The Elgato Wave: 3 is a professional-quality microphone designed for streamers and content creators. Its intuitive controls and out-of-the-box functionality makes it easy to use for even the least tech-savvy streamer. Elgato has built their brand by being exceptionally in tune with creators and their specific needs. The Wave: 3 fits perfectly alongside the Stream Deck and HD capture card as yet another high quality, easy to use streaming tool.
Simple Tools, Tons Of Control
There are a multitude of ways that the Wave: 3 keeps things simple. A USB-C connection means no dealing with giant XLR cables; it can be plugged into any available USB 2.0 or 3.0 port you have and it’s ready to go. The Wave: 3 has a dial with 3 different settings that can be adjusted: gain, monitor volume, and mic/PC mix. If you need to turn your game volume down a bit and turn your voice up, decrease the gain to eliminate background noise, or simply turn up your own monitor volume to hear yourself better, you can make all those adjustments by simply turning the dial on the microphone. No alt-tabbing to move sliders in OBS, no sifting through game settings, the controls are right there.
One of my favorite little features on the Wave: 3 is the Capacitive Mute button. It’s a soft-touch button on top of the mic that instantly mutes the mic and turns the dial light red. This gives streamers the ability to mute their mic silently and without jostling it or changing its position. I wouldn’t have complained about a click-y button, but the Capacitive Mute just further demonstrates how closely Elgato is paying attention to the way creators actually use their devices.
Another example: Streamers can’t really monitor and make adjustments to their audio while they’re playing, so Elgato built the Wave: 3 with a Clipguard to smooth out audio peaks and an internal pop filter to neutralize plosives. Now, when you shout with excitement over a clutch play or get a little to close to the mic in the heat of battle, you aren’t going to kill everyone’s ears in chat, and the Wave: 3 is doing that work internally, automatically.
The Elgato Ecosystem
The Wave: 3 introduces a Elgato’s audio mixing software Wave Link, a way to tune and balance your microphone, game, music, other players, and any other audio sources coming in before passing them through OBS as a single mix. It’s incredibly easy to use and offers more control than standard OBS audio mixes. It does flood your PCs list of audio devices with separate devices for every default source though, so you may want to disable the sources you aren’t using.
The other minor frustration is audio monitoring. Through Wave Link, there is a slight delay in feedback as your voice processes through the software, making it unusable in a practical sense. For true audio monitoring without delay, you need to plug your headphones directly into the Wave: 3’s 3.5mm audio jack. Ultimately, this means choosing between using your perfectly mixed USB 7.1 surround gaming headphones or using a pair of earbuds plugged into the mic so you can hear yourself.
I’m sure there are gaming headphones with a standard 3.5 mm connection out there, but all of my gaming headphones have USB. Luckily, once you determine you sound good monitoring isn’t actually essential, but those of us who have gotten used to sidetone to monitor the volume of our own voice will have to make a concession here.
The Wave: 3 is also integrated with the Stream Deck at launch, giving streamers yet another fantastic tool to control and adjust their audio mix. The Stream Deck can be set up with controls for each individual channel in the mix, essentially becoming a physical version of Wave Link that can be manipulated without tabbing over or leaving game. All of Elgato’s equipment is designed to be used efficiently and easily so you can focus on creating content.
Uncompromised Sound Quality
I test tons of audio equipment and I’ve never gotten as many compliments for sound quality in-game as I have with the Wave: 3. This is a professional quality microphone that brings out the full range and nuance in your voice. The sound quality is simply incredible, check it out in the most recent episode of TheGamer’s original podcast, Pexin’ With The Legends:
It’s a fantastic microphone no matter how you’re using it. Streaming, videos, podcasts, or even just playing with your friends on Discord - the Elgato Wave: 3 is the easiest to use, highest quality microphone you can buy.
The Wave: 3 is available now for $159.99, the slightly-less featured Wave: 1 also launched today, available for $129.99. You can learn more about both products on Elgato’s website.
An Elgato Wave: 3 was provided to TheGamer for this review.
