Over two years ago, the Canadian company BEACN created a lot of buzz in the creator community with the release of three products that quickly became staples in setups worldwide. These products—the BEACN Mic, BEACN Mix, and BEACN Mix Create—made the life of a streamer infinitely easier and more enjoyable, all without taking up much space on your desk. While people largely loved the gear, many were already looking ahead to the products’ future potential, with XLR connectivity being a key feature in BEACN’s next evolution. Now, BEACN has taken that 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 made the BEACN Mic popular, including its top-of-the-line mixing software and signal processing.
In the box, you’ll find the BEACN Studio, a USB-C to USB-C cable, and a quick start guide. The build quality is solid despite the lightweight plastic body. The device features a single knob with multiple functions, primarily serving as the volume control for your headphones. There’s discreet, tasteful RGB lighting just beneath the knob that, beyond its aesthetic appeal, indicates when certain functions, like muting or turning on phantom power, are engaged.
“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 made the BEACN Mic popular…”
On the back of the BEACN Studio, there’s an extended plastic footing to ensure the audio interface doesn’t tip back when cables are connected and pressure is put on it. I would have liked to see some cable management tools, such as a clip, to better utilize this piece and avoid the appearance 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 sound monitoring through headphones, and two USB-C ports for a multi-device setup.
Setting up the BEACN Studio is incredibly easy, though it may require some extra steps depending on your setup. If this is your first BEACN device, you’ll need to download the BEACN app and install the necessary drivers before plugging into the device. If you already own a BEACN Mix Create, the app layout will change slightly, so there may be a small learning curve as you navigate the software. The mixing software will no longer exist under the Mix Create as a device but will be found in its own Mixer area. The BEACN Mix Create can still be controlled as usual, making it an even more powerful tool when used in tandem with the BEACN Studio.
If you’re not familiar with their app, it is one of the finest audio software solutions on the market. It provides individual sources for your mic, music, chat, game audio, browser audio, system audio and more, with two assignable monitoring devices that can easily be switched between with a single click. It also provides the best signal processing software for any mic in this reviewer’s humble opinion. A full mic chain is present on the software where you can impact the mic’s gain and add EQ and noise suppression while adding an expander, compression and headphone controls.
The EQ is fantastic, allowing 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 suppression is also among the best available, offering both snapshot and adaptive suppression. Snapshot suppression listens to the general ambiance in the room and removes that sound from your audio, while adaptive suppression adjusts in real-time to eliminate any background noise present at the moment.
“The coolest addition to the BEACN Studio is its ability to simultaneously use multiple devices.”
The expander essentially functions as a noise gate, allowing you to monitor your sound waves and adjust the expander below your lowest speaking volume to eliminate any other excess noise that may not be consistent, such as distant construction or your kid playing video games loudly in the other room—though maybe that’s just me.
For those who don’t yet know the joy of submixes, get ready because the ability to send different mixes to different outputs is one of the greatest tools in a creator’s toolbox. Imagine you’re gaming and want your chat audio loud in your headphones so you can hear crucial 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 a game-changer.
“At $249 USD, the BEACN Studio is fairly priced for what it offers, especially if you already have a microphone you’re happy with to pair with it.”
Add to that another separate mix for your chat, so they don’t have to hear music, alerts, gameplay, or anything else besides your voice. Then, create yet another mix for your VODs, which I primarily use for editing videos from my stream, as I can remove the music altogether for cleaner edits. With this setup, you have a winning audio solution. It’s well known that the people behind BEACN’s products were also behind the GoXLR, where this technology was first aimed at streamers. Now, members of that team, combined with new talent, have evolved it and brought it into this decade in a big way, while other companies are still playing catch-up.
The coolest addition to the BEACN Studio is its ability to simultaneously use multiple devices. You can connect it to your PS5 and set it up so that you’re using your mic and headphones on both the console and your PC, with all the audio routed back to your PC. They’ve also enhanced the two-PC setup, adding 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 as independent channels to the second PC. With the BEACN Link companion app on the second PC, you can choose which sources to send back to your first PC, to be added to the full mix. With an 8-channel swing of audio, the configuration options for what audio comes from which PC are more open than ever.
At $249 USD, the BEACN Studio is fairly priced for what it offers, especially if you already have a microphone you’re happy with to pair with it. If you also have the BEACN Mix Create, even better, because I firmly believe that having physical control of 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 forget it, with all sources locked off after initial setup.
For that reason, I strongly recommend owning a Mix Create alongside the Studio. The good news is that this combination is still more economical and a bit less bulky than the RØDECaster Duo, which also offers a dual-PC setup.
The BEACN Studio alone is about $90 more than the Elgato Wave XLR, which offers one of the original (and still great) audio mixing software solutions, but you won’t be getting hardware signal processing; you’ll be dependent on your processor to do that, and you’re not getting the audio to a second PC without an additional device or a lot more trouble than you want to deal with when we are talking about less than $100, so the BEACN Studio is the obvious solution if making your audio processing and routing as simple and effective as possible is important to you.
While everything here is clearly sufficient for such a small device, I can’t help but think about the potential for what could be. 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 mic) and two headphone jacks, making it the most portable podcasting solution you’ve ever seen.
Are these features necessary for the BEACN Studio to be great at what it does? Absolutely not. However, I can’t resist thinking about what’s next (that may just be the survival instinct of a tech reviewer), and the part of me that’s still 12 years old can’t resist the allure of new toys. But the BEACN Studio is not a toy. It’s free of gimmicks and flash. It’s a modest device that does everything it claims to do—and does it extremely well.
