You want to reduce noise from your microphone for streaming?
You need to boost your microphone levels without making it sound like bull crap?
You want to be able to run your microphone input through an equalizer?
Well, good thing there are VST plugins. And they integrate seamlessly into OBS as sound source filters.
First of all, install
the ReaPlugs VST filters. Yes, they are free.
Be sure to install them to the default directory, otherwise OBS won’t find
them. No, don’t ask me why I know that.
Click the cog wheel next to your Mic/Aux thing in Audio Mixers, select “Filters”. That will bring you to the filter interface.
Hit the “+”, “VST 2.x Plug-in”, and select the proper one for the job.
Order is important! First in the list is applied first, last ist applied last.
Update 2021-04-11: Instead of ReaFir you can also use this adaptive noise supression plugin. Haven’t used it for a long time yet but it works stunningly well, without having to train it or set anything up. Just add it to the chain.
Select “reafir_standalone”, and hit “Open Plug-in Interface”.
Set “mode” to “subtract”, fire up some noise (now is the time to run this crazy benchmark that uses 200% CPU and 500% GPU!), don’t talk into your mic and hit “Automatically build noise profile”. You will want to do that with the worst noise you are expecting to happen during streaming/recording so you get all of it :)
Once the profile has built sufficiently, un-tick it again.
Select “reagate-standalone”, and hit “Open Plug-in Interface”.
Just fiddle with the slider in the far left of the thing until it’s just above your not-talking mic levels. Optionally fiddle some more to exclude clicking and typing noises as well as possible.
This one really is optional.
Select “reaeq-standalone”, and hit “Open Plug-in Interface”.
Well, it’s an equalizer. Fiddle with it until you like the result?
You can also add some gain in this step if your mic is generally too quiet.
Select “reacomp-standalone”, and hit “Open Plug-in Interface”.
… you probably want to put the ratio up more than the 1:1 in the screenshot.
Oops. If you don’t know what a compressor does, either read up or skip this step
:)
Finally I’m using OBS’ built-in Limiter. Just to make sure I don’t make people’s ears explode when I get passionate.
“But NERD, that’s just OBS! What if I want to tweak my mic for EVERYTHING⁈”
Well, I got you covered! This is the part where you regret not reading to the end before you started fiddling with stuff.
You can use Equalizer APO to apply effects (including the VST plugin stuff) to any Windows audio device. It hooks into the standard API for audio effects so it will work on the device and with any program you use.
I’m still doing the Noise Gate stuff in OBS instead, just because I’m using VoiceAttack for voice recognition and it’s working noticeably worse if I gate the entire microfone device. YMMV.
