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SteelSeries Alias & Alias Pro (Quick Look) - For the Audiophiles
We've got our hands on two new microphone options coming from SteelSeries, with one being a Pro version of a base edition.
Audio transcription
"Hello everyone and welcome to a pretty, we think, exclusive Gamereactor Quick Look, because on the desk in front of me right here, I have a brand new product category from none other than SteelSeries, a company that we know very well here at Gamereactor, and that we've taken a look at their products and pretty much liked a lot of them throughout mice and keyboards and headsets for years."
"Now, like almost all peripheral designer manufacturers on the market, they are trying their hand at microphones.
It seems like to be a carryover from the COVID-19 days, where either aspiring streamers had more time to challenge themselves, upgrade their setups in order to create better content, but also where it was just very nice to have good semi-studio grade microphones at home so you could, you know, talk to your loved ones or chat with people more clearly while you were gaming, all sorts of use case scenarios."
"So SteelSeries might be a bit late to the party, but there might be a reason for that because these products, at least at first glance, seem rather compelling.
This is the Alias series.
They consist of the Alias, this is the standard Alias, as well as the Alias Pro."
"Now if you look at them side by side, there really isn't anything that differentiates them apart from a few key things.
So the standard Alias here obviously has a little knob here on the front, as well as a mute button, and that is all very necessary because with the Alias Pro, you get this little fella here, which both works as a sort of an overlay, meaning that you can quickly at a glance see whether some settings are on or off."
"These will of course turn on, whether or not it is muting the sound or muting your microphone, adjust in volume and gain on your microphone, but it's also a really simple and really small XLR interface, something which is actually quite rare.
You see them over at Elgato, for instance, but that's both a bigger box and it comes with less features, that is really just an XLR interface in order to translate the analog signal coming from the microphone into a digital throughput, which then enters your computer through USB-C."
"So the thing is, these two together should make for a bit more of a pro setup, but the point is, the microphones are in pretty much all aspects the same.
So what are we actually looking at here?
Well, for one, it has this really weighted aluminum bottom plate with this little arm here."
"This can of course be completely detached and put on a boomer arm if that's what you want.
It has a shock mount on both, that means that it's actually suspended on these tight threads here in the middle, meaning that if there is something happening while you're recording, you accidentally jostle your desk or you move about, those micro movements won't be picked up by the microphone because it is suspended in midair."
"But these come as standard on both of those, and that is actually the same with the actual microphone, the materials, and the design.
So inside, we find a pretty massive, massive capsule.
It's in my notes that we actually went to an event, it was not me personally who went, but at this event, we actually got to see an exploded version of it, and by exploded I mean disassembled, and there you could see the size of the capsule."
"Normally it's about the size of a fingernail, but this was the size of about a thumb.
It's absolutely massive, which means, hopefully, a more precise and broader pickup.
In terms of what it actually is picking up, it's 24-bit or 48 kHz, and it uses 48-volt phantom power, that's in the Pro by the way, that's one of the differentiating factors that keeps noise and interference to an absolute minimum, and it supports a couple of different software suites."
"So for one, you have the Sonar software, which we've taken a look at before, which can de-reverb audio, remove echo, get new EQ profiles, and use AI noise cancellation if that's your thing, but there's also something called Sonar for Streamer, which is a free studio-grade piece of software which works with all brands of hardware, and makes audio routing easy, can be fully customized, and with the next update, it will even support drag and drop."
"There's a lot of pro-mixing features in Sonar for Streamer, and for them to both make it sort of open-ended, so that it can, you know, be used to sort of adapt to different pieces of hardware, and also something that is put out for free, is really cool, actually.
This is something that interests me quite a big deal, because we actually think that these small, cool XLR interfaces are really rare, and they are often way too overpriced in terms of what you're getting, but this seems really straightforward, nicely designed, and we could end up using this for a lot of different things, both using the Aliases, but also not, so it's cool that you get that."
"The Alias microphone itself will cost €200, and the Pro is quite a bit more expensive.
These two things together is €350, and there is going to be a dedicated boom arm which fits these.
This looks like standard, a standard screw to me."
"The great thing about microphones in this particular part of the market is that most of them use standardized threads, meaning that it shouldn't be too difficult to get a boomer arm which fits this, but if not for some reason, well, SteelSeries themselves are planning to put one out later this year."
"So, for a full review of both the Alias and the Alias Pro, well, you're already in the right place.
That's Game Racker.
See you soon."
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