Question / Help Microphone sounding bad - hopeless.

[z3rk]

Hello. I have a Steelseries Siberia V2 headset that sounds just fine while talking on skype or discord, you call it.

However, when I stream or record anything on OBS, my microphone sounds really bad. It's not the background noise, the volume just keeps going up and down, it's almost if I had some sort of voice detection, but I don't. Sometimes it would start sounding robotic.

I went as far as installing different programs, virtual audio cable, trying to improve something, but I had no luck.

I'm kinda feeling hopeless. I wonder if it could be something witrh my sound drivers, but then again, I downloaded the newest Realtek HD sound drivers from my MSI motherboard page.

Any help is appreciated, thanks.

EDIT: My microphone noise gate is disabled. I even went as far as enabling the noise gate and turning the settings down. Nothing has changed.

 

[FerretBomb]

Go into the Windows Recording Device settings. Make sure 'audio enhancements' are turned OFF. That's likely causing the volume fluctuation, as Windows by default tries to adapt mic audio for VoIP programs if it thinks one is in use.

Beyond that, Skype/Discord/Teamspeak use audio filtering and background noise reduction. OBS uses the raw microphone signal, assuming you'll be handing it clean production-ready audio. That's what your mic actually sounds like.

You can use basic Windows audio processing with the mic DSP plugin, which may help but your mic levels will go across the System meter instead of the mic meter (mute/volume adjustments will still apply on the mic channel though):
https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/microphone-dsp-plugin.21034/

The real solution is to get a better mic, move it closer to your mouth so you get a stronger signal, and turn down the gain to exclude ambient noise.