- Since it's release the
Elgato Wave Mic Arm Low-Profile has done everything
but keep a low profile. It's become insanely popular. So today let's see how
it stacks up against the RØDE PSA-1 and then you can decide if you Elgato get one. (80's type beat) As you might know from many of my videos, the RØDE PSA-1 has been my mic boom arm of choice for many, many years. I love the RØDE PSA-1 but I'll be honest and say that sometimes this
doesn't look super great. Maybe it's not super practical. And that something like this might be a lot easier to work with. Now this is the Elgato
Low Profile boom arm. And I know that it's
not a direct competitor to the RØDE because this is a traditional, you know, taller boom arm. And this is a low profile one and Elgato did release
a taller traditional, I don't know what it's
called, a traditional boom arm but I don't have that one. I'm more interested in the functionality. What does a low profile arm get you that a regular arm doesn't and vice versa? And so right off the bat, obviously having a low profile is the biggest feature. These types of boom arms like
the RØDE PSA-1 specifically have been used in radio broadcasting and audio production for
many, many, many years. And the goal with these is just to get the microphone as close to the
speaker's face as possible. So it doesn't matter what
angle it's coming from, it doesn't matter how high up it is. It's just to position the
microphone in front of your face. But as video has become
more and more popular, video podcasts are a thing,
live streaming is a thing and videos where people
just want good quality audio is a thing. Now it's a problem if
you have a microphone in front of your face the whole time. So you've gotta find a way to
not have your face blocked. You gotta preserve the
moneymaker over here if you're doing online
content and whatnot. And that's where a low profile
arm can really save the day because it can position
the mic where you want it but it doesn't block your face. It doesn't block the camera, it doesn't block conversation
with other people so there's a lot of advantages here. There are also a few disadvantages and we'll talk about those a little later. So I'm actually going
to disassemble this arm and then we will, I guess it's
called disarming it, right? And then we will see what it
has, how it comes together and the different features of
the Elgato Low Profile arm. So the arm itself is pretty simple. You get the base and then you get the arm and that's pretty much it as is the case for pretty much every other arm. Now the whole thing is made out of metal. It's incredibly tough, incredibly durable. I really love that this clamp
part that goes on your desk, it does what I like, which
is it positions the weight of the arm on top of the desk. It doesn't hang off the desk like some of the cheaper arms do, I love that. It's also really big so it's
gonna grab onto your desk a lot and it opens up quite wide. And also already comes with
rubber on the top and bottom so it's not going to damage
the desk or the table or whatever you're mounting it to. The RØDE PSA-1 comes with a similar design that does have padding on the bottom here but it doesn't have padding
on the little metal part. And so I always put little felt pads to protect the bottom of the desk. But overall I actually think this is a better clamp than this one. And if you've been looking
at low-profile boom arms for a while, this might look kind
of familiar cause they did, I think in a lot of ways
sort of take some design cues from OC White boom arms, which have a lot of low profile ones, but they're significantly more expensive. So instead of costing somewhere between 3 and 500 dollars this is $100. I have never personally
used an OC White boom arm so I "NO C" what the difference is. However, I'm guessing that
this $100 arm probably doesn't have the exact same
quality and fit and finish as a 3 to 500 dollar arm does. But it is still a very,
very good boom arm. I done videos in the past about cheap versus expensive boom arms,
where you can see wow, $13 ones are very different
than the $100 ones. And I've also done videos
where I compare $100 boom arms, and you see there's a
lot more functionality and features in this price range. It's definitely worth the investment. The handle has that thing
where if you're kind of like running up against the
desk and it's bumping into it you can pull it out and then reset it. So it's almost like a ratchet. If you need to, if
you're limited on space, it makes it easy to
still use the boom arm. I really like that. The RØDE PSA-1 has a
simpler version of that, which is just this metal thing
that goes back and forth. So if you run out of space,
you can just turn it, turn it and it's kind of the same concept. But I think the Elgato's implementation is actually a little more
slick than the RØDE's. And then the arm just goes in there and you're pretty much done. The arm has these two main sections and at the end it has a ball
mount, which is pretty sturdy. And what's interesting is this
has a quarter 20 mount on it. That's something I've not really
seen on a lot of boom arms. Typically they have three
eighths inch mounts. But when you get the arm, it
does come with two adapters. One is a quarter 20 to three eighths inch. And another one is something
I've not seen before. It is a quarter 20 to five eighths inch. So right out of the box,
you'll be able to use this arm maybe with one of these adapters with basically any
microphone that you have. The Allen key can be used to adjust the tension at different points. There are at the joints
here, there's tension. So this will adjust the spring tension. If you're using a light
microphone, you can loosen it. If you're using a heavy microphone, you might wanna tighten it. And then there's also
little points here where you can adjust how easy it is to move around. So you can keep this very loose where it just kind of like slides very easily or you can tighten it up where it's gonna more firmly stay in place
where you position it. There's a lot of flexibility here. My original plan was to get
this boom arm and put it behind my computer monitor and then have it come out under my monitor. And then when I'm done, I
can fold the microphone away because, get outta here, look
how small this thing folds up when it's not being used. So it can just totally be out of the way, it doesn't take up a lot of space. That's pretty awesome. And then I can just pull it
back out under my monitor. But in the time since I pre-ordered this, it was back ordered and
it finally got delivered, I ended up putting my
monitor on an arm of its own. So now I don't really need this. I rearranged my desk
and that original plan doesn't really work the
way that I intended it to. But it's still pretty cool. If you take this ball mount
off, there's a weird thing. I've never really seen this mount before. I don't know what else
you could put on there. You kind of need this proprietary thing. Fortunately, this is very
heavy-duty and very strong. But the cool thing is it's going to let you position the mic at any angle. So if you have a shock mount like this that comes out from the back,
you can position it that way. If you need your mic to go
straight up, you can do that. And the bottom section
moves left or right, the top section moves left to right. And the top section also moves up and down so even though it is a low-profile arm, it can actually still
raise up pretty high. So that's kind of cool if you do need the microphone to be up higher. If you have this really low
and you're trying to like use your keyboard or your mouse,
it can easily get in the way. That's probably the biggest downside to a low-profile boom arm is that now it's another thing on your desk. And so by being able to raise this up, you then open up a lot of space there. But my question is, if
you're raising it up then it's no different than this? So I don't know if that
undoes some of the benefit. One of the cool things though
about this is each of the arms has these metal plates,
which are held on by magnets. And then in here is where
you route the XLR cable. And it is a pretty strong boom arm. So I'm gonna take the SM7B, which is a fairly heavy
microphone mount that on here. And you can see, it has
plenty of, plenty of strength to position this microphone,
wherever I need it. I have a feeling that unless you have something completely insane like a kettlebell microphone or something, this arm will hold just
about anything you got. And then to set up your cable, there's a little hole in the
bottom of this section here. You can run your XLR connector and then you can just plug
it into your microphone. And basically it just goes
in this little channel here. Now you've got a pretty slick, you know, cable management system. I've noticed something
that's really cool is this corner over here, this
joint, when you turn it, the arm, it doesn't let
the cable get tangled, which can happen with
some other boom arms. However, as you can
probably see right here. A thing that happens a lot is
these little magnet channels, this is my biggest con of this arm is it's very easy for you
to move the arm in a way. that's gonna pop these off. Depending on what mic
you're using the SM7B, this isn't as much of an issue. The AT2040 has a more
traditional rear jack. And that means pretty much
what just happened here is gonna happen a lot. When you move the mic, it's going to pull up on the cable, which in turn can then pull
up on these little covers. And it just sorta depends
how you have your setup, what microphone you're using, how much of an issue that's going to be. But I can pretty much guarantee you, if you get this boom arm,
you're going to have to deal with these covers popping off pretty much every time you use it You could wrap something
around it to stop that from happening but that
doesn't look as cool or as slick as just the arm itself. It's not a big deal. It just means chances are
when you position the arm these might pop off from time to time and you just have to put them back on. That's the biggest drawback
to this arm to me is just that 'cause it's kind of annoying. Beyond that the only other negative, which is not anything to do
with this arm specifically, it's just low profile arms
in general is the fact that they do have the potential
to get in the way of things, depending on how you have them set up. If you're somebody who's going to be using like your laptop and a tablet
and keyboard and mouse, and you have this thing in the way, it's going to be difficult,
maybe, potentially. It's all about how you set it up. Whereas a traditional boom arm's not gonna have that problem at all. So for example, let's
connect to the RØDE PSA-1. The PSA-1 doesn't have
easy internal routing. It is possible to route
an XLR cable through here but you basically have to
take off the end of the cable. Like unsolder it, run the cable through and then reset solder the
connectors on the end, which isn't very difficult if you're someone who's
comfortable with soldering. But it definitely doesn't make it easy to switch out your cables very often. And it's just more of a hassle than I would personally like to do. So I would do the traditional
thing of just using the little Velcro ties and
running the cable along the boom arm. Now in terms of build quality
between these two boom arms, both pretty darn excellent. They're both gonna last
a really long time. I do like that the Elgato
just seems easier to adjust. You just use a little Allen
key to adjust the friction. You can do the same
thing on the RØDE PSA-1. If you ever noticed that it's
too strong or too like low, you can adjust this screw
right here at the top and that will change the spring tension for your microphone. It's not hard to do but it's
sort of harder to dial in. I found the Elgato to
be super easy to dial in exactly how I wanted it. The RØDE PSA-1 has a more
universal three eights inch mount up here that you can attach
all kinds of other stuff to. The Elgato has this
proprietary weird ball thing, which is fine as long as it doesn't break. And I don't think it will,
but it's just sort of, it's not as modular interchangeable as a traditional arm would be. This is as small as the PSA 1 gets. And obviously the Elgato gets really, really small and compact
and out of the way. So which one of those is better for you is going to depend. My least favorite thing about the PSA-1 is this shape right here. Because what it does is it
means if you try to turn this vertically, you can't
make it perfectly vertical 'cause this part has like
a teardrop shape to it and you can't get it totally vertical. What you can do with the PSA-1 is take this little locking nut off
and then it gives you more room to position the mount
so that it's vertical. But it also then doesn't
give you that much space to actually mount a microphone on it. So I've noticed when I've done
this, the microphone tends to wobble and not stay on
as securely as it should. So this has been very frustrating. And the reason I'm bringing that up, if we look at the Elgato
arm and this ball mount, it's very easy to position
something vertically, which is important on a low boom arm. But also important if you're
using a microphone like the SM7B or the Super55, where your mount and your connector are kind of right next to each other. To use the Super55 on the
PSA-1 and make it so I can have it like this in front of me, I had to make this little adapter that has
like nine other adapters. It's a small rig ball mount. What is this? This is a three eights
to five eights adapter, a five eights to quarter
20 adapter, a quarter 20 to quarter 20 into the
small rig into a quarter 20 to three eights into a
three-eights to a five eights. It's a lot of adapters just
to basically let me position the microphone vertically in a way that doesn't block the XLR connector. So here's what I would have to do, Shure makes these little extension tubes. Now I've got my Super55
mounted vertically. I can use the same tube on
the PSA-1 but like I said I can't get it vertical
without all those adapters. It's always gonna come
out at like a weird angle. If you're using a mic like
the Super55 or the 55 SH, something that has this kind of connector, I do think it's gonna be
significantly easier to position how you want it using this
boom arm than a PSA-1. 'Cause really these are made to stand on vertical mic stands not boom arms. So it's always a little funky
when you're trying to do this, but this works pretty well. So I know it's incredibly
unsatisfying sometimes when I do a review or a comparison and I say, yeah, either one is good. You can't really go wrong either way. But it's true, they're just different. If you need something that's gonna be low, maybe with a little more
angular versatility, when it comes to actually
mounting your mic, the Elgato is the way to go. If you just want simple, reliable, easy, the RØDE PSA-1 is tried and true. You can't go wrong with that one. The PSA-1 has more traditional mount here with the three eight inch. The Elgato has this proprietary thing. The Elgato also has this
super cool magnet feature but also this super annoying
feature that hides the cables. But also does not hide your frustration with the cables from time to time. And of course, like I said, a
lot of it has to do with what you're going to be doing
in front of the microphone. Do you need a lot of hand space? If so the low-profile arm is probably gonna get in the way and
get kind of annoying. Whereas the PSA one can
easily be positioned to still let you have lots
of room for activities. Now much like the most popular
store in any mall during the early two thousands,
boom arms are a hot topic. So if you want to check
out some more reviews and comparisons to arm
yourself with the best arm, check out these videos right over here. (Thanks for being here!)
