The Razer Nari is a decent wireless headset, but it’s a little oddball—because it uses a bespoke USB dongle for pairing. This is all well and good if you’re using a supported configuration; plug it into a Windows PC, run the utility, and you’re good to go. If you’re a Linux user, though, you were out of luck—but [JJ] has just solved that problem.
The tool was created by reverse engineering the pairing protocol used by Razer’s own proprietary software. [JJ] figured out the necessary pairing command, and how to send it to both the dongle and the headset. The headset itself must be connected by a USB cable when initiating the pairing process.
[JJ] believes the tool should work with any Razer Nari and dongle variant. However, the Nari Ultimate and Nari Essential models are yet to be tested, with verification still required. However, the pairing commands were extracted from Razer’s own tool and don’t appear to differ so it should probably work across the board. Setup is still a little fussy, particularly to get both the Game Audio and Chat Audio outputs working under Linux. However, [JJ] has helpfully provided the necessary detail to get everything up and running with PulseAudio and PipeWire setups.
Proprietary hardware can be frustrating to work with at times, but that’s never stopped hackers from reverse engineering their way to success before. If you’ve got your own projects in this vein, don’t hesitate to notify the tipsline!
I love sweet hacks like this. Well written and actually not so hard, inspiring stuff.
I respect the effort. But in my mind this is strong evidence that unless you are an audio nut, your headset should use a standard bluetooth connection or headphone jack.
I fully agree. And I also thing that the manufacturer of such device don’t deserve additional sales brought by the efforts of someone who liberated the hardware, even if hack in itself is inspiring and worth the lesson how to break the proprietary protocol.
I don’t think you need to be an audio nut to notice both the quality and latency limitations of Bluetooth, and the low end headphone space is pretty crowded. Do you really think there’s zero room for innovation?
The bigger question is though – why not support Linux? Is this a money thing?
Why would you buy a proprietary headphone? Why? Makes no sense.
Gift from someone who doesn’t realize?