Elgato Wave 3 the best USB Mic for Twitch, YouTube, and Podcasts? | Review and Comparison |

what's up ladies and gentlemen welcome to gnrfrank my name is francisco and today we're going to be talking about the elgato wave 3 usb condenser microphone let's go [Music] for a long time now i've been wanting to pick up the elgato wave 3 microphone and i've been kind of up in the air deciding between wave one or wave three so i went ahead and got the microphone from best buy it was on sale i believe i believe it's like 139 something like that uh usually it typically retails for around the 159 range i'll include the prices down here just to make sure it's accurate but i went ahead and picked it up and i've had some time to spend with the microphone and not only are we going to talk about this microphone but we're going to take the wave 3 and compare it to my shure mv7 dynamic microphone so this is a usb condenser microphone and this is a dynamic xlr and or usb microphone as well and yes we're going to review this but i also kind of been wondering which one i feel i like more in terms of sound for my needs and we're going to go ahead and take some time to compare the two so without further ado let's just get right into it too since the wave 3 is a usb microphone i will be using the shure mv7 via usb as well inside of the box there's really not a whole lot going on so we're just going to go ahead and open it up for you real quick as is with most electronics these days you're going to get some paperwork right here quick start guide and some random shenanigans so just put that off to the side you have a little box with the usb cable now of course i've already got everything set up so the cable is hooked up and everything to my boom arm so i'm not going to show you the cable but i don't think you really need to see that and inside you would have found the microphone itself right here right but you also have a actually pretty heavy and pretty sturdy uh desktop stand for it now along with that stand there is also this little guy right here and this is a boom arm uh converter if you will so basically you would screw this in to your wave three right here at the bottom and it would enable you to attach the microphone to a boom arm of your choice so we take a look at the microphone itself the microphone is incredibly lightweight it doesn't it barely has any weight to it at all and it does have unfortunately an all plastic build with the exception of well actually it feels like this mount is also plastic so it seems like the whole thing is just built on plastic we have one button right here at the front which is a dial which is how you're gonna adjust your microphone's gain your output volume and your balance between your your chat audio and your wavelink audio and then you can also press it to switch between the settings so it does have a capacitive touch me button at the top so you just tap it it mutes it you tap it again it does and unmutes the microphone right there as far as build quality is concerned this microphone is a very sleek looking mic i do love how it looks it has a very classy look to it it does have a bit of a cheap feel to it considering the price point i'm a little disappointed with that but other than that it does look pretty classy and just right here in the back it is a usb-c connector to the microphone to power it and connect it to your pc and you have a headphone out right here i'd say i mean i feel like if you gave this a good drop you'd probably crack it if not just break it all together but if you're careful with your belongings and your equipment i don't think you're going to have much trouble with that as far as the aesthetics go i don't think anybody's gonna have any issue with how this looks on stream or in your youtube videos so let's uh get everything set up and let's go ahead and start talking about sound okay ladies and gentlemen so this is what the elgato wave 3 microphone sounds like right now i should have the gain set about roughly 50 i'm sitting at about i'd say 6 to 7 inches away from the mic this is exactly what the mic sounds like so i'm going to go ahead and show that for a moment so we can see how much ambient noise this microphone captures because keep in mind it is a condenser microphone so condenser microphones are going to be picking up a lot more noise than say a dynamic microphone would i'm not doing any post processing whatsoever there's no added compression no noise reduction nothing at all the only thing i'm probably going to post process is my lav mic and that's about it the wave 3 microphone has a cardioid polar pattern which means is that it's going to capture the sound caught directly in front of the microphone so there is no talking off to the side because it's not going to make that big of a difference there's definitely no talking about it back here because you're not going to get as much pick up there it is intended to be spoken to directly in front of the microphone as far as sound quality goes for this one i gotta say i am very impressed with how clear and great my vocals do come in my sound and my commentary does one thing i did notice in several recordings that i did do is that my voice is a typically low voice and i think that this microphone did have a little bit of trouble picking up on the lows on my vocal cords if you will and one thing that i do like about microphones i like a microphone that can really pick up the low parts of my voice i think it adds a lot of richness and depth to my commentary this microphone i feel struggles in that department a little bit but if anything and if i had to really i guess designate what this quality is like it's that it's crystal clear and it's very balanced i don't think as although it doesn't get the lows that i want it to it does get some and it doesn't get too many of the highs either i think it's a very nice balanced neutral sound that i get out of this microphone as well overall i think the microphone sounds pretty darn good i like it a lot actually as a matter of fact but i'm not convinced yet and this is where i'm going to need your help i'm going to go ahead and set up the shirt mv7 and we're going to do some tests comparing both of them to one another all right so now i have the shirt mv7 set up via usb and i've got the wave 3 right here also set up right now i'm currently speaking into the wave 3 and this is what it sounds like a couple of things that i want to note as well is that when you use a microphone that has a me button usually you will hear the uh an audible like click when a user clicks that mute button in the middle of recording right so the really cool thing about a capacity to touch me button is that you simply tap the top and there is no audible noise at all so for example i'm going to press the button right and all i do is simply tap it again and once again you should not have heard any sort of audible cue that i have muted the microphone because of its capacitive touch nature it does happen on the wave three when you're switching from uh what output or what source you want to manage the volume for so for instance right now i have it set to where the dial uh changes the microphone's gain but we're going to switch it to my output volume for it for instance if i had a headset hooked up to it so i'm going to click it right now and you might have been able to hear it so let's try it again i'm going to click it one more time and it's going to switch it over to the balance and now we're going to switch back to gain and we're back to gain let's switch over to the mv7 and see what y'all think about that all right ladies and gentlemen and this is the shure mv7 hooked up via usb and i've got it set at about the same distance from the elgato wave 3. now do bear in mind that this is a dynamic microphone which means that now as opposed to a condenser microphone which can capture a whole lot of sound from the direction that it captures sound from this microphone right here does a much better job at noise rejection so i could have my little girl in the living room running around playing with her toys screaming and joy and happiness and if i was using the elgato wave 3 that microphone would pick up some of that noise with a dynamic microphone it won't pick up any of that noise because it's only going to pick up the noise or the sounds coming from directly in front of the microphone nothing from the sides or from behind now obviously it'll pick up some from the sound so if i start talking over here off to the side it's going to pick up some of that sound right but it's not as prevalent as it would be with a condenser microphone this microphone has a pretty nice little pop filter added with it so for example we're going to take this off real quick see this is the mv7 grille right here this is uh this is what the microphone looked like if it didn't have the windscreen included so thankfully the people at shore went ahead and added that in with the with the package as well the wave 3 has internal pop filters bit built into it but let's see how good they really do against plosives we're going gonna go ahead and start with the sure first peter pickle piper penny pizza passive person now let's try out the plosives with the elgato wave three peter piper pickle person prize that starts with p and b and v pronto shout out to andrew aka podcastage so after listening to that i got to tell you that the surprisingly enough the wave 3 did a much better job of handling plosives as opposed to the shure mv7 one other thing that we're going to do is the last test we're going to do is just the proximity effect so how does the microphone sound the closer that you get to it because the closer you get to a microphone the more it should be able to pick up the depth and richness of one's voice and one thing i want everyone to bear in mind what this microphone or this microphone sounds like for me is not necessarily what it's going to sound like for you so let me go ahead and switch over to the wave 3 so you can get the proximity effect with that as well okay and now the proximity effect test with the elgato wave 3 microphone so now as i get closer to the microphone i really have to be a little bit more careful about how loudly i speak because this being a condenser microphone of the gain still being only about 50 i have a feeling that it's going to be catching a lot of uh a lot of sound and i'm looking at audacity here and it is exactly the case but uh you be the judge what this what sounds better to you this microphone right here being this close to me or the mv7 now granted i die i doubt that most of you will be using a condenser microphone this close to your mouth you probably shouldn't even be doing that to be honest but i just want to give you a good example of what it sounds like with the proximity effect in consideration okay ladies and gentlemen i'm actually a liar that this is the last test there's something i almost forgot to include this and this is a noise pickup from the microphones for both microphones uh specifically for those of us who like to game on pcs and we have mechanical keyboards you might want to know how much of your keyboard is going to get picked up by either microphone so we're going to go ahead and start with the elgato wave 3 and i am using a logitech g513 with the blue mechanical switches ready 3 2 1 go this is me just typing away random gibberish on a google docs document and now the shirt mv7 this is me just typing away at some gibberish on a google docs document using the shure mv7 dynamic microphone all right ladies and gentlemen so there you have it so in terms of noise pickup no surprise the elgato wavelength 3a usb condenser microphone ended up picking up a whole lot more of the keyboard sounds than the dynamic shirt mv7 did that just goes to show that condenser microphones had a tendency to pick up a whole lot more noise especially if you're using them in an untreated room the dynamic microphone the shure mv7 did a much much better job of rejecting all that noise and keeping the commentary cleaner as opposed to the wavelength 3. anyways ladies and gentlemen that about wraps it up for today i got to tell you this for the price of the wavelength 3 i think you get a phenomenal microphone i would definitely recommend this to any content creator out there anybody looking to do twitch streams with this microphone youtube videos even podcasting with podcasting you can definitely use it raw or i would highly recommend is get a good daw and just get some good post processing down i think they both sound great but for all intents and purposes um i'm going to go ahead and say that for me in my opinion whoa let me stop right there this was the part of the video where i was about to announce the shure mv7 as the winner between the two microphones but after giving it much thought and sitting here all practically all night last night just going back and forth between different clips between the mb7 and the wave 3 i gotta say i'm taking it back ladies and gentlemen the winner is the elgato wave three i love how this microphone makes my voice sound i love how this sounds i am accustomed to what a dynamic microphone does to my voice but for some reason playing them back and forth a whole bunch last night i got to really hear a really good just good detail in the wave 3 and i just love how it makes my voice sound not to mention that i can sit here at a comfortable distance from the microphone and feel like i'm still capturing some good audio as opposed to the shirt mv7 which is dynamic i do have to have it relatively closer to my mouth and that can be a little annoying so the wave 3 is the winner enjoy the rest of the video have a great one peace out what do you think tell me in the comments below what you think i hope you all enjoyed the video i hope you found informative and helpful let me know if you own this microphone and what your thoughts on it are let me know if you owned the mv7 and what your thoughts on it are and until next time be good to yourselves be good to one another peace out

Channel: GNR Frank

Views: 21,324

Keywords: Elgato wave 3, elgato wave 3 review, review, elgato wave 3 mic test, best mic for twitch, best mic for twitch streaming, twitch, mic, gaming, best mic for YouTube, best mic for youtube videos, best mic for youtube gaming, best microphone for youtube, wave 3 vs mv7, microphone, Shure mv7, mv7, wave 3 review, wave 3 review elgato, best podcast mic, best podcast microphone, best podcast microphone 2020, best podcasting microphone, what microphone to use for streaming

Id: QnkvNr2rtPY

Length: 13min 38sec (818 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 27 2020