SteelSeries has leveraged one of the better DACs on the market for the GameDAC in the ESS Sabre 9018 DAC. The DAC in GameDAC stands for Digital to Analog Converter, and is the piece of the audio pipeline that converts the digital audio into the analog signal that is necessary to drive the speakers. By building the GameDAC, SteelSeries gets full control of the entire audio path to ensure that the output is the best they can make it. Not all motherboards or laptops do this, but to have quality audio on a system is far less common than the opposite. Many systems include the minimum necessary to output an audio signal, to save on costs. Why would they want to do this? Well, a lot of the time the audio is an afterthought. So first, what is the GameDAC? SteelSeries built their own audio device for the Arctis Pro, allowing them to bypass the onboard audio of the PC, laptop, or PlayStation 4.

This is the key to being able to offer the first High Resolution Certified gaming headset. SteelSeries has put a lot of thought, and experience, into this little marvel. The other half of the Arctis Pro + GameDAC is, of course, the GameDAC, and this small USB device is truly where a lot of the magic happens.

Gamedac