Have you ever wanted to adjust the sound of your headphones or microphone while gaming or listening to music?
SteelSeries Sonar is a free audio program for your PC that lets you do just that!
It’s a great place to start if you’re not happy with the way your audio sounds, and you don’t need any proprietary hardware to use it.
With Sonar, you can make real-time adjustments to the sound being played or sound being recorded.
This makes it perfect for gamers who want to boost or cut different frequencies to help them in FPS games or to make their games or music more immersive.
You can also use Sonar to drastically change the sound of your standalone mic or even salvage your headset mic and make it actually listenable.
One of the great things about Sonar is that it works with pretty much any headset and mic and although I use it with my Steelseries Arctis 1 Wireless I would definitely recommend it to others looking for a simple to use and set up equaliser.
How to get Sonar
To use Sonar, you need to download it from the SteelSeries website.
Although it’s free, there are a couple of catches.
Firstly, you have to create an account and be signed in to use it.
Secondly, the program does collect data on you, although they don’t go into too many specifics about how much.
In reality though, who isn’t tracking your every move these days when you’re online?
How to use Sonar
Once you have Sonar up and running, there are four tabs at the top: Mixer, Game, Chat, and Microphone.
Mixer
In the Mixer tab, you can control the master volume, game volume, chat volume, and microphone volume.
Before you can use the game/chat mixer, you have to set Sonar to your default audio device in Windows settings.
Most of your desktop audio is going to default to “game”. For example, if you’re playing Warzone or any other game, the audio meter will show in the game column.
You can then set specific sources like Discord to “chat”.
Game
In the Game tab, you’ll be altering the primary audio source you’ll be listening to.
There are also presets for many of the most popular games at the moment including COD, Apex Legends and CS:GO. This gives you a quick starting point that you can then tweak to your own liking.
There’s also a parametric equalizer, a spatial audio tuner, a gain slider, and a “smart volume” slider which is effectively a compressor keeping your audio from getting too loud.
Chat/Microphone
Back in Sonar, you can raise or lower the volume of the game or chat independently.
Or you can drag the ChatMix slider in the Mixer tab to adjust both at the same time, so Discord and the game you’re playing don’t overpower each other.
As part of the Chat tab, you have things like Noise Reduction which can help clean up your microphone sound or add a Noise Gate which will help reduce sounds like keyboard clicks or fan whirring being picked up in your microphone.
Again there’s also a number of presets here to give you good starting points.
You’ll find the exact same options under the Microphone tab.
Media
If you like watching other streams on your PC, you can also tweak the sounds of this in the Media tab. Add your browser as a Media type and you can tweak the settings here to make your game sound as immersive as you want to.
You’ll find the same setting options here as you would in the Game tab.
Equalizer
The equalizer is probably what most people are downloading this software for.
Sonar includes a parametric equalizer that lets you visualize your changes in more of a curve.
You get five different points to adjust, and you can add up to five more.
Overall, Sonar is a great tool for anyone who wants to adjust the sound of their headphones or microphone while gaming or listening to music.
It’s free, easy to use, and works with pretty much any headset and mic.
Just be aware that you need to create an account and that the program collects data on you.
