Room‐temperature magnetoelastic waves have been observed in yttrium iron garnet from 1.6 to 8.5 Gc/sec. The minimum observed insertion loss, which includes conversion, transmission, and reconversion loss, was 15 dB at 1.6 Gc/sec; at 8.5 Gc/sec the smallest insertion loss was 46 dB. The transmission attenuation increases approximately linearly with frequency from about 6 to 20 dB/&mgr;sec over this frequency range. The experimentally observed conversion loss from electromagnetic to magnetoelastic energy ranges from 3 to 13 dB and is compared with theoretical values.