The Power of Quality: A Review of the Wave XLR Audio Interface

As a musician and streamer, I've always been on the lookout for high-quality audio interfaces that can deliver crystal-clear sound and reliable performance. In this review, I'll be putting the Wave XLR through its paces to see if it lives up to the hype.

My first step was to get familiar with the interface itself. I connected it to my studio and started experimenting with different microphones. I used three microphones in total: two gain-hungry Hungarian Mics, an Electro Voice RE-20, and a Sennheiser SM7B. I also added a big, large diaphragm condenser microphone, the CAD-E100S, to my setup. With all three microphones, I compared the Wave XLR to the Go XLR and my Audient Evo 4.

The results were impressive. The SM7B sounded slightly better on the Wave XLR than anywhere else, but the RE20 and CAD-E100S sounded remarkably similar across all interfaces. However, the Wave XLR and Go XLR did stand out from the rest with their clean preamps and crisp sound quality. Whether you're a musician or a streamer, this interface delivers top-notch audio that's hard to beat.

One feature that caught my attention was the customizable faceplate on the Wave XLR. This is similar to the Stream Deck 2, which I've always loved for its flexibility and customization options. The Wave XLR's faceplate allows you to create custom buttons and shortcuts to boost your productivity and workflow.

Value-wise, the Wave XLR is a steal at $160. It costs just $30 more than my trusty Audient Evo 4, but provides way more features and functionality. Of course, for those who want to go all-out, there are other options like the Go XLR Mini or Live Streamer Nexus products that offer even more advanced features, but they come with a hefty price tag.

The Wave XLR doesn't try to be anything it's not – it's just a high-quality XLR interface with handy virtual audio routing software. I appreciate its straightforward approach and lack of unnecessary features that might get in the way of your workflow.

For those who want to take their streaming game to the next level, I have some exciting news. The Wave Mic is coming soon, but without being a USB condenser mic – it's an XLR interface that lets you bring your own microphone! This means you can use any mic you like, whether it's a dynamic or condenser mic.

To celebrate this partnership, Curiosity Stream and Nebula have teamed up to offer a special deal. For a limited time, you can sign up with the link below and get access to both Curiosity Stream and Nebula for less than $15 per year. This is an unbeatable deal that includes thousands of educational and documentary content on both platforms.

And finally, I'll be releasing a full recording session soon featuring all my microphones running through the Wave XLR. Stay tuned for this exciting release, which will be available on Nebula first. In the meantime, join us on Discord to chat about this and other releases from this week, and get help with your live stream – remember to be kind!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: en75 decibels of gain 20 decibels of clip guard protection for your loudest of screams while streaming a beefy enough preamp the power of the re20 the sm-7b and more without flinching usb-c customizable place flash flash place plates customizable faceplates virtual audio routing to separately manage game sound voice chat and so on and it's under 200 the wave xlr from elgato is seriously impressive but it's not without its faults it's also not this honestly i think most people were hoping for something like this but here you go elgato wave deck as the live streamer nexus and go xlr competitor we're reviewing the wave xlr in today's video sponsored by curiositystream get access to my own streaming site nebula for free when you sign up for curiosity stream via the link in the description i'm eposvox the stream professor and i've reviewed a ton of mics and audio products on this channel with only one go to help you get the best value for your dollar to build or improve your streaming content creation or teaching setups in case you missed it on july 15th which i guess was yesterday at the time this is being uploaded elgato announced a ton of new products and accessories which i've been covering in depth and you can find linked below for what has already gone live and i have plenty more videos to help you master your stream and your tech and covering more of these releases releasing soon so hit the subscribe and notification icon so you can stay informed of course full disclosure elgato did send this to me for review but they're not seeing this before it's posted sponsoring the video in any way yada yada i've been spoiled in the past couple years with some pretty high quality audio gear i may not have an rme baby face or anything like that but good audio interfaces have gotten cheaper and i still love my mix pre-3 mark ii audio recorder as well this means that i typically don't get impressed by audio interfaces too easily but elgato's wave xlr came in swinging and caught me by surprise this is the wave xlr the xlr interface equivalent of elgato's wave usb microphones they released last year these mics were notable due to the high quality capsule designed by luit affordable price tag at significantly below 200.00 and coming with the wavelink software that gives you virtual audio devices and submixes akin to the goexlr to make audio routing and separation of game and voice chatting sound a lot easier wavelink was such a huge hit there that there was massive community outcry to just sell wavelink as its own app rather than requiring one of their microphones elgato didn't do that but instead built a high quality audio interface paired with the app to make things easier for those in need of an interface or those who find it worth it to upgrade or side grade physically it is quite simple basic plastic shell angled up at the user big clickable dial in the middle with led ring around it led indicators for mode selection a capacitive mute button that turns the leds red and then a single xlr jack 3.5 millimeter headphone jack and usb type-c output on the back i have a lot of good things to say about this interface overall as we get into it but i want to start with the bad because it mostly has to do with this physical layout the xlr port being at the bottom rather than the raised angle eliminates the usability of right angle xlr connectors and the outputs dear gosh why streamer gear keeps insisting on only including a 3.5 millimeter jack for headphones despite the fact that the cross section of streamers and users who want high quality headphones is not insignificant even if it were smaller it is much easier and more clean to adapt a 1 4 inch jack to 3.5 millimeter rather than the other way around this is just silly not only that but there's only a headphone jack no line out no speaker out not even a line in this matters for a few reasons the most common being dual pc is basically a non-starter here without at least a line out you have no real way of routing audio to a secondary pc and bi-directionality is kind of important there meaning a line in would have been nice as well go xlr and live streamer nexus get that but specifically to me and i imagine others i use speakers at my desk i don't like wearing headphones 24 7. it's not healthy nor sanitary and definitely not comfortable for even the most comfortable of headphones i like having speakers to get a different take on my audio mix and generally enjoy sound when i'm up and about in my studio this is a pretty normal thing but with no line out i have no real way of running audio to the speakers every mixer costing 20 or more has dual one-fourth inch or 3.5 millimeter line out often with dual outputs and most xlr interfaces have a main out as well this is like bare minimum i o for this kind of device and it's just gone depending on your speakers you could kinda rig up the 3.5 millimeter aux from the headphone out to the aux in on a speaker set but the headphone amp levels and line levels are different voltages and that's generally not a good idea at best and can cause all sorts of audio garbage or possibly even damage your gear at worst this was a stupid omission period part of the reason the more snobby part of the gear community looks down upon streamer gear as toys or wastes of money even when they're not is because in catering so heavily towards what a streamer does while they're streaming these devices often don't even begin to consider how a streamer might use them when they're not live or performing and having to juggle multiple audio routing systems just for that is cumbersome and i would always recommend a single piece of gear that does it all for you rather than piecing together multiple pieces of gear if possible elgato could add a tertiary submix output to the wavelink software allowing you to pipe out audio to another output giving you speakers back or sending audio over hdmi for streaming but that assumes you want this running on your gaming pc which is also only a specific workflow and not one that i'm even personally a fan of all right specs wise this is a 24 bit 96 kilohertz audio interface 48 volts of phantom power is available for condenser microphones the preamps are nice and clean providing 52 decibels of analog gain and 23 db of clean digital gain for a total of 75 db of gain at its base but you do have an additional 20 db of headroom out of gain but of headroom with their clip guard feature the same used in the wave microphones to make sure that you never peak or clip or distort breaking your listener's eardrums that is if you want to it is optional you could become that demon with terrible audio if you want to turn it off wave xlr has a dynamic range of 100 db 120 with clip guard enabled the device is entirely powered over the usb c cable the dial has three different functions just like the wave 3 microphone model it controls your microphone gain your headphone volume levels and the balance mix between system sound and your microphone sound for those of you who don't want to hear yourselves you don't have to clicking the knob in swaps between modes the wavelink app has seen some minor updates since we've last looked at it the main part of the window acts as your mixer board you can have up to nine devices virtual or other physical devices from your system including other microphones added to the mix eight if you don't count the wave xlr jack which cannot be removed of course the software installs a group of virtual audio devices for you to map your various programs to system browser game music sfx voice chat and then two auxiliary devices for whatever else you then have to manually assign specific programs to those devices using the windows sound manager or in a specific program's menus whether or not an app remembers the setting past reboot or even past closing and reopening is entirely dependent on the app vlc does not remember this setting whether i set it in windows or in the program itself and i hear uwp apps are especially frustrating in this regard each device listing including the xlr input can be renamed in the mix for ease of use from here you have two sliders for each device one for each sub mix currently there are two sub mixes a monitor mix for you to hear and a stream mix for your stream hence the name you can swap between which one you hear in your headphones by clicking the little eye icon mainly just to check your stream levels manually and then adjust the master levels of each mix at the bottom of the window you can also change which device the monitor mixer mounts to you can adjust or mute the levels for each submix per device or link those two sliders together for a specific device as well clicking the drop down menu for the xlr jack gives you a good breadth of options sample rate input gain phantom power control over the output volume and mix balance of the headphone jack two different low cut filter options or none clip guard wave gain lock which prevents other applications from adjusting the device levels such as what might happen with video calling apps or voice chatting apps here you can also customize the led color for general use and for muted use which is nice for customizability as well as to set up better color choices for those who are colorblind the problem is this is not a sticky menu it disappears if you click anywhere else and having the audio interface settings in the microphone listing just feels thrown together you go from mic gain settings to headphone output settings back to microphone settings again into audio interface settings it just feels disorganized headphone jack and color settings should probably be moved to the settings cog for the app makes the most sense to me also these sliders are useless they should always display the numeric value of where they're at not just when you're dragging them because then you have to adjust it to see where you're at that's just a poor user experience lastly i would have loved more options for the low cut filter but you can just add that in post anyway especially since there is no overall mic processing options here i found this to be a glaring emission from the wave microphones and i feel like it's even more of an issue here at minimum they should let you add vst filters to the mic device within wavelink if they don't want to build their own tools for eq compression noise gate etc while you can add each of the individual audio devices to obs and manage your mix there the whole point of this part of the device is for you to manage your mix in the wavelink software and take the final output to obs or your streaming program but if you do that you can't add filters to just the microphone anymore i still do not like this workflow a year later the clip guard is an essential feature that i know so many streamers need in their streams sound quality wise the wave xlr is great the preamps are clean and strong enough to power an electro voice re20 sure has some 7b and just about any other gain hungry mic you're going to throw at it without issue here's a couple microphone samples though i will have a bigger video with all of my mic samples coming in the future as i did with the live streamer nexus i didn't think i'd be doing this so close again three rings for the oven kings under the sky seven for the dwarf lords in their halls of stone nine for the mortal men doomed to die one for the dark lord on his dark throne in the land of mordor where the shadows lie three rings for the oven kings under the sky seven for the dwarf lords in their halls of stone nine for the mortal men doomed to die one for the dark lord on his dark throne in the land of mordor where the shadows lie three rings for the oven kings under the sky seven for the dwarf lords in their halls of stone nine for the mortal men doomed to die one for the dark lord on his dark throne in the land of mordor where the shadows lie three rings for the oven kings under the sky seven for the dwarf lords in their halls of stone nine for the mortal men doomed to die one for the dark lord on his dark throne in the land of mordor where the shadows lie three rings for the oven kings under the sky seven for the dwarf lords in their halls of stone nine for the mortal men doomed to die one for the dark lord on his dark throne in the land of mordor where the shadows lie three rings for the elven kings under the sky seven for the dwarf lords in their halls of stone nine for the mortal men doomed to die one for the dark lord on his dark throne in the land of mordor where the shadows lie three rings for the oven kings under the sky seven for the dwarf lords in their halls of stone nine for the mortal men doomed to die one for the dark lord on his dark throne in the land of mordor where the shadows lie three rings for the elven kings under the sky seven for the dwarf lords in their halls of stone nine for the mortal men doomed to die one for the dark lord on his dark throne in the land of mordor where the shadows lie three rings for the oven kings under the sky seven for the dwarf lords in their halls of stone nine for the mortal men doomed to die one for the dark lord on his dark throne in the land of mordor where the shadows lie so i've listened through with the wave xlr with three different microphones two gain hungary mics the electro voice re20 and the sure sm7b and then a big large diaphragm condenser microphone the cad e100s and with all three microphones comparing the wave xlr to the go xlr to my audient evo they all sound great i will say that the go xlr and the wave xlr are the most kind of competitive there as they require less post gain to boost the sm7b specifically and the sm7b sounded slightly better on the wave xlr than anything else but in terms of the re20 and the caddy 100s here they sounded just about the same occur same across all the interfaces only the wave xlr and the go xlr provide more gain up front than the evo4 does whereas the evo4 would need a little bit more gain added in post to get the same sound levels but overall completely happy with it preamp sounds clean everything sounds clean and crisp and clear you know this wouldn't necessarily be an upgrade over say the go xlr or anything else but if you're looking to choose a high quality interface that's what they've made here i did want to note that the wave xlr supports customizable face plates just like the stream deck 2. i was supposed to have a custom faceplate made in time for this review but i've been super behind on things and timing did not work out on my end i will be doing some cool stuff with that though in terms of value per cost the wave xlr costs 160 dollars just 30 more dollars than my audient evo 4 the interface i've been using all year for my re20 while providing way more functionality overall just missing the second xlr jack and main outputs that i could run to my speakers or audio or video recorder for the majority of single pc streamers this will probably be perfect the rest of us should probably look at the go xlr minis and live streamer nexus products out there though they're significantly more expensive the wave xlr also doesn't try to be anything it's not and i kind of appreciate that they didn't shoehorn a weird feature onto it or combine two products it's just a high quality xlr interface with handy virtual audio routing software and it does it well at a price that's surprisingly affordable in the audio interface space if you were wanting the wave mic but for it to not be a usb condenser mic the xlr just lets you bring your own just like i'm bringing my own streaming platform built by my creator friends the site is called nebula and we've partnered with curiositystream it features youtube's top education creators such as mkbhd lowspecgamer and renee ritchie curiosity stream saw what we were doing for educational content and wanted to form an educational power team we've worked out a deal where if you sign up with the link below you not only get access to curiosity stream and they're a library of thousands of educational and documentary content but you get access to nebula and all of its content for free for the entire duration of your subscription to curiosity stream for a limited time curiosity stream is running a 26 off sale off of their annual plan making it less than 15 per year for both curiosity stream and nebula while you're there check out super intelligence beyond human a documentary about artificial intelligence it's posing the questions about how ai might be able to help us why we might fear it and to what extent the cleverness is actually useful head on over to curiositystream.com epos for the best deal in streaming and get access to both sites for under 15 per year it's crazy just do it there you have it product links will be in the description below as always and i do plan on releasing a full recording session of all of my microphones that i own running through the wave xlr to keep building my library of samples like that soon i do need a break i guess for that it will be on nebula first so stay tuned for that join us on discord to chat about this and all the other releases from this week and get help with your live stream remember be kind rewind75 decibels of gain 20 decibels of clip guard protection for your loudest of screams while streaming a beefy enough preamp the power of the re20 the sm-7b and more without flinching usb-c customizable place flash flash place plates customizable faceplates virtual audio routing to separately manage game sound voice chat and so on and it's under 200 the wave xlr from elgato is seriously impressive but it's not without its faults it's also not this honestly i think most people were hoping for something like this but here you go elgato wave deck as the live streamer nexus and go xlr competitor we're reviewing the wave xlr in today's video sponsored by curiositystream get access to my own streaming site nebula for free when you sign up for curiosity stream via the link in the description i'm eposvox the stream professor and i've reviewed a ton of mics and audio products on this channel with only one go to help you get the best value for your dollar to build or improve your streaming content creation or teaching setups in case you missed it on july 15th which i guess was yesterday at the time this is being uploaded elgato announced a ton of new products and accessories which i've been covering in depth and you can find linked below for what has already gone live and i have plenty more videos to help you master your stream and your tech and covering more of these releases releasing soon so hit the subscribe and notification icon so you can stay informed of course full disclosure elgato did send this to me for review but they're not seeing this before it's posted sponsoring the video in any way yada yada i've been spoiled in the past couple years with some pretty high quality audio gear i may not have an rme baby face or anything like that but good audio interfaces have gotten cheaper and i still love my mix pre-3 mark ii audio recorder as well this means that i typically don't get impressed by audio interfaces too easily but elgato's wave xlr came in swinging and caught me by surprise this is the wave xlr the xlr interface equivalent of elgato's wave usb microphones they released last year these mics were notable due to the high quality capsule designed by luit affordable price tag at significantly below 200.00 and coming with the wavelink software that gives you virtual audio devices and submixes akin to the goexlr to make audio routing and separation of game and voice chatting sound a lot easier wavelink was such a huge hit there that there was massive community outcry to just sell wavelink as its own app rather than requiring one of their microphones elgato didn't do that but instead built a high quality audio interface paired with the app to make things easier for those in need of an interface or those who find it worth it to upgrade or side grade physically it is quite simple basic plastic shell angled up at the user big clickable dial in the middle with led ring around it led indicators for mode selection a capacitive mute button that turns the leds red and then a single xlr jack 3.5 millimeter headphone jack and usb type-c output on the back i have a lot of good things to say about this interface overall as we get into it but i want to start with the bad because it mostly has to do with this physical layout the xlr port being at the bottom rather than the raised angle eliminates the usability of right angle xlr connectors and the outputs dear gosh why streamer gear keeps insisting on only including a 3.5 millimeter jack for headphones despite the fact that the cross section of streamers and users who want high quality headphones is not insignificant even if it were smaller it is much easier and more clean to adapt a 1 4 inch jack to 3.5 millimeter rather than the other way around this is just silly not only that but there's only a headphone jack no line out no speaker out not even a line in this matters for a few reasons the most common being dual pc is basically a non-starter here without at least a line out you have no real way of routing audio to a secondary pc and bi-directionality is kind of important there meaning a line in would have been nice as well go xlr and live streamer nexus get that but specifically to me and i imagine others i use speakers at my desk i don't like wearing headphones 24 7. it's not healthy nor sanitary and definitely not comfortable for even the most comfortable of headphones i like having speakers to get a different take on my audio mix and generally enjoy sound when i'm up and about in my studio this is a pretty normal thing but with no line out i have no real way of running audio to the speakers every mixer costing 20 or more has dual one-fourth inch or 3.5 millimeter line out often with dual outputs and most xlr interfaces have a main out as well this is like bare minimum i o for this kind of device and it's just gone depending on your speakers you could kinda rig up the 3.5 millimeter aux from the headphone out to the aux in on a speaker set but the headphone amp levels and line levels are different voltages and that's generally not a good idea at best and can cause all sorts of audio garbage or possibly even damage your gear at worst this was a stupid omission period part of the reason the more snobby part of the gear community looks down upon streamer gear as toys or wastes of money even when they're not is because in catering so heavily towards what a streamer does while they're streaming these devices often don't even begin to consider how a streamer might use them when they're not live or performing and having to juggle multiple audio routing systems just for that is cumbersome and i would always recommend a single piece of gear that does it all for you rather than piecing together multiple pieces of gear if possible elgato could add a tertiary submix output to the wavelink software allowing you to pipe out audio to another output giving you speakers back or sending audio over hdmi for streaming but that assumes you want this running on your gaming pc which is also only a specific workflow and not one that i'm even personally a fan of all right specs wise this is a 24 bit 96 kilohertz audio interface 48 volts of phantom power is available for condenser microphones the preamps are nice and clean providing 52 decibels of analog gain and 23 db of clean digital gain for a total of 75 db of gain at its base but you do have an additional 20 db of headroom out of gain but of headroom with their clip guard feature the same used in the wave microphones to make sure that you never peak or clip or distort breaking your listener's eardrums that is if you want to it is optional you could become that demon with terrible audio if you want to turn it off wave xlr has a dynamic range of 100 db 120 with clip guard enabled the device is entirely powered over the usb c cable the dial has three different functions just like the wave 3 microphone model it controls your microphone gain your headphone volume levels and the balance mix between system sound and your microphone sound for those of you who don't want to hear yourselves you don't have to clicking the knob in swaps between modes the wavelink app has seen some minor updates since we've last looked at it the main part of the window acts as your mixer board you can have up to nine devices virtual or other physical devices from your system including other microphones added to the mix eight if you don't count the wave xlr jack which cannot be removed of course the software installs a group of virtual audio devices for you to map your various programs to system browser game music sfx voice chat and then two auxiliary devices for whatever else you then have to manually assign specific programs to those devices using the windows sound manager or in a specific program's menus whether or not an app remembers the setting past reboot or even past closing and reopening is entirely dependent on the app vlc does not remember this setting whether i set it in windows or in the program itself and i hear uwp apps are especially frustrating in this regard each device listing including the xlr input can be renamed in the mix for ease of use from here you have two sliders for each device one for each sub mix currently there are two sub mixes a monitor mix for you to hear and a stream mix for your stream hence the name you can swap between which one you hear in your headphones by clicking the little eye icon mainly just to check your stream levels manually and then adjust the master levels of each mix at the bottom of the window you can also change which device the monitor mixer mounts to you can adjust or mute the levels for each submix per device or link those two sliders together for a specific device as well clicking the drop down menu for the xlr jack gives you a good breadth of options sample rate input gain phantom power control over the output volume and mix balance of the headphone jack two different low cut filter options or none clip guard wave gain lock which prevents other applications from adjusting the device levels such as what might happen with video calling apps or voice chatting apps here you can also customize the led color for general use and for muted use which is nice for customizability as well as to set up better color choices for those who are colorblind the problem is this is not a sticky menu it disappears if you click anywhere else and having the audio interface settings in the microphone listing just feels thrown together you go from mic gain settings to headphone output settings back to microphone settings again into audio interface settings it just feels disorganized headphone jack and color settings should probably be moved to the settings cog for the app makes the most sense to me also these sliders are useless they should always display the numeric value of where they're at not just when you're dragging them because then you have to adjust it to see where you're at that's just a poor user experience lastly i would have loved more options for the low cut filter but you can just add that in post anyway especially since there is no overall mic processing options here i found this to be a glaring emission from the wave microphones and i feel like it's even more of an issue here at minimum they should let you add vst filters to the mic device within wavelink if they don't want to build their own tools for eq compression noise gate etc while you can add each of the individual audio devices to obs and manage your mix there the whole point of this part of the device is for you to manage your mix in the wavelink software and take the final output to obs or your streaming program but if you do that you can't add filters to just the microphone anymore i still do not like this workflow a year later the clip guard is an essential feature that i know so many streamers need in their streams sound quality wise the wave xlr is great the preamps are clean and strong enough to power an electro voice re20 sure has some 7b and just about any other gain hungry mic you're going to throw at it without issue here's a couple microphone samples though i will have a bigger video with all of my mic samples coming in the future as i did with the live streamer nexus i didn't think i'd be doing this so close again three rings for the oven kings under the sky seven for the dwarf lords in their halls of stone nine for the mortal men doomed to die one for the dark lord on his dark throne in the land of mordor where the shadows lie three rings for the oven kings under the sky seven for the dwarf lords in their halls of stone nine for the mortal men doomed to die one for the dark lord on his dark throne in the land of mordor where the shadows lie three rings for the oven kings under the sky seven for the dwarf lords in their halls of stone nine for the mortal men doomed to die one for the dark lord on his dark throne in the land of mordor where the shadows lie three rings for the oven kings under the sky seven for the dwarf lords in their halls of stone nine for the mortal men doomed to die one for the dark lord on his dark throne in the land of mordor where the shadows lie three rings for the oven kings under the sky seven for the dwarf lords in their halls of stone nine for the mortal men doomed to die one for the dark lord on his dark throne in the land of mordor where the shadows lie three rings for the elven kings under the sky seven for the dwarf lords in their halls of stone nine for the mortal men doomed to die one for the dark lord on his dark throne in the land of mordor where the shadows lie three rings for the oven kings under the sky seven for the dwarf lords in their halls of stone nine for the mortal men doomed to die one for the dark lord on his dark throne in the land of mordor where the shadows lie three rings for the elven kings under the sky seven for the dwarf lords in their halls of stone nine for the mortal men doomed to die one for the dark lord on his dark throne in the land of mordor where the shadows lie three rings for the oven kings under the sky seven for the dwarf lords in their halls of stone nine for the mortal men doomed to die one for the dark lord on his dark throne in the land of mordor where the shadows lie so i've listened through with the wave xlr with three different microphones two gain hungary mics the electro voice re20 and the sure sm7b and then a big large diaphragm condenser microphone the cad e100s and with all three microphones comparing the wave xlr to the go xlr to my audient evo they all sound great i will say that the go xlr and the wave xlr are the most kind of competitive there as they require less post gain to boost the sm7b specifically and the sm7b sounded slightly better on the wave xlr than anything else but in terms of the re20 and the caddy 100s here they sounded just about the same occur same across all the interfaces only the wave xlr and the go xlr provide more gain up front than the evo4 does whereas the evo4 would need a little bit more gain added in post to get the same sound levels but overall completely happy with it preamp sounds clean everything sounds clean and crisp and clear you know this wouldn't necessarily be an upgrade over say the go xlr or anything else but if you're looking to choose a high quality interface that's what they've made here i did want to note that the wave xlr supports customizable face plates just like the stream deck 2. i was supposed to have a custom faceplate made in time for this review but i've been super behind on things and timing did not work out on my end i will be doing some cool stuff with that though in terms of value per cost the wave xlr costs 160 dollars just 30 more dollars than my audient evo 4 the interface i've been using all year for my re20 while providing way more functionality overall just missing the second xlr jack and main outputs that i could run to my speakers or audio or video recorder for the majority of single pc streamers this will probably be perfect the rest of us should probably look at the go xlr minis and live streamer nexus products out there though they're significantly more expensive the wave xlr also doesn't try to be anything it's not and i kind of appreciate that they didn't shoehorn a weird feature onto it or combine two products it's just a high quality xlr interface with handy virtual audio routing software and it does it well at a price that's surprisingly affordable in the audio interface space if you were wanting the wave mic but for it to not be a usb condenser mic the xlr just lets you bring your own just like i'm bringing my own streaming platform built by my creator friends the site is called nebula and we've partnered with curiositystream it features youtube's top education creators such as mkbhd lowspecgamer and renee ritchie curiosity stream saw what we were doing for educational content and wanted to form an educational power team we've worked out a deal where if you sign up with the link below you not only get access to curiosity stream and they're a library of thousands of educational and documentary content but you get access to nebula and all of its content for free for the entire duration of your subscription to curiosity stream for a limited time curiosity stream is running a 26 off sale off of their annual plan making it less than 15 per year for both curiosity stream and nebula while you're there check out super intelligence beyond human a documentary about artificial intelligence it's posing the questions about how ai might be able to help us why we might fear it and to what extent the cleverness is actually useful head on over to curiositystream.com epos for the best deal in streaming and get access to both sites for under 15 per year it's crazy just do it there you have it product links will be in the description below as always and i do plan on releasing a full recording session of all of my microphones that i own running through the wave xlr to keep building my library of samples like that soon i do need a break i guess for that it will be on nebula first so stay tuned for that join us on discord to chat about this and all the other releases from this week and get help with your live stream remember be kind rewind\n"