Arctis Nova Pro ChatMix on Linux

About this project

Some SteelSeries headsets have a feature called ChatMix where you can easily adjust game and chat audio volume on the headphones or dongle.

In previous SteelSeries headsets ChatMix was always a hardware feature. It worked by providing 2 sound devices to the host, 1 for general audio and the other for chat audio.

In newer generations of their headsets however, in particular the Arctis Nova Pro, this feature was taken out of the hardware itself, and made into a feature of their audio software called Sonar.

Sonar of course only works on Windows and requires a SteelSeries account.

Even though it is now a software feature, the hardware can still control it, but only when Sonar activated this feature on the base station. You can toggle between normal volume controls and ChatMix by pressing down on the volume dial on either the headset or base station.

I wanted to be able to use ChatMix on linux, so I reverse engineered the communication between Sonar and the base station to control 2 virtual PipeWire sinks.

Disclaimer

THIS PROJECT HAS NO ASSOCIATION TO STEELSERIES, NOR IS IT IN ANY WAY SUPPORTED BY THEM. I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR BRICKED/BROKEN DEVICES NOR DO I GUARANTEE IT WILL WORK FOR YOU. USING ANYTHING IN THIS PROJECT MIGHT VOID YOUR WARRANTY AND IS AT YOUR OWN RISK.

Usage

For this project I created a simple Python program to both enable the controls and use them to control 2 virtual sound devices.

Dependencies

• Python 3
• python-hidapi
• PipeWire
• pactl

On Fedora these can be installed with:

sudo dnf install pulseaudio-utils python3 python3-hidapi

On Debian based systems (like Ubuntu or Pop!_OS) these can be installed with:

sudo apt install pulseaudio-utils python3 python3-hid

Install

Clone this repo and cd into it

cd nova-chatmix-linux
## Copies nova-chatmix.py to ~/.local/bin, adds udev rules, and creates/starts the systemd service for the user
# You will be prompted for the root password where required
./scripts/install.sh

Uninstall

cd nova-chatmix-linux
## Removes nova-chatmix.py from ~/.local/bin, removes udev rules, and removes/stops the systemd service for the user
# You will be prompted for the root password where required
./scripts/uninstall.sh

If you want to run this script on startup you can add and enable the systemd service

## The systemd service expects the script in .local/bin
# Create the folder if it doesn't exist
mkdir -p ~/.local/bin
# Copy the script to the expected location
cp -i nova-chatmix.py ~/.local/bin/nova-chatmix

# Create systemd user unit folder if it doesn't exist
mkdir -p ~/.config/systemd/user
# Install the service file
cp nova-chatmix.service ~/.config/systemd/user/nova-chatmix.service
# Reload systemd configuration
systemctl --user daemon-reload
# Enable and start the service
systemctl --user enable nova-chatmix --now

Run

You can now run the python script to use ChatMix. This will create 2 virtual sound devices:

• NovaGame for game/general audio
• NovaChat for chat audio

# You do not need to run this if you installed the systemd unit!
python nova-chatmix.py

This command does not generate any output, but the Sonar icon should now be visible on the base station.

To use ChatMix select NovaGame as your main audio output, and select NovaChat as the output in your voice chat software of choice.

ChatMix should now work. You can toggle between volume and ChatMix by pressing the dial.

Details

I started by installing SteelSeries GG and Sonar in a Windows 11 VM and passing through the base station USB device. On the Linux host I used Wireshark to see what happened when I enabled Sonar.

This device uses USB HID events to both configure and receive data from the base station. I identified which ones enabled what features and tried activating these on Linux using the /dev/hidraw* device. See commands.sh for more information.

I am on MCU firmware version 01.29.27 and DSP firmware version 00.03.82.

Protocol description

See nova-chatmix.py for a commented example implementation.

The controls and data output are on USB Interface 4 (bInterfaceNumber=4). This interface has 2 endpoint, 1 for sending data (0x04) and 1 for receiving data (0x84).

The HID Data messages are structured as follows:

• The first byte decides wether we are sending or receiving. 0x6 means we sent it, 0x7 means we received it from the base station
• The second byte specifies the parameter, eg. 73 (0x49) to enable ChatMix
• The next bytes contain the value for that parameter, some parameters use 1 byte, some use more.
• Because the message should be 64 bytes long, the unused bytes should all be 0

These are the parameters I have found:
(There are quite a few more parameters, like sidetone and other settings, I just haven't documented those yet.)

Option	Description	Parameters	Range	Notes
73	ChatMix State	- Boolean: State	0-1
141	Sonar Icon State	- Boolean: State	0-1	I think this only toggles the icon, but that could be wrong
37	Volume Attenuation	- Integer: Attenuation	0-56	0=max 56=mute
69	ChatMix Controls	- Integer: Game Volume - Integer: Chat Volume	0-100
46	EQ Preset	- Integer: Preset	0-18	Preset 4 is the custom EQ profile
49	Custom EQ Controls	- Integer: EQ Bar - Integer: Value	0-40	On the base station the value ranges from -20 to 20

License

This project is licensed under the Zero-Clause BSD license