Review: SteelSeries Alias Pro

For streamers, podcasters, and basically anyone who wants to upgrade their audio without a full studio backing them, the choices are to use a simple USB microphone that sounds OK or upgrade to a full XLR-based setup. The latter is what most professionals use and can deliver higher-quality audio. The SteelSeries Alias Pro is the best attempt yet to split the difference.

SteelSeries, the company that has impressed us with a number of high-quality gaming headsets, has entered the gaming microphone market with the Alias and Alias Pro. The former is a USB microphone that comes with a shock mount and RGB LEDs, but it's the Alias Pro that turns heads the most. The microphone inside is similar to the base Alias model, but it uses an XLR connection and comes with a dead-simple audio interface.

The audio interface is one of the more cumbersome hurdles to get over when learning how to upgrade audio recording gear. Nearly every other type of gadget on earth can connect directly to a computer, but professional microphones still require this extra box that just sits on a desk. What does it do? Why do I need it? How do I get the right one? Can't I just use a USB mic?

Photograph: SteelSeries

There are a lot of complicated answers to these questions, and we've explained them a bit more in-depth in the past, but rather than answer them, the Alias Pro sidesteps them. The box comes with an XLR microphone and an interface—dubbed the Stream Mixer—in the same package. If you don't want to bother learning why an interface is important or what kind you need, you don't have to worry about it. Just plug everything in and it'll work. If you decide you want to upgrade the Stream Mixer interface later, you can swap another in and still use the same Alias Pro mic (or you can swap out the mic for another). It's just like any other pro setup.

For gamers and streamers, the audio interface is worth keeping around. It's not too complicated to use compared to most other interfaces. There are two dials—one for microphone gain and one for computer volume (you can customize them)—and two buttons. The buttons mute either the microphone or computer audio and light up while muted, so you'll never wonder if someone can actually hear you while on a stream. The physical controls are easier to monitor and adjust while live and the LEDs even make for a better aesthetic if your desk space is frequently on camera.

The interface comes with +48V phantom power—a feature most professional mics need to get a usable audio signal, including the Alias Pro—and a built-in preamp. If you don't know what those words mean and really don't want to get bogged down in the details, then the Alias Pro interface might be appealing to you. It makes XLR support as plug-and-play as it can get.

Unlike most audio interfaces, the phantom power on the Stream Mixer doesn't have a hardware button you can turn on or off. That's a feature professionals might need—like if you're swapping to a microphone that doesn't require phantom power—but for most people, you either need it on or you don't (and you can configure this in the Engine section of the SteelSeries GG app). A dedicated button for this is one of those features that doesn't make sense to devote room to for streamers.

Photograph: SteelSeries

Instead, the Stream Mixer focuses on features more immediately useful to gamers and streamers. An LED ring surrounding the gain knob glows a subtle green when turned on but will get brighter, then turn yellow as the microphone input gets louder. It will eventually turn red if the audio peaks. This is a handy way to keep an eye on your mic levels without being distracting. If you tend to yell during your games, this can be a godsend to your teammates or viewers.

The giant dials are easy to adjust without looking directly at them. The volume knob is large, flat, and easy to grab quickly to avoid blasting your ears off. The gain knob for the microphone feels considerably different. It's thinner and has a gentle curve toward the bottom. It's hard to mix these up and grab the wrong one if you're busy paying attention to your game.

As I mentioned before, the mute buttons for your mic and PC audio are large and easy to press quickly. Use SteelSeries' Sonar app and you can tweak the buttons to add fades and transitions that can make for a smoother experience if you're streaming.

Out of the box, the Alias Pro mic sounds great. It picks up solid bass tones while vocals are crisp and clear. If this XLR mic came on its own, I'd plug it into my existing interface and be quite happy with it. But its real strength shows up when paired with Sonar. We've discussed SteelSeries' Sonar software in prior reviews and it continues to be one of the biggest perks of the company's hardware.

With it, you can customize levels and profiles for different games, balance team chat with game audio, and adjust your microphone volume. And with the Alias Pro, it also has an array of equalizer presets that help you coax even better sound out of the mic. I used one of the built-in presets and got something very near that clear, podcast-voice sound without requiring any additional editing.

For streamers, Sonar takes on a new role as a sound mixer for broadcasting via the Streaming toggle. The app can take in up to five audio inputs, remix them, and output the mixed signal. This is a task that's often handled by either a physical mixing board, or in apps like OBS, but Sonar has some extra tools to equalize audio signals in a simplified interface.

Most streaming apps only have rudimentary tools for mixing audio levels from different sources. Sonar takes this concept a step further. For each of the five inputs Sonar can mix, you can set separate equalizer settings tuned to the type of audio you're sending the app. So, for example, you can apply one EQ to video game audio, a different one to your microphone, and another to your team chat via apps like Discord.

SteelSeries provides some presets tailored to several popular games, like Valorant, Fortnite, and CS: GO. A few of these presets are specifically designed to highlight certain sounds, like the CS: GO preset, which elevates some of the higher frequencies used when an enemy places a bomb. I'm more of an Overwatch guy, and many of the presets–including the Overwatch 2 one–are more basic EQ adjustments, so I can't speak to how effective they are at providing a competitive advantage.

However, these tools are particularly useful for streamers, since you can adjust game audio so it doesn't overpower your voice. This is a common trick used in video editing. Simply turning down the volume of background music or game audio is only so effective if your voice and the background noise are occupying the same frequencies. With audio source-specific EQ, broadcasters can tweak their audio so viewers can hear them without crushing the sound from the game they're playing.

There are also a few source-specific features for reducing background noise. The currently early access Clearcast AI noise cancellation is designed to eliminate sounds like whirring fans and clicking keyboards, without disrupting speaking voices.

In my tests, it was fairly good at this, and it didn't necessarily make voices sound unnatural. However, I think there may be an element of subjective taste here. For me, the sound of furiously clacking keyboards during a high-octane moment is a key part of the soundscape, so removing it can actually sound more unnatural, but that really depends on what kind of games you're playing and what stream you're trying to put on, so your mileage may vary.

The one downside to Sonar–on Windows, anyway–is that to function, it effectively takes over your list of audio devices. Before setting up the Alias Pro, I had two sound devices in my taskbar: my desktop speakers and a pair of wired headphones. After setting up Sonar, I had eight. Most of these are labeled “SteelSeries Sonar - [device] (SteelSeries Sonar Virtual Audio Device),” where “device” is replaced with one of the five audio inputs Sonar can manage, like Gaming, Microphone, or Chat.

This might just be my personal pet peeve, but this approach–while necessary for Sonar to function the way it does–makes it positively obnoxious to manage audio devices using anything except Sonar. I often use my desktop speakers for most things, but switch to headphones when gaming or editing. This device clutter is so visually obnoxious. I mean do we really need “SteelSeries Sonar” in there twice? Per audio device?

This device confusion filters out to every other app that interacts with those audio devices. Zoom, Discord, and OBS all end up with a massive list of devices, and their own memory of which ones they're using. In a way, it highlights why audio pros use physical mixers in the first place. The first time it takes you 10 minutes to figure out that Discord can't hear your mic because it's using the SteelSeries Sonar Mic input instead of the regular microphone input, and it's muted in Sonar but not in Discord … well, it's easy to wish you had a little red LED on a mixer board that shows you what's muted.

That said, if you're planning to use the Alias Pro with a streaming setup and you're comfortable building your audio pipeline on top of Sonar, it's a worthwhile trade. I'm a video editor who plays games online and tests audio gear, so I need a bit more flexibility, but someone who's setting up a dedicated streaming rig might not be annoyed by this minor–yet core–annoyance.

Overall, the suite of tools you get with Sonar and the Alias Pro aren't quite as powerful as you'd get from a full professional audio setup, but vastly more powerful than you'd expect from typical USB microphones. The price reflects that. At $330, you could spend more time and effort researching gear that's, technically, more geared toward professional audio recording.

However, the Alias Pro offers a simpler transition point. If you're in that middle-ground space where you're looking to upgrade your audio setup, but still leave yourself room to grow and improve in the future, the Alias Pro is a solid stepping stone. It has everything you need in one box, and you can upgrade either the microphone or the interface later without sacrificing the other. If you're a gamer or streamer, the extra features make it even more worth the price.