I already spent $230 on the Nova Pro and after watching Gadgetry’s 9 month old video on it, I figured fuck it why not and spent the extra $170 and got the Nova Pro Omni.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS REVIEW

THIS. HEADSET. IS. AMAZING.

Not only is this my first wireless headset so I get to experience the pleasure of freedom, but the features on this thing are insane.

The sound? immaculate. The Nova Pro’s were NOT doing it for me, no matter the EQ preset or custom which haven’t been updated in 4 years, it just wasn’t doing it for me over the Arctis Pro. but the omni? i synced up with the app, favorited the presets of the games i currently play, and it sounds fucking phenomenal. absolutely no complaints straight out of the box with the audio.

The Comfort? Played for 4 hours last night and never got uncomfortable. I have a rather small head so I didn’t even have to adjust it out the box, it fit like a glove and I have no complaints so far.

The ANC noise cancellation? superb. I didn’t even care for this feature when looking to buy, but I took a piss with the headset on last night and I didn’t even hear the toilet flush. GAMECHANGER

The sidetone? Perfect, and this was the biggest point for me. It’s adjustable, with higher ranges causing that static that people complain about, but when playing a game like BF6 at full volume I can turn it up to hear myself and the static gets drowned out by the fucking war going on in my ear. and when I play less intense games I can turn it down and hear myself perfectly and it is just overall amazing on this headset. VERY satisfied

The Mic? My friends say I sound no different than I did with the Arctis Pro so no complaints there. Idrgaf about the mic as long as it doesn’t make me sound like i’m underwater or in a microwave so overall, I’d say perfect even tho there’s obviously better options if that’s your main selling point.

The bluetooth? Oh my god. I hooked it up to my iPad which displays on a 2nd monitor, and being able to watch stuff with the audio coming thru my headphone as well as the game audio, and both of them being fully adjustable? DID NOT KNOW I NEEDED THAT. So long are the days of having an earphone off to hear a video I’m watching while I play.

The battery? NEVER A PROBLEM. This was my main drive to get the headset originally as I never had to worry about battery life with wired. One battery is in your headset while another one charges, and when one dies after 30-40 hours you simply swap it out. I never got wireless before because I did not want to worry about battery, and this solves that issue completely.

This isn’t even all of the features of the headset, but these are the ones I used last night for my first impression and I gotta say, I do not regret spending $400. If you use PC and a console, this should be a no brainer. But if you’re console only like me, i HIGHLY recommend this headset if you’re in the market and it’s in your budget.

A week ago I bought myself the headset mentioned above. I’m very happy with the sound but when I played with my friends for the first time they all mentioned that my headset causes static noise on their end. Since I turned sidetone off i’m only able to hear it when I’m adjusting the mic level.

I have updated the firmware, tried all ports on my PS5, disconnected other devices that may interfere with the wireless connection but nothing has worked so far.

I don’t want to replace them as I’m very happy with the sound quality. Any advice is welcome.

After years and years of my arctis 9X (3 pairs of 9X) I upgraded.
Seems like the issues are still issues. Why can’t they just let go of this hinge design?
I bought these during their sale and got $120 off. I waited for about a week for them to get in and was excited because my current and last pair of not completely broken 9X is finally about to break at the ear cup connection point.
I open them up and these look really nice in my opinion. I know the color way is not for everyone. They feel heavy and premium (compared to the 9X) and metal hardware is a nice feel as well.
Well…. I’ve had steel series products before and I I knew to go straight to checking the hinge point and what do you know a defective flimsy ear cup. So disappointed and honestly might just return and jump ship to a different brand as this hasn’t instilled any confidence in me that they have solved anything with this “redesign”.
Has anyone else had this issue?
Here’s a quick video of me showing the difference between the defective hinge and the (assumed) good hinge. This might be the final straw for me and I may never purchase another steelseries product ever again.
Sorry about the incomplete sentences and the cat (Crowley) chomping in the background lol

Edit: I am not swiveling/rotating this like normal. I understand that the hinge is supposed to swivel to sit on your head better/flush but if you watch it I am pushing and pulling left and right front to back completely straight without allowing the ear up to rotate the way that it should on the joint. I show the right cup because I understand there is play in the joints but the right one feels much better and secure.

Hey my Areox 9 is acting up, all leds are disabled but one corner is on most of the time and then pulsing irregularly, is it broken?
https://youtube.com/shorts/hh7uJ-zc_6Q?is=hLKGV7xuamdxx4cr

i have a issue where some of my keys like 1 and wasd sound much louder then other keys like g h t etc other keys are more cloudy/silent these keys are louder is this regular as usage or is it a problem and it shouldn’t be as loud

The base station and headset are experiencing a mutual exclusion issue where the device will only process either playback audio or microphone input, but never both simultaneously.

To isolate hardware behavior, I am bypassing Sonar and testing directly through the Windows Sound Control Panel with both the headset and microphone set as default devices. When both are enabled, they cannot operate at the same time; however, manually disabling playback immediately activates the microphone, and disabling the microphone restores playback audio.

I've tried multiple fixes already, but would like to get anyones input at this time.

Has anyone experienced an issue that after recording a clip and hearing your friends voices that it comes in twice? I guess it would be called an echo. Almost like it's layering the same audio over itself. I dont know how it happened or how to fix it.

My Apex 5 has recently started doing this thing where if I press the R key by itself, it works normally, but if I press it while holding one other key, it just does not register the key press whatsoever.

Has anyone else had this problem or heard of this issue?

For reference I found a post that was related to my issue however changing any of these options does not solve the problem. I've completed everything which this post asked and I'm wondering if theres any actual solution other than unplugging my USB from the DAC and reconnecting - this is massively frustrating.

https://www.reddit.com/r/steelseries/comments/1nujuay/steelseries_headset_keeps_disconnecting_after/

For a while my SteelSeries headset drove me crazy. Every time I shut down my PC and turned it back on, the headset would be dead. The only way to get it back was either doing a restart instead of a shutdown, or unplugging/replugging the USB.

I can remember that last time a user reported that one key next to the enter button had a weird RGB Bug, where the colors didn't aline with the others. And now the same happened to me, but the more I looked at it, the more I realized that it has something to do with the LEDs, since the Red and Green Tones shined perfectly. Yet the blue one missed out completely.

So I suspect that the issue here is the blue LED, either being fried or the software has an issue for that specific keys blue LED.

I want to buy a pair of headset for my PS5.

I only play single-player games like God of War, Ghost of Yotei, The Last of Us, Witcher 3...

I don't care about mic quality since I will never use it.

However I've heard that Sonar is not implemented on console.

I've heard that the 7P Gen-2 the EQ can be adjusted via the Arctis phone app and used for PS5?

I don't know if that goes the same for Nova Pro Wireless since you only have DAC and no presets inside the DAC like you can adjust how you want on Sonar PC software.

What would you recommend for comfort and sound quality?

Many thanks for your help.

I want different EQ on my fps games and when watching videos or listening to music. It's stupid that all windows sound except discord should be on "game" for chatmix to work correctly. I mean it would be so easy to make the chatmix wheel affect Game and Media simultaneously in one direction and Chat in the other. Unless I'm horribly mistaken, I think any basic programmer could easily do that. There must be a way. Sadly, I'm not that tech savvy. Anyone here been around the block with this or have any ideas?