Software

One of the comparative advantages not offered by any competitors of the Wave:3 is Wave Link, Elgato's accompanying digital mixer.


Wave Link is split into two sections: Inputs and Outputs. The entire layout might strike you as confusing at first, but it all makes perfect sense once you get into it a bit more.


The first device in the Inputs section is the microphone. By clicking on its name, you'll access a menu where you can adjust the gain, output volume, and mic/PC mix—the very same options you'd otherwise configure by using the multipurpose dial at the front of the Wave:3 microphone. Here, you'll also find the Enhanced Lowcut Filter and Clipguard toggles. I'll cover them in the microphone performance section of this review.


The general idea of the Inputs section is to allow you to attach various sound sources 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 eight virtual playback devices: Wave Link System, Wave Link Music, Wave Link Game, Wave Link Browser, Wave Link Voice Chat, Wave Link SFX, 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 during streaming. Those can be Chrome, Spotify, Discord, and the game you plan to stream, for example. 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, you simply have to 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, your audience, or both. This is achieved by clicking on the appropriate headphone/streaming icons underneath the volume sliders.

You could, for example, entertain your audience with background music only they can hear so that it doesn't distract you from your gaming session. Other options are to have your teammates only audible to yourself to keep their comms private, or increasing your in-game volume while keeping it quieter for your audience, which prevents explosions and gunfire from making you harder to hear and understand. The possibilities are numerous.


After you have set everything up, you can use the Outputs section to check 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:3 microphone.


Finally, in Open Broadcaster Software, Streamlabs OBS, or any other streaming software of your choice, you have to visit the audio settings and select the Wave Link Stream (Elgato Wave:3) as your Mic/Auxiliary device. By doing so you're basically letting Wave Link control the entire sound portion of your livestream.

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