ELGATO WAVE:1
RUNNER UP
The Elgato Wave:1 ( go.pcworld.com/ ew1) may lack its sibling’s fancier features, but don’t count it out. It still has the same fantastic large condenser capsule and protection against plosives and clipping as the Wave:3, and you get similar sensitivity and tonal clarity, too. This mic plays nice with almost every voice out there—it provides warm, full tones in the low end that mix perfectly with a crisp high range.
Where it falls behind the Wave:3 is with its lower-quality analog-to-digital converter, which offers a 24-bit/48khz signal. Less data in the digital capture of your voice means a less faithful reproduction of it, though as noted above, it still sounds pretty good.
More disappointing are the strippeddown hardware controls. The control dial on the Wave:1 only toggles muting of the mic and headphone volume. You can still control mic gain and crossfade through Elgato’s Wavelink PC software, but the experience is more cumbersome than having dedicated controls on the mic. We think it’s worth the extra $30 to get a Wave:3, but if you’re on a tight budget, this $130 mic is still one of the best on the market.