SteelSeries has been on one thing of a roll not too long ago, with their redesigned Arctis Nova Professional headsets and new Area audio system each attracting plaudits from press – together with Eurogamer – and customers alike for his or her design, audio high quality and software program. Now the Danish agency has turned its consideration to the opposite facet of audio: microphones. We have seen even nice audio manufacturers like Epos fail to ship a convincing microphone for the gaming and streaming market, so how does SteelSeries fare with its Alias and Alias Professional microphones? In a phrase: fantastically.
Let’s begin at first. The Alias microphones are each constructed round a one-inch condenser capsule in a cardioid sample, designed to seize your voice whereas sitting at a PC – quite than the Blue Yeti method of providing 4 totally different pickup patterns for various recording situations that use as much as 4 smaller capsules together. This focus permits for a noticeably slimmer microphone with out sacrificing on sound high quality. (The Alias’s essential physique is round 190x55x45mm or 470cm³, in comparison with the 702cm³ Blue Yeti X and 590cm³ Shure SM7B.)
The distinction between the Alias and Alias Professional is how they connect with your PC – each in the end connect by way of USB, however the Alias connects instantly with controls constructed into the physique of the microphone, whereas the Alias Professional comes with a small audio interface that it connects to by way of an XLR cable. Regardless of this, each fashions will be managed by way of SteelSeries’ Sonar software program and each are designed to be plug-and-play choices that do not require different {hardware} to sound nice. The Alias Professional mic works with one other XLR interfaces – and the interface works with different XLR mics – however the focus right here is on maximising usability and sound high quality with these two parts working in tandem; later upgradeability is extra of a bonus than a core function.
Regardless of which mannequin you select, audio high quality is superb, with my voice coming throughout with depth and readability with out being overly choosy about positioning. Condenser mics are well-known for capturing loads of element out of your voice, in distinction to dynamic mics which might be much less delicate however higher at rejecting off-axis sounds. (Which means you are a little bit extra depending on methods like AI noise cancelling to take away any interruptions, and certainly we see the Sonar software program does implement this – together with different important options like a noise gate and compressor.) There’s additionally a supplied shock mount that expertly reduces dealing with noise, and each microphones include an honest desk stand as properly – although a microphone arm permits for considerably higher positioning of those side-address microphones and we might all the time advocate this.
It is clear that usability was a function right here, and past the plug-and-play nature of the Alias mics the precise controls are fairly easy. You may see how loud you are talking on a five-element green-happy-to-red-clipping metre on the Alias mic or a round LED on the Professional’s management pod, whereas dials permit you to alter the acquire and headphone quantity. You can too faucet to mute the mic, which does not add noise to your recordings and is confirmed with a crimson x spelled out in LEDs on the novice Alias and crimson backlighting for the mute key on the Professional. The Professional’s management pod has an extra button which mutes your output audio by default, however this may be remapped within the Sonar software program together with the operate of the second dial.
I discovered the Professional interface extra snug to make use of with out wanting, and it additionally permits for a neat trick: you may plug the mic into a number of computer systems without delay through the use of each of the 2 supplied USB-C cables. (An XLR cable and management pod energy cable are additionally included.) Twin PC streaming has fallen out of vogue considerably, as graphics card media encoders have gotten more and more highly effective and environment friendly, however it’s nonetheless good that this use case is catered for.
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SteelSeries’ Sonar software program has developed in leaps and bounds because it was first launched, and there are many well-designed options to route and blend inputs and outputs – you may actually drag and drop totally different applications which is as pleasantly intuitive as you’d hope. It additionally consists of parametric EQs for every little thing from the microphones – with presets for the Alias and Alias Professional on growth arms and desk stands – to recreation and media playback.
You do not have to have interaction with Sonar for fundamental streaming, chatting or recording, however as an hobbyist streamer I appreciated with the ability to rapidly tweak how my voice sounded, stop my music from going out on stream and ensure my recreation sound and mic quantity have been correctly balanced. There are additionally game-specific EQ settings for dozens of video games, even together with titles outdoors of the standard FPS focus like Forza Motorsport. I would say that Sonar ranks alongside Elgato’s Wave Hyperlink app as being some of the highly effective mixing apps that also stays comparatively simple to make use of.
The one draw back to Sonar, in my estimation, is that it performs merry hell together with your listing of audio units in Home windows. If beforehand you had ‘audio system’ and ‘headphones’, making it simple to swap from one to a different all through the day, you now have six additional Sonar units to wade by. (Packages like SoundSwitch, which let you bind a hotkey that swaps between a smaller preset listing of audio units, is usually a godsend right here – so I would like to see comparable performance within the SteelSeries software program in future.)
Altogether then, the Alias and Alias Professional are robust debut microphones from SteelSeries. I believe they sound nice, however the Alias Professional particularly stands out by way of its design and ease of use – you get glorious high quality audio and handy controls with the naked minimal of setup and fuss. I like its cleaner design in comparison with the vanilla Alias too.
The one main criticism I’ve right here is the worth – at $180/£180 for the Alias and $330/£320 for the Alias Professional, you may actually get nice gaming microphones that sound simply pretty much as good for considerably much less – even the legendary Shure SM7B at £379 is not that rather more than the Alias Professional, although you’d additionally must account for an XLR interface in your price range.
Nonetheless, most of those options would battle to match the easy setup course of and nice software program expertise accessible with the Alias and Alias Professional whereas additionally delivering equally good audio, so it is right down to you to determine whether or not paying that premium for each is price it.
Of us on a price range will in all probability look elsewhere – the Elgato Wave 3 or Wave DX supply broadly comparable options for much less cash, as an illustration – however equally I can see plenty of streamers that will have an interest. In spite of everything, for those who’re trying to put money into your tools, £180 and even £320 looks like a cut price for a single field that ranges up your audio and would not require any additional analysis.
Disclosure: SteelSeries paid for flights and lodging to see the Alias microphones and converse to its designers previous to launch.
