- In this video, we're gonna set up, test and review
the Elgato Wave Mic Arm LP.
This is the low profile LP version
of their microphone boom arm.
Not a traditional up and over style.
This will float more low.
The idea is that hopefully
that you can scoot this underneath your monitor
or keep it low from the side
like we're gonna test in this video today.
We're going to test this boom arm with the Shure SM7B.
We're gonna show you the things I like
about this combination.
A couple of things I don't like about this combination,
and we're gonna answer the question
whether or not you need any other accessories
to make this work.
Commonly, you will need a three inch extension tube
like this one to make the Shure SM7B
work with some other popular microphone boom arms.
What will happen on those boom arms,
is that this cable management system
that's built into the Shure SM7B
will sometimes hit the stand itself
so you need to create more distance.
So, we're going to test this with and without
to see if there's any advantage to getting that accessory
or whether or not you can save your money and go without.
If you are looking for pricing or specs
for anything that you see in this video,
we do have some links down in the description below
where you can find current up-to-date pricing
from a variety of online retailers to make sure
that you are always getting the best price possible
if you're looking at anything in this video.
Now, first of all, what do you get
in the box with the Elgato Wave Mic Arm LP?
You of course get the boom arm,
which we're gonna demonstrate here in a minute,
you get a clamp,
you get an Allen key
and you get two different sets of thread adapters
to convert from the quarter-inch,
and that is on the Elgato Mic Arm LP
to the two most popular microphone thread sizes.
So this will work with any manufactured microphone
with one of these two common thread mounts
that come with Elgato Wave Mic Arm LP.
Now I do just want to quickly say a note about an Allen key.
I always cringe when I see an Allen key
come out of something like this
because home studios and desks are,
I don't know if you're anything like me,
but I reconfigure my desk all the time.
I'm always switching things up and trying new things.
And when you need a tool to make everything work,
I much prefer a tool that's workflow.
I'm gonna lose this in about 10 seconds
and I'll have to go find my Allen key set or something
if I'm wanting to set up.
But I'm gonna talk a little bit more about this later,
but I generally cringe whenever I see something like this
come out of the box with a boom arm.
So, first of all, let's talk about the clamp.
When you open the box,
you do get a traditional kind of crank down clamp
that comes with Elgato Wave Mic Arm LP.
You don't get any type of tabletop, flange mount
or recessed mount, or hole mount or anything like that.
that some of the competitors offer.
This is really well built. It's really heavy.
And the other thing is that the size of the pin
on the Mic Arm is not compatible with other mounts.
It's not compatible with the Gator one that I have here.
This thing will generally eat any other boom arm
that I have, and I can use it with it.
This is all, its own size proprietary compared
to other mic arms and boom stands.
Now, as we take a look at this clamp,
you'll notice a couple things.
I'm gonna start with the bad.
Inside here, there are three different bolts in there.
They use two different Allen key sizes.
If I can get the camera pointed in there.
And none of these are sized for the Allen key
that comes with it. It's a different size.
When I got this stand,
and I did a couple other videos
and some other projects with it.
There was actually some wobble.
This top piece was loose.
So I had to tighten it and I had to go find
two other sized Allen keys, other than what came in the box
to tighten that down.
So that's one knock on it,
is that I did need to find some other tools
to set it all up properly, but on for the good now,
there is a little bit of foam on the top and the bottom
of the clamp here.
So I would not be worried about using this
on a high gloss table,
like a boardroom table or your desk or something like that.
I'm pretty confident that this would not scratch or dent.
You can tell it's like a heavy gauge metal here.
It's not likely to bend it's super sturdy.
And another big win for this
is that it does have this ratchet system,
so if you get stuck up against a desk or a wall,
you can lift, reset and continue to crank it down,
if you have a narrow field of being able to crank it down.
So that is a nice,
it's super common on things in the film industry.
And I like that all got, I'll put it on here.
Also has a nice big lever arm on it.
I'm super confident that I can always crank it down as tight
as I need to in any given situation.
Now, back on the top of the pin here,
you can see that that's where we need the Allen key.
We'll demonstrate, tightening that in a little bit.
It does take some of the play out of the system,
but it also adds a little bit of a compromise.
And I'll explain that when we set everything up.
So right now I'm gonna clamp this to this table.
As I mentioned before,
there's no desktop mount available for it.
So I had to bring in this piece of plywood.
So we gonna clamp to that.
Okay, so it's nice and tight now.
Now we can drop the mic arm into this desk clamp.
Now you'll notice here that there is a little bit of play
that's when you'd tighten that set screw on the back
of the clamp, but with a set screw like this,
there's always a compromise.
It'll get rid of some of this play on the vertical,
but it will also add tension to the horizontal swing.
So you don't want to tighten it too much because
it'll solve this problem,
but it'll tighten this to where it's impractical to use.
So you have to find a happy compromise,
whatever your needs are.
If you don't mind the little bit of droop there,
then you can leave it wide open,
or if you wanna really lock it down
so it's not always swinging every time you bump it,
you can do that as well.
So right there, I think is a pretty good compromise.
It's able to move as I want it to,
but it also solved, like you'd see there,
there's almost no play left in it.
Now to look at this boom arm,
we're gonna cover a couple of things first.
First of all,
there is this super cool magnetic cable tray system.
It's on both boom arms here, the upper and the lower.
My one knock on this,
is we'll demonstrate it with the cable later.
I do wish it was upside down
and the cable tray was on the bottom.
I just don't like seeing the hops as much.
And I think it could be a lot more discreetly done,
and it would flow a lot more
with how the cable naturally comes out of the microphone
rather than having to swing it back up
to make it through the cable management system.
That being said,
this is one of the more clever and well-designed
and flexible cable management systems
that we've seen.
On some other mic stands,
you're threading the cable through on one mic stand.
There's a bunch of YouTube videos on how to drill a hole
to get a cable through.
So this is a very easy to use design.
If you're always switching microphones like I am,
you just take the two top plates off,
make your new run, put it back on between USB and XLR,
whatever else you need to run through this mic stand.
So that is very nice.
Then here, there is a tension screw,
so you can adjust the height.
So this is really nice as well.
I find I don't have to mess with this too much.
It doesn't often segue on me,
and then on the end of the mic arm here,
there's this kind of 360 degree yolk system.
So you can orient it really, however you need it to be,
and then you can tie in it down,
and this one tension knob will tighten all the access
on this yoke system.
So I think that's a really clever,
really helpful design.
You can really get the microphone where you need it to be
Next, let's throw the Shure SM7B onto this boom arm,
and we all play with some positioning.
So you will need this larger thread adapter,
the quarter inch to five eights.
You put that on, screw it down.
Yeah, bring this other piece up.
Put the Shure SM7B onto there.
Okay, now the Shure SM7B is quite a heavy microphone.
You can see here that I didn't have to tighten anything
down too much.
I am just gonna tighten this one Allen key spot in here.
No, it's just,
just a little more loose than I would prefer.
Again, chances are I'm gonna lose this thing,
so I won't be able to make that, you know,
mid podcast or anything like that.
That's one downside is the, including an Allen key with it.
But I think for most people let's just quickly walk through
some common positions with the Shure SM7B.
So I think this would work really well.
I can get my hands on the keyboard.
I can see a screen.
The microphone is just over a fist away from my mouth,
I can get it a little bit closer here,
and it's positioned well, I think.
Now if you want it a little bit higher,
and sometimes I like coming in on a side angle,
if I'm at a standing desk or doing a video conference
or something like that, this would work really well.
This would be really common for somebody
that's used to using a mic stand
or a musician or something like that.
This is a more comfortable
kind of make position system for that.
And if you want to go even higher,
like a more traditional boom arm,
you can really bring it up.
And if you ever need, you know,
your mic to be out of frame or something like that,
or if you wanna use a different microphone with it,
you can do something like this.
If you're using a shotgun mic or something like that,
instead of the SM7B,
but for the SM7B really
should have this microphone quite close.
For me out of all of those,
I would say that this is the most common.
This is how I would like to use it.
This gives me plenty of room for my hands.
The mic stand is out of the way of any lighting.
You don't have any shadows, the camera can see me.
I can see my screen well.
This is really comfortable for me.
Now, like I said before,
let's take a look at what would happen
if we connect an XLR cable.
Before we actually connect the cable,
I just put this XLR connector on the end.
And this gives a really good test
as to what we're dealing with here.
You can see here, I'm just gonna tighten this back up.
That commonly right there is the problem.
So I don't know if you can see this,
but sometimes the cable will actually hit the clamp,
or the tension screw on the boom arm.
But what is good about the Elgato Wave Mic arm LP is that
if that happens, you can always flip the tension screw
to be away from it.
You can right there, I just undid it, flipped it,
and now it's back in conflict and then I can get it
all the way out of the way again.
So that's super cool
that you can orient that however you need.
So I'd say I'll base on that one factor alone,
you wouldn't need a three inch extension tube.
So I'm gonna take this dummy cable out.
I'm gonna put in the full XLR cable now.
Come back to how I would actually use it.
Orient this correctly.
Something like this would work really well.
Tighten this up a little bit.
The actual mic is just a little bit loose.
I'm going to take both of these plates off,
And then I'm gonna put this cable on.
So here you can see what I was talking about earlier.
Just loosen up a little bit again,
is I would rather run the cable into the tray right there.
It's, right now I have to make a decision
as to whether bring it up
to make it into the tray here,
which that's probably the cleanest
from the camera's point of view.
So that's probably what I'll do,
or you can run it on the backside,
but then the camera would see more of the cable.
So I'll try do this as neat as possible
as if it was my live streaming setup.
Drop that into there, drop the plate on.
Now I could see if this was a permanent system
that you may want.
I'm just gonna tighten everything up here.
You may want to put a piece of electrical tape
around this plate because I do find sometimes
if I'm messing with the microphone,
those plates will pop off as there's cable strain.
That's one thing to keep in mind.
I don't think it'd be super common,
but if you're never changing these components out,
it's something that I would definitely consider.
It's just a little piece of gaff tape on there
to hold it all down. So there you have it.
The microphone is in the most common, most popular position,
I would say.
My hands are comfortable on a keyboard and mouse set up.
I can see the camera, see the screen.
There's no shadows on my face from the lighting.
I think this is great.
Now, if I did wanna change it up just a little bit,
something like this,
I think would also be another common setup.
And then you can easily just jog the cable down
to get it out of the way.
So I think that would work well as well.
So with all these setups,
I don't use the three inch extension tube.
That means that I'm just gonna throw it on right now,
just so you can see what it would look like,
if you already have one and you're trying to decide
what you wanna do with it.
Okay. So here it is all set up
with the three inch extension tube.
And you can see here that this would have its place.
I don't think it's necessary to make everything work,
but you can see here
that it does add a nice longer lever here.
So you can better position it,
if you are trying to do something really particular
with trying to keep the boom arm really out of the way
of your shot or something like that.
If you want to keep the boom arm, you know,
lower and have the mic just pop up.
This gives a longer stem here at the end of the mic arm.
I'm just gonna move it, so it's all squared up here.
So something like that.
If you are really particular and you need a longer stem,
this is a good option for you,
but I don't think it's necessary to make the stand work.
I prefer to have a shorter end stem.
Really depends what you're doing.
Maybe like I'm six foot.
Maybe if you're six four or something,
you really need this extra length and
you don't wanna, reorient the boom arm to make it work.
Then this is the solution for you.
Okay, so what are the pros of this stand?
Why do I recommend this setup?
I love how clean and simple it is
compared to the competition.
It's a far less expensive option.
It's all matte black, it's heavy design.
It's not too big in places that it doesn't need to be.
It's lightweight and easy to manage, but at the same time,
I've a feeling that this thing would last forever.
The clamp especially is really heavily built.
I love the ratchet system on the clamp.
I'm confident I can get this thing on any table.
So I think all those things are good.
I think it looks good, functions good,
supports the weight of the SM7B.
If you want a low-profile boom arm,
I would say that this is
a really, really good option for you.
Now, the cons of this boom arm,
are simply that you need an Allen key
to tighten some of the components up.
If you ever do have to tighten this little stem
on the clamp itself,
you'll need two other Allen key sizes
that don't come with it.
So you have to have an Allen key set
or something like that.
I am a little bit worried that these magnetic plates
might pop off midstream.
So I'd put a little piece of tape on there
and I don't think there's anything else worth mentioning
for this setup.
I do think that this is worth the money.
I think it's a good buy.
I think it's a really good option for the SM7B
if you want a low profile boom arm.
Again, if you are looking for pricing
or specs for anything that you've seen in this video,
we do have some links down in the description below.
If you have any other questions about this setup,
please leave a comment down in the comment section below.
And if you wanna see more videos like this in the future,
please like, and subscribe.
Thank you for watching.
(upbeat music)