It’s an Arctis Nova 7. It’s intended to be used with a program called Steelseries GG that manages EQ profiles for the headset, as well as spatial audio, with some proprietary thing called Sonar. It also includes a mixer for managing multiple audio sources. I find the whole thing to be pretty nifty. But what I’m worried about is losing this functionality if/when I move from Windows to Linux, apparently that specific program doesn’t have Linux support. Does anyone have any experience with this or something similar?
I have a Nova 7 as well. The good thing is that the settings are saved into the headset itself, so you can just set it to how you like in Windows and have it be remembered in Linux.
I setup a small Windows VM and I passthrough the USB device whenever I need to change the settings, but I haven’t needed to do that since I got the headset a year and a half ago. Of course, if you need to constantly change settings, yeah it is less than ideal.
I haven’t tried it, but check this out:
I’ve got an Arctis 7 myself and it works just fine in Linux, no special drivers or anything needed. However, there are a bunch of features in their proprietary app which I used for all of a few minutes on a Windows machine (I think there was an equaliser in there?) and that might work in Linux under Wine… but I’m not sure as I’ve never bothered.
Can speak to this slightly. I tried to get their app to run via Wine, and it did not work just “plug and play” at least. Tried to find a guide or some alternative option. After about 15 min of searching, I decided that “eh, it works great out of the box” and started using easy effects for an EQ instead.
Pulseaudio, pipewire, jack, even alsa all have equalisers.
I literally got the Acrtic Nova 7 a month ago, and I daily drive OpenSUSE. There were no issues getting it set up for normal use, but Sonar doesn’t have a Linux version and as far as I could find there are no instructions to get it working so all of those creature comforts will not work.
One thing to note is that if you connect to Windows via Bluetooth and not the dongle, make sure to unpair the headset before wiping Windows. I ran into this because I had it connected to my old phone and had to unpair it to connect it to my new one (the headset will not pair to a new device unless intentionally unpaired from the old one)
Everything works just fine sound wise but the chatwheel doesn’t work at all. So the changing the volume between your game and discord or some other chat app. Won’t work. Also you can set up their buttons and feedback sensitivity that can be done on windows and it will be saved in the hardware.
chatwheel
If it emits some signal the OS recognizes it’s possible to bind that to some action, hack a script.
Maybe but the way it it works is the software creates a virtual mixer with two virtual sound devices that you set one to your game hand one to your chat program then the chat wheel balances between the two. The virtual sound devices are created by their software not the device driver. It could be done but I don’t think enough people are enough to write that code.
It also includes a mixer for managing multiple audio sources.
Isn’t that just a normal part of the/any operating system?
Well, in this case you can have different audio profiles for each channel.
I’ve never had an issue with anything Steel Series and linux.
My mouse is steelseries and there’s a simple Linux utility to change the color of the LED (black switches it off).
And it’s a really good mouse.
My wireless steel series worked with no extra effort.
I have an arctis something, 7 or 9, not entirely sure anymore and posting this from my phone. Only thing I needed the drivers for the mic loopback settings (which I used my gf’s old windows laptop for for like 5 minutes) and otherwise there wasn’t anything I needed. The wireless connection base station is just usb plug and play, no drivers needed. Not the same as the nova but my 2 cents, good luck!
Never used any software but my arctis works fine otherwise
