Software

One of the comparative advantages of the Elgato Wave:1 (and Wave:3) microphone not offered by any of its competitors is the accompanying digital mixer Wave Link.


Wave Link is split into two sections: Inputs and Outputs. The entire layout might strike you as confusing at first, but it all starts making perfect sense once you've gotten into it a bit. The first device in the Inputs section is the microphone itself. By clicking on its name, you'll access a menu where you can adjust the microphone (input) gain, output volume, and mic/PC mix—the volume balance of the sound coming out of your PC and the microphone itself when using the built-in 3.5-millimeter audio output for microphone monitoring. You can also choose between two dial functions: input gain or output volume (for headphones plugged into the microphone). Finally, you'll find the Enhanced Lowcut Filter, Clipguard, and Wave Gain Lock toggles here. The Wave Gain Lock function completely blocks any app other than Wave Link from controlling the gain of the Wave:1 microphone, which is generally a good idea when streaming. I'll cover the Enhanced Lowcut Filter and Clipguard technologies in the microphone performance section of this review.


The general idea of the Inputs section is to allow for various sound sources to be attached to different "virtual sound cards." When you install the driver, the Sound section of your Control Panel will be populated by a grand total of nine virtual playback devices: Wave Link System, Wave Link Music, Wave Link Game, Wave Link Browser, Wave Link Voice Chat, Wave Link SFX, Wave Link Game, Wave Link Aux 1, and Wave Link Aux 2.


To set up the digital mixer, you first need to start the apps you want to use when streaming. Those could for example be Chrome, Spotify, Discord, and the game you intend to stream. When they're up and running, you have to click on the icon next to the cogwheel, in the upper-right corner of the Wave Link software, to access the "App volume and device preferences" Windows menu. Here, simply open the Output drop-down menu next to the app you want to assign to a virtual sound card and select the appropriate virtual sound card. For simplicity, it's best if you select Wave Link Browser for your browser, Wave Link Music for Spotify, Wave Link Game for your game, and so on. After doing so, those apps will be added to the digital mixer, where you can adjust their volume individually and decide if they'll be audible only to you, only to your audience, or both. This is achieved by clicking on the appropriate headphone/streaming icons below the volume sliders.

As such, you can, for example, entertain your audience with background music while making it inaudible to yourself, so that it doesn't distract you from your game. Or you can have your teammates audible only to you if you want to keep their comms private. Or you can make the game very loud for yourself, but quieter for your audience to prevent explosions and gunfire from making your voice hard to hear and understand. The possibilities are numerous.


After you have set everything up, the Outputs section shows what is audible to you and your audience by clicking on the ear icon next to the Monitor Mix (what you hear) or Stream Mix (what your audience hears). Of course, you can output the monitor mix to any other output device available on your PC—nobody is forcing you to use the 3.5-mm port on the Elgato Wave:1 microphone.


Finally, in Open Broadcaster Software, Streamlabs OBS, or any other streaming software of your choice, visit the audio settings and select the Wave Link Stream (Elgato Wave:1) as your mic/auxiliary device. By doing so, you're basically letting Wave Link control the entire sound portion of your livestream.


Since I've last used the Wave Link digital mixer, Elgato added a nice quick start section to it, which should help you get going faster. It takes us through the monitor output selection and helps add virtual channels and bind apps to their appropriate channels in order to correctly route app audio.

Overall, the Wave Link digital mixer is a great addition to the Elgato Wave:3 microphone. It could do with some additional tweaks; for example, you still can't change the width of its window, which means pulling on the horizontal scroll bar to access all nine virtual channels, which I found quite annoying. The software is otherwise completely stable and fully functional.