This was… not what I wanted, but about what I expected given the GoXLR product line’s lack of momentum since the pandemic started.
A moderator in the official GoXLR Discord Server posted a grim status update regarding the GoXLR product line and the official support server. It appears all remaining TC-Helicon staff in the Canada office have been laid off by MusicTribe (TC-Helicon’s parent company). These staff were the ones responsible for firmware, software, and driver updates and support for GoXLR products.
This comes after the original GoXLR product team left TC-Helicon (after releasing the GoXLR Mini and a couple accessories) to form the BEACN team (a product line which has also seen limited software support and slowed momentum, plus staff departures since launch) and a previous round of layoffs.
GoXLR was a promising product that really brought some innovation to the streaming-focused scene, which audio companies had yet to take seriously at time of release in 2019 – but carried a high cost and had quite a few downsides compared to similarly-priced professional audio solutions. The GoXLR Mini (review) came at a much more affordable price with the most important features in-tact.
Many exciting follow-up products were planned for the GoXLR line, including a “GoXLR 2” or “GoXLR Pro” which would feature dual USB hosts and a toggle to switch the motorized slider states between them for better dual PC compatibility, among other plans.
The potentially good news on the horizon is that a third-party developer has been working on an open-source, feature-parity app for the GoXLR that is compatible with Windows, Mac OS, and Linux, and should be finished soon – learn more about that at the GitHub Repo.
While this could breathe new life into the product, there are inherent limitations. As mentioned by the Discord mod, managing support for that many people is a “full-time job” and both supporting a complex, mission-critical (for streamers) app and providing tech support on a volunteer, open-source basis rarely runs smoothly, so we’ll see how things turn out. Plus, the firmware itself doesn’t appear to have been open sourced, so stabilizing onboard features or bugs will be difficult or impossible without some potential reverse-engineering.
MusicTribe apparently “doesn’t believe in marketing” for their consumer-facing products, according to an inside source during GoXLR’s release, and never gave much funding towards such endeavors – and most of their consumer products are clones of existing products, making it not surprising that they didn’t support the GoXLR in the way it was needed. However, given the initial hype for it (and the Mini’s) release and the added momentum at the start of the pandemic, it’s still quite sad to see it get cut off when streamers still use it daily for their streams.
You can join the new “soft-launched” Discord server for the open-source app here.
I guess as a bit of personal product advice: Maybe don’t buy a new GoXLR product anytime soon, especially for full price. Consider instead the Elgato Wave XLR or the Elgato Stream Deck + if you already have an audio interface (like the Audient Evo 4 (Amazon affiliate link)) instead. A more direct alternative would be the pricey Rodecaster Pro II (Amazon affiliate link), which I haven’t gotten to try yet, but have heard great things about – and have requested a sample to cover given the current context.
