Review: Magewell USB Capture HDMI 4K Plus

Audio I/O

One of the other features I appreciate on the Magewell USB Capture 4K Plus devices is the 3.5mm audio in and out. These I/Os have lots of potential applications but the most obvious to me is an easy way to monitor your HDMI audio with headphones and connect a cellphone to add some music from your playlist to your production (Figure 5, below).

Figure 5. Choosing an audio input in vMix

When using the 3.5mm audio input, do note that the audio isn’t muxed with your HDMI audio and you can add it as a separate audio input.

This is another situation where initially I didn’t have any luck getting these features to work while testing. Notwithstanding the fact that my new Pixel 2 XL phone doesn’t have a headphone out and I had to grab an older device to test with, by default, the volume settings for both the headphone out and mic in are set very low (Figure 6, below). If you want to use them, you will need to change the levels by using the USB Capture Utility. I have already mentioned this utility three times so don’t forget to download it, use it to update your firmware, and get familiar with the settings. I mention this because if you own any of the Gen 1 USB capture devices, the USB Capture Utility for those devices could not live-analyze a signal that was already connected to another software application. It didn’t really have any controls, other than to update the firmware.

Figure 6. Adjusting the audio mix in the Magewell Capture Utility

I was pleasantly surprised how much control I had on the newer devices. As much as these devices are plug and play, there are times when you want to analyze your signals and take control of the settings.