SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro Gaming Headset

I am writing this review after an initial 2 weeks. I will come back and update if I have insightful longer term updates to provide. Before jumping into my $.02 I think it's useful to prefix review input with past experiences and what I'm comparing my product against. When thinking about music and overall sound quality, I have Apple AirPod Max's that blow these things out of the water. These can't touch the Max's bass, nor do they sound as smooth and natural out of the box (as everyone has said, these are quite flat out of the box). I also have SennHeiser MB660s that have been my work conference/music-at-the-desk and occasionally my gaming headphones w/o a mic and even they sound far, far better for music and even in some games (assuming OOB setup, not fully configured with Sonar). I am also going to address the lack of ANC outside of the pros/cons list, because I think the use cases of this headset are unique compared to general over the hear headphones. Despite my opinion, I do think it's odd the wireless version of these have ANC and these don't. However, I think if you want pure, fairly competitive or natural and detailed game sound quality above all else, you do not want ANC hissing and adding pressure to your ear. If you haven't owned in or over ear headphones with ANC you might not realize that the constant pressure they create on your ears cancelling out noise will fatigue your ears for long gaming sessions. I also don't think when I need to hear footsteps exactly where they are around me and where they're going in Warzone that I want to try to separate ANC hiss from game noise. I guess this could be easily addressed by putting the feature in the headphones and letting the game profile turn it on off. PROS: - the sound profile is very flat out of the box. I think that opens the most options wit the Sonar EQ software to adjust them to more peoples preferences. - if you read this and are a gamer who plays games that has voice chat, I totally under-estimated and under-valued what the GameDac can do. The GG software splits up game sound, your game mic, and your game chat mix into 3 individual audio streams. The best part of this, is games like Warzone let you split which audio device the game uses for those audio outputs. You can then press the dial on the dac once and adjust the output between chat and game sound. This means I can dynamically adjust hearing my team or the game - if people have low mics, are mumbling, or are obnoxious children blaring music into their mic during the game I can curtail that instantaneously. - despite no ANC the ear cushions do a really good job of blocking out most sound - I think the ear muffs and head band could be more comfortable than my Sennheisers and AirPod Maxes. These things just disappear on my head. I have never gamed more than an hour and a half straight without taking them off, but I thought nothing of them being on my head for that long. - the mic is excellent, especially with the ClearVoice "AI" filter - the game presets are pretty good out of the box. the sound quality and clarity are excellent. despite lacking in music impact, I have to admit these are probably are setup as they should to give the most accurate, clear in game sound. the sound imaging to pinpoint players is spot on, the volume levels are good. I cannot take these more than 75% in war zone without hurting my ears. CONS: - the Sonar software component of the GG suite requires a SteelSeries account to enable. This is totally unacceptable and just shows where SteelSeries is trying to monetize by getting your e-mail address. I have never found an aspect of Sonar that requires SteelSeries knowing who I am or utilizing an account to manage or enable my product. - I don't think if you're an audio snob you'll have a jack of all trades headset. as I mentioned above I have at least 2 over ear headphones that aren't even in the same solar system for music - stop buying the hype about the marginal better sound quality from the DAC. 99/100 normal people with untrained ears with average hearing can't tell the difference between compressed bluetooth audio and lossless wired headphones, all else equal. I bought the wired because I have so many bluetooth or wireless devices in my headset that when I want to game, I do not want interruptions, drop outs, hitches or blips.