FINALLY!! A CHEAP(er) GoXLR!! - the GoXLR Mini

[Music] hey hold on just a sec Helicon gaming just sent me the go XLR mini and they they kind of put me in a little bit of a pickle look I would love to do a full review on this thing talk about the sound quality the features the i/o all the things but the bottom line is if you've seen any videos on the fold go XLR that came out last January you know exactly how that go XLR minis gonna sound and function that the exact same thing same exact preamps so they sound exactly the same same exact IO so they function exactly the same all they've really done is they took this thing they chopped it in half took off the voice changer in the sampler and then dropped the price almost in half also and that's pretty much the go accel our mini they took this half of the go XLR made it its own thing and then made it more affordable so if that's all I came to know then cool you're welcome go find another one of my videos and the recommended feed over there or and your me out here we can take this opportunity and spend the rest of the video unboxing the go XLR I can answer every single question you guys ask me every day in my twitch chat about the go XLR things like using wireless headphones etc and to avoid this looking like an ad because it's not an ad they did send me the go lecture but it's not an ad that didn't pay me I can give my suggestions after using the go XLR for nine months on what I'd like to see them add to this as well as the future products that I would love to see Helicon gaming release cool [Music] by the way feel free to follow me on Twitch I stream every Monday Wednesday Friday link to that down in the description down below also if you enjoyed this video make sure you hit the like button subscribe to the channel let's get to unboxing this thing but we're gonna do it the right way and it's time for another yes by the way I know the ASMR unboxing is on this channel are very polarizing if you hate ASMR timecode right here go ahead and skip it or you don't need to but it makes the [Music] you're welcome for that by the way now we need like some kind of like animation like title screen for ASMR unboxings it's a thing on the channel now let's take a look at these two go XLR go XLR mini side-by-side let's talk about what's the same and then let's talk about what's different both had the exact same input with the exact same preamp so the mic quality is going to sound exactly the same both have a line in a line out a USB and an optical input called console and in the headphone on the microphone and put on the front over here both have got the exact same dual function mute buttons at the bottom and then they took the two buttons over here the bleep button and the COFF button and they threw them at the bottom so they're still usable for your mic they both work exactly the same with all the software inputs and outputs being recognized separately so you can send your music to one channel your game to another channel your mic to another channel and control them all separately with the faders essentially it works exactly the same and sounds exactly the same alright let's point out the differences now and there's some obvious ones and then there's a not so obvious one it's missing the voice changer it's missing the sampler and it's missing the screens above the faders one other thing it's missing that you can't see from looking at it these faders I mentioned during the unboxing feel a lot smoother there's a lot more give the reason they're a little bit harder to push is because they're not motorized anymore that was one of the expensive features of the go XLR that they had to cut out to save cost I actually really liked the feel of these faders I would have really liked it on the regular go XLR the reason the go XLR faders have to be much lighter to press is that if you have that much resistance you'd have to have much heavier motors built into the motorized faders making it even more expensive you can still save presets like the old one and it'll save different levels I'll explain how it works in a little bit but taking out these things was there a way of making the device much more affordable to everyone that's pretty much all the differences though it's essentially the exact same device same quality processing is all still done inside here so there's no load on your PC at all let's talk about some of these changes and what it means if you're considering picking one of these up number one no motorized faders on the original goal XLR you could have multiple profiles and when you selected different profiles the faders changed to ever you needed them to go or if you hit the mute button the fader would slide down to the bottom for you without motorized faders that's obviously not gonna happen however the functionality actually stays the same just like the regular go XLR each fader has LEDs indicating the positioning along the side of it and if you change profiles the LEDs will actually change to the indicated volume level even though the faders won't move and then what they did was actually really clever let's say you have your chill setting where have your music really high and then you changed your gameplay setting and the music changes to really low all you have to do is move the fader down to where the volume level actually is once the two cross paths they latch on to each other and the faders back in control again just super clever and this way new streamers aren't paying for four motorized faders another thing you notice there are no screens above the faders where you can choose what it says whether it says mic or chat or whatever they are printed directly onto the go XLR again to save on costs to make the thing cheaper even though the screens not there each fader is still completely programmable you can choose what goes into the second fader it's just still gonna say chat at the top you can put console into fader number two you can move mic into fader number four where it says system doesn't matter other than that I think the whole mixer functionality is exactly the same alright let's jump into a segment I like to call up stop asking me these questions I get them five times a stream look there are a couple legitimate questions that I get five times a stream and I get why you ask them there's a lot of conflicting information on the Internet let's put these to rest right now number one does the go XLR take up a lot of PC processing power now these devices have DSPs or digital sound processors built right into them all the processing is done on here the app that you use on your PC is simply a controller check off that one number two can you use these at the wireless headset yes there are a couple of wireless headsets that will work with these there are two that I am a hundred percent positive about and then there are a couple that I'm not sure the two that I know for sure are the astro a 50s and the SteelSeries arcgis pro wireless and i know this because i use a SteelSeries arctos pro wireless with my go XLR the reason these ones work is because they're not just little USB flash drives that plug into your PC they have some kind of hub or mix amp something that has a line input I'll shut you know what I'm just gonna grab some kind of hub or mix amp like this that has a line input built into the back of it my wireless headset connects to this not a little USB stick and how it works is I take a little ox cable go into the headphone jack on the back plug it into the line-in on the back of this and now the go XLR is working exactly the same and everything it normally would send out to the headphone jack this device is transmitting wirelessly to my headset easy peasy I actually don't even have this thing connected to my PC it's just all my audio is going through the go XLR this is just a transmitter another big question is do I need a cloud lifter if I'm using a dynamic mic like a shure sm7b now if i just had a lot of big words that you didn't understand right there this is the shure sm7b dynamic mics like this and especially this one have a much lower output than condenser mics like my blue Kiwi that I use on stream we're gonna play a game real quick where I give you some really technical information not that it's really necessary for you to know but that way in the future when your friends are like hey do I need a cloud lifter you can regurgitate this to them and they're gonna be like how did you know that and which by the way your answer should always be you didn't know that always that should always be your answer mic sensitivity is measured in millivolts per Pascal what this means is for every Pascal of air pressure or to oversimplify for a certain amount of sound put into the microphone how many millivolts are coming out of the cable i condenser mic for example my Kiwi that I use on stream outputs 18 millivolts per Pascal the shure sm7b for comparison outputs 1.1 millivolts for Pascal it's got a super low output and if you're plugging this into a really cheap mixer with really crappy preamps it's gonna have a hard time boosting this loud enough without adding noise which is why a lot of people add what's called a cloud lifter which is essentially just another amplifier between your mic and your preamp that adds an extra 20 decibels of game basically it's a $150 device that makes your mic louder and to answer the question no you don't need one with a go XLR these things have Midas preamps into them they've got 72 dB gain they've got everything it takes and you know just in case you don't believe me here you go shure sm7b connected directly into the go XLR mini no cloud left her in the middle you can actually here's that here's the cable straight out of the mic directly into the mixer I actually could add 13 DB of gain if I wanted I had to turn it down because the mic was clipping does that work for you the last question that I get asked probably the most often is is it worth it do you still like it as someone who studied sound recording technology in college that was my major let me explain to you why this has become probably my favorite streaming device that I own there are a lot of people on Twitch with really expensive audio equipment but their audio sounds like garbage because they're turning one knob wrong and they don't know which knob it is even my audio and I first started streaming was super blown out but I didn't know because it wasn't blown out in my headphones it was only blown out in the output going back to my stream it's just very complicated the guy's a Helicon gaming went to a lot of gaming events and with interview streamers saying what do you need on your stream what do you want out of a streaming audio device and then they built this in my opinion I think they've nailed the balance between sound quality and user simplicity the sound quality of this device is great by the way it's not a you know $2,000 preamp but it is a great device and it's important to recognize that on Twitch there is a quality ceiling not only is your stuff being compressed and sent through to live stream on a platform and you lose a lot of quality there but also a lot of your viewers are watching it on a computer with crappy speakers or even on their phone where something like a recording studio quality ceiling might be all the way up here the ceiling of quality of twitch is probably closer to down here which means if you have one device that sounds this good and one device that sounds this good they're gonna both sound the same on Twitch cuz this is as high as it goes this $2,000 preamp is gonna sound the exact same as this $400 go XLR or I guess $250 go XLR most people instead lose their audio quality by not understanding how to use their equipment properly which is the brilliance behind this device it sounds as good as you're possibly going to sound on Twitch and they've literally made the thing idiot-proof from setting up the mic to mixing to the fact that you hear exactly what your stream hears so you know what your stream sounds like they did an incredible job on these devices and to be able to pack it into a little device that's $250 is one of the best things for the industry I still do think there are a lot of creative options that Helicon gaming hasn't jumped into that any other company could jump in and sweep up a large audience for example something I would love to see on a go XLR is a version of the full go XLR and rather than take off this whole side get rid of the sampler which very few people use and only give us one fader because frankly I rarely use more than one fader at a time I would love to see a device with a single motorized fader and the voice changer and then have little left and right arrows underneath the voice changer if you need to swap to a different channel the one I use most is checked turning up and down my teammates and I would have it set to chat all the time but if I needed to go and change the music volume I could hit the right button and then this moves to wherever the music was at and I can adjust the music then I can hit the left button and it moves back to where my teammates are I think for content creators a single motorized fader and voice changing would be an amazing device so take notes you comment down below if you want to see that but dropping the device from 400 to 250 makes this a viable option for a lot of new streamers so for new streamers out there who are trying to upgrade their audio rig this is my upgrade path that I have recommended for you I would start off with a solid USB mic something like the blue Yeti or the Samson G track Pro when you're ready to upgrade again I'd pick up the go XLR mini and on the USB mic itself there is a headphone jack you are able to take an aux cable go out of the headphone jack into the 3.5 millimeter mic jack on the front of the go XLR mini it treats it just like a regular mic the only difference is instead of using the fancy preamps inside the go XLR it uses the built-in one in the USB mic so you're still not going to get the full quality of this device but that leaves you some room for the next upgrade which would be a solid XLR mic one of my favorite suggestions would be the blue amber at $100 I've also got another mic coming in this week or next week all the road Todd mic if you want to find out $100 dynamic mic option from now you're pretty much set with high quality audio until you blow up and get thousands of subscribers and you're ready to upgrade to a full-size go XLR and you know 3 to $400 microphone and you're ready to add the content creation side of the voice changer and the sampler and all those things but that's it that is my beginning to end audio upgrade timeline if you have any other questions about the go XLR go ahead and drop them down in the comments below I'll be talking about them on stream as I usually do linked that's down in the description below and as always happy streaming

Channel: Alpha Gaming

Views: 265,491

Keywords: Alpha Gaming, Stream Doctor, OBS, Tips, Streaming, Harris Heller, Alpha, Gaming, Live, Overlay, Design, Stream, Twitch, Doctor, How, To, How To, Help, Mixer, Youtube, Broadcast, Alerts, Streamlabs, youtuber, growth, stream, streamelements, harris, heller, money, monetize, income, full-time, full time, career, GoXLR, Mini, GoXLR Mini, helicon, helicon gaming, viewers, tricks, audio, microphone, xlr, sound, shure sm7b, preamp, setup, interface, mic, te helicon, affordable, cheap, voice

Id: 8qT_-yuiOJg

Length: 15min 15sec (915 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 30 2019