Question / Help Background noise with mic

A

Achilles

Member
I'm not sure exactly how to describe this, sometimes it will barely be noticeable but other times I can really detect it when reviewing past broadcasts.

Whenever I speak through my mic I can occasionally hear some white noise along with my voice, like I can hear my mic activating, and then de-activating. It's not loud but it is certainly there.

I'm only using the mic that comes with my Astro A40 headset so I don't know if it just a case of a cheap microphone or if there are ways to reduce it.

I found my mic to be pretty loud too in comparison to the in-game audio so I have turned my mic down on the main control panel from 100 to 85% (although not tested).
 
C

Cryonic

Member
First: try to do a clean recording offline with an audio software (try Audacity, its free) of your mic. If you hear a background noise, you found your problem and you have to work around it.
Do you use the noise gate? If yes, turn it off. I hate it so much. Make sure that your audio chain (not only the mic, but anything else) doesnt produce or pick up anything that you dont want. Then you will never use noise gate again (that stuff produces the activation/deactivation effect in OBS by muting the mic until the signal is strong enough to pass).
The Astro A40 is not cheap, but its also not good. Its an "OK" headset in terms of streaming, but if you find out that it is responsible for the background noise, there is nothing you can do. Live with it (and turn down the volume overall a bit, game & mic together) or replace it by a semi-professional mic (a lot of USB condenser mics are avaliable, even Razor jumped on the bandwagon).
 
A

Achilles

Member
How can you turn off the noise gate on the Astro mic? I've got Audacity so I'll give it a go and see how it sounds
 
C

Cryonic

Member
The noise gate is not on the headset, its in OBS, open settigns and you will see the Microphone Noise Gate there. Make sure to turn it off and test it (do a local recording for like 30sec, thats enough).
 
A

Achilles

Member
Noise gate is already disabled on OBS, looks like it it the built in noise-gate on the mix amp kicking it and causing the issue.

May look into getting a better mic then.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top