Elgato Wave XLR Pro Review: The Ultimate Audio Upgrade?

[00:02] new audio interface from Elgato. It is unlike anything we've ever seen before make. And I want you to know that when I say that, I don't mean like, "Oh, no one else has the skills and the technical know-how other than Elgato." What I mean

[00:14] position. They got a lot of market share, especially with one particular product that makes this possible and no one else [music] can do it. When we get into this, you will understand. So, let's get into this.

[00:26] ago. I've been using it and I really like it. I think you're going to like in one of two camps. This is a $350 device. That's expensive, but it is less expensive than the GoXLR that launched at $400

[00:40] 6-7 years ago, especially if you consider inflation. But also, it does a lot of things that the GoXLR or even a lot of modern interfaces don't do. So, you're going to be excited, you're going to need it, and it's going to fully

[00:52] upgrade your system or you're going $350 on a device when a $130 device like the WaveXLR could probably get you the same results. The idea is that by the end of are. Let me show you how this works and what it does. My USB cable is stuck. All

[01:07] straightforward. We got our PC plugged into the USB port that says host. into that in a second. Then we have our XLR mic plugged into the first XLR slot. You notice there are two XLR slots. We'll get into that also, but that's

[01:21] Elgato's new Wave Link 3.0 software pulled up here. You can see that in Elgato devices, WaveXLR Pro pops up in here. Let's open this up. We've got our XLR mic one. So, we want to adjust this microphone. Let's get this set up here.

[01:34] interface, we always use the SM7B because it takes a lot of power. If it handle any of them. Some of you may have noticed this is an SM7DB, but I have the preamp turned off. This is essentially just an SM7B. But if you haven't seen

[01:48] Elgato's new Wave Link software, it's pretty streamlined, very simple to control now. Over here we have our inputs, so we have our XLR mic one. In already got it set properly here. We've got a handful of features here like

[02:01] microphone. We don't need it on this. It's a dynamic mic. We've got gain lock because some apps actually change the gain of the microphone. This keeps that from happening. Clip guard keeps you from peaking. Inline boost compatibility

[02:14] using like a cloud lifter or something. None of these things are particularly new. They're also available on the $130, $160, depending on when you buy it, to jump through it. We also have these effects and just like the Wave:XLR or

[02:28] Wave:XLR dock for the Stream Deck Plus, these are all processed on device. Well, the device. The software effects are still processed on your computer. And high. They're turned up to 11 right now. Elgato has made some of these

[02:42] sliders that anybody can use them. I want you to hear what they sound like so you can hear what they do. And while we do that, I'm going to tell you about today's sponsor, our old friends owned.pro. You guys know owned.pro.

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[03:37] voice are cuz I'm not listening to it right now. But, Elgato has included a solid list of the most important things that you could need. Things like low-cut hums, especially hitting the desk. An expander, which is like a noise gate,

[03:49] and off cut. [music] Voice tune, which is essentially a compressor, but a little bit more tweaked. Of course, compression, EQ, and then their own AI noise cancellation called voice focus. Normally, that's paid for, but if you

[04:02] buy one of these devices, it comes [music] included. But so far, nothing here is different from the WaveXLR. As far as I know, they even share the exact same preamps. They're both very good, up to 80 dB of gain, which I'm only using

[04:14] 45. So, let's jump into where it gets different. [music] Let's get into our can see that we have four hardware inputs here, which is excessive for a the back of this, you can see that we have two XLR inputs. We have hardware

[04:30] that we're missing on a lot of devices these days. A headphone jack on the one on the front, and [music] two USB ports. But one thing you'll notice is missing is any kind of hardware control. No knobs, no faders,

[04:46] take on this. I want to see how my audience here, because Elgato could have way is to have all the controls on the device itself, like the GoXLR, the Rodecaster, the Roland Bridgecast. Any of these devices have the controls on

[05:00] board, so you don't have to buy two devices. But, once you have the controls on the device, you're limited to what those controls are and nothing else. But have the most popular device for streamers, which is also [music]

[05:14] a control device, the Stream Deck. Whether it's one of the regular ones with dials on them, or even the rack-mounted one. Considering almost every streamer already has one of those, Elgato went the route of let's put all

[05:26] the budget into the brain and let people [music] control it with the Stream Deck. That allows for every dollar to be put into a more powerful device. It also allows for expandability. For example, if you have a GoXLR, you have four

[05:39] faders. You will always have only four faders. But, by using the Stream Deck as your controller, you can have as many dials as you want. I've got a Stream Deck Plus XL on my desk, but if for some reason six dials wasn't enough, I can

[05:52] plug in another Stream Deck Plus and now I have 10 dials. I could control all of my mixes, my speakers, my headphones separately. I could control multiple inputs with a dial or even if I want specifically to control how much my

[06:05] microphone comes out of just my stream mix, I can add that on there because I can have as many dials as I want. I could have too many dials. I will even use the swipe function on a single Stream Deck Plus and have eight dials.

[06:17] that doesn't really have an answer because it's all personal preference. Do >> [music] >> do you allow for endless expandability? don't have a Stream Deck, you can control it in the software itself. You

[06:32] probably want one though. So, let's go over how using this is different than using something like a Wave XLR. What makes this more powerful? The main thing that separates this from the Wave XLR,

[06:44] outputs, are the fact that the brain in here is incredibly powerful. So, everything is being done on device, not just the voice effects, but also all the mixing, all the routing, everything is here. On the Wave XLR, the mixing is

[06:57] still being done on your PC. One of the things that that means is if your Wave things that that means is if your Wave XLR software crashes or you X out of it for some reason, your mixes stay [music] put. You don't lose all your stream

[07:09] audio. This just keeps chugging. It also gives you a lot more mixing control. now, I've got my personal mix for my headphones. I got my stream mix going to going to Discord. [music] I've got all four inputs here, the

[07:22] line-in jack on the back, the USB aux if I want to plug in another computer, and then my two microphones. Let's add some software inputs. When we hit create that it can capture, but if we go to add empty channel, it gives us our classic

[07:35] system, and just like any other device in my settings, I can set [music] system as my default audio. So, now YouTube or my game is all going to come out of system here. I want that to go into my personal mix. I want that to go into my

[07:48] stream mix. I don't want that to go into Discord. But, I do want my microphone to teammates can hear me. My stream can hear me and my game, and I can just hear my game. Personally, I like to hear my microphone in my mix. Before, [music]

[08:02] this was a little less straightforward. You had to go into your microphone and there was an option [music] here to change how much you could hear yourself, how much was being monitored. Now, because all the brains are right here,

[08:14] I'm going to add my microphone, and now my microphone is coming through my headset mix. It's a little bit loud. I want it quieter in my ears, even though I want it full volume on my stream. So, I'm just going to turn it down right

[08:26] So, now in my headphones, it's 60% the volume it is to my teammates and my stream. But, if I wanted to turn down my microphone for everything, I would just pull it down right here. And keep in mind, you're hearing the

[08:39] live mix. You're hearing this stream mix. So, as I do that, I'm sure you wanted to add some effects to my microphone, again, I could do it right in the mixing tab. I never have to go back to the

[08:52] where we're seeing an effect that's brand new [music] that we can only do on the Wave XLR Pro, and it's called ducking. Ducking is very cool, and I this. Essentially, what it does is you set your key channel, the main audio

[09:06] source, and I'm going to set that to my microphone. Now, what that means is anytime the Wave XLR Pro hears my microphone, hears me [music] talk, it's else coming in, or at least everything I

[09:18] choose. So, if I've got game sound coming in, and I want my game to get a little bit quieter every time I talk, I'm going to check this. So, now anytime little bit lower. Maybe that's not what you want. Maybe you want your music to

[09:31] here. We're going to add music. We're going to to put it in the stream mix. We're not going to put it in our Discord mix. Now, that there's this ducking icon happening on system. It's not happening on music.

[09:44] Let's go back into here in these ducking settings we set up. I'm going to check right here where we've got music on our stream mix. I'm going to add music into it's added it there. But let's make one more adjustment here. Let's say we want

[09:57] the game volume to duck in the [music] stream mix so my audience can hear my to lower in my own ears when I'm playing. I can hit these three little buttons right here, and I can say don't allow ducking. And now, on this one

[10:09] particular mix in this one particular channel, ducking [music] is turned off. Everything is processed separately, and everything is processed on device. This is the first time we've had this level of control in a mix in an audio device.

[10:24] a couple more times before the end of this video. This is incredibly powerful. You need to ask yourself, is this necessary for your stream, or is it just I need you to be thinking about that this whole [music] video. Now, we've got

[10:37] version of the mix that doesn't have music in it. This is very easy to do. We This is going to be our VOD track. Let's move this right next to basically going to be the same thing. If you're wondering why these top parts

[10:50] the software. There's a couple bugs in here. But let's add in our microphone. to add in our music. And this is the version we're going to send to Twitch don't get muted. This doesn't mean your stream is safe and you're allowed to use

[11:04] get a strike while you're live. The best way to make sure you don't get any something like StreamBeats, which by the way finally has a brand new website. You can go check it out. Check out all 16 of our genres. Play them on your stream.

[11:16] them however you want. It's totally free. Enjoy it. But [music] lastly, let's say we want a clean recording on a totally separate PC. We've got our I'm going to click the plus button. We're going to call this recording.

[11:30] record is our gameplay, nothing else. And we don't want this duct at all. We want the volume to be constant so we can use it properly for editing. Now, we're going to plug our second PC into the USB AUX

[11:42] port here. And in this, we're going to add an output to USB out. And now in have a couple mix settings over here. One of these is a maximizer, which basically is a compressor for all of your tracks together, making it a little

[11:57] without adding any clipping. Now, I'm going to crank that up to 70% and that compression is only happening on that particular mix. In fact, if I want to add compression to make my stream punchier, I can add it to the stream mix

[12:12] also. Maybe we only want it at 30% though. Maybe we don't want it as high. You can have separate compression on every single mix. And all of this being this device is for a handful of people.

[12:24] of control. It's for people that have multiple PCs and want to have multiple people running podcasts or maybe have guests on their live stream and they multiple headphone outputs. And what's cool about this is you can have this

[12:38] device in the middle of your setup and each person can have their own Stream >> with their own volume dials controlling their own mixes. So, for example, instead of having a second recording output, we can make this one the second

[12:53] headphone output. And I can control the volumes of the individual microphones just for my headphone jack. One of the things I've done in my setup is I've got my headphones just plugged in right into the back here. But I've also got my

[13:05] speakers plugged into the line out and I've got a separate mix just for the speakers. And in my speakers mix, I remove the microphone. [music] it's not blasting back at me through the speakers and then going on an endless

[13:18] feedback loop. So, is this thing worth $350? Obviously, that's a subjective person but not for you. But I do think the value that this offers matches $350.

[13:30] We've got incredible onboard mixing, onboard signal processing and effects, some of the best IO in a small sleek device, and endless expansion for both control and also expansion for IO because if you plug in another device

[13:44] mixer. But if all you're doing is a standard live stream with headphones in, Elgato has not pulled any punches with their smaller more affordable devices. $200 saved goes a long way. So, ask yourself what your needs are today.

[13:57] Also, ask yourself how far you plan to expand in the future. Is this something streaming experience grows? [music] Let me know in the comments down below which again, do you like this idea with having the controls not on here, but instead

[14:12] to see how divisive that is. I own a lot of Stream Decks, so I love this device, >> [music] >> happy streaming.