- All right guys, hands up if you are the kind of person
who has spent hours and hours
on the visual side of your stream,
making sure everything is perfectly aligned,
your camera is set up properly,
your alerts and your overlays,
but when it comes to the audio side of your stream,
all you've done is plugged in your microphone
and added it to your streaming software.
And I'm not blaming you, I'm a culprit of this myself.
I often spend far too much time on the visual side
rather than the audio,
but why is that?
Why do we settle for good enough when it comes to audio,
when actually just spending 10 to 15 minutes
on your audio setup once
can make a massive difference to your stream?
Well, settle no more, because in this video,
we're going to be going through five steps
that you can implement today
with your current microphone
that can massively improve the audio for your livestreams.
(upbeat music)
All right, so step one is all about microphone positioning.
Making all the changes in the physical environment
to actually give your microphone
the best chances of picking up a clean signal.
Now, most microphones nowadays
come with a built-in or attachable desk stand,
which is super convenient,
but will actually leave the microphone
pretty far away from your mouth,
meaning you have to crank the gain
to be able to get a decent audio level.
Not only that, but these stands encourage you
to position your microphone kind of close to noises
like your keyboard and your mouse
which are typically, noises you want to avoid
hearing on your stream.
So what I recommend doing instead is getting a boom arm
which can attach to your desk and your microphone
and then you can use that to raise the microphone
up off the desk, away from those noises
and closer to your mouth.
I use the RODE PSA1 microphone arm
which is pretty universally popular
and it does work well
for a whole handful of different microphone weights
but it is quite expensive, about $100
so you don't need to go and spend that much.
I actually used one of these for about two or three years,
which is just a cheap microphone arm from Amazon.
The only real issue I'd say with these
is these exposed springs can be a little bit noisy
if you're adjusting them whilst streaming,
but they certainly do the job for a good couple of years.
So now your microphone is hopefully raised off of your desk
and you can position it closer to your mouth,
but just how close to our mouth
do we actually want to position it?
Well, the boring answer
is it completely depends on your microphone,
but a good starting point
is usually about three to six inches
between the microphone capsule and your mouth.
As a general guide, I tend to set up my microphones
with between four to eight fingers of width
between the microphone capsule and my mouth
and then I'll listen back to a recording
and see how that sounds.
If you're too close to the microphone,
you're going to hear some unwanted mouth noise
like salivating and breathing
and if you're too far away,
you're going to get more of that room noise and reverberation
and less low-end from your voice.
Another microphone positioning tip
is that you'll want to have your microphone off axis,
so that you're actually speaking past the mic
rather than directly into it
'cause this will help with plosives, the P and B words,
that blow a lot of air into the microphone
since you're speaking past the mic instead,
this will definitely help with those
and it'll also helps your audience be able to see your mouth
rather than it being covered by a microphone.
If you're still struggling with plosives
even after moving your microphone off axis,
you might want to invest in a pop filter or windscreen.
They come in all different shapes and sizes,
some designed for specific mics
and some that are more general,
that just attach to your boom arm,
but these will disperse the large sound waves
before they cause distortion and they're pretty cheap.
I think this cost me the equivalent
of about 6 or $7 on Amazon.
Whilst we're on the topic of microphone positioning,
if you are streaming with a microphone
that has multiple different polar pattern selectable
like the Blue Yeti or the HyperX QuadCast,
please make sure that you have set it
to the cardioid pickup pattern
which is the one that looks like an upside down heart
and make sure you're talking into the front of the capsule.
Seriously, the number of streamers I see
still talking into the top of the Blue Yeti,
it gives me nightmares.
Right, so I say microphone positioning done,
let's jump into the fun stuff over on the PC.
So I'm using the Elgato Wave:3,
probably my favorite USB microphone right now,
but this process will work for any microphone
that you're using for streaming.
We followed the positioning advice that we've just covered,
so it's got a pop filter,
it's raised up on a boom arm
and it's nice and close to our mouth
and we're speaking off axis.
Before we dive into OBS
and the filters that we're going to apply,
it's worth noting that you do need to set
the gain correctly on your microphone.
So if you look down here at the OBS audio mixer,
you should see your microphone levels changing.
If you don't see anything down here,
you'll want to jump into your settings,
go to the audio tab
and just make sure that your mic slash auxiliary audio
is set correctly to the microphone.
Once that's set, you should see down here the meter's moving
and you want to adjust the gain on the microphone,
so there's usually a physical dial on the microphone,
to make sure that we're speaking in this yellow range here,
around minus 15 decibels.
Once that's done, we're ready to apply our first filter.
So come down here to the little cog wheel
next to our microphone, click that and go to filters.
So the first filter we're going to add is a noise gate
which effectively closes the gate.
It turns off your microphone when you're not speaking,
so none of that background noise
filters through whilst you're not speaking.
So if you click the little plus icon here,
you can see that there is a noise gate option,
but instead, actually we're going to use an expander.
An expander, similar to a noise gate,
allows you to turn off your microphone
when you're not speaking,
but the advantage is is that there's an adjustable ratio
for how much you want to reduce the gain
when it hasn't hit that threshold.
So it allows for a smoother operation
than the static open or shut noise gate.
Effectively what this is doing
is just making your quiet sounds even quieter,
so when you're not speaking,
your room noise or your computer fans won't be easily heard.
So we can click the expander option,
we can name this whatever we want,
I'm going to leave it as expander,
and we're going to change the preset from expanded to a gate.
Now ratio, this is the amount of reduction
that's going to apply to any sounds
that are below the threshold.
So a 10 to one ratio, which is the default,
that's going to operate very much like a traditional gateway,
it's going to basically be open or closed.
I prefer something a little bit more natural,
something maybe around four to one ratio,
but feel free to adjust this
depending on how much you want to reduce
that background noise when you're not speaking.
Now, threshold, this the setting really
that you're going to have to figure out yourself
and I'll help you through that.
Effectively what threshold is, is this is the volume
at which the expander
will no longer start reducing your signal.
So any volumes above this level
aren't going to have the expander applied to it
and all the sounds that are below this volume level
are going to have the expander applied to it
and reduce the volume even further.
To calculate what we want to set the expander to,
let's disable the audio filter
by clicking this little eye icon here
and then have a look down at the audio meter
and be quiet for a second
and see where our noise floor is sitting.
So you can see for me,
that there was a little bit of noise around here
between sort of minus 60 and minus 55,
let's say minus 58 decibels.
Now, this is going to be a completely different level for you
'cause it depends on the room that you're streaming in
and how sensitive your microphone is,
but you want to basically set the threshold
around about five decibels above this noise floor.
So for me, our noise floor is about minus 58 decibels,
five on top of that is minus 53
so that's what I'm going to set my threshold to.
Now, if we re-enable the expander,
you should be able to see that when we're quiet
there is no noise at all
coming through on our microphone levels.
If you find that there is still some noise coming through,
then you need to up the threshold
and if you find that it's starting
to eat into some of your words
and some of your words are being cut up,
then you need to lower that threshold back down,
but around about five decibels above your noise floor
is a great starting point.
The attack and release times we can leave at their defaults.
They are fine and we're not going to add any output gain here
'cause we'll be doing that later in the compressor.
Next, we're going to add an equalizer.
Now, this is going to allow us
to shape our voice in a specific way,
basically, boosting and lowering specific frequencies
in our voice to make it sound better.
If you click the plus icon
and have a look at the filters that OBS has included,
you'll see that there isn't actually an equalizer included.
So we're going to have to make use of a VST plugin
we can download from the internet
to be able to add an equalizer.
So head to the link that I put down in the description,
it is reaper.fm/reaplugs
and download the VST pack of Reaper plugins.
Once they're installed, you don't need to restart OBS.
You can just click the plus icon
and then come down here to the VST 2.x plugin.
Now, I definitely recommend renaming this to EQ or equalizer
just so you know which filter is which
and then we'll get a dropdown list
of all the different VST plugins that OBS has detected,
which is just our pack of Reaper plugins
that we've just installed.
We're only interested in one, which is the ReEQ standalone.
So select that and then we can click
to open the plugin interface.
Now, the EQ is probably the hardest setting
in this whole video for me to try and recommend settings
to you because it's completely dependent on your voice
and the environment that you're streaming in
and the microphone and so many different aspects.
If me and you were both streaming from the same PC
with the same microphone,
the EQ would still be different
because our voices are inherently different.
That being said, I do have some blanket settings
that I think are a starting point
that I've recommended to a few streamers before
and it'll help you get started with your EQ,
but please, please do play around with these settings
and really identify which bits of your voice
you want to boost and which bits you want to cut out
because it really is dependent on your own voice.
As you can see, the yellow wavy line that is showing here
is the current frequency response of the microphone
and that blue flat line is our equalization,
so where we want to boost and cut different frequencies.
So right now it's flat,
we're not applying any real EQ to our voice.
So let's make sure we have our first node selected
and our first tab selected down here.
We're going to change this to be a high pass filter
'cause we want to basically remove anything below 60 hertz,
which is below the human vocal range.
It's mostly just noise down there,
so change the type from band to high pass
and then we're going to just adjust the frequency
down to around 80 hertz,
somewhere around 80 hertz like that
and then we're just going to narrow the actual bandwidth
down to around 1.2.
Next, we'll move to our second node.
So we can come across to the second tab here
and we want to just add a bit of presence
which is usually found
between around 100 hertz and 200 hertz.
So you can actually drag the node here
to between 100 and 200 hertz on the scale
and maybe just up around a decibel or so.
So you can see here, we've gone up in gain
to around a decibel between 100 and 200 hertz.
And again, we can narrow the actual bandwidth of this
down to around 0.9.
So the third frequency that we're going to target
if we move across to the third tab
is the broadcast frequency,
which is typically found around 480 to 500 hertz.
So if we bring that across here
and we boosted it all the way up,
you can hear that it starts to sound very boxy
like I'm speaking into a box.
So we actually rather than boosting this,
we want to reduce it down,
cut it effectively by a decibel or two.
So to cut it, either dragged down on the node here
or can actually adjust the game slider
down by maybe a decibel and a half.
And again, we want to reduce the amount of frequencies
that this is being applied to
to something a bit more narrow around 1.2.
Finally, I like to add some airiness
to the higher frequencies
which helps with the Ss and general pronunciation of words.
So if we move across to this fourth node here,
change the type from a high shelf to a band again
and around five kilohertz,
which is actually where this node is by default,
we want to boost the signal by a decibel or so
and reduce the bandwidth down to something around 1.5,
so we're not applying it to too many different frequencies.
If for some reason you're getting some high frequencies
coming through that are outside of the human voice
but something like an air conditioner,
we can add a low pass filter
similar to the high pass filter we had at the start.
To do that, we just click the add band button here,
change the band type to be a low pass filter
and we want to adjust the frequency
right the way up to 18 kilohertz or so
and then we can just narrow the bandwidth a tad
and this will just cut out any of those high frequencies
that are outside of the vocal range,
but something like an air conditioner like I mentioned.
So now we can close down the plugin interface
and if we disable the EQ,
you should be able to hear the difference
that that has made to my voice.
And if you can't hear the difference
when I toggled the EQ on and off,
then you need to put some headphones on honestly Chris.
The next filter we're going to add is a compressor
and I've seen quite a lot of misinformation
being spread about what a compressor does,
but effectively, all it does
is it makes your volume more consistent
by reducing the volume
of some of the louder sounds, that's it.
This is a really useful filter
in your audio chain for live streamers,
because if there's a moment
where you get particularly excited and loud,
you're not going to deafen your audience
by all of a sudden changing your volume level massively
by getting excited.
The compressor will help reduce that loud noise
back to a more consistent volume,
but you can keep it sounding pretty natural
so it doesn't sound completely robotic
and the same audio level throughout.
So let's add the compressor filter.
We can leave this named as compressor
and I'm going to start by disabling it
so it's not actually being applied to a microphone,
so I can explain some of the options without becoming quiet.
So as you can see here,
some of these options are pretty familiar
from the expander filter
and it's kind of exactly the same,
but it's playing to volumes that exceed the threshold
rather than volumes that are under the threshold
as was the case with the expander.
So the first option ratio, this is exactly the same.
It's effectively the ratio of gain reduction
that gets applied through any volumes
that exceed the threshold.
So the ratio here that's default of 10 to one
is going to heavily reduced any volumes
that exceed the threshold.
I like things a little bit more natural
as I've said a few times in this video,
something around four to one,
but feel free to play around with four to one, eight to one,
10 to one compression to see what you like the sound of.
The threshold, as I've said,
is basically whenever a volume exceeds
this threshold of minus 18 decibels,
then the compressor is going to be applied.
So the default here at minus 18 decibels
it's absolutely fine
as is the default for the attack and release as well.
The final option here, the output gain,
this effectively might be needed
because when we enable the compressor,
effectively, any volumes above minus 18 decibels
are going to be compressed with a ratio of four to one
which isn't a super heavy compressor,
but we still probably need to add
a few decibels of output gain.
So let me start by setting this to around three decibels
which I think will roughly be about right
and then if we enable the compressor,
we're hoping to see that our audio levels
remain in that yellow section.
So you can see here three decibels
was actually a pretty good choice,
but you might need five, six decibels
depending on how heavy of a compressor we've been adding.
The final step and the final filter in our audio chain
is going to be a limiter
and this just has one sole function
which is to stop us from clipping
or digitally distorting our microphone,
so it needs to go last in our audio chain.
We add it the exact same way that we've added any others
and the only setting that we need to change
is this threshold from minus six
to around minus one decibel.
So this basically means
that if we get really, really loud at any point,
we scream because we've had a great moment on our stream,
we're not going to clip our microphone and distort our audio.
It's going to limit it to a threshold of minus one decibel.
So that's it, we've now completed
the five steps to better audio,
microphone positioning, noise gate or expander,
equalization, compressor and a limiter.
If we disable these audio filters,
you should able to hear the difference
especially if you're wearing good headphones
between my microphone before and after.
So I'll enable them again
and hopefully now you can hear
that it is more consistent audio, a better equalization
and less noise coming through when I stop speaking.
If you've reached this point in the video
and you've enjoyed following along with the tutorial,
please do give it a thumbs up
and let me know down in the comments
what else you would like to learn in the streaming world.
I'll catch you guys in the next one, peace
(upbeat music)
Chris, honestly Chris,
Chris, (indistinct) honestly Chris
honestly Chris (indistinct) honestly Chris
(upbeat music)