Elgato Wave: 1 Comment: A beginner’s dream, a professional’s nightmare
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The ease of use in the small package is the name of the Elgato Wave:1 game (130 USD MSRP at the time of writing), and in most cases, it succeeded. The Wave: 1, the brother who pays more attention to the budget El Gato Wave: 3 (160 USD MSRP), with a high-quality condenser designed by Lewitt Audio, you can feel its presence in clear audio reproduction. The microphone has chosen a cardioid mode, which makes it a difficult task to make any sound sound really bad.
The Wave Link software is intuitive enough to allow amateurs of almost any level to mix broadcasts like semi-professionals in a matter of minutes. All these factors make Wave:1 a powerful tool for beginners, and they are likely to be so excited that it is so simple to start and run, that the more serious flaws of the product will be masked.Those with professional audio experience or seeking The best gaming microphone However, you will find that the Wave:1 problem cannot be ignored.
Elgato Wave: 1 specification
| Frequency response range | 70-20,000 Hz | |
| Samples/bitrate | 48 kHz / 24 bit | |
| Polarity mode | Heart-shaped | |
| Headphone amplifier impedance | 16 ohm | |
| Dimensions (expanded in the bracket, LxWxH) | 1.6 x 2.6 x 5.6 inches (40 x 66 x 141 mm) | |
| weight | Microphone and U-shaped connector: 0.54 lb (245 g) base: 0.68 lb (310 g) | |
| additional | Desktop stand, cantilever adapter, USB-C cable |
The design of Elgato Wave: 1
The Wave:1 Adhere to the simple and elegant design concept. The microphone itself is a smooth black rounded rectangle, and there is a USB Type-C port and a 3.5 mm jack on the back of the chassis for headphone output. There is a knob for output volume or, if you download software for the microphone, for input gain. Out of the box, the dial also doubles as a mute button installed on the front. The volume knob has a notch, which can well indicate your volume setting position. In addition, the white LED ring around the knob will brighten as the volume increases. Pressing the knob will mute the microphone and the LED level indicator will turn red. We are already enjoying an intuitive design that is easy to get used to.
Although the overall simplicity of the Wave:1 design is primarily an advantage, the lack of on-board controls dedicated to microphone input gain is an obvious disadvantage. The front volume knob controls the headphone output level, so you must install Elgato’s Wave Link software to adjust the microphone input gain. For those looking for a more plug-and-play experience, this is a big disadvantage and makes Wave:1 software a necessity rather than an option. The recent firmware update makes it possible to adjust the input gain of the microphone through the physical volume knob, but access to this function still requires the use of Wave Link software.
The Wave:1 box contains an 8.2-foot USB-C cable, U-shaped bracket, desktop bracket, and a cantilever adapter. The microphone can be easily fixed to the U-shaped mount with a pair of thumbscrews. And the cantilever adapter also makes it easy to install Wave:1 to the microphone arm. However, boom adapters are not universal. Some microphone arms may require additional weight to prevent vibration. Wave:1 does not come with a shock mount, but you can purchase an additional one 40 USD.
Although fixed to the included desktop stand, Wave:1 has a very small footprint, which is a huge advantage for people with limited desktop space.All in all, the size of the microphone is 1.6 x 2.6 x 5.6 inches, which is slightly shorter than Wave:3 (1..6 x 2.6 x 6 inches), and even shorter than Wave:3 Razer Kraken Mini Edition (2.2 x 3.5 x 6.4 inches).
Elgato Wave’s sound quality: 1
Elgato Wave:1 was designed with the help of Lewitt, a well-respected name in the professional audio field, and it seems to have paid off. The microphone provides top-notch audio quality.
The microphone faithfully reproduced my voice, without the compression and nasal characteristics commonly found in more economical microphones. My test recordings using OBS are very clear-in some cases, too clear. This cardioid pointing capacitor is very sensitive and can pick up a lot of background noise. If you have a street bedroom or other recording area like me, this is not the most suitable.
You also need to consider special considerations when placing the microphone relative to other gaming devices.if your The best gaming keyboard The sound is loud and clicks, you don’t want it to be close to Wave:1. Since the Wave:1 capacitor only operates in cardioid mode, if your gaming device is noisy, it is best to use a cantilever to place the microphone.
The default input gain level of Wave:1 is a bit hot, but it won’t be as close to cutting the microphone as the Clipguard function. This is a hard compressor/limiter that prevents peaks from appearing, and it does a very good job of keeping the signal below the red line during the test. Nevertheless, it will still exacerbate the unwanted environmental noise problem in your recording/streaming space. It turns out that reducing the gain in Elgato’s Wave:1 software helps minimize this problem.
I plug Wave:1 into a USB-C port that supports Thunderbolt on my desktop. Due to the extremely low latency, I usually prefer USB-C or Thunderbolt for recording. Unfortunately, Wave:1 does not seem to take advantage of this. There is a significant round-trip delay from when I speak to when the sound is relayed to the output I choose. This can be very distracting. Sometimes, the words I speak into the microphone will not be reproduced by my headphones until I am halfway through the next one, producing an effect similar to an echo with a slight tail. In the mildest case, this delay is still noticeable, in the worst case, it seems to be close to the level of 200-500 milliseconds, reminiscent of recording in a cave.
I tried to eliminate this situation by closing the software, trying different USB-C ports, and even testing on a USB-C-equipped gaming laptop, but the result was the same. After these efforts failed, I updated Wave:1 to the latest firmware (version 1.1.0 at the time of writing), which seems to actually make the problem worse.
Using Wave:1 can be close to zero delay monitoring, but only if you plug a set of headphones into the 3.5mm jack located on the back of the device and set the monitor mix output to the microphone’s headphone output. This is contrary to the small desktop footprint of Wave:1, because it means that in order to get a usable monitor mix, you need to plug in additional equipment. Depending on your settings, this may cause cable management issues, but the alternative of listening to the monitor mix with half a second echo is even worse.
Unfortunately, Wave:1 suffers from this limitation because it is indeed an excellent sounding microphone. However, if I am always nearly half a second later than I should have heard, I tend not to care about how great something sounds. For tools used for recording and broadcasting, signal lag is a big problem. Imagine recording a podcast with someone on the speakers and you will understand this. If you don’t like to use headphones with a microphone, please don’t ride the wind and waves.
Elgato Wave’s functions and software: 1
Wave Link is very easy to understand, and it is very easy to achieve a balanced mix, which can be imported into streaming software as a source. But audio perfectionists would like to have more sophisticated methods to manipulate the overall EQ curve. However, in terms of the functions it provides, Wave Link is a good time and money saver for streamers and content creators who lack the resources and space of a physical mixer.
There are not many audio adjustment options. You will not find any EQ presets or the ability to manually change the default sound of the microphone. Instead, you can only turn on and off the aforementioned Clipguard and low-cut filter, and manipulate the slider to control the microphone’s input gain, output volume, and the mixing balance between the microphone and PC audio.
The software also allows you to choose whether the dial on the front of the microphone controls the input gain or output volume, and has a gain lock function to prevent other applications from interfering with your level.
After the initial setup, you can add channels to the overall mix, each channel has its own independent monitor (read: headphones) and stream output slider. This allows you to run two mixes at the same time, one for yourself and one for your target audience. Once you have achieved your preferred mix balance between microphone input, game audio, music, voice chat, and any other sources you wish to add, your streaming output mix can be added to the streaming software of your choice. Source without further adjustments.
Bottom line
Elgato Wave:1 does a lot of right things, but has some obvious flaws that make it unable to stand out in the upper layer of USB gaming microphones.
Let’s start on the positive side: the microphone audio is top-notch, crisp, clean and without unpleasant frequency emphasis. The microphone itself is compact and lightweight, and can be easily mounted on a cantilever. Elgato’s Wave Link software does an excellent job of producing professional broadcast audio mixes by providing a simple, elegant and intuitive workflow. These are wonderful advantages that others in the field can well emulate.
However, if the Wave Link software is not installed, the microphone’s input gain cannot be adjusted, resulting in Wave:1 not plug-and-play. To make matters worse, the default input gain setting allows excessive ambient noise pickup. There is audio delay when the 3.5mm jack is not used.Although it is a USB-C device, the audio delay often exceeds
Appears in the USB-A microphones I have used, for example Blue snowman.
This Wave number: 3 Due to higher sensitivity, more dialing options and built-in popular filters, it has won higher scores, especially when discounting.
However, if your budget is limited, Wave:1 provides excellent sound quality and a well-designed virtual mixing console, suitable for anchors and content creators who want to keep things simple—except for headphones.
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