Stream Audio Quality is NOT Hard... Stop scaring away viewers!

**Improving Audio Quality: Tips and Tricks**

When it comes to audio quality, there are several factors that can affect your microphone's performance. One of the most important things to consider is background noise. When you're not talking anymore, it shuts back off, which means that even if you have a background noise floor, as long as it's not as loud as you are, it's going to cut back off. However, this doesn't mean that your voice will be completely clear. If you have fan noise or other sounds present when you talk, they may still be noticeable to your viewer.

To minimize the impact of background noise, it's often helpful to use a low-level sound in the background, such as music or game sound. This can help to mask any noise that might be present and make your audio more pleasing to listen to. However, this is only effective if the background noise is not too loud. If you have something real loud on the background, it's going to open the gate and let all sorts of unwanted sounds in.

**Noise Suppression: A Double-Edged Sword**

One way to deal with background noise is to use noise suppression, which aims to filter out only the frequencies of your voice. However, this can often have an unintended consequence, particularly if you're dealing with recurring sound effects that repeat when you're talking. This can cause a "toilet bowl effect" where audio sounds like it's just really distorted and running through a toilet or seashell. Personal experience suggests that noise suppression is not a reliable solution, especially for recurring sounds.

Instead of using noise suppression, it's often better to use a bass background sound to help mask any unwanted noises. This can be as simple as playing some music or game sound in the background. When you're talking, the gate can open and shut or expand and contract to adjust the level of your audio accordingly. This is often the most effective way to balance your audio levels and ensure that your voice sounds clear and crisp.

**Order of Operations: The Signal Chain**

When it comes to audio processing, the order of operations is crucial. If you use an EQ before a compressor, for example, you may end up affecting the sound frequencies of your background noise, which can confuse your noise suppression system into thinking that some of those frequencies are part of your voice. Similarly, if you use a compressor before an EQ or other effects, you're literally taking the level of your background noise and making it louder, which can make it harder to get rid of with a noise gate.

To avoid this problem, it's essential to follow a specific order of operations when working on your audio signal chain. Typically, this means starting with noise suppression (if necessary), followed by EQ, compressor, and other effects such as reverb or distortion. By following this order, you can ensure that your audio is properly balanced and that any unwanted noises are effectively eliminated.

**Soundproofing: The Use of Sound Foam and Blankets**

Finally, when it comes to sound quality, there's also the issue of soundproofing. This refers to the use of materials such as sound foam or blankets to reduce echo and reverberation in your recording space. Sound foam is particularly useful in situations where you need to reduce reflections, as it can help to soften out any hard surfaces and create a more even acoustic environment.

Sound blankets, on the other hand, are designed to block sound rather than diffuse it. These can be useful for reducing noise from outside sources, such as your neighbors or other people in the house. One creative solution is to hang curtains or use moving blankets to create a makeshift soundproofing panel over your doorway. This can help to filter out unwanted sounds and reduce echo in your recording space.

**Real-World Examples: DIY Sound Booths**

Finally, it's worth noting that there are many real-world examples of people using creative solutions to improve their audio quality. One such example is the work of a friend who built his own sound booth using just PVC pipe and moving blankets. By dropping the blankets over his streaming setup, he was able to reduce unwanted sounds from the rest of his house and create a more focused acoustic environment. This kind of DIY ingenuity can be a powerful tool in the pursuit of better audio quality.

In conclusion, improving your audio quality is all about understanding how different factors affect your microphone's performance and using creative solutions to overcome those challenges. By following tips such as using low-level background noise, avoiding noise suppression, following an order of operations for signal chain processing, using soundproofing materials, and experimenting with DIY solutions, you can take control of your audio quality and create a more professional-sounding stream.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enyou know there are a lot of difficult things about live streaming entertaining yourself and still appearing entertaining even when nobody is watching what just happened what just happened to you all the daily grind that's required to live stream enough to really build up a successful stream that people tune into day in and day out the stress and the insecurity and just the the weight that carries that with live streaming and being successful at it the only real way you're regularly making money or growing is by being live obviously there's a lot you can do in the background but for direct work you have to be live for your work to be out there if you're only on twitch or a live streaming service those things are hard grinding multiple times a week multiple hours a day when you do that is very difficult what isn't difficult is audio quality and we're gonna nail some myths about all the audio quality some ways that you can improve your audio quality for your live streams and we're doing it while i'm on a temporary setup that probably doesn't sound that great but it's still far more passable than most people's audio setups and we're going to talk about why so while most of the online content creation scene typically focuses on image quality video quality getting the best possible camera the best possible lenses how to remove your green screens and things like that the very first thing that a viewer is going to notice if they are actually trying to pay attention to a person-oriented live stream is your audio quality your relationship with your microphone and that overall relationship with your viewers ears if it sucks your viewer will not watch it doesn't matter how great your camera looks if they can't understand you or the audio quality is just uncomfortable to listen to your viewers gone period hey guys today we're live streaming some fork knife and make sure you subscribe give me the bits please i need all the twitch monies please i am the best streamer ever so we're going to talk about roughly five things you can do to improve your audio quality without spending any money assuming you have a semi-functional microphone first and foremost if you have a condenser microphone or a microphone that isn't it doesn't have one built in like this one technically does or you are otherwise not unless your microphone is not going to be right on top of your mouth which in most cases it should be get yourself a pop builder you can get nice little k ones catered to your microphone so they're not the giant fly swatters because those are crap you can get you know ones custom fitted to your microphone but you need to have an actual pop filter if you're going to be putting your plosives into the microphone what these things do is they are basically a little filter that diffuses the air that you basically spit out whenever you're hitting p's t's and b's whenever you type it they're called plosives so i'm going to show you an example now because even the built-in pop filter isn't always enough for these these are very aggressive on viewers ears especially if they have earbuds in or anything like that they are awful to listen to and you do not want to subject your viewer to that so you can get a pop filter the thing is those big fly swatter ones pretty much block your face and look really awful and they need to be one to two inches away from your microphone which not most people do they usually just set them right on top of the microphone and it doesn't do a good enough job now the alternative that a lot of budget oriented things come up with is putting a sock or a pantyhose or a windscreen on top of your microphone because those are cheap or free those aren't actually pop filters those would act as windscreens which are great if you have wind or your fan on or something to keep the actual air that's blowing across your mic capsule from being creating this aggressive like just rumbling of your mic but they don't actually do a great job of diffusing plosives you can't get around that and you can get around that by pointing your microphone at your mouth at a certain angle like this so that when i say it's not going into the microphone capsule directly depends on your microphone type but that's generally the way to go but however the the usual alternative that people go to is to take okay well i can't do that so i'm gonna put my microphone way over here and just talk as loudly as possible and hope that it sounds really good it it doesn't now again this is a pricier dynamic microphone that's designed to cut out background noise but you take that blue yeti you put it all the way out the end of your desk next to your monitor in between your keyboard which when you're typing is going to be much more louder because that's the closest source of sound to your mind to your microphone or either next to your computer with giant loud fans and this is what i consider to be the lazy blue yeti user position which is all the way up against my monitor that doesn't help that makes it worse and a big thing that we're going to talk about here is just simply understanding the physics of audio which is not as complicated as it sounds sounds get it so don't clap to your viewers so one thing people fail to understand most of the time with regards to the microphone usage is you have to project into the microphone it took me a very long time to learn this and i had a blue snowball for a long time and i would talk real quiet like this and i'd just be like hey guys how's it going my name is eposvox i have my door shut but i still don't want my parents to hear me i talked before in a video you may or may not have seen i may or may not have been freaking posted at this point um it took me years of practice not really years but it took me a long time of practice and getting it right and you know spending time talking to a microphone listening to how i sound the effect that it has understanding the process of voice project into capsule record sound levels background noise things like that to really start projecting when i'm in recording or streaming mode because you need to send your voice over to your microphone in order for it to be clear you know obviously clipping and peeking aside up to a certain point the louder your source is and the closer it is to your microphone as long as your audio hardware handles the signal the higher quality it will be don't yell at it don't scream at it don't blow distort out your microphone but don't sit here and talk like this hey guys how's it going today we're doing some live stream tips do you know what's going on i don't know what's going on how's it going hey can you hear me chat chat hello chat why don't i have any chat chat alright two more points about physics the direction that your background sound is coming from the background it needs to be in the background as far in the background as you can think of it like a picture you have your foreground subject the thing that's in focus that should be your voice that should be as close to the microphone or lens in most cases unless you're doing landscape photography or something as possible it should be as close to the microphone as possible everything else should be as far away from the mic as possible anything that produces noise that you don't want to be picked up needs to be moved so those of you who like to have your pc sitting on your desk right next to your monitor i don't know why that's an absurd setup you're killing your audio quality i did that for a long time you move that pc to a floor put your desk in between your pc and your microphone and that does so much to help cancel out your fan noise also look up how to set a fan curve on your computer so that when you're doing this stuff it's not at 100 the full time unless it needs to be anyway set rugs on your floor use carpet have a couch hang curtains things that can help absorb sound reflections so that it's not just bouncing around your room if you have a door open close that you're sending out audio out into your hallway that's bouncing around and coming back if you have a window or there's other noise coming from the rest of your house or apartment or area that you're recording in coming back into your microphone same thing with windows have airplanes and motorcycles going outside with the windows open you can't get rid of that that just need you need to put the window in between there that's that's what it's for that's the whole physics thing now these last two points are with regards to combating that assuming you've already taken all of your physics 101 into account here or you're just stubborn and refused to do so keep in mind audio filtration especially real time live is not magic you can't just cut this stuff out that's not how it works but there are two different ways of filtering noise in real time here that you need to consider and most people pick the wrong one there is a noise gate and a noise suppressor and now in obs there's a downward expander which is just a smoother noise gate so for the purposes of this we'll talk about them as the same thing a noise gate is what it sounds like it is a gate that lets some sounds through and then closes when that sounds not coming through and so you set it up and configure it so that there's a threshold of when you're talking it opens up and lets the sound through because you are loud enough and you are talking to it but then when you are not making sound loud enough anymore when you are not talking anymore it shuts back so even if you have a background noise floor as long as it is not you know as loud as you are then it's going to cut back off now that's not going to cut out things out of your voice so if you have fan noise that's present when you talk that will sort of come back but assuming you have background music or game sound or something else happening it's gonna be a lot less noticeable to your viewer and then if you have something real loud on the background start happening happens to be as loud as you like a baby screaming or something you just can't just get rid of that it's gonna open the gate if it's as loud as you set in the threshold but then there's noise suppression which aims to actually filter that stuff out of your microphone however this usually goes poorly and again this is for recurring stuff that does show up when you are actively talking but this is what can cause that toilet bowl effect where audio sounds like it's just really distorted and running through a toilet or or a seashell or something because it's trying to filter out only the frequencies of your voice and it's not likely doing a good job personally i don't recommend doing that i just recommend having a bass background sound like i said be it a game or music and having the gate open and shut or expand and use the downward expander whenever you are talking that usually provides the best result also a super quick note here if you happen to be doing multiple steps of audio processing such as eq compressor noise gate things like that your noise filtration needs to go first the thing is if you use an eq that can affect the sound you know the sound frequencies of your background noise which can further confuse noise suppression into thinking that some of those frequencies are part of your voice and if you use a compressor what a compressor does is it makes the quieter noise louder and the louder noise is quieter and brings them to a more even level so you are literally taking that background noise level that noise floor and raising it closer to your to your microphone sound so you're actually making your background noise worse and making it harder to run a noise gate or noise suppressor on so that needs to happen first and then your compressor and eq and whatever you do order of operations in a signal chain in audio processing is very important lastly there's the discussion of sound foam versus sound blankets everyone jumps to get all these little sound foam tiles and put them everywhere and admittedly you can't really see them but i have a couple in some places they're really good they're really good at handling reflections when you have sound that's bouncing off of something and then bouncing to another corner you know sound is energy it you know it's it's something that projects it hits a wall and it bounces to the other wall and then to the other wall so sound foam on walls that have big open spaces and can absorb you know can reflect a lot of sound reflections that's very important sound foam can be much more useful in little corner scenarios you can't really see this here but i have a little corner nook where you know my voice is going to get projected into these little corner bits and reflect back a lot more than if there wasn't anything in the corner so i have sound from there sound blankets on the other hand are or you can hang curtains or things like that sound blankets help block sound so sound foam kind of diffuses the reflections because you know the foam is porous it's like a sponge so the sound goes into it and kind of softens out sound blankets outright prevent it from going any further so you can hang this over your doorway and just roll it up when you're not streaming to help filter out sound from the rest of your house or your windows or you can just build i i'll have a buddy from my buddy to have a buddy from my buddy i'll have a video from my buddy technical diy who built his own sound booth out of 20 bucks worth of pvc pipe and some moving blankets and basically built a little fort around his streaming setup drops the blankets down and no sound from the rest of it well very little sound from the rest of his house enters his recording area and then his voice isn't projecting out into the rest of his room and reverbing back pretty straightforward it's it's a kind of nice way to go so there you have it 5-ish tips to improve your audio quality because audio quality is really not that hard to master and somewhere in here i will have laden in samples from headset mics and cheaper microphones and things like that because they can all sound good you just have to know how to use them i'm eposvox here to make easier i'm eposvox here to make tech easier and more fun but speaking more difficult i'm actually losing my voice speaking of audio qualityyou know there are a lot of difficult things about live streaming entertaining yourself and still appearing entertaining even when nobody is watching what just happened what just happened to you all the daily grind that's required to live stream enough to really build up a successful stream that people tune into day in and day out the stress and the insecurity and just the the weight that carries that with live streaming and being successful at it the only real way you're regularly making money or growing is by being live obviously there's a lot you can do in the background but for direct work you have to be live for your work to be out there if you're only on twitch or a live streaming service those things are hard grinding multiple times a week multiple hours a day when you do that is very difficult what isn't difficult is audio quality and we're gonna nail some myths about all the audio quality some ways that you can improve your audio quality for your live streams and we're doing it while i'm on a temporary setup that probably doesn't sound that great but it's still far more passable than most people's audio setups and we're going to talk about why so while most of the online content creation scene typically focuses on image quality video quality getting the best possible camera the best possible lenses how to remove your green screens and things like that the very first thing that a viewer is going to notice if they are actually trying to pay attention to a person-oriented live stream is your audio quality your relationship with your microphone and that overall relationship with your viewers ears if it sucks your viewer will not watch it doesn't matter how great your camera looks if they can't understand you or the audio quality is just uncomfortable to listen to your viewers gone period hey guys today we're live streaming some fork knife and make sure you subscribe give me the bits please i need all the twitch monies please i am the best streamer ever so we're going to talk about roughly five things you can do to improve your audio quality without spending any money assuming you have a semi-functional microphone first and foremost if you have a condenser microphone or a microphone that isn't it doesn't have one built in like this one technically does or you are otherwise not unless your microphone is not going to be right on top of your mouth which in most cases it should be get yourself a pop builder you can get nice little k ones catered to your microphone so they're not the giant fly swatters because those are crap you can get you know ones custom fitted to your microphone but you need to have an actual pop filter if you're going to be putting your plosives into the microphone what these things do is they are basically a little filter that diffuses the air that you basically spit out whenever you're hitting p's t's and b's whenever you type it they're called plosives so i'm going to show you an example now because even the built-in pop filter isn't always enough for these these are very aggressive on viewers ears especially if they have earbuds in or anything like that they are awful to listen to and you do not want to subject your viewer to that so you can get a pop filter the thing is those big fly swatter ones pretty much block your face and look really awful and they need to be one to two inches away from your microphone which not most people do they usually just set them right on top of the microphone and it doesn't do a good enough job now the alternative that a lot of budget oriented things come up with is putting a sock or a pantyhose or a windscreen on top of your microphone because those are cheap or free those aren't actually pop filters those would act as windscreens which are great if you have wind or your fan on or something to keep the actual air that's blowing across your mic capsule from being creating this aggressive like just rumbling of your mic but they don't actually do a great job of diffusing plosives you can't get around that and you can get around that by pointing your microphone at your mouth at a certain angle like this so that when i say it's not going into the microphone capsule directly depends on your microphone type but that's generally the way to go but however the the usual alternative that people go to is to take okay well i can't do that so i'm gonna put my microphone way over here and just talk as loudly as possible and hope that it sounds really good it it doesn't now again this is a pricier dynamic microphone that's designed to cut out background noise but you take that blue yeti you put it all the way out the end of your desk next to your monitor in between your keyboard which when you're typing is going to be much more louder because that's the closest source of sound to your mind to your microphone or either next to your computer with giant loud fans and this is what i consider to be the lazy blue yeti user position which is all the way up against my monitor that doesn't help that makes it worse and a big thing that we're going to talk about here is just simply understanding the physics of audio which is not as complicated as it sounds sounds get it so don't clap to your viewers so one thing people fail to understand most of the time with regards to the microphone usage is you have to project into the microphone it took me a very long time to learn this and i had a blue snowball for a long time and i would talk real quiet like this and i'd just be like hey guys how's it going my name is eposvox i have my door shut but i still don't want my parents to hear me i talked before in a video you may or may not have seen i may or may not have been freaking posted at this point um it took me years of practice not really years but it took me a long time of practice and getting it right and you know spending time talking to a microphone listening to how i sound the effect that it has understanding the process of voice project into capsule record sound levels background noise things like that to really start projecting when i'm in recording or streaming mode because you need to send your voice over to your microphone in order for it to be clear you know obviously clipping and peeking aside up to a certain point the louder your source is and the closer it is to your microphone as long as your audio hardware handles the signal the higher quality it will be don't yell at it don't scream at it don't blow distort out your microphone but don't sit here and talk like this hey guys how's it going today we're doing some live stream tips do you know what's going on i don't know what's going on how's it going hey can you hear me chat chat hello chat why don't i have any chat chat alright two more points about physics the direction that your background sound is coming from the background it needs to be in the background as far in the background as you can think of it like a picture you have your foreground subject the thing that's in focus that should be your voice that should be as close to the microphone or lens in most cases unless you're doing landscape photography or something as possible it should be as close to the microphone as possible everything else should be as far away from the mic as possible anything that produces noise that you don't want to be picked up needs to be moved so those of you who like to have your pc sitting on your desk right next to your monitor i don't know why that's an absurd setup you're killing your audio quality i did that for a long time you move that pc to a floor put your desk in between your pc and your microphone and that does so much to help cancel out your fan noise also look up how to set a fan curve on your computer so that when you're doing this stuff it's not at 100 the full time unless it needs to be anyway set rugs on your floor use carpet have a couch hang curtains things that can help absorb sound reflections so that it's not just bouncing around your room if you have a door open close that you're sending out audio out into your hallway that's bouncing around and coming back if you have a window or there's other noise coming from the rest of your house or apartment or area that you're recording in coming back into your microphone same thing with windows have airplanes and motorcycles going outside with the windows open you can't get rid of that that just need you need to put the window in between there that's that's what it's for that's the whole physics thing now these last two points are with regards to combating that assuming you've already taken all of your physics 101 into account here or you're just stubborn and refused to do so keep in mind audio filtration especially real time live is not magic you can't just cut this stuff out that's not how it works but there are two different ways of filtering noise in real time here that you need to consider and most people pick the wrong one there is a noise gate and a noise suppressor and now in obs there's a downward expander which is just a smoother noise gate so for the purposes of this we'll talk about them as the same thing a noise gate is what it sounds like it is a gate that lets some sounds through and then closes when that sounds not coming through and so you set it up and configure it so that there's a threshold of when you're talking it opens up and lets the sound through because you are loud enough and you are talking to it but then when you are not making sound loud enough anymore when you are not talking anymore it shuts back so even if you have a background noise floor as long as it is not you know as loud as you are then it's going to cut back off now that's not going to cut out things out of your voice so if you have fan noise that's present when you talk that will sort of come back but assuming you have background music or game sound or something else happening it's gonna be a lot less noticeable to your viewer and then if you have something real loud on the background start happening happens to be as loud as you like a baby screaming or something you just can't just get rid of that it's gonna open the gate if it's as loud as you set in the threshold but then there's noise suppression which aims to actually filter that stuff out of your microphone however this usually goes poorly and again this is for recurring stuff that does show up when you are actively talking but this is what can cause that toilet bowl effect where audio sounds like it's just really distorted and running through a toilet or or a seashell or something because it's trying to filter out only the frequencies of your voice and it's not likely doing a good job personally i don't recommend doing that i just recommend having a bass background sound like i said be it a game or music and having the gate open and shut or expand and use the downward expander whenever you are talking that usually provides the best result also a super quick note here if you happen to be doing multiple steps of audio processing such as eq compressor noise gate things like that your noise filtration needs to go first the thing is if you use an eq that can affect the sound you know the sound frequencies of your background noise which can further confuse noise suppression into thinking that some of those frequencies are part of your voice and if you use a compressor what a compressor does is it makes the quieter noise louder and the louder noise is quieter and brings them to a more even level so you are literally taking that background noise level that noise floor and raising it closer to your to your microphone sound so you're actually making your background noise worse and making it harder to run a noise gate or noise suppressor on so that needs to happen first and then your compressor and eq and whatever you do order of operations in a signal chain in audio processing is very important lastly there's the discussion of sound foam versus sound blankets everyone jumps to get all these little sound foam tiles and put them everywhere and admittedly you can't really see them but i have a couple in some places they're really good they're really good at handling reflections when you have sound that's bouncing off of something and then bouncing to another corner you know sound is energy it you know it's it's something that projects it hits a wall and it bounces to the other wall and then to the other wall so sound foam on walls that have big open spaces and can absorb you know can reflect a lot of sound reflections that's very important sound foam can be much more useful in little corner scenarios you can't really see this here but i have a little corner nook where you know my voice is going to get projected into these little corner bits and reflect back a lot more than if there wasn't anything in the corner so i have sound from there sound blankets on the other hand are or you can hang curtains or things like that sound blankets help block sound so sound foam kind of diffuses the reflections because you know the foam is porous it's like a sponge so the sound goes into it and kind of softens out sound blankets outright prevent it from going any further so you can hang this over your doorway and just roll it up when you're not streaming to help filter out sound from the rest of your house or your windows or you can just build i i'll have a buddy from my buddy to have a buddy from my buddy i'll have a video from my buddy technical diy who built his own sound booth out of 20 bucks worth of pvc pipe and some moving blankets and basically built a little fort around his streaming setup drops the blankets down and no sound from the rest of it well very little sound from the rest of his house enters his recording area and then his voice isn't projecting out into the rest of his room and reverbing back pretty straightforward it's it's a kind of nice way to go so there you have it 5-ish tips to improve your audio quality because audio quality is really not that hard to master and somewhere in here i will have laden in samples from headset mics and cheaper microphones and things like that because they can all sound good you just have to know how to use them i'm eposvox here to make easier i'm eposvox here to make tech easier and more fun but speaking more difficult i'm actually losing my voice speaking of audio quality\n"