Elgato Wave Link vs Splitwave

Elgato Wave Link is a free audio routing and effects app for streamers, podcasters, professionals, and other content creators. It works with USB and XLR microphones, third-party interfaces, headsets, and capture cards recognized by the computer. A horizontal routing matrix lets users direct audio sources to outputs, with up to five independent mixes and separate routing and volume levels. Users can group multiple applications, such as Zoom, Teams, Discord, Spotify, or Chrome, into one channel. The app supports VST3 effects on Windows and Audio Unit effects on macOS, with unlimited effects per input. Mixes can feed OBS Studio, MS Teams, or any application that accepts audio input. Its Stream Deck plugin can change volume, mute channels, toggle effects, and switch mixes. The Wave Link 3.0 plan lists up to eight software or non-Wave inputs, four Wave-device inputs, and five virtual mixes. Windows requires Windows 11 and 8 GB RAM; macOS requires version 15.0 or newer and 8 GB RAM.

Splitwave is a free desktop audio router for connecting sources, effects, and outputs in a real-time node graph. Sources include microphones, system audio, individual app audio, WAV files, and virtual-device loopback. Its listed effects include noise suppression, EQ, compression, gating, reverb, and delay, and it can record audio to files. Splitwave can host CLAP and VST3 plugins as nodes; Audio Unit hosting is available only on macOS. For network audio, WebRTC peers connect in both directions, while UDP sender and receiver nodes support Opus or raw PCM. Splitwave creates virtual audio devices on macOS and Linux; Windows users need VB-Cable or a similar virtual cable. It supports macOS 13 or newer on Apple Silicon or Intel, Linux x86_64 with PipeWire, and 64-bit Windows 10 or newer. Processing is local unless a network node directs audio to a peer. The desktop app does not transmit audio streams, personal files, or usage telemetry to an external server. It is free and open source under the MIT license.