Elgato WAVE:3 review - Final Words & Conclusion

Final Words & Conclusion

Bluntly stated, the WAVE:3 we briefly tested today is a feature-rich MIC for a very specific audience. Less bluntly we argue that it's perhaps one of the better units available towards that very specific crowd of 'creators' and ' Streamers'. Fair is fair though so it needs to be stated, I do not have a basis of comparison. That said we feel that the WAVE:3 offers good quality in all its bases, the audio quality is good thanks to the underlying hardware. The cherry on top of it all is a small software suite that brings you the ability to mix and control the available audio sources on that PC of yours, and that is fairly interesting as a feature to have as you do not need expensive external hardware that bypasses and routes audio with a real mixer for example. So you can perfectly tune your voice with gaming volume levels or even background music and do all though with the comfort of your mouse.

So yes, no benchmarking but we can offer a little limited testing. But if you click the audio file above, a high-quality MP3 will load up so you can listen to the audio quality of my voice (I know i know, it's like listening to to voice of an angel), mixed in with some music. Aside from manually activating the (play the audio file, the volume control of my voice, and separated on a slider, the music you can mix together audio at a set of a preference. Quite handy during a live stream, and remember, that mixing can be re-rerouted, you can separate system, game, music streams from your PC, and mix that with that angelic acoustic you send towards the WAVE MIC. You can set up quite a bit, that functionality also can make it a little confusing configuration wise. The audio sources need to be pointed to the WAVE:3 for example that will require you to load up your windows audio applications and point it towards the Wave:3, once you get a hang of it it's a one time job that is easily done, however for a novice user to get playback software to be difficult. But much like a real mixer, your source needs to be connected to it, and then the mixer forwards it all to your receiver:

So if 'Lister' is the playback software (device) for say MP3 playback, in windows configuration you need to select the Wave Link stream, then it's connected to your software and you can mix it in. Once you get a grip on things, it's all easy enough. Another note that I need to make, 2 days prior to this review going live Corsair came back to us mentioning that Wave Link Stream Deck integration is now also available. This requires Stream Deck 4.8 which should be available pretty soon. Once the Stream Deck software is installed, click on ‘More Actions…’ at the bottom right of Stream Deck app to open the plugin store and search for ‘Wave’ or scroll in the list and look for Wave Link. Click on Install.

Once installed there is a choice of installing a pre-made profile. This profile automatically populates keys based on channels in Wave Link.

Available Actions:

• Toggle Monitoring
• Mute Input
• Set Input Volume
• Adjust Input Volume
• Mute Output
• Set Output Volume
• Adjust Output Volume
• Microphone settings
• Adjust gain
• Set gain
• Adjust output volume
• Set output volume
• Adjust Mic/PC mix
• Set Mic/PC mix
• Toggle Enhanced Low Cut Filter
• Toggle Clipguard

Now all aspects of the Wave microphone and Wave Link can be controlled by Stream Deck, this certainly is handy. 

Concluding

The Microphone market is a bit of a niche, especially the target demographic for what Elgato aims at and offers is very limited towards the streamers out there. The WAVE series is clever though, it's a good MIC, and then some. The icing on top of the cake is the software suite that allows you to mix in audio sources at volume levels of your preference. Overall the WAVE:3 did not disappoint in terms of build- and audio quality, however, some sort of noise-canceling for background noises probably would have been a desired welcome.  The looks are nice as well, very subtle and classy classic even. The sound quality is top-notch, we can see why this is the mic could become a choice of a lot of podcasters and streamers. Being USB based these microphones are suitable for gamers, podcasters, and streamers alike. Coming from an oldster and non-stream it's a bit subjective to objectively make a conclusion here, but yeah I can see the positives of this product and albeit there is a very narrow audience for it, I'd say the price tag of 160 USD is steep, but warranted and as such we can recommend it. Overall, a great fairly low-profile microphone that's easy enough to use and sounds good as well without a need for an external device due to mixing audio sources. Recommended.