As someone that's spent a good portion of my life tangled up in XLR cables, I'll be the first to tell you that setting up audio gear can be a fiddly endeavour. If you're not inclined to get down and dirty with all the intricacies of a pro audio setup—yet still fancy capturing quality sound for streaming, podcasts and more—then this SteelSeries kit makes things about as painless as they can be.
Currently available at a touch over $237 for Amazon Prime Members (and $250 for those without a membership) as part of the Prime Day sales, the SteelSeries Alias Pro kit has almost everything you need to get going. For much less fuss than you might expect, too.
I reviewed the Alias Pro kit at the start of this year, and came away very impressed with the package as a whole. The pill-shaped microphone, unlike the regular SteelSeries Alias, ditches internal amplification for an XLR port, through which it links to a very compact Stream Mixer that acts as both a preamp and a streaming controller.
On the front of that little unit are two RGB-lit soft-touch configurable buttons for things like muting and input switching, along with a dedicated gain dial and a much larger configurable dial for all sorts of uses. This can all be adjusted to your hearts content in SteelSeries' Sonar audio suite, and it's that integration that really makes things as simple as they can be here.
Once the mic's been hooked up and the Stream Mixer connected, Sonar performs a small miracle, auto-detecting your input and output devices and making it easy to sort them out onto various faders. Traditionally complex things like compressors and noise reduction are reduced down to single sliders, which is ordinarily the sort of thing that'd annoy me greatly as an over-simplification.
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However, the neat trick here is that they're all configured very well to begin with, meaning you just have to choose how much you need. Want less background noise? Turn up the AI-enhanced (groan) ClearCast noise reduction with a single slider.
Compression? Fuggedabout it, just bump it up a bit and hear the results.
There's one thing missing from this kit, however, and its a big one: a boom arm. That excellent capsule combined with the powerful preamp really shines when it's positioned up close to your mouth, and you'll really need an adjustable arm to get the most out of it.
SteelSeries will sell you one of its own for $99, but in all honesty, it's more than a little overpriced for what it is. Thankfully, the socket and included adaptors on the back of the mic will fit most arms, so something like this InnoGear model for just over $37 (again, Prime Member price, $50 otherwise) should do just as good a job for much less.
After that? You're sorted. The Alias Pro kit is capable of making excellent vocal audio streaming easy to achieve with just a few clicks, and for that it's earned its spot as the best microphone for streaming in our best microphone guide. And at this price? I'd say it's a better shout than ever.
