Software

SteelSeries Engine 3 is the software package that comes with the Arctis 5. As soon as you install it, it will check for any remaining software or headset firmware updates and make sure you're up to date with everything.


The user interface is easy on the eyes, very responsive and simple to use. If you turn the "Live Preview" switch, located at the bottom, to "On", everything you do in the driver will be applied to the headset right away without you having to press "Save". This is pretty nice, especially if you plan on playing with the equalizer, as you'll be able to play your songs and hear how the changes affect these right away.

As far as sound settings go, we first have the surround sound trigger and its sound profiles. Turn this off unless you want to completely ruin everything that is to be liked about the Arctis 5. Then, we have a general system-wide equalizer, where you'll be able to tune the way the headset sounds. More demanding users won't really like the granularity of the equalizer as it only allows you to set to the 62.5 Hz, 250 Hz, 1 kHz, 3.6 kHz, and 12 kHz regions and nothing in-between. This is most likely a decision made in order to prevent inexperienced users from ruining the sound of the Arctis 5, which is something you can do with any headphone ever made if you're playing with the equalizer without knowing what you're doing. In short, you can adjust your basic lows, mids, and highs, either manually or by using one of a couple presets - Flat, Performance, Immersion, Entertainment, Music, and Voice. I can't tell you which one to pick as the ones preferred by me won't necessarily be to your liking. Simply play your favorite music, play with the equalizer and see what you like. Keep away from the Voice preset though as it completely kills the bass and emphasizes the mid- and high range. It can be useful if you want to articulate someone's voice, but under no circumstances did I have trouble understanding someone or hearing the vocals in the music I was listening to.

If you want my suggestion, stick with the Flat profile, which gives you a pure, untouched sound presentation. If you could do with a bit more bass, adjust the 62.5 Hz slider to around +6 dB and the 250 Hz one to +4 dB. You can use your cursor keys to finely regulate them in both directions.

The last sound setting is called Dynamic Range Compression. This is yet another setting you should keep turned off as it does exactly what it says - it compresses the dynamics of the audio. It crushes the variance between quieter and louder parts of whatever is playing, but that's not something you should aim to do as music producers and game developers go to great lengths to make their products sound as dynamic and lively as possible.

Then we have the microphone section. Here, you can turn on "Live Mic Preview", an option that will play the sound picked up by the microphone through the headphones with about a 0.5 second delay. It's there so you can check on how you sound - don't use it for anything else. If you want to have a bit of fun, turn that option on, press Record in Audacity and try to have a conversation with somebody. Hearing yourself talking with a delay will confuse your brain, and you'll sound like you just took a nasty fall and landed on your head.

We also have the "Mic Volume" slider and the "Noise Reduction" slider. The first one determines the sensitivity of the microphone, while the latter will decide how much of the background noise to filter. It's interesting that the voice quality doesn't change at all, regardless of the Noise Reduction's setting. On the other hand, even when set to "High", it won't completely block off the sounds of your mechanical keyboard or the clicking of the mouse. It will alter them and make them less "clicky" though, so it's pretty much up to you if you use it or not. In case you missed the microphone performance section of this review, here are audio sample I recorded while having it set to "Off" and "High". As you can hear, I was simultaneously talking, typing, and clicking my mouse.




Finally, there's the "Mic Sidetone" slider, one you won't see on many other headsets. What this setting does is quietly play the sound of your own voice through the headphones with no delay. It can be extremely useful if you're one of those people who find it annoying to chat while wearing closed-back headphones. They make it harder for you to hear your own voice and can cause you to sound nasal and talk louder than necessary. By adjusting the "Mic Sidetone" slider, you basically make the Arctis 5 behave as if it were open-back, in the sense that you'll be able to hear yourself much better and won't sound weird to your friends. I suggest going for the Low or Medium setting. When set to High, it picked up the sounds of my mechanical keyboard, which annoyed me a bit. I wish every headset came with an option like this!


To control the RGB lighting system, you'll use the buttons on the left side of the Engine 3 software. Here, you can individually control the colors for the left and right ear cups or link them together. However, if you decide to link them, you can only choose between the "ColorShift" and "Multi Color Breathe" effects, with various selectable colors, color shift speeds, and glowing patterns. You can have both ear cups light up at the same time or after each other. The colors can be picked from a color palette or entered via the HEX or RGB code. Talk about covering all bases.

The only way to set up a static lighting pattern or to disable the illumination completely is to unlink the ear cups and set them up individually. That's not difficult to do or anything - it comes down to pressing a single button. I'm mentioning it primarily to let the RGB haters know that the lighting system can be turned off.


Finally, you can save your settings to multiple configuration profiles and even make them automatically launch when starting a certain application.

Overall, the SteelSeries Engine 3 is a great piece of software. It offers various useful settings and is not bloating with needless features, which makes it a pleasure to use.