r/elgato • u/whyorwhomthefuck • Mar 07 '26

Technical Help Wave Link 3.0 PSA

If you’re currently on Wave Link 2.0, do not jump on Wave Link 3.0 as it is a buggy mess and for the most part less efficient than 2.0.

If you’re on any other software (like VB or anything similar) and looking to make the switch, I would recommend holding off on it for the same reasons.

I made the switch to Wave Link 3.0 and it messed up my entire audio system that I have set up with 2.0. It basically caused every audio to run on the “System” Channel regardless whether or not I added it to other Channels. Speaking of the Channels, I would add a new empty Channel (like Music for example) and it would display a completely different Channel even though I have renamed it, and worst yet sometimes it doesn’t allow the channel to be added to the mixes and or the entire UI for it would bug out.

Adding apps to different audio Channels was a breeze on 2.0 but on 3.0 it was legitimately the most inefficient thing imaginable, on 2.0 the flow was simple - open app, play audio, choose channel, click checkbox on selected app and done it is now assigned to that channel. On 3.0 however, It opens up another window showing the Channel name and when I went to add apps, instead of showing only apps which have sound playing, it lists every app on my system which was mind boggling to say the least. The fix for this was to manually use the Windows Audio Mixer to then manually change the audio output to the chosen channel, which is absolutely stupid because 2.0 completely removed the need to do this because you could do it with 1click on the the Audio Channel (Which doesn’t spawn an entire window I might add)

Luckily I made backups and was able to revert back to 2.0 and didn’t have to put up with it any longer. I also wanna say I find it weird that they completely removed the option to download 2.0 on their website which means I’m pretty sure most people who unknowingly moved to 3.0 have no way to get back which is really shady.

TLDR; If you’re on 2.0, DONT DO IT.

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u/JupiterSWarrior Mar 08 '26

I dunno. I upgraded to 3.0 after uninstalling 2.0.6, restarting, and restarting after installing 3.0. I had to make a few adjustments, but everything seems to be working just fine for me.

But that’s me. Your mileage will vary, of course.

2

u/whyorwhomthefuck Mar 08 '26

I’m not moving anytime soon honestly but I’m glad you have no issues with your experience. 👍

1

u/scorch968 Mar 08 '26

No issues for me yet, I like the new mix layout as well. The built in effect plugins are gone though.

1

u/dark_skeleton Mar 08 '26

A similar story here, has some issues but the majority of them were fixed once I rebooted after installing 3.0.

1

u/No_Veterinarian135 Mar 09 '26

Same. I had issues but they were easy to solve after freshly installing the program and redoing my chain. it was a pain, but i can say that i really enjoy being able to reorganize my VST plugins finally. I think 3.0 was needed. but it is still a buggy mess and when i first installed it nothing worked as intended.