Why I won’t spend a fortune on a gaming microphone
I admit, I’ve been guilty of buying gaming microphones that are painfully out of my budget, if only to not sound totally amateur in my team chats. But that was before I discovered filters in OBS Studio. The truth is you don’t need to spend a fortune on your gaming microphone. In fact, even a sub-$50 mic can sound amazing with a few simple filters.
An obvious question is: Why don’t I just use my microphone’s companion app which has been optimized especially for it? For me, there’s a simple reason for this and that is, OBS standardizes the settings and eliminates any annoying quirks specific to a particular microphone that I don’t know about.
In OBS I can apply the same filters and settings to just about any mic, and it will sound terrific. Plus, any changes I make also work in Discord, Zoom, and my game chats. But don’t just take my word for it; if you’ve got a gaming mic, let’s get it sounding great…
The steps to broadcast quality
For the sake of this “how to,” I’ve applied OBS filters to a $120 HyperX Quadcast S, which was the only microphone I had on hand at the time of writing.
Admittedly, the Quadcast S is a grade above many cheaper mics. Still, without applying the OBS filters to it, it’s not going to sound broadcast quality for my voice. In the past I’ve applied the same filters to the $49.99 Razer Seiren Mini and had a similarly good result. The point is, this process will work perfectly fine for just about any mic you want to use it on — so don’t spend a lot; you can go cheap!
Step 1: Adjust the gain
In Windows 11, I right-click on my audio icon, then chose Sound Settings > More Sound Settings > Recording. Then, I double-click on Microphone and select Levels. I then adjust the gain level until the sound is registering in the yellow part of OBS’s sound meter. The level is going to be different for each microphone, so for best results do this step in real time until you get the desired result. You may also need to adjust the volume level on your microphone too.
Tip: If you set your gain to 100 percent in Windows and still aren’t recording in the yellow, open your filter menu in OBS, right-click, and add a Gain filter.