**A Review of Elgato Wave 3: The Ultimate Audio Mixer for Streamers**

When it comes to setting up an optimal audio system for streaming, one of the most important components is the microphone. In recent years, Elgato has been at the forefront of creating high-quality microphones specifically designed for streamers and content creators. Their latest addition, the Wave 3, is a significant improvement over its predecessors, offering a range of features that make it an attractive option for those looking to upgrade their streaming setup.

One of the standout features of the Elgato Wave 3 is its ability to avoid recent licensing issues. This means that streamers can rest assured that they won't have any problems with their audio being cut off or interrupted due to licensing conflicts. Additionally, the microphone has a physical dial that allows users to adjust the monitor mix and stream mix as a whole. However, this dial does not offer the same level of precision as some other options, and users may find it difficult to tune individual sources while streaming.

For those who want to link their monitor and Streamyx together, the Elgato Wave 3 is also compatible with this setup. This allows streamers to create a seamless audio experience that integrates all of their equipment seamlessly. The microphone itself has a reputation for being easy to use, thanks in part to Elgato software, which works nicely but still requires some technical expertise.

However, one of the main advantages of the Elgato Wave 3 is its compatibility with the popular Stream Deck. This device offers complete control over audio settings without having to exit the game or switch to another application. For streamers who already own a Stream Deck, this integration makes sense and can be a major advantage in terms of convenience.

In terms of sound quality, the Elgato Wave 3 is certainly impressive. While opinions on sound quality are always subjective, many users have reported that it offers excellent performance compared to other microphones on the market. However, there are some drawbacks to consider, particularly for those who are not experienced streamers or content creators.

One potential drawback of the Elgato Wave 3 is its price point. As one of the more expensive options on the market, this microphone may be out of reach for some beginning streamers or budget-conscious buyers. Additionally, professional creators who already own high-end equipment may find that they do not need to upgrade their audio setup.

Despite these potential drawbacks, many streamers and content creators will still see the Elgato Wave 3 as a worthwhile investment. The microphone offers features that are unparalleled in this class of products, including control over individual sources and filters for adjusting voice quality. In terms of usability, the microphone is easy to set up and use, making it an attractive option for those who want to optimize their streaming audio without a lot of hassle.

**Improving the Elgato Wave 3: Noise Gate and Voice Tuning**

While the Elgato Wave 3 offers many impressive features, there are still some areas that could be improved. One potential addition that would take this microphone to the next level is a noise gate. This feature would allow users to automatically adjust their audio levels in real-time, reducing background noise and minimizing distractions.

Another feature that could enhance the user experience of the Elgato Wave 3 is more control over voice quality. Some microphones, such as the Blue Yeti X Pro, offer advanced features like filters and vocal tuning that can help users achieve a more professional sound. By incorporating similar features into the Elgato Wave 3, users could have even greater flexibility in terms of customizing their audio setup.

**Conclusion**

Overall, the Elgato Wave 3 is an excellent addition to any streaming or content creation setup. Its reputation for quality and ease of use make it a popular choice among streamers and creators. While there are some potential drawbacks to consider, including its price point and limited features compared to other options on the market, many users will find that this microphone offers value and performance.

**Recommended Reading**

For those who want to learn more about streaming and content creation, we recommend checking out Adam's YouTube channel. As a seasoned streamer and creator, Adam has produced numerous videos and guides that cover everything from setting up your audio setup to navigating the world of partnerships and sponsorships. His expertise is unparalleled, and his content is both informative and entertaining.

By following along with Adam's tutorials and guides, you'll be well on your way to creating a top-notch streaming experience that engages and retains your audience. And don't forget to subscribe to his channel for regular updates and tips!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhi everyone not today I'll be checking out a new products from El Gato the wave 3 which is a microphone made specifically for streamers and other Creators and even though you kind of hear that same marketing pitch all the time as creators as streamers are the focus group that requires a good dedicated microphone every microphone so far was pretty much just that a microphone and you had to sort out all your settings and all your sound mixing yourself and if you've ever tried streaming you know that setting up your audio can be quite complicated and quite time-consuming and that's where this wave 3 comes to play now oh god his real focus here is not just on the physical product but also on the software that it comes with and with a new software you can easily mix and manage the volume levels of all kinds of different audio sources like your game your voice chat browser tabs background music and so on making your life as a streamer so much easier so in a way it is not just the competition for other microphones on the market but also dedicated audio mixers like go XLR for example now to get one of these you will need to spend 160 dollars or 170 euros so in theory if al gatos mixing functionality works as smooth as they promised it is a very interesting offer so let's check it out this video is brought to you by iFixit and their pro tech toolkit the pro tect toolkit has all the tools and accessories you need to repair your hardware whether it's a PC phone tablet console and so on it is made of great quality materials and iFixit backs that claim up with a lifetime warranty get yours using the links in the description below installing the wave is actually pretty simple now you get a stand with it and all you need to do is connect it to your PC using the 2 point 5 meter USB type-c to type a cable and that's it now because it's a standard USB cable you can easily order a longer one if you need to or get much shorter one if you stream on your laptop now since this is a condenser microphone you do want to kind of get it as close to your mouth as possible and definitely not put it somewhere far away behind your keyboard for example the only accessory it comes with is this little adapter to mount it onto something now you can use algata zone multi mount 2 which is actually really handy but it fits on majority of other boom arms on the market and since the microphone is not big nor heavy you don't really need to buy an expensive one so anything that will get the microphone close to you in order to help your sound quality will do Elgato is also offering separate pop filters and shock mounts as well that will cost you thirty or forty dollars respectively now my advice here is to just first see how your audio ends up sounding and then see if you even need either of those to improve your recording quality as it will kind of completely depend on your setup now I personally think that it is a really good looking microphone - and even though looks don't really matter as much I think it still doesn't hurt that it's small elegant and it has a very professional look to it now some larger microphones with RGB and that in-your-face design can seem a bit obnoxious in my opinion but this one definitely doesn't fall into that category now the way it has a pretty typical set of features there's a USB type-c and a headphone connection on the back there is a mute button on the top that you can actually activate with a very very light touch so it doesn't really cause any annoying sounds when you try to use it and there is a dial on the front that allows you to adjust your microphone gain your headphone volume or even crossfade between your PC audio and your audio monitoring now where it gets interesting is the wave link software after installation you get to this main screen where you can see up to nine different audio sources as well as a bunch of new devices and windows that kind of match each of those sources it might look a bit overwhelming at the start but what you need to do next is actually pretty simple so you need to set each of the different audio sources you want to use for your stream like your game for example your chat your browser and so on to each of the channels that you want to control now some applications like discord will let you easily set it to wavelength voice chat but others like certain games or Google Chrome require you to set it in Windows itself now you can control the volume of each of those sources and as you can see you actually have two sliders for each source now the left one controls the volume for your monitor mix and the right one for your stream mix now the monitor mix is the sound that you will actually hear either through a headset connected directly to the wave or in another headset that is connected to your PC and keep in mind this can be a USB headset - including wireless headset so you don't really have to have a good analog headset to fully use all the features of the wave 3 now your stream mix is what your audience will hear and what you will kind of need to set as your audio source in your favorite recording or streaming software like OBS algata will then separate what you hear and what your audience hears and it will also give you some extra options that are a bit harder to do some other audio mixers like the go XLR again so for example you can decide to listen to some music yourself without streaming it potentially avoiding recent licensing issues or if you want your game sounds to be a little bit higher you can do so without it affecting your overall system volume or other sources and if you want to link your monitor and your Streamyx together you can even do that as well one of the reasons people actually go for the go XLR is the fact that you get physical sliders now Elgato software it works really nicely but it's still software the dial on the microphone itself lets you adjust the monitor mix and stream mix as a whole but you cannot really tune individual sources so for example if you're streaming a game and you do not have a dedicated streaming rig you will have to tap out of your game to adjust your audio settings mid stream and of course this is where Elgato stream deck becomes really handy as it gives you complete control over this microphone without having to go into the software you can adjust each of the individual sources for yourself and for your audience separately as well as muta microphone adjust the gain or use the low-cut filter to remove some of the background humps and so on now using the software is fine but it's kind of obvious that the wave was made with a stream deck in mind and using them together just makes so much more sense since the stream deck is not cheap and it will cost you as much as this microphone and the stream deck excel is even more expensive it isn't really fair to give this wave 3 full credit for this combined experience but personally I do think if you got to the point where you start looking for an audio mixer for your stream you probably already own a stream deck as that is pretty much one of the first things that you get as a streamer and there are not that many good alternatives to the elgato stream deck on the market now all the features in the world won't mean a thing if the microphone itself doesn't offer a good recording quality now sound can be very subjective so I will let you be the judge of that compared to some of the other alternatives that I have here in the office do you notice guy Adam who knows everything about how to set up your stream he made video after video about it's making a reality of his youtube dream you should check out his channel for reviews guides and tips you'll become a better streamer and maybe scores some partnerships now do go check him out I'll put his link in the description and while you're there do consider a subscription now personally I think it sounds pretty good but let me know in the comments down below which one do you prefer but the thing is al gato doesn't even have to be the very best sounding microphone on the market it just has to be good as it still does something that no other microphone does not technically there are some separate software alternatives that kind of try to do a similar thing like voice meter for example but my personal experience with that was a complete mess and it actually caused several issues with my system audio which was pretty much the reason I went and bought go XLR so that's pretty much it and like with most of their previous products I think algata really did a good job of looking at an actual problem that streamers and creators are facing every day and then coming up with an easy solution now of course it's not for everyone I think that the price might be a bit too high for beginning streamers considering the fact that it will work best if you combine it with a stream deck and I also think it's not really for those professional creators that already have extremely expensive microphones and XLR mixers and sound boards and so on and I don't think they will really care about this product at all but there are many streamers out there who would rather spend a bit more money on something that actually works instead of messing around with a bunch of settings that they don't really know what to do with especially if they already own a stream deck so then this wave 3 will make a lot of sense there are a couple of things that Elgato can improve in my opinion I think a noise gate would be a very good addition as well as some control over how your voice sounds like the blue yeti X Pro has for example now that would pretty much add some filters and some voice tuning so you just you you get more options to play with and those are the things I hope Elgato will consider and possibly add in some of the future software updates but at the end of the day this wave 3 just works well it is not complicated to use and it lets you manage your stream audio easily it is just simple as that now that's it for today thank you so much for watching let me know in the comments down below what do you think about this new microphone and about this review don't forget to subscribe give me thumbs up and see you the next one guys bye youhi everyone not today I'll be checking out a new products from El Gato the wave 3 which is a microphone made specifically for streamers and other Creators and even though you kind of hear that same marketing pitch all the time as creators as streamers are the focus group that requires a good dedicated microphone every microphone so far was pretty much just that a microphone and you had to sort out all your settings and all your sound mixing yourself and if you've ever tried streaming you know that setting up your audio can be quite complicated and quite time-consuming and that's where this wave 3 comes to play now oh god his real focus here is not just on the physical product but also on the software that it comes with and with a new software you can easily mix and manage the volume levels of all kinds of different audio sources like your game your voice chat browser tabs background music and so on making your life as a streamer so much easier so in a way it is not just the competition for other microphones on the market but also dedicated audio mixers like go XLR for example now to get one of these you will need to spend 160 dollars or 170 euros so in theory if al gatos mixing functionality works as smooth as they promised it is a very interesting offer so let's check it out this video is brought to you by iFixit and their pro tech toolkit the pro tect toolkit has all the tools and accessories you need to repair your hardware whether it's a PC phone tablet console and so on it is made of great quality materials and iFixit backs that claim up with a lifetime warranty get yours using the links in the description below installing the wave is actually pretty simple now you get a stand with it and all you need to do is connect it to your PC using the 2 point 5 meter USB type-c to type a cable and that's it now because it's a standard USB cable you can easily order a longer one if you need to or get much shorter one if you stream on your laptop now since this is a condenser microphone you do want to kind of get it as close to your mouth as possible and definitely not put it somewhere far away behind your keyboard for example the only accessory it comes with is this little adapter to mount it onto something now you can use algata zone multi mount 2 which is actually really handy but it fits on majority of other boom arms on the market and since the microphone is not big nor heavy you don't really need to buy an expensive one so anything that will get the microphone close to you in order to help your sound quality will do Elgato is also offering separate pop filters and shock mounts as well that will cost you thirty or forty dollars respectively now my advice here is to just first see how your audio ends up sounding and then see if you even need either of those to improve your recording quality as it will kind of completely depend on your setup now I personally think that it is a really good looking microphone - and even though looks don't really matter as much I think it still doesn't hurt that it's small elegant and it has a very professional look to it now some larger microphones with RGB and that in-your-face design can seem a bit obnoxious in my opinion but this one definitely doesn't fall into that category now the way it has a pretty typical set of features there's a USB type-c and a headphone connection on the back there is a mute button on the top that you can actually activate with a very very light touch so it doesn't really cause any annoying sounds when you try to use it and there is a dial on the front that allows you to adjust your microphone gain your headphone volume or even crossfade between your PC audio and your audio monitoring now where it gets interesting is the wave link software after installation you get to this main screen where you can see up to nine different audio sources as well as a bunch of new devices and windows that kind of match each of those sources it might look a bit overwhelming at the start but what you need to do next is actually pretty simple so you need to set each of the different audio sources you want to use for your stream like your game for example your chat your browser and so on to each of the channels that you want to control now some applications like discord will let you easily set it to wavelength voice chat but others like certain games or Google Chrome require you to set it in Windows itself now you can control the volume of each of those sources and as you can see you actually have two sliders for each source now the left one controls the volume for your monitor mix and the right one for your stream mix now the monitor mix is the sound that you will actually hear either through a headset connected directly to the wave or in another headset that is connected to your PC and keep in mind this can be a USB headset - including wireless headset so you don't really have to have a good analog headset to fully use all the features of the wave 3 now your stream mix is what your audience will hear and what you will kind of need to set as your audio source in your favorite recording or streaming software like OBS algata will then separate what you hear and what your audience hears and it will also give you some extra options that are a bit harder to do some other audio mixers like the go XLR again so for example you can decide to listen to some music yourself without streaming it potentially avoiding recent licensing issues or if you want your game sounds to be a little bit higher you can do so without it affecting your overall system volume or other sources and if you want to link your monitor and your Streamyx together you can even do that as well one of the reasons people actually go for the go XLR is the fact that you get physical sliders now Elgato software it works really nicely but it's still software the dial on the microphone itself lets you adjust the monitor mix and stream mix as a whole but you cannot really tune individual sources so for example if you're streaming a game and you do not have a dedicated streaming rig you will have to tap out of your game to adjust your audio settings mid stream and of course this is where Elgato stream deck becomes really handy as it gives you complete control over this microphone without having to go into the software you can adjust each of the individual sources for yourself and for your audience separately as well as muta microphone adjust the gain or use the low-cut filter to remove some of the background humps and so on now using the software is fine but it's kind of obvious that the wave was made with a stream deck in mind and using them together just makes so much more sense since the stream deck is not cheap and it will cost you as much as this microphone and the stream deck excel is even more expensive it isn't really fair to give this wave 3 full credit for this combined experience but personally I do think if you got to the point where you start looking for an audio mixer for your stream you probably already own a stream deck as that is pretty much one of the first things that you get as a streamer and there are not that many good alternatives to the elgato stream deck on the market now all the features in the world won't mean a thing if the microphone itself doesn't offer a good recording quality now sound can be very subjective so I will let you be the judge of that compared to some of the other alternatives that I have here in the office do you notice guy Adam who knows everything about how to set up your stream he made video after video about it's making a reality of his youtube dream you should check out his channel for reviews guides and tips you'll become a better streamer and maybe scores some partnerships now do go check him out I'll put his link in the description and while you're there do consider a subscription now personally I think it sounds pretty good but let me know in the comments down below which one do you prefer but the thing is al gato doesn't even have to be the very best sounding microphone on the market it just has to be good as it still does something that no other microphone does not technically there are some separate software alternatives that kind of try to do a similar thing like voice meter for example but my personal experience with that was a complete mess and it actually caused several issues with my system audio which was pretty much the reason I went and bought go XLR so that's pretty much it and like with most of their previous products I think algata really did a good job of looking at an actual problem that streamers and creators are facing every day and then coming up with an easy solution now of course it's not for everyone I think that the price might be a bit too high for beginning streamers considering the fact that it will work best if you combine it with a stream deck and I also think it's not really for those professional creators that already have extremely expensive microphones and XLR mixers and sound boards and so on and I don't think they will really care about this product at all but there are many streamers out there who would rather spend a bit more money on something that actually works instead of messing around with a bunch of settings that they don't really know what to do with especially if they already own a stream deck so then this wave 3 will make a lot of sense there are a couple of things that Elgato can improve in my opinion I think a noise gate would be a very good addition as well as some control over how your voice sounds like the blue yeti X Pro has for example now that would pretty much add some filters and some voice tuning so you just you you get more options to play with and those are the things I hope Elgato will consider and possibly add in some of the future software updates but at the end of the day this wave 3 just works well it is not complicated to use and it lets you manage your stream audio easily it is just simple as that now that's it for today thank you so much for watching let me know in the comments down below what do you think about this new microphone and about this review don't forget to subscribe give me thumbs up and see you the next one guys bye you\n"