Over two years ago, Canadian company BEACN made a big splash in the creator community with the release of three products that quickly became staples in setups around the world. These products – BEACN Mic, BEACN Mix and BEACN Mix Create – made a streamer’s life infinitely easier and more enjoyable, all without taking up much desk space. While people mostly loved the gear, many were already looking ahead to the products’ future potential, with XLR connectivity set to be a key feature in BEACN’s next evolution. Now, BEACN has taken the next step with the release of BEACN Studio, a dream product for many of its users.
BEACN Studio, BEACN’s brand new audio interface, is the company’s solution for bringing everything you love about the BEACN Mic to any XLR microphone. Whether you have a microphone from RØDE, Shure, Audio-Technica or another brand, you can connect it to the BEACN Studio and access all the tools that have made the BEACN Mic so popular, including the best-in-class mixing software and signal processing.
Inside the box, you’ll find the BEACN Studio, a USB-C to USB-C cable, and a quick start guide. Build quality is solid despite the lightweight plastic casing. The unit features a single multi-function button that primarily serves as a volume control for your headphones. Just below the button is discreet, tasteful RGB lighting that, beyond its aesthetic appeal, indicates when certain functions, like muting or turning on phantom power, are enabled.
“Whether you have a microphone from RØDE, Shure, Audio-Technica or any other brand, you can connect it to the BEACN Studio and access all the tools that made the BEACN Mic popular…”
There is an extended plastic foot on the back of the BEACN Studio that ensures that the audio interface does not tip backwards when cables are connected and pressure is applied to it. I would have liked some cable management tools like a clip to make better use of this part and avoid the impression of a handle on such a small device. The BEACN Studio has four ports on the back: an XLR jack, a 3.5mm jack for real-time audio monitoring via headphones, and two USB-C ports for a multi-device setup.
Setting up the BEACN Studio is incredibly easy, but may require a few extra steps depending on your setup. If this is your first BEACN device, you will need to download the BEACN app and install the necessary drivers before connecting the device. If you already own a BEACN Mix Create, the app layout will change slightly, so there may be a small learning curve when navigating the software. The mixing software will no longer be listed under the Mix Create as a device, but will be in its own mixer section. The BEACN Mix Create can still be controlled as normal, making it an even more powerful tool when used in conjunction with the BEACN Studio.
If you’re not familiar with the app, it’s one of the best audio software solutions on the market. It offers individual sources for your microphone, music, chat, game audio, browser audio, system audio, and more, with two assignable monitoring devices that you can easily switch between with a single click. It also offers, in this reviewer’s humble opinion, the best signal processing software for any microphone. The software offers a full microphone chain that lets you affect the microphone’s gain and add EQ and noise reduction, while adding an expander, compression, and headphone controls.
The EQ is fantastic and allows you to use presets or add multiple bands to create the perfect sound for your voice. BEACN even provides a guide explaining what each frequency range does to your voice. The noise cancellation is also some of the best on the market, offering both snapshot and adaptive cancellation. Snapshot cancellation listens to the general atmosphere in the room and removes that sound from your audio, while adaptive cancellation adjusts in real-time to eliminate any background noise currently present.
“The coolest addition to BEACN Studio is the ability to use multiple devices at once.”
The expander essentially acts as a noise gate, allowing you to monitor your sound waves and set the expander below your lowest speaking volume to eliminate any other excessive noise that may not be consistent, such as distant construction work or your kid playing video games loudly in the other room – but maybe that’s just me.
For those new to the fun of submixes, get ready because the ability to send different mixes to different outputs is one of the best tools in a creative’s toolbox. Imagine you’re gaming and want to hear your chat audio loudly through your headphones so you can hear important calls – audio that would drown you out on your stream if you only had one mix. The ability to create a mix for your headphones and a separate one for your stream is groundbreaking.
“At $249, the BEACN Studio is fairly priced for what it offers, especially if you already have a microphone you’re happy with that you can pair with it.”
Add to that another separate mix for your chat so people don’t have to hear music, alerts, gameplay, or anything else except your voice. Then create yet another mix for your VODs, which I mainly use for editing videos from my stream since I can remove the music completely for cleaner edits. With this setup, you have a compelling audio solution. It’s well known that the people behind BEACN’s products were also behind the GoXLR, where this technology was initially aimed at streamers. Now members of that team, along with new talent, have evolved it and brought it into this decade in a big way while other companies are still catching up.
The coolest new feature about the BEACN Studio is the ability to use multiple devices at once. You can connect it to your PS5 and set it up to use your mic and headphones on both the console and your PC, with all the audio being routed back to your PC. Plus, the two-PC setup has been improved, offering more depth than ever before.
Four new “Link” sources are available in the software, allowing you to assign any source or mix to each of the links, which are then sent to the second PC as independent channels. Using the BEACN Link companion app on the second PC, you can select which sources are sent back to your first PC and added to the full mix. With an 8-channel audio swing, the configuration options for which audio signals come from which PC are more open than ever.
At $249, the BEACN Studio is pretty cheap for what it offers, especially if you already have a microphone you like to pair it with. If you also have the BEACN Mix Create, that’s even better, because I’m a firm believer that having physical control over your mixer rather than relying solely on software faders is a big deal – unless you’re the type of streamer who prefers to set it and then forget it, with all sources locked after the initial setup.
For this reason, I highly recommend owning a Mix Create alongside the Studio. The good news is that this combination is still more economical and a little less bulky than the RØDECaster Duo, which also offers a dual PC setup.
The BEACN Studio alone costs about $90 more than the Elgato Wave XLR, which offers one of the original (and still great) software solutions for audio mixing, but you don’t get hardware signal processing; you’re dependent on your processor for that, and you can’t port the audio to a second PC without an additional device or going through a lot more hassle than you want to afford at a price of less than $100. So the BEACN Studio is the obvious solution if you care about making audio processing and routing as simple and effective as possible.
While everything here is clearly adequate for such a small device, I can’t help but think about the potential that is still possible. I envision a BEACN Studio with programmable buttons on top for sound effects or a voice changer. I also see a version with two XLR inputs (or a USB input for a microphone) and two headphone jacks, making it the most portable podcasting solution you’ve ever seen.
Are these features necessary for the BEACN Studio to do what it does? Absolutely not. However, I can’t resist thinking about what’s next (that might just be a tech critic’s survival instinct), and the part of me that’s still 12 years old can’t resist the lure of new toys. But the BEACN Studio isn’t a toy. It’s free of gimmicks and bells and whistles. It’s a humble device that does everything it says on the tin – and does it extremely well.
