XLR Interfaces Are Getting SO GOOD - (Best Features and Worst Problems)

i am going to try to get this intro shot before before the sun goes down anymore i do not have a lot of time let's get started we've done so many videos on xlr microphones on this channel because there's always a new microphone coming out there's always new features on them because they're all digital and they've gotten so good lately that there's not a huge advantage to going with an xlr system over it however there are still advantages and we haven't done too many videos on those advantages until today because the main advantage you get with an xlr setup is control for example if you want a usb microphone there are generally maybe fewer than 10 that you can choose from and of those 10 maybe five of them are good and of those five if you want something that has volume control and options like an xlr setup you have uh you have one option you you have the elgato wave it's literally the only one with multi-channel supports if you want a good usb microphone with solid control that that's it that's the only one you have to get that one however with xlr microphones not only do you have multiple interfaces to choose from that all have a level of control higher than a usb mic but then you can also choose to plug in any xlr mic you want the possibilities and combinations are virtually endless so we've got four of the most common devices i actually i'd say two of the most common devices that are currently being used the go xlr and the scarlet solo or the two i see just about everybody on twitch use and then two newcomers that are genuine competitors to the scene and actually bring something new to the streaming environment so we're going to take a look at these four interfaces and do i have to say it i'll say it look if you don't know what an audio interface is if you have an xlr microphone and needs to plug into something it goes into this xlr microphone right here this device has a preamp built into it to give it that gain that it needs it also has the converters to make it digital so it can connect to your device and it gives you all the control the gain knobs all the things that you need you don't need these with a usb microphone this is an xlr interface for xlr microphones we have the go xlr mini which is 250 we could have brought the full on go xlr but if you want my opinion first of all they're going to sound the same so the test is going to be exactly the same but also this is just a better bang for your buck this is half the cost of a full go xlr and it does 90 of what the go xlr does we have the focusrite scarlett solo which is the absolute classic i just got on amazon for 120 so it's by far the budget option we have the wave xlr another decently budgeted device from elgato for 159 which essentially turns any xlr microphone into an elgato wave mic and then we have the avermedia live streamer nexus which i did a full review on actually done full reviews on everyone here except for the focusrite it retails for 350. i love so much of what they've done with this but i was so disappointed with half the other stuff we'll have to take a look and see what they've updated on this thing since i've done my review any reviews i've done on this if you're more interested in details will be down below we're going to be judging these four devices in three different categories we're going to talk about sound quality we're going to talk about functionality things that each one can actually do whether that's talking about their i o whether they can handle plug-ins how much audio control they have over your devices that's is probably the most important category to me and then lastly the intuitiveness of the device because you can have all the controls in the world on a device but if it is difficult for you to use on the fly it amounts to nothing so how are we doing on lights i think we're still killing it sam is this difficult to color correct i think we got it let's get started [Music] all right so how are we going to do this well i set up one of my favorite dynamic microphones the shure mv7 and plugged it into all four interfaces to record two different tests first was just saying a normal sentence then taking a listen to it on both my studio monitors my yamaha hs 80s and a nice pair of headphones and it's important you guys know before i judge these things this area is going to be the least important area of this entire test you'll see why with the second test but it was very difficult to hear a difference between these devices in fact i couldn't really hear it on my monitors i could hear it a little bit on my headphones let me play them for you real quick i can guarantee you won't hear a difference unless you're wearing headphones so pop those on real quick this is the avermedia live streamer nexus i'm sitting here to tell you that stream beats is the best music you can use on your live streams that is all this is the focusrite scarlet solo and if you're wondering is harris going to shamelessly plug stream beats this entire audio test oh yeah but this is an audio test of the elgato wave xlr which i'm going to use to tell you that we just dropped a huge collaborative album release with 100 thieves called hype tracks you should check it out it's 90 tracks awesome high energy stuff for your game play this is an audio test of the go xlr mini and i feel like i should let you know that on none of these devices was there eq or compression or any plugins turned on and keep in mind what you just heard was entirely uncompressed raw large files so even though the elgato wave xlr and the go xlr had a tiny bit more punch to them maybe a little bit more detail on the high end like like this much by the time you filter it through all of obs and twitch that that change isn't gonna be there i gave them all very high scores because they will all work on twitch just fine if sound quality is all you're looking for so i gave the go xlr a 10 and the wave xlr a 9.5 the only reason i took off 0.5 on the elgato is because you can't add plug-ins to it like compression and eq but reaper plug-ins are free and you can add those right into obs and give it the same effect so it wasn't really worth taking off a whole point i gave the focusrite a nine entirely because its gain level is a little bit lower the go xlr and wave xlr are able to give up to 75 db of gain which is far more than you need for an sm7b you don't need any kind of cloud lifter for an sm7b the focusrite is going to struggle a little bit with only 56 db of gain where the sm7b generally needs 60. i mean that's only 4db off if you cranked up the gain with the sm7b you'd be just fine but it's not gonna have quite as much punch as you'd like on that microphone and that lack of gain is the main reason why the go xlr and wave xlr i think had a little bit more brightness and detail to it the nexus i gave an eight just because it had about the same quality as the focusrite but for some reason when i was monitoring my microphone there was a hiss in it the whole time and i tried to figure out where it was coming from and i'm completely lost because it didn't show up in the recording at all and when i turned microphone monitoring out of my headphones the hiss went away so you'd think it was coming from the microphone but it's not because it doesn't show up in the recording but you can get rid of it with the noise gate but the noise gate doesn't work very well i was very confused anyway the nexus overall will still sound great on stream but it only has 42 db of gain which i'm very confused about because in the software you can actually drag it up to 60 but i know it only has 42 db i don't know what's going on over here either way if you're just looking for good mic quality the nexus will sound fine just make sure you don't use a microphone that requires a little bit too much gain but the second recording i did which i'll show you maybe just two of them i'll show you the focusrite and the wave xlr and i did this to show you that if you've got obs encoding and twitch compression and sounds going on behind your voice there is literally no way anyone is going to hear a difference in sound quality between different interfaces this is a twitch audio test with the elgato wave xlr and this is what i would sound like if i were playing a game while streaming and my voice was being played over gameplay sound and this is what i would sound like if i were doing a just chatting stream and i had music playing in the background behind my voice this is a twitch stream audio test of what i would sound like in front of some gameplay sound and this is what i would sound like if i were doing it just chatting stream in front of music so let's get into the more important things let's talk about functionality with each of these now i'm going to give them a score based on how i feel about the the features of each of these but i'm gonna go into detail about what they have and what they're missing because every streamer has different needs some of you are on single pc setup some of you are on dual pc setups so while one device might work really well for one person another one might work even better for a different person let's jump into it and let's start with the focusrite scarlet solo just because it's the easiest this one gets a two and not because i dislike the product it's just it's got one function you plug a microphone in and then you plug this into a computer that's all it can do this device is not designed for streamers in fact it's the only one here that's not designed for streamers it even says on the box the perfect audio interface for a singer songwriter and i think i totally agree in fact i gave it a two instead of a one because it's got this little air button that boosts up the high end to give it a little bit more clarity which is kind of nice but that's about it anyway this is a pretty easy one this is why when people ask me about it i say it's great but it's just not built for streamers there's no multi-channel support there's no plugins all those things that streamers need it just doesn't exist in fact i didn't even need any software to record on it because it just picks up in my interface like a usb microphone let's go to the classic next let's go to the go xlr mini this thing brought a lot of features that no other device had this was really the first dedicated audio interface for streamers and it was mind-blowing at the time but there are more devices now and this thing is kind of falling behind it was the first device with multi-channel support where you could control your microphone your teammates your gameplay all the different things even your headphones your music whatever all on completely different faders and it was totally programmable with a pretty incredible software it's got a line in and line out for a second pc on the back as well as an optical input for console gameplay they they completely changed the game for what streamers expected out of audio devices but nowadays they're missing things that every new device has they're missing things like sub mixes meaning if i want to hear my teammates at a slightly lower volume than my stream does i can't do that on here it's also pretty poor utilization of space this is a chunky device especially the full-size go xlr takes up a massive amount of space on the desk but because everything is hardware nothing's programmable it kind of does very little it does what it does and it does it very well i mean the audio routing table is mind blowing and no one else has done anything like that yet but because it's fallen behind and because the go xlr team has all left tc helicon the makers of the device it hasn't been updated in a couple years and it's probably not ever going to be updated again so i'm gonna give it a seven truth be said i'm probably still gonna use it at my next setup i'll probably use the mini i like its size and i haven't really used the voice changer in the sampler in a couple months so we'll see but yeah solid seven let's move on to the nexus i was so pumped about this device this thing is so full of features that i'd wanted for my go xlr for so long it's got most of the same functionality as the go xlr with multi-channel support etc but they moved everything over to knobs instead of faders because it takes up so much less space you can do so much more with the real estate when you don't have a fader taking up the entire face so because they switched over to knobs not only can you have six on here instead of just four like the go xlr but you also have a whole touch screen over here that you can program exactly like a stream deck and then of course they've got four soft buttons over here because sometimes you want to hit a button without really having to look at it and pay attention they added things that the go xlr was missing like sub mixes which made me very excited essentially this thing when you're looking at the features checks just about every one of my boxes so in terms of functionality i give this one a 10 but before you go out and buy it i am gonna have you wait until we get to the next category because that will that will change some things now let's get to the wave xlr this is the newest addition to the lineup released earlier this month or i guess last month now that it's august and it's elgato's classic simple interface very much software control and essentially what it does is it turns any xlr microphone into the same exact functionality as their wave usb microphones you have the same single button that you can click three times to go between the different controls whether it be microphone volume headphone volume or the blend knob you have a capacitive mute button on the top that when you hit turns on the lights red so you know that it was hit and then it plugs into elgato's wavelink software which is very simple but also very great the software has multiple outputs and submixes so you can have different volume levels going to your headphones versus going to your stream it's got enough gain for any microphone you can add up to nine different channels that you can individually control with your stream deck and you can take off the faceplate here in case you feel like going the extra mile and really redesigning your uh device throw your logo on it make your desk a little bit more personal nobody hates extra customization but it is missing things most notably io all it's got is usb xlr and a headphone jack on the back in fact let me give you a close-up on that so using this on a two pc setup is really going to require you to use voice meter go out of one pc into another pc i've set it up before it's not super clean but it's doable right now it really lacks a good control interface whereas the go xlr and the live streamer nexus use faders or knobs which make volume control really easy anything other than your main controls like your headphone volume required to either use your pc using your mouse or stream deck buttons which volume control using buttons is not the greatest experience and then of course unlike these two it's missing plug and support so currently you don't have any compression eq noise gate those things that generally you want i didn't take off too many points for that because you can use reaper plug-ins which are totally free easy to use you throw them right in obs and they work just fine but i did give this an eight because of the things it was missing of course if you're on a single pc setup and you don't mind using stream deck buttons this thing's awesome which is why i mentioned that depending on your setup one might score higher for you than it did for me but let's get into the last category which is intuitiveness which i view as kind of like a a multiplier for functionality for example the focusrite scarlett gets a 9 for intuitiveness because it does so little that it's very easy to control what it does you've got a gain knob for controlling a microphone gain and a volume knob for controlling your headphone volume i don't know what else you want in fact the only reason i gave it a 9 instead of a 10 is because it doesn't have a great way to properly meter your voice it just lights up green yellow and red and it flashes pretty fast so it's kind of hard to tell if you set your gain properly but other than that for what little it does it's very easy to do it doesn't give it a lot of good functionality it just means that for what it does it's very easy to control the go xlr even though it's lacking on some features the amount of control and intuitiveness of those features is incredible so i gave it a 9. there are times in the software where the tabs get a little bit clunky and a little bit overwhelming because it can do so much but the fact that they've given you so much control and i was able to figure it out just by looking at it for the first time is pretty incredible the nexus however even though i got a 10 on functionality i gave it a two on intuitiveness because the thing that destroys this device is the software they added every feature i wanted into this thing but the way you control it and the way the software works is an absolute nightmare take for example submixes if you look at sub mixes on the wave xlr they're placed right next to each other you have your fader for your teammate volume in your headphones and you have the fader for your teammate volume going to the stream you set them to what volumes you want and then you lock them together with an offset lock this way if you die in game and you want to talk to chat and turn down your teammates you pull down one fader it pulls them both down the exact same amount it just makes a lot of sense and of course it does that was that was my idea i'm going to say that every single video i bring it up in the nexus software however you have your broadcast mix entirely separate from your headphone mix so i'd have to go and turn down my teammate volume in my broadcast and then separately turn it down for my stream and then when i want to bring the volume back up i have to try to remember what they were both at and bring them both back up to where they are because i can't tell what the stream is hearing if i'm using two separate mixes and if i want to do it on the device itself i have to turn down the knob click to go to the other mix then turn down the knob again and do the exact same thing when i turn it back out i mean in my opinion this actually makes sub mixes completely useless and then on top of that the software itself is just very slow to be responsive it's very buggy you can see the gain meter refreshes itself like two or three frames per second and it's like a half a second behind so it's impossible to really meter yourself it's an excellent device almost made completely useless by its poor execution but onto the wave xlr kind of like i showed you earlier with the sub mixes i give it a nine it's very easy to use very intuitive everything just really makes sense setting up a microphone is super easy using it while you're streaming is super easy the only reason it doesn't get a 10 is for a lack of knobs or faders but in my opinion this is how the control of a modern device should look it's simple it's small it fits on your desk it's very easy to use so even though the streamer nexus had the highest score in terms of functionality the go xlr mini and the wave xlr are definitely my two favorite audio interfaces and which one you use really depends on what you want do you need the extra i o or need to be able to plug into two pcs are you okay with using buttons or maybe something like a pc panel to control a smaller device like this or maybe most importantly hitting the like button to help out this video and youtube's algorithm is showing me that that this helped out a little bit so let me know down below did this help you at all was there a feature that maybe i missed maybe a device that i missed if i can be real with you i actually planned on also bringing the yamaha mg10 xu into this because it used to be a more popular one you don't see too many people using it anymore but i used to use it but unfortunately in the move my wife got a little bit facebook marketplace happy and sold off some of those things you never sell old gear this is why youtubers never sell off old gear you always end up needing it in a future video guys hit the subscribe button if you haven't yet if you want to chat more about this in a live setting i stream on my personal youtube channel link to that in the description down below i stream every monday wednesday saturday i love you guys i'll see you around have a good one peace oh and happy streaming you know the drill

Channel: Alpha Gaming

Views: 111,687

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, beginner, beginners, setup, widget, graphics, audio, review, camera, mic, pc, lights, lighting, webcam, elgato, starting, new, algorithm, learning, start, AVerMedia, Nexus, Live Streamer, Wave XLR, WaveLink, Wave

Id: swR4LsN6Wd8

Length: 18min 35sec (1115 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 05 2021