Steelseries Arctis Pro Wireless and some faffing about

[Lightning Phil]

Wanted a wireless headset that did everything. So after some reading up on them, ended up with a pair of steelseries arctis pro wireless headphones.

They claimed lots of good things and while initially quite pleased, couldn't resist a tinker.

First paid attention to the plastic ear cups. They were a bit acoustically transparent. Or in other words - loud if trapped or otherwise handled. So took them apart and added a little sound deadening material to the back of the driver enclosures. Them some more on the insides of the removable outer covers.

With the damping in place it, a resonance I was initially unaware of had gone. Clarity, especially in the mids was increased nicely, as was the sense of stereo and special location (these are for gaming and music).

Then measuring with a pair of miniDSP Ears and correcting with Equalizer APO did thre rest. Also revealed a discrepancy in loudness I was beginning to suspect. The left headphone was most of 1 dB lower than the right.

After the tinkering, very, very happy with them.

Were they audiophile (or my personal version of what that means) before? Maybe not. But after honing their potential? Maybe yes.

 

[Lightning Phil]

If anyone else needs thin bituminous damping material. The car audio stuff can be squished between some foil with a rolling pin. Start off with a bit slightly bigger than needed, squish, then trim off the edges where the goop oozes out with a craft knife.

 

[waztedpanda]

hey, i just got mine and i noticed that sound feels like all over the place for example if i play apex legends and when fight starts it feels like i just have bucket over my head and cant tell almost any direction from what where it comes . and footsteps are so silent

 

[Lightning Phil]

After calibrating them, they were a lot clearer.

Assume you use windows? If so, can assist setting up Equalizer APO.

 

[Lightning Phil]

Configuration files for the EAPO filters that I've been playing with are attached.

EAPO.txt was the first generated and more or less an average response to correct both the left and right channels at the same time.

EAPOhalf.txt is the response of the above halved.

EAPOleft.txt is the response corrected after some iterations and a bit of perfecting for the left ear.

EAPOright.txt is the same for the right.

These could act as interesting starting points for anyone without the minidsp ears.