Microphone Performance

Underneath the steel grille of the Elgato Wave:3 is a 17-millimeter electret condenser capsule, protected by a multilayered internal pop filter. If you're at all familiar with condenser microphones, you already know what to expect: good ones sound great and offer excellent dynamics, but are very sensitive, so they're not an ideal choice for noisy environments, or for instances where you are not the only person talking, as they can and will pick up anyone in your room. If that's your situation, you need a dynamic microphone—no condenser microphone will fulfill your needs.

Elgato tried to fight the inherent characteristics of a condenser microphone by giving the Wave:3 a tight cardioid polar pattern, which means it should in theory pick up sounds directly in front of the capsule while ignoring everything coming in from the sides or behind the capsule. In practice, your audience will still pick up a certain amount of noise from your surroundings, such as whacking of your mechanical keyboard, loud case/GPU fans, and street traffic. Regardless of how you use the Wave:3, don't expect it to fully mute your environment. Despite that, the Wave:3 isn't a good choice for recording music or doing interviews as it doesn't offer other, more suitable polar patterns. This really is a single-user streaming microphone, and that's exactly how it should be used.

The built-in ADC (analogue to digital converter) offers 24-bit/96 kHz recording resolution, greatly surpassing what you'll want to use for streaming (48 kHz). It also uses a hardware low cut filter that removes frequencies under 80 Hz from the microphone signal in order to reduce audible boominess. This filter can be toggled on and off. If it removes a noticeable amount of depth from your voice, you'll definitely want to turn it off. Finally, the ADC is equipped with a technology Elgato calls Clipguard, which aims to remove any traces of clipping (distortion caused by shouting). According to the manufacturer, a second audio channel runs inside the microphone at a reduced volume. If peaking occurs—say, you get overly excited and start shouting, for example—the microphone instantly switches to that second channel for a quieter recording it delivers to your audience. As you'll see in the following microphone samples, the Clipguard technology works great, proving really useful in everyday usage. Fear not if you want your audience to experience the full range of your emotions, though, as Clipguard can be toggled off.


As for ideal positioning, Elgato suggest we place the microphone at around two fists (~20 centimeters) away from our mouth and start with its gain set to 40%, which is two glowing white LEDs if you're adjusting gain through the physical dial. The general idea is to keep the gain as low as possible, and the microphone as close to your mouth as possible; that's the optimal way to reduce background noise to a minimum while getting the best-possible sound quality. Of course, if you think you're too quiet with the gain set to 40%, by all means, do increase it to a more acceptable level. Just be aware that increasing the gain (sensitivity) of a condenser microphone capsule makes your surroundings louder and louder. When the Wave:3 is set to maximum gain, you'll hear every creak of your chair, every smack of your lips, whirring of your quietest case fan, and just about everything else happening around you. During my testing, I wasn't comfortable with the gain above 60%, nor did I feel the need to do so, not even when I had the microphone sitting about 40 centimeters away from my mouth on the table.

Let's listen to some microphone samples. I recorded the first sample by putting the microphone between myself and the keyboard on the table in front of me, around 40 centimeters away from my mouth, as that's how anyone without a boom arm will use it. The second sample was recorded after installing the microphone on a boom arm (Rode PSA1) and putting it close to my mouth. I used the gain settings I felt most comfortable with—60% for the first sample and 50% for the second one.




Two things are immediately apparent: the Elgato Wave:3 microphone sounds really good, and it massively benefits from being close to your mouth. When I'm talking into it from within the suggested 20 centimeters, my voice sounds very natural, and has a pleasant depth and timbre. The quality remains very decent when the microphone is placed on a table stand and the distance from my mouth is doubled, but if your goal is to make your stream sound as good as possible, the Wave:3 definitely needs to go on a boom arm. Unless you're very short, you won't be able to get close to it while it's sitting on your table. It should also be noted that the integrated pop filter seems to be doing a great job of handling plosive speech sounds (T, K, P, D, G, and B) as there's no audible boominess even in the most delicate parts of what I'm saying.

Let's introduce some background noise. The following two samples are recorded in the same way as the first two, only this time I'm typing on my mechanical keyboard positioned behind the microphone. My keyboard (Corsair K70) uses Cherry MX Red mechanical switches.




These samples fortify my stance: You really want to use a boom arm with the Elgato Wave:3 microphone, and any other broadcasting microphone, for that matter. The mashing of my mechanical keyboard is much more audible when the microphone is sitting 40 centimeters away from my mouth on the table than when on a boom arm and close to my face (20 centimeters). The closer it gets, the less gain you need to use to make it sound good. As a result, the capsule becomes less sensitive and prone to picking up background noise.

In this sample, I alternated between my normal talking voice, whispering and shouting to test overall capsule dynamics, and the Clipguard technology, which was left on at all times. After that I recorded a sample to further demonstrate the Clipguard technology by turning it off, shouting into the microphone, and turning it on and repeating the process. Headphone users beware—this is going to be loud!




These two samples demonstrate the excellent dynamics of the Elgato Wave:3 microphone, but also show off one of its best features, the aforementioned Clipguard technology. This isn't just a slapped-on, half-baked feature; it actually works, and works really well. With the gain set to a normal, usable level, it's next to impossible to distort the microphone by shouting. While this might not be as important to someone who never gets emotional in the heat of the battle, most users will love the safety Clipguard provides. You can pretty much forget about clipping and focus on other aspects of your stream, and that's great peace of mind to have.

Difference to the Elgato Wave:1

I didn't have a sample of the less expensive $129.99/€139.99 Elgato Wave:1 at my disposal while I was testing the Wave:3, so I cannot comment on the differences in their performance. What I can say is that the Wave:1 comes without a capacitive mute button and a simpler dial, which is in its case only used for headphone volume and microphone muting. The Wave:1 apparently also has a lower quality ADC capable of 24-bit/48 kHz recording, so it will be interesting to see how it performs compared to the Wave:3 once I get my hands on a sample. In every other sense, Elgato's two microphones are identical, as clearly shown in the comparison table below.