Noise suppression

[Mazeka]

HI,
I plan on using OBS for piano teaching, I use a Yamaha technology called Disklavier, basically, the two piano connect to each other via net work anywhere in the world, so when I play on my piano, the keys and pedals move on the other piano, and visa versa.

For video, I will be using OBS camera into zoom

Now the question is for Audio:
I Have Shure Move Mic 2 kit, which OBS see's as an audio source
the question:
Often, I play and speak at the same time for teaching, I don't want the piano acoustic sound to be picked top by the Movemic 2, I only want my specking voice to be picked up.

Basically I am looking for a away to make sure only my lav mic picks up my voice and not the piano, something like sound isolation.

Is there a plugin or a way ?

Thank you kindly

 

[AaronD]

OBS does have a Noise Suppression filter, and this is one of the few times it's actually useful!

Seems like most people who ask why it doesn't work or why their audio is bad in general, have just slapped it on because someone said so or because they think it'll only take away that their brains identify as noise...when it's actually designed to take away *everything that is not speech*. So when it wrecks their music or repetitive sound effects, it's doing exactly what it's supposed to! But in your case, that *is* what you want, right? Only your voice gets through?

Keep in mind though, that it's not magic. Fundamentally, you can't unmix. Once sounds are mixed, whether electronically or in the air, they can't be separated again. What a noise suppressor actually does, is guess at what's speech and what's everything else, and subtract its guess of everything else from the total input. Not everything is easy to guess, and so it doesn't do as well in those situations. But if it works for you, great!

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I would also recommend switching to a headset mic instead of a lapel. Get it as close to your mouth as you can without blowing on it. Ignoring differences in overall sensitivity between different mic capsules, the closer you can get it to the source, the louder that source is going to be for it, and the more you can turn it down (*) to get the same volume in the rest of your audio chain. Meanwhile, the other sources that you don't want, didn't change their distance hardly at all, so they're still the same volume. So the same reduction in electronic volume to account for the intended source being louder, effectively turns everything else down, before any special processing at all. That makes EVERYTHING easier!

(*) Right up front, like on a beltpack that it plugs into, or on a wireless receiver, or if you don't have either of those, your operating system's mic volume. OBS's source volume is *after* all the processing, which is good to create a final mix of several sources, but not to set the operating level that the processing wants to see.

That said though, it's not uncommon for lapel capsules to be more sensitive than headset capsules, so the difference may already be accounted for without you having to tweak anything. Just plug something else into the same socket and see how it works.
But do be ready to tweak something in case it does need some. The difference is an educated guess, and there's some variance anyway.

 

[Mazeka]

Thank you

 

[AaronD]

I've never had a noise suppressor sound "robotic" to me. It's more like compression artifacts. Different mechanism, similar result. Different algorithms might sound different though, so I wouldn't completely rule it out.

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Noise gates are not magic either. Like physics requires, they don't unmix. They either cut everything, including what you want, if nothing is loud enough, or they let everything through unchanged, including noise, if something *is* loud enough. That something doesn't even have to be what you want: anything will do.

Before I understood what I do now, I tried to use some on the vocal mics of a live PA for feedback prevention when the band wasn't playing and so the compressors relaxed and increased the total system gain above the threshold to do that. I had carefully tweaked the settings so the gates would close before the feedback got started but without noticeably cutting off the end of a song...and then the drummer dropped a stick. That was enough to open a gate, the feedback got established before it closed again, and the feedback held the gate open. Fortunately, I was still at the board to stop it.

So a gate is not nearly as useful as I've seen people think they are. They're not reliable to prevent feedback as in my story, and they won't take a screaming guitar amp out of a flute or violin mic as I've seen others ask about. But for low-level background noise that's not really noticeable when the intended sound is present, like a projecting voice in a mostly quiet studio, or the background buzz from a guitar amp, it can still help with the right threshold(s) and timing: when and how fast to fade in (attack) and back out (release).