Elgato Wave Link Tutorial | Linking All Programs + Stream Deck (2020)

**Upgrading Stream Production Quality with Elgato Microphone and Stream Deck**

I'm enjoying this video, so please consider liking it if you're finding it helpful for the YouTube algorithm.

The set input volume function can be extremely useful to upgrade your stream production quality by making separate modes and sound settings for each scene. For example, let's say you want your music to be pretty loud during your game because then you're not talking a lot, but when you go in queue, you want your music to lower the volume so that then you want to interact with your viewers and want them to hear you clearly and pretty loud.

In this case, you could set up a multi-action and add a switch to intermission screen, but also a set input volume function that adjusts the volume to 30%. Then, you could throw in an extra set input volume function and change your game sound to zero percent so that when you're in your intermission screen, your game sound goes to zero, your music lowers from 80% to 30%, and your voice just stays at 80-90-100%.

This way, you can make one button to swap the scene and adjust all the separate volume settings to really create an enjoyable watching experience. To be honest, the possibilities with using the Stream Deck software together with all these program links and then the WaveLink software are endless; you can be really creative with this.

**Understanding the Elgato Microphone and Stream Deck Functions**

The next function is the set input volume, which can be extremely useful to upgrade your stream production quality. You can adjust the volume in steps instead of choosing a certain value to set it to.

The mute output function is straightforward; you can completely mute all your sound in your headset or for your stream. The set output volume works like the set input volume but controls all headset sounds or all stream sounds.

You can link these two sliders in the WaveLink software to adjust the output volume again, just like the input volume but for the headset or the stream in general.

The last function is microphone settings, which has a lot of options and can control everything that you're seeing right here in the software. You should check out all the possible settings right here and see what you need.

**Getting Started with Elgato Microphone and Stream Deck**

If you want to check out the microphone or accessories, you can do so through the links in the description. If you want to buy it, I would appreciate it if you would use my links because then I'd get a little percentage of it.

Don't forget to follow me on Twitch because I stream every Monday, Wednesday, and sometimes Friday; if you want to talk to me on stream, I'll show my link right here on the screen and also in the description.

To see behind-the-scenes of what I'm doing every day for this channel, just follow me on Instagram at The Video Nerd. I post stories all day, and I answer all my DMs right there; if you have any questions or just want to say hi, leave a comment right here on YouTube or join my Discord server.

Right now, we're with 8-9 hundred people; by the time you're watching, we might have a few thousand. Our Discord is the best place to get quick help with a problem you're having, so definitely consider joining us there.

Since you're interested in this microphone, I'm pretty sure either my Complete StreamLabs OBS playlist or my OBS Studio playlist will contain at least some videos that will be useful to you; definitely check out the Audio Filters video in one of these playlists because it will improve the production quality of your stream when using this Elgato microphone.

I'll see you in one of these two.

WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthis is not just a review of the elgato wave microphone i really want to focus on how you're actually going to implement this microphone and software in your streaming setup or workflow hey guys welcome back to the channel i'm the video nerd and in this video we will be taking a look at everything you can do with the elgato wavelink microphone and the software elgato is an amazing company and they really nail every product they make and this time they didn't only nail the product which is a very good and affordable usb microphone they added a software that makes almost any other usb microphone obsolete i'm going to divide this video into chapters you can see them right here on the screen and i will also add timestamps in the description so if the new youtube feature is doing its work you will see that the progress bar will be divided into certain parts however if you're considering buying this microphone or you already have it i'm sure that every part right down here will include at least some information that will be useful to you something i can skip is going over the two different models of the wave microphone the wave one which you can see right here and then the wave three now elgato only sent me the wave one since it's the first time i've had contact with them but i'm already grateful that they at least sent me this microphone so i could test it in before but let's go over the difference between these two besides the 30 dollars in price to be honest they are extremely similar the wave 3 can record any higher sample rate of 96 kilohertz instead of the 48 kilohertz with the wave one but that doesn't really matter for streaming only for recording audio and i bet that a lot of you out there are probably never going to utilize this advantage or just don't really care about the small difference so what else is different the wave 1 right here is the cheapest one of the two and it comes at 130 dollars has one button on the front that's used to control the headphone volume and for muting the microphone the wave 3 that's around 160 dollars can switch between three functions with the button on the front these three are the microphone gain the headphone volume and adjusting the balance between your pc sound and your microphone and while physically clicking the button only wave 1 just mutes the microphone on the wave 3 it's used to swap between the 3 different functions to mute the wave 3 microphone there is a button on top that you can just press and that will immediately mute the microphone and these are the biggest differences so is it worth to get the more expensive one or should you just get this wave one microphone to be completely honest i don't really think you should spend the extra thirty dollars the extra functions that the wave 3 can control with the button on the front are also controllable only wave 1 by just using the software and there's also a lot you can do by linking these microphones with an elgato stream deck which we will talk about later in this video elgato also has a pop filter that you can buy separately for these microphones but you should judge for yourself if it's actually needed i'll spit out some plosives and then use one of my own pop filters to really show you the difference so without pop filters probably pretty unpleasant now with pop filter is probably more pleasant of course now i'm almost spitting in the microphone so you've heard me talking pppp and then ppp that's probably a difference but oops but i also don't know how big the difference will be because i can't hear it right now i will see afterwards another thing if it's actually a big difference comment down below what you think about it is it worth it to get a pop filter or is it just fine without let me know down in the comments i will add a link to all the accessories that you can buy for this microphone including a shock mount in the description below so once you checked out some information on this microphone and you see how insanely useful the elgato wavelink software is you order the microphone and you receive the package at home let's go over how you actually integrate this microphone into your streaming setup you can position the microphone in front of you on your desk using the stunt that comes with it but to avoid cluttering your desk and to actually get the microphone closer to your mouth most people use a microphone arm and when the microphone is closer to your mouth the microphone doesn't need that much gain because the sound is coming from your mouth and it's very close to the mic to attach your microphone to a boom arm you will need to detach the foot and then use this boom arm adapter that comes with it screw it on the mic and then screw the adapter to the arm which in my case is the rode psa1 this is a popular microphone arm but it's actually for heavier microphones so because of this i had to heavily tighten the screws of the arm to make sure it didn't completely stretch out as the wave microphone is very light i will link some good boom arms in the description so then to connect your microphone to the computer you will need a usb cord that comes with it and it's very long it's like 3 meters or 10 feet it's around that length so you definitely have enough length to like lead it across your boom arm and then into your computer for some nice cable management and then of course there's the software man this is just amazing i have a tutorial on my channel for voice meter banana which a lot of you will know and it's also a virtual mixer that a lot of people in the streaming community are using and the program is great but it's not made specifically for streamers so there are some shortcomings and i was afraid for the same lack of specific features in the elgato software but hey it's elgato they just nailed it again elgato is just one of those companies that got everything right when they make something they don't have hundreds of products they just have their niche which is streamers they research what exactly these people need and then they just build something that makes perfect sense and for those who don't have a clear view of what is software that comes with this microphone the wavelink software what it does exactly it's actually a virtual go xlr and if you also don't know what that is let me explain to you what the software does so the elgato wavelink software allows you to control all your stream audio in a little window you can add your microphone your game sound your music your browser your voice chat and even more if you really want to and then after linking everything together you can control where exactly these sources are going and how loud the volume should be so all these separate sources are coming into this virtual mixer and then the two outputs on the bottom this is where the audio is actually being sent to so to your stream or to your headphones maybe you want to mute only the music for your stream and you want to hear the music yourself and these faders right here are to control how loud your stream should hear something or how loud you want to hear something yourself and you can also lock them by pressing this icon and then they will always have the same difference in output volume or maybe you want to lower the music volume for yourself so you can concentrate on the game and then you want to make it loud for the stream and actually that's what i'm doing i really want to concentrate on my game i want to hear the game sounds etc so i lowered the game sound for my stream and i make sure that the music is higher on my stream and for myself i make sure that i hear the game sound very loud but that the music is pretty quiet so i can still hear which songs are playing if it's a good song or a bad song etc when something stuck but i can not really hear it very loud while my stream can hear it very loud so they can just enjoy my stream while listening to the music and hearing me talk without having a lot of special effects from games etc another extremely useful feature is that you can listen to what your stream is hearing just by clicking on this ear icon next to the stream output let's go through all these steps you need to take to link all these separate sound sources to the elgato wavelink program and then how to link everything to your stream and make sure you follow along because we need to change some things to get better microphone sound management if you didn't install the software yet go to the download page which i will link in the description download the installer and then install the wavelink software make sure your microphone is connected to the computer open the program and then the first thing you want to do is clicking the sound settings button to go to your windows advanced audio settings now you want to change the output of your computer to the wavelink system and this will make your pc audio go to the system column in the wavelink software so all your pc sound browser game music etc is now all going to this column but the point of this program is to separate all these sources and that's what we'll do with the columns on the right so after installing you're given four basic columns but we can add more using these plus buttons so let's add a source for our game our sound effects and then two extra sources called aux 1 and aux 2. so just to give you an overview of what the columns are doing once we've linked everything we've not done it right now but we will do it but once we've linked everything all our programs will be sending sound to these separate columns right and then these columns will send the audio to the two devices on the bottom our headset and our stream mix and then the headset of course is going to our headset and the stream mix that will be sent to our stream and in our stream we will import these three mix so then that is how everything works so for example spotify sends audio to this column this column sends the audio to headphone and stream and then stream will be imported on our stream so let's go over all these columns one by one the first one is the microphone and we got a few settings when we click on the drop down arrow the first slider is the gain and simply set this is how much you are boosting the sound that's coming into your microphone so your voice quickly enable clip guard i will explain this later and then move this slider completely to the left and start speaking when you speak you gradually move this gain slider to the right and now you will see that there's a point where adding more gain doesn't increase the input level anymore and that's the perfect setting for your gain if you move it further right now you're just adding noise because your voice is already at the maximum volume so adding more gain will not affect your voice but it will increase the silent sounds like your keyboard or the fan noise from your computer preferably the microphone should be as close to your mouth as you can but make sure while you're testing this you're actually using the setup that you will be using on stream so if the mic is standing on your desk a bit more far away from your mouth then also do this gain setup while the microphone is actually set up right there on your desk don't move it close like this to then set up the gain and test it and then afterwards put it far away from you on your desk because that's not a point the point of setting up this gain slider is to add just enough gain to make your voice loud enough the output slider can be set to the maximum for most people and the next setting the low cut filter will not be the same for everyone basically what enabling this does is removing very low sound so for example when you're using a boom arm like this without an elgato shook mount sound from typing on your keyboard or slamming your desk can travel through the boom arm to the microphone and it will not be absorbed by a shook mount or anything like that while the low cut filter makes sure that these very low sounds are ignored however because of this your voice will also not sound as deep or as podcast like compared to when you would disable this filter now that's the theory and to be completely honest with you i did some testing on this and i actually don't notice any difference when enabling or disabling this setting maybe for you there are some use cases where it's actually useful but for me it doesn't really matter so i just disable it the next checkbox that's a different story this is amazing and you will definitely notice the effect of this what the clip guard does is making sure that your audio doesn't clip so it limits the volume when you're shouting because of this there's also no difference in actual sound output between when you're talking and when you're shouting look at the input volume when i shout while the clip guard is disabled and now look at it while i shout when it's enabled ha this is very useful if you want to listen to your microphone you need to make sure that you either enable this headphone output and then click on this ear icon to listen to the headset or that you enable this stream output and then listen to the stream mix by clicking the ear icon next to that and before we go on to the next sources we have a problem right now with the microphone now the downside of this software is that there are no live audio effects like a noise reduction or a noise gate which is actually very important because it silences your keyboard sounds when you're not talking and it then enables or activates your microphone again when you start to talk and then it picks up all sounds but this noise gate is very useful it's used by a lot of people and elgato said that they will be adding that so like extra effects for the microphone that they will be adding that in the future but right now it's not available yet however there is a solution for this instead of sending our microphone together with all our other audio sources to the stream mix and then to the stream we will be disabling our microphone in the wavelink software and we will import it separately in our streaming software so all these other sources like your music your game etc will still be controllable in this elgato software which is the whole point but our microphone will be added separately in obs studio or streamlabs obs why do we add it separately well because then we can use obs studio or streamlabs obs filters so first of all let's link the elgato software to our streaming software because we haven't done that yet let's say you're using streamlabs obs in that case you would go to your settings and this also works for obs studio to the audio tab and then instead of using the default pc audio source right here we will disable it and add our microphone source that's called wavelink stream so what happens now is all these sources in the elgato software are being sent to the stream mix that you see right here at the bottom and then that stream mix is being imported in streamlabs obs and this is great but we muted our microphone and if you didn't do that yet you should mute it right now and then we will add a second microphone input in our streaming software and right here we will import the elgato microphone so once you did that you will see that there are two extra sources right here in the mixer one for our wavelength stream and then one for our elgato wave microphone and hold on because there's something important about this microphone import right here that you will probably not expect so you would assume if we selected our microphone separately that this wave microphone is going directly to our streaming software right but that's not the case the microphone is actually first going to the elgato stream software and then of course it's not being sent anywhere because we disabled the headphone and the stream output but when we select this microphone in streamlabs obs we are actually importing it from the software to the streaming program so that means that our microphone so our sound is still going through the wavelink software and then to our stream and because of this the effects that we see right here in the wavelink software so the clip guard and the gain which we can adjust this is still being applied to the microphone before it goes to streamlabs obs and that's very important to note because we do not need a limiter anymore or a clip guard because that's already applied in the software and we can also set up just the gain of the microphone in the software before adding filters in streamlabs obs so then after we imported from wavelink to streamlabs obs right here as this microphone source now we can apply filters to it in stream absolutes to add extra effects to it now in both streamlabs obs and obs studio you can access the filters by clicking on the cog icon next to the microphone source and then going to the filters then by clicking the plus icon you can choose which filter you want to apply now i have two separate videos that go in depth on all these filters and show you how to set up all the filters for your stream to be stream ready and to make your audio management more professional so i will link them in the cards and then also in the description so you can check them out if you want they are very useful for automatically muting your microphone when you're not talking reducing constant noise from your computer and a bunch of other settings so again link in the card in the description i really advise you to check them out but remember after all this there is a possibility that by the time that you are watching this tutorial elgato already added the option to add extra effects natively in wavelink so make sure you check if these effects are already available in the wavelink software and if they are not i really advise you to route it separately and then apply filters right here in your streaming software now that our microphone is set up correctly it's time to link these other sources so how do we actually get all those different programs to send their audio to all these separate sources in wavelink well just click on this icon on top and that will open your pc's advanced audio settings again right here in the sound settings you can see all the programs that are currently producing sound on your pc so if i launch spotify and then i play a song you will see that spotify will appear right here in the list and now the output column you see right here this controls where all the sound of all these separate programs is going so if you haven't changed anything right here they will all be set to default so they all go to this general output on top and this is what we linked to our wave software so all the sources are going to the default on top and that is coming in as the system source in the wavelink software and once you understand this it's actually pretty easy to be honest for example spotify this is what i use to play my music on stream so i will change the output of spotify in the output column and i will set it to wavelink music so now instead of spotify sending my music to the default source so to this general output and then to the system source in elgato it now sends my music to the wavelink music source and that's a separate source right here in the wavelink software as you can see right here so because of this i can control the sound of my music in my headphones and on my stream separately without affecting any other sounds on my computer hey future video nerd here i forgot to record how to link the browser to your elgato software but it's very easy actually just like the other things in the advanced audio settings just search for your browser so for me it's google chrome and then change the output of that to elgato browser and that way chrome will send the audio directly to the browser column in the elgato software to be honest guys this wavelink software is game breaking at the moment and honestly as a beginning streamer i see no reason at all to get any other entry level microphone besides this wave 1 or wave 3 microphone because the software is just amazing and you only got the software together with the mic of course if you want to spend like five six hundred dollars there are other options you can get a go xlr with like an xlr mic etc but even so for me right now i don't have a go xlr however i wait a second i do have this xlr microphone and i can connect it to my audio interface but it's just a simple audio interface and i've done a few streams using the elgato wave software and this mic and to be honest i prefer all the control that i have with the wavelink software over the extra sound quality from this microphone without having all the control when i use this mic because i don't have another mixer i don't have a go xlr which is a physical expensive mixer to put on your desk but there's not really other software that does the same thing as the elgato wavelink software so really if you're a beginning streamer and you don't want to buy a go xlr plus an xlr mic then you should really consider getting this microphone and i'm not saying this because i'm sponsored because i'm not sponsored they just sent me this microphone but really to be honest guys yeah this software is just amazing and i'm really curious about what your impressions are on this microphone the sound quality and how useful the software is so please comment it down below tell me what you think about it if you know any alternatives if you're actually going to get a go xlr or if you don't care about this control and you're just gonna buy a blue yeti or something like this just let me know i'm really curious actually and then the next column is our voice chat and i will show you how to link discord since that's what most people or most streamers or gamers are using so go to discord go to the settings and then to voice and video and even if you did set up the wavelink microphone as your default input in the windows sound settings you still need to directly select the wavelength microphone as your input device for discord or it will not work you can click on let's check to test the microphone but make sure that you don't forget to disable it again then your output this should be set to wavelink voice chat let's go back to the wavelink software and this voice chat source that we just set up is a really important one a lot of the questions i get from you guys in my comment section and in my discord are about how to mute your voice chat program for these streams so only you can hear your friends but your viewers cannot and it was definitely possible but you had to make sacrifices at least if you wanted to do it for free you had to choose between doing this for discord or doing this for your music and now with wavelink it's just as easy as going to the voice chat tab and then muting the stream output right here so it will not be sent to your stream and it will be sent to your headphone something that also could be very handy is just lowering the voice chat a bit so it's clear to the stream when you are talking versus when your friends are talking because you your microphone will be louder than the voice chat if you just lower the volume a bit for your stream and the same goes for the music for example like i already talked about you can mute it for yourself and not for your stream or otherwise or make it more quiet for yourself so you can focus on footsteps but your stream is still enjoying loud music i'm not going into it again you have a lot of options you know what the options are by now so let's just get to the next audio source the next one is game sound and this is also pretty straightforward you should go to your game and then set your playback device or output device or sound device whatever it's called in the settings of your specific game you just set it to wavelink game your microphone in game should then of course be set to mic in elgato wave 1 or 3 depending on which microphone you have and then you're all set up for your game the last pre-named source is the sound effect source and while you can choose what you want for this i think a good use for the sound effects column are your alerts so that will allow you to make your alerts more quiet so they don't distract you or disturb you too much while talking or while listening to something in game so you can still hear when an alert is playing so you can look at your other screen to see if it was bits or full aware follow or a sub etc but it's not too loud or you can mute it for the stream because they do not have to hear it and you want to hear it yourself so linking your alerts to the sound effects column is really handy and the way to do this is different for obs studio than for streamlabs obs obs studio makes this very easy you just go to your advanced windows sound settings and you change the output of obs studio to wavelink sound effects now when alerts are being triggered in obs studio they will be sent to this sound effects column so you can control where the audio is and isn't going and how loud it should be now in streamlabs obs and this is very important you cannot use the default alerts widget that's built into streamlabs obs because you can't control where that sound is going for some reason it's just always going to the system source in elgato wavelink if you know a fix for this definitely comment it below i've tested around with it it doesn't work but there's an alternative to this you can set up your alerts on the website of streamlabs and then copy the stream k to a browser source in streamlabs obs and then check the box that says control audio via or via i don't know via obs if you have no clue how to set up your alerts using the online version of stream maps i have a video on that that goes over all the different settings and possibilities etc and i will link it in the cards and also again in the description so then once you check the control audio via obs now you can go to the advanced sound settings and then route streamlabs obs to the sound effects from elgato just like we did with obs studio it was just that obs studio is by default sending the audio just through the obs program and streamlabs obs wasn't sending it like through the program but immediately to your pc sound so you need to check that box instagram of obs if you want to route it to the sound effects column so then once we link the sound effects column as you can see there are two more sound columns aux 1 and aux 2 and like i mentioned before you can choose what you want to do with this most people will not need them but if you come up with some creative ways of using extra sound sources they are available right here and of course since this microphone is from elgato there's also the possibility of controlling the wavelink software with the elgato stream deck after making sure you have the most up-to-date version of the software you can go to more actions search for wave and then install the wavelink integration in the right column you will be able to find wavelink and under that you can see a bunch of actions let's go over all of them and i will show you some cool things that you can do with this the first one is toggle monitoring and this is pretty basic but extremely useful if you ever wonder if a certain song or in-game soundtrack or something like that is playing too loud or if your stream sound is messed up for the viewers by adding this function to your stream deck you can quickly swap between hearing your normal sound so your monitor mix and between hearing the stream mix as you can see when i'm pushing this button on my keyboard the wavelink software is swapping between the monitor mix and the stream mix the second function is the mute input and this can be used to mute and unmute a specific audio source this has a lot of potential especially when combined with multi-actions from the stream deck so let me show you what's possible right here let's drag this to a key and then check out the settings at the bottom the input is the audio source that you will be muting so let's select our music right here both then you have another option and that is if you want to mute it for your stream or for yourself and as you can see when i press this button on my keyboard right now you will see that the music monitor mix is getting muted in the wavelink software and then when using multi-actions we can also mute music for both ourselves and for our stream by just going to stream deck dragging this multi-action function to a key and then dragging two mute input functions to the multi-action then setup one for the music monitor mix and one for the music stream mix when i press this button on my keyboard you will see that both the monitor and stream mix will be muted in the wavelink software and you can even combine the muting and unmuting of certain sources such as music game alerts etc so you can get really creative with this function however make sure that you pay attention to the fact that muting your microphone this way doesn't work since we're not using this microphone output as we are importing our microphones separately in our streaming software to apply filters to it but instead of this you can add a mixer audio function from obs studio or streamlabs obs to the multi-action but then you can only choose to activate or deactivate it you can't automatically make it mute and then unmute once you press the button again so you're better off just making separate buttons to mute and unmute your microphone or just use the physical mute button oops the physical mute button only wave microphone to mute it if you want and before we go to the next function please consider liking this video if you're enjoying it because that helps a lot for the youtube algorithm so for the next function then the set input volume can be extremely useful to upgrade your stream production quality by making separate modes and sound settings for each scene so for example let's say you want your music to be pretty loud during your game because then you're not talking a lot but then when you go in queue you want your music to lower the volume because then you want to interact with your viewers and you want them to hear you clearly and pretty loud in that case you could set up a multi-action and then add a switch to intermission screen but also a set input volume function that adjusts the volume to for example 30 then you could also throw in an extra set input volume function and change your game sound to zero percent so then for example when you're in your intermission screen your game sound goes to zero your music lowers from eighty percent to thirty percent and your voice just stays at like 80 90 100 percent so in that case you can make one button to swap the scene and adjust all the separate volume settings to really create an enjoyable watching experience to be honest the possibilities with using the stream deck software together with all these program links and then the wavelink software the possibilities are endless you can be really creative with this and i will quickly go over the remaining functions because i cover most of the mechanics of these functions and implementations so let's see what's left adjust input volume this just allows you to change the volume in steps instead of choosing a certain value to set it to mute output this is straightforward you can completely mute all your sound in your headset or for your stream set output volume this works like set input volume but the output volume controls all headset sounds or all stream sounds so this function is linked with these two sliders right here in the wavelink software adjust output volume again like i just input volume but then for the headset or the stream in general and then the last function microphone settings this setting has a lot of options and can control everything that you're seeing right here in the software in the settings for your microphone and then some extra things you should look at all the possible settings right here and just see what you need i think that's all there will be links in the description for this microphone or the accessories so if you want to check it out you can do that and if you want to buy it i would appreciate it if you would use my links because of course then i got a little percentage of it don't forget to follow me on twitch because i stream every monday wednesday and sometimes friday so if you want to talk to me on stream i will show my link right here on the screen and also in the description and to see behind the scenes of what i'm doing every day for this channel just follow me on instagram at the video nerd i post stories all day and i answer all my dms right there if you have any questions or you just want to say hi leave a comment right here on youtube or join my discord server like many of the tv and community have already done right now we are with eight or nine hundred people maybe by the time you're watching we have a few thousand i certainly hope so our discord is the best place to get quick help with a problem you're having so definitely consider joining us there and since you're interested in this microphone i'm pretty sure either my complete streamlabs obs playlist or my obs studio playlist will contain at least some videos that will be useful to you definitely check out the audio filters video in one of these playlists because that will improve the production quality of your stream when you're using this elgato microphone i will see you in one of these twothis is not just a review of the elgato wave microphone i really want to focus on how you're actually going to implement this microphone and software in your streaming setup or workflow hey guys welcome back to the channel i'm the video nerd and in this video we will be taking a look at everything you can do with the elgato wavelink microphone and the software elgato is an amazing company and they really nail every product they make and this time they didn't only nail the product which is a very good and affordable usb microphone they added a software that makes almost any other usb microphone obsolete i'm going to divide this video into chapters you can see them right here on the screen and i will also add timestamps in the description so if the new youtube feature is doing its work you will see that the progress bar will be divided into certain parts however if you're considering buying this microphone or you already have it i'm sure that every part right down here will include at least some information that will be useful to you something i can skip is going over the two different models of the wave microphone the wave one which you can see right here and then the wave three now elgato only sent me the wave one since it's the first time i've had contact with them but i'm already grateful that they at least sent me this microphone so i could test it in before but let's go over the difference between these two besides the 30 dollars in price to be honest they are extremely similar the wave 3 can record any higher sample rate of 96 kilohertz instead of the 48 kilohertz with the wave one but that doesn't really matter for streaming only for recording audio and i bet that a lot of you out there are probably never going to utilize this advantage or just don't really care about the small difference so what else is different the wave 1 right here is the cheapest one of the two and it comes at 130 dollars has one button on the front that's used to control the headphone volume and for muting the microphone the wave 3 that's around 160 dollars can switch between three functions with the button on the front these three are the microphone gain the headphone volume and adjusting the balance between your pc sound and your microphone and while physically clicking the button only wave 1 just mutes the microphone on the wave 3 it's used to swap between the 3 different functions to mute the wave 3 microphone there is a button on top that you can just press and that will immediately mute the microphone and these are the biggest differences so is it worth to get the more expensive one or should you just get this wave one microphone to be completely honest i don't really think you should spend the extra thirty dollars the extra functions that the wave 3 can control with the button on the front are also controllable only wave 1 by just using the software and there's also a lot you can do by linking these microphones with an elgato stream deck which we will talk about later in this video elgato also has a pop filter that you can buy separately for these microphones but you should judge for yourself if it's actually needed i'll spit out some plosives and then use one of my own pop filters to really show you the difference so without pop filters probably pretty unpleasant now with pop filter is probably more pleasant of course now i'm almost spitting in the microphone so you've heard me talking pppp and then ppp that's probably a difference but oops but i also don't know how big the difference will be because i can't hear it right now i will see afterwards another thing if it's actually a big difference comment down below what you think about it is it worth it to get a pop filter or is it just fine without let me know down in the comments i will add a link to all the accessories that you can buy for this microphone including a shock mount in the description below so once you checked out some information on this microphone and you see how insanely useful the elgato wavelink software is you order the microphone and you receive the package at home let's go over how you actually integrate this microphone into your streaming setup you can position the microphone in front of you on your desk using the stunt that comes with it but to avoid cluttering your desk and to actually get the microphone closer to your mouth most people use a microphone arm and when the microphone is closer to your mouth the microphone doesn't need that much gain because the sound is coming from your mouth and it's very close to the mic to attach your microphone to a boom arm you will need to detach the foot and then use this boom arm adapter that comes with it screw it on the mic and then screw the adapter to the arm which in my case is the rode psa1 this is a popular microphone arm but it's actually for heavier microphones so because of this i had to heavily tighten the screws of the arm to make sure it didn't completely stretch out as the wave microphone is very light i will link some good boom arms in the description so then to connect your microphone to the computer you will need a usb cord that comes with it and it's very long it's like 3 meters or 10 feet it's around that length so you definitely have enough length to like lead it across your boom arm and then into your computer for some nice cable management and then of course there's the software man this is just amazing i have a tutorial on my channel for voice meter banana which a lot of you will know and it's also a virtual mixer that a lot of people in the streaming community are using and the program is great but it's not made specifically for streamers so there are some shortcomings and i was afraid for the same lack of specific features in the elgato software but hey it's elgato they just nailed it again elgato is just one of those companies that got everything right when they make something they don't have hundreds of products they just have their niche which is streamers they research what exactly these people need and then they just build something that makes perfect sense and for those who don't have a clear view of what is software that comes with this microphone the wavelink software what it does exactly it's actually a virtual go xlr and if you also don't know what that is let me explain to you what the software does so the elgato wavelink software allows you to control all your stream audio in a little window you can add your microphone your game sound your music your browser your voice chat and even more if you really want to and then after linking everything together you can control where exactly these sources are going and how loud the volume should be so all these separate sources are coming into this virtual mixer and then the two outputs on the bottom this is where the audio is actually being sent to so to your stream or to your headphones maybe you want to mute only the music for your stream and you want to hear the music yourself and these faders right here are to control how loud your stream should hear something or how loud you want to hear something yourself and you can also lock them by pressing this icon and then they will always have the same difference in output volume or maybe you want to lower the music volume for yourself so you can concentrate on the game and then you want to make it loud for the stream and actually that's what i'm doing i really want to concentrate on my game i want to hear the game sounds etc so i lowered the game sound for my stream and i make sure that the music is higher on my stream and for myself i make sure that i hear the game sound very loud but that the music is pretty quiet so i can still hear which songs are playing if it's a good song or a bad song etc when something stuck but i can not really hear it very loud while my stream can hear it very loud so they can just enjoy my stream while listening to the music and hearing me talk without having a lot of special effects from games etc another extremely useful feature is that you can listen to what your stream is hearing just by clicking on this ear icon next to the stream output let's go through all these steps you need to take to link all these separate sound sources to the elgato wavelink program and then how to link everything to your stream and make sure you follow along because we need to change some things to get better microphone sound management if you didn't install the software yet go to the download page which i will link in the description download the installer and then install the wavelink software make sure your microphone is connected to the computer open the program and then the first thing you want to do is clicking the sound settings button to go to your windows advanced audio settings now you want to change the output of your computer to the wavelink system and this will make your pc audio go to the system column in the wavelink software so all your pc sound browser game music etc is now all going to this column but the point of this program is to separate all these sources and that's what we'll do with the columns on the right so after installing you're given four basic columns but we can add more using these plus buttons so let's add a source for our game our sound effects and then two extra sources called aux 1 and aux 2. so just to give you an overview of what the columns are doing once we've linked everything we've not done it right now but we will do it but once we've linked everything all our programs will be sending sound to these separate columns right and then these columns will send the audio to the two devices on the bottom our headset and our stream mix and then the headset of course is going to our headset and the stream mix that will be sent to our stream and in our stream we will import these three mix so then that is how everything works so for example spotify sends audio to this column this column sends the audio to headphone and stream and then stream will be imported on our stream so let's go over all these columns one by one the first one is the microphone and we got a few settings when we click on the drop down arrow the first slider is the gain and simply set this is how much you are boosting the sound that's coming into your microphone so your voice quickly enable clip guard i will explain this later and then move this slider completely to the left and start speaking when you speak you gradually move this gain slider to the right and now you will see that there's a point where adding more gain doesn't increase the input level anymore and that's the perfect setting for your gain if you move it further right now you're just adding noise because your voice is already at the maximum volume so adding more gain will not affect your voice but it will increase the silent sounds like your keyboard or the fan noise from your computer preferably the microphone should be as close to your mouth as you can but make sure while you're testing this you're actually using the setup that you will be using on stream so if the mic is standing on your desk a bit more far away from your mouth then also do this gain setup while the microphone is actually set up right there on your desk don't move it close like this to then set up the gain and test it and then afterwards put it far away from you on your desk because that's not a point the point of setting up this gain slider is to add just enough gain to make your voice loud enough the output slider can be set to the maximum for most people and the next setting the low cut filter will not be the same for everyone basically what enabling this does is removing very low sound so for example when you're using a boom arm like this without an elgato shook mount sound from typing on your keyboard or slamming your desk can travel through the boom arm to the microphone and it will not be absorbed by a shook mount or anything like that while the low cut filter makes sure that these very low sounds are ignored however because of this your voice will also not sound as deep or as podcast like compared to when you would disable this filter now that's the theory and to be completely honest with you i did some testing on this and i actually don't notice any difference when enabling or disabling this setting maybe for you there are some use cases where it's actually useful but for me it doesn't really matter so i just disable it the next checkbox that's a different story this is amazing and you will definitely notice the effect of this what the clip guard does is making sure that your audio doesn't clip so it limits the volume when you're shouting because of this there's also no difference in actual sound output between when you're talking and when you're shouting look at the input volume when i shout while the clip guard is disabled and now look at it while i shout when it's enabled ha this is very useful if you want to listen to your microphone you need to make sure that you either enable this headphone output and then click on this ear icon to listen to the headset or that you enable this stream output and then listen to the stream mix by clicking the ear icon next to that and before we go on to the next sources we have a problem right now with the microphone now the downside of this software is that there are no live audio effects like a noise reduction or a noise gate which is actually very important because it silences your keyboard sounds when you're not talking and it then enables or activates your microphone again when you start to talk and then it picks up all sounds but this noise gate is very useful it's used by a lot of people and elgato said that they will be adding that so like extra effects for the microphone that they will be adding that in the future but right now it's not available yet however there is a solution for this instead of sending our microphone together with all our other audio sources to the stream mix and then to the stream we will be disabling our microphone in the wavelink software and we will import it separately in our streaming software so all these other sources like your music your game etc will still be controllable in this elgato software which is the whole point but our microphone will be added separately in obs studio or streamlabs obs why do we add it separately well because then we can use obs studio or streamlabs obs filters so first of all let's link the elgato software to our streaming software because we haven't done that yet let's say you're using streamlabs obs in that case you would go to your settings and this also works for obs studio to the audio tab and then instead of using the default pc audio source right here we will disable it and add our microphone source that's called wavelink stream so what happens now is all these sources in the elgato software are being sent to the stream mix that you see right here at the bottom and then that stream mix is being imported in streamlabs obs and this is great but we muted our microphone and if you didn't do that yet you should mute it right now and then we will add a second microphone input in our streaming software and right here we will import the elgato microphone so once you did that you will see that there are two extra sources right here in the mixer one for our wavelength stream and then one for our elgato wave microphone and hold on because there's something important about this microphone import right here that you will probably not expect so you would assume if we selected our microphone separately that this wave microphone is going directly to our streaming software right but that's not the case the microphone is actually first going to the elgato stream software and then of course it's not being sent anywhere because we disabled the headphone and the stream output but when we select this microphone in streamlabs obs we are actually importing it from the software to the streaming program so that means that our microphone so our sound is still going through the wavelink software and then to our stream and because of this the effects that we see right here in the wavelink software so the clip guard and the gain which we can adjust this is still being applied to the microphone before it goes to streamlabs obs and that's very important to note because we do not need a limiter anymore or a clip guard because that's already applied in the software and we can also set up just the gain of the microphone in the software before adding filters in streamlabs obs so then after we imported from wavelink to streamlabs obs right here as this microphone source now we can apply filters to it in stream absolutes to add extra effects to it now in both streamlabs obs and obs studio you can access the filters by clicking on the cog icon next to the microphone source and then going to the filters then by clicking the plus icon you can choose which filter you want to apply now i have two separate videos that go in depth on all these filters and show you how to set up all the filters for your stream to be stream ready and to make your audio management more professional so i will link them in the cards and then also in the description so you can check them out if you want they are very useful for automatically muting your microphone when you're not talking reducing constant noise from your computer and a bunch of other settings so again link in the card in the description i really advise you to check them out but remember after all this there is a possibility that by the time that you are watching this tutorial elgato already added the option to add extra effects natively in wavelink so make sure you check if these effects are already available in the wavelink software and if they are not i really advise you to route it separately and then apply filters right here in your streaming software now that our microphone is set up correctly it's time to link these other sources so how do we actually get all those different programs to send their audio to all these separate sources in wavelink well just click on this icon on top and that will open your pc's advanced audio settings again right here in the sound settings you can see all the programs that are currently producing sound on your pc so if i launch spotify and then i play a song you will see that spotify will appear right here in the list and now the output column you see right here this controls where all the sound of all these separate programs is going so if you haven't changed anything right here they will all be set to default so they all go to this general output on top and this is what we linked to our wave software so all the sources are going to the default on top and that is coming in as the system source in the wavelink software and once you understand this it's actually pretty easy to be honest for example spotify this is what i use to play my music on stream so i will change the output of spotify in the output column and i will set it to wavelink music so now instead of spotify sending my music to the default source so to this general output and then to the system source in elgato it now sends my music to the wavelink music source and that's a separate source right here in the wavelink software as you can see right here so because of this i can control the sound of my music in my headphones and on my stream separately without affecting any other sounds on my computer hey future video nerd here i forgot to record how to link the browser to your elgato software but it's very easy actually just like the other things in the advanced audio settings just search for your browser so for me it's google chrome and then change the output of that to elgato browser and that way chrome will send the audio directly to the browser column in the elgato software to be honest guys this wavelink software is game breaking at the moment and honestly as a beginning streamer i see no reason at all to get any other entry level microphone besides this wave 1 or wave 3 microphone because the software is just amazing and you only got the software together with the mic of course if you want to spend like five six hundred dollars there are other options you can get a go xlr with like an xlr mic etc but even so for me right now i don't have a go xlr however i wait a second i do have this xlr microphone and i can connect it to my audio interface but it's just a simple audio interface and i've done a few streams using the elgato wave software and this mic and to be honest i prefer all the control that i have with the wavelink software over the extra sound quality from this microphone without having all the control when i use this mic because i don't have another mixer i don't have a go xlr which is a physical expensive mixer to put on your desk but there's not really other software that does the same thing as the elgato wavelink software so really if you're a beginning streamer and you don't want to buy a go xlr plus an xlr mic then you should really consider getting this microphone and i'm not saying this because i'm sponsored because i'm not sponsored they just sent me this microphone but really to be honest guys yeah this software is just amazing and i'm really curious about what your impressions are on this microphone the sound quality and how useful the software is so please comment it down below tell me what you think about it if you know any alternatives if you're actually going to get a go xlr or if you don't care about this control and you're just gonna buy a blue yeti or something like this just let me know i'm really curious actually and then the next column is our voice chat and i will show you how to link discord since that's what most people or most streamers or gamers are using so go to discord go to the settings and then to voice and video and even if you did set up the wavelink microphone as your default input in the windows sound settings you still need to directly select the wavelength microphone as your input device for discord or it will not work you can click on let's check to test the microphone but make sure that you don't forget to disable it again then your output this should be set to wavelink voice chat let's go back to the wavelink software and this voice chat source that we just set up is a really important one a lot of the questions i get from you guys in my comment section and in my discord are about how to mute your voice chat program for these streams so only you can hear your friends but your viewers cannot and it was definitely possible but you had to make sacrifices at least if you wanted to do it for free you had to choose between doing this for discord or doing this for your music and now with wavelink it's just as easy as going to the voice chat tab and then muting the stream output right here so it will not be sent to your stream and it will be sent to your headphone something that also could be very handy is just lowering the voice chat a bit so it's clear to the stream when you are talking versus when your friends are talking because you your microphone will be louder than the voice chat if you just lower the volume a bit for your stream and the same goes for the music for example like i already talked about you can mute it for yourself and not for your stream or otherwise or make it more quiet for yourself so you can focus on footsteps but your stream is still enjoying loud music i'm not going into it again you have a lot of options you know what the options are by now so let's just get to the next audio source the next one is game sound and this is also pretty straightforward you should go to your game and then set your playback device or output device or sound device whatever it's called in the settings of your specific game you just set it to wavelink game your microphone in game should then of course be set to mic in elgato wave 1 or 3 depending on which microphone you have and then you're all set up for your game the last pre-named source is the sound effect source and while you can choose what you want for this i think a good use for the sound effects column are your alerts so that will allow you to make your alerts more quiet so they don't distract you or disturb you too much while talking or while listening to something in game so you can still hear when an alert is playing so you can look at your other screen to see if it was bits or full aware follow or a sub etc but it's not too loud or you can mute it for the stream because they do not have to hear it and you want to hear it yourself so linking your alerts to the sound effects column is really handy and the way to do this is different for obs studio than for streamlabs obs obs studio makes this very easy you just go to your advanced windows sound settings and you change the output of obs studio to wavelink sound effects now when alerts are being triggered in obs studio they will be sent to this sound effects column so you can control where the audio is and isn't going and how loud it should be now in streamlabs obs and this is very important you cannot use the default alerts widget that's built into streamlabs obs because you can't control where that sound is going for some reason it's just always going to the system source in elgato wavelink if you know a fix for this definitely comment it below i've tested around with it it doesn't work but there's an alternative to this you can set up your alerts on the website of streamlabs and then copy the stream k to a browser source in streamlabs obs and then check the box that says control audio via or via i don't know via obs if you have no clue how to set up your alerts using the online version of stream maps i have a video on that that goes over all the different settings and possibilities etc and i will link it in the cards and also again in the description so then once you check the control audio via obs now you can go to the advanced sound settings and then route streamlabs obs to the sound effects from elgato just like we did with obs studio it was just that obs studio is by default sending the audio just through the obs program and streamlabs obs wasn't sending it like through the program but immediately to your pc sound so you need to check that box instagram of obs if you want to route it to the sound effects column so then once we link the sound effects column as you can see there are two more sound columns aux 1 and aux 2 and like i mentioned before you can choose what you want to do with this most people will not need them but if you come up with some creative ways of using extra sound sources they are available right here and of course since this microphone is from elgato there's also the possibility of controlling the wavelink software with the elgato stream deck after making sure you have the most up-to-date version of the software you can go to more actions search for wave and then install the wavelink integration in the right column you will be able to find wavelink and under that you can see a bunch of actions let's go over all of them and i will show you some cool things that you can do with this the first one is toggle monitoring and this is pretty basic but extremely useful if you ever wonder if a certain song or in-game soundtrack or something like that is playing too loud or if your stream sound is messed up for the viewers by adding this function to your stream deck you can quickly swap between hearing your normal sound so your monitor mix and between hearing the stream mix as you can see when i'm pushing this button on my keyboard the wavelink software is swapping between the monitor mix and the stream mix the second function is the mute input and this can be used to mute and unmute a specific audio source this has a lot of potential especially when combined with multi-actions from the stream deck so let me show you what's possible right here let's drag this to a key and then check out the settings at the bottom the input is the audio source that you will be muting so let's select our music right here both then you have another option and that is if you want to mute it for your stream or for yourself and as you can see when i press this button on my keyboard right now you will see that the music monitor mix is getting muted in the wavelink software and then when using multi-actions we can also mute music for both ourselves and for our stream by just going to stream deck dragging this multi-action function to a key and then dragging two mute input functions to the multi-action then setup one for the music monitor mix and one for the music stream mix when i press this button on my keyboard you will see that both the monitor and stream mix will be muted in the wavelink software and you can even combine the muting and unmuting of certain sources such as music game alerts etc so you can get really creative with this function however make sure that you pay attention to the fact that muting your microphone this way doesn't work since we're not using this microphone output as we are importing our microphones separately in our streaming software to apply filters to it but instead of this you can add a mixer audio function from obs studio or streamlabs obs to the multi-action but then you can only choose to activate or deactivate it you can't automatically make it mute and then unmute once you press the button again so you're better off just making separate buttons to mute and unmute your microphone or just use the physical mute button oops the physical mute button only wave microphone to mute it if you want and before we go to the next function please consider liking this video if you're enjoying it because that helps a lot for the youtube algorithm so for the next function then the set input volume can be extremely useful to upgrade your stream production quality by making separate modes and sound settings for each scene so for example let's say you want your music to be pretty loud during your game because then you're not talking a lot but then when you go in queue you want your music to lower the volume because then you want to interact with your viewers and you want them to hear you clearly and pretty loud in that case you could set up a multi-action and then add a switch to intermission screen but also a set input volume function that adjusts the volume to for example 30 then you could also throw in an extra set input volume function and change your game sound to zero percent so then for example when you're in your intermission screen your game sound goes to zero your music lowers from eighty percent to thirty percent and your voice just stays at like 80 90 100 percent so in that case you can make one button to swap the scene and adjust all the separate volume settings to really create an enjoyable watching experience to be honest the possibilities with using the stream deck software together with all these program links and then the wavelink software the possibilities are endless you can be really creative with this and i will quickly go over the remaining functions because i cover most of the mechanics of these functions and implementations so let's see what's left adjust input volume this just allows you to change the volume in steps instead of choosing a certain value to set it to mute output this is straightforward you can completely mute all your sound in your headset or for your stream set output volume this works like set input volume but the output volume controls all headset sounds or all stream sounds so this function is linked with these two sliders right here in the wavelink software adjust output volume again like i just input volume but then for the headset or the stream in general and then the last function microphone settings this setting has a lot of options and can control everything that you're seeing right here in the software in the settings for your microphone and then some extra things you should look at all the possible settings right here and just see what you need i think that's all there will be links in the description for this microphone or the accessories so if you want to check it out you can do that and if you want to buy it i would appreciate it if you would use my links because of course then i got a little percentage of it don't forget to follow me on twitch because i stream every monday wednesday and sometimes friday so if you want to talk to me on stream i will show my link right here on the screen and also in the description and to see behind the scenes of what i'm doing every day for this channel just follow me on instagram at the video nerd i post stories all day and i answer all my dms right there if you have any questions or you just want to say hi leave a comment right here on youtube or join my discord server like many of the tv and community have already done right now we are with eight or nine hundred people maybe by the time you're watching we have a few thousand i certainly hope so our discord is the best place to get quick help with a problem you're having so definitely consider joining us there and since you're interested in this microphone i'm pretty sure either my complete streamlabs obs playlist or my obs studio playlist will contain at least some videos that will be useful to you definitely check out the audio filters video in one of these playlists because that will improve the production quality of your stream when you're using this elgato microphone i will see you in one of these two