Question / Help Problem with Condenser Microphone

[Smoshi]

I have the AT2020 (had it for years, love it) but the problem is, it picks up my mechanical keyboard and even goes as far as to enhance the sound of the key strokes.

I have had success with using adobe audition + VAC to reduce the noise, but audition uses way too much resources. Are there any other alternatives? Or maybe there are other microphones out there that might do a better job at eliminating these background noises?

 

[Amenince]

Well, I use an MXL 770 condenser mic and was worrying about sounds that get picked up. Thing is, some sounds will be drowned out by game audio (kind of like when recording music how certain things aren't really heard because of other parts overpower things like instrument key presses or something). Try using the gate option in OBS or just do a little gain staging via your audio interface or DAW. If you don't have an input monitor on your AI then use adobe audition and watch the gain level. Talk loud or at the level you'll talk while streaming and at the distance you'll have your mic. Raise the gain of your mic until it clips (red indicator usually), then slowly lower it until it no longer clips. That's usually the best way to get the right level, the rest of the sounds in the background shouldn't be too bad. People don't mind unless it's extremely loud and obnoxious. Kind of a "deal with it" thing.

 

[Smoshi]

Well, it's a USB mic so there's very little I can control. So changing the gain is out of the question.
The only problem I have is my mechanical keyboard is too loud. I get complaints every stream.

Has anyone tried dampeners?

 

[mitcmack]

From what I know, all Condenser mic will pick up a lot of sound. What I do to remove keyboard and click was. Use Audition+VAC like you and put noise gate on. But mine only take 126,512k memory that is less then my google chome.
So maybe you have a setting make it take more memory?

 

[Amenince]

Well, it's a USB mic so there's very little I can control. So changing the gain is out of the question.
The only problem I have is my mechanical keyboard is too loud. I get complaints every stream.

Has anyone tried dampeners?

You should still be able to adjust the levels via the windows recording devices in the taskbar in the same manner I talked about. Like mitcmack stated, condensers are notorious for picking up a lot of sound whether it is wanted or not. OBS has a gate you can use, all you would do is preview it and do something like open notepad and start typing. Wherever the volume is peaking when you are typing, set the "close" threshold to just above it and set the "open" threshold to something about 6 dB above what you set for the "close" threshold. Enable it and apply, then it'll just gate for you while you stream. If you want to that is, can't really do too much about other noises other than dampers as you said, but I've never used them.

 

[Smoshi]

Windows 8.1 doesn't exactly have a way to adjust the levels in the taskbar. Damn I miss W7. Also, the reason I don't use the noise gate is because the keyboard is about the same as my speaking voice. So what happens, is my voice cuts in and out mid sentence.

Oh well, thanks anyway.