You don't need crazy expensive equipment to sound like a pro on twitch at the end of the day it might help but really you just need to understand how to level your audio how to mix different audio sources and how to apply my three favorite filters to your microphone and lucky for you we’re covering all of that today and more let's go.
Hello there my name is Eljay from streamscheme.com i'm also a variety streamer over at twitch.tv/Eljayem_ there are links to both those in the description I’m live right now most likely and over on stream screen we have over 200 plus guides devoted to helping you become the best streamer, you can possibly be so check those things out understanding your audio is something that's crucial becoming a content creator on twitch and it's really interesting because it's also one of the biggest barriers that most people face a lot of people can't see or hear when their audio is bad and if they can know what's bad they don’t know how to fix it so before i got into online content creation and streaming i was actually the film industry for over seven years and audio was always something in the film industry that seemed to stump people there were people who specialized in it and anyone else really didn't understand it which i thought was odd because at the end of the day audio can be very basic to understand and get sounding good.
Today i'm going to take you from plugging in your microphone to literally getting it positioned in front of your face to getting it leveled and getting it all the way through to the final stages there are time codes in the description and in the top comments if you want to skip to a particular part go ahead otherwise let's just get into it!
How to Pick Up a Microphone For Streaming
So the first thing i want to stress to you is that today's tips are going to be for any microphone, that said you don't need to buy the ear cleaner throat guzzler 6000 it's just not important to spend five grand on a mic you can get this working with a usb microphone a headset whatever that said i do think it is important if you want to take content creation on twitch seriously that you look at investing a small amount into getting yourself a nice usb microphone.
For example i bought the at2020 plus recently when i upgraded because didn’t want to invest too much but i still wanted to have good quality sound using something like a webcam microphone or a headset, for example that’s designed for gaming or a laptop microphone is going to lead to lower results because at the end of the day those things aren't designed for content creation they're designed for quick zoom calls or just something on skype right so it’s never going to get you the same quality you can out of actually buying something designed for content creation.
In my seven mistakes small streamers make video which is uh linked at the cards and in the description i said that in the film industry we have a saying that is 60 of your film is audio when it comes to streaming on twitch or generally streaming at all a lot of the time it's actually a hundred percent because people put you on in the background or they play a game or they do something else so having good audio is absolutely crucial so the first step once you have your audio sounding good is to listen back and learn to diagnose the problem.
So what you're going to do is you're going to open obs or slobs and you’re going to turn on the monitor feature for your microphone and start speaking but what you're going to want to do is head to your mixer here, open advanced audio settings and you're going to want to turn on your microphone and set it to monitor only or if you‘re recording and you want to make sure the audio is going through like i am then monitor and output you'll be able to hear yourself in your own headphones and you can start getting an idea for how your audio sounds, how loud or how quiet it is.
How to Position Your Microphone Properly
Now what i want you to do is i want you to move around a bit, lean over lean this way lean that way get an idea for where your voice sounds best and make sure you're speaking at the mic properly.
The thing is the at2020 plus the one i have has a little blue light on it so i know where the front is but often with these condenser usb microphones the front can be a bit ambiguous and sometimes people will be talking into the back or the side of the microphone without even knowing it so make sure you move around your mic, listen to it talk to it and find where you sound the best or the loudest.
So once you can hear yourself all you have to do is just move your arm around and you'll get an idea for how the mic picks up audio,
As i said the at2020 has this little blue light which means it's the front and instantly you can already hear the difference in my voice, watch to see what I mean and you can do the same thing just moving your mic around to see what I mean? test.
So one of the first things i'm going to tell you in this entire video is that to get good audio sometimes you just need to have your mic in the right position even if your audio sounds best when your mic is here or something don't do that because obviously people want to see your face so find a good position where it sounds good and doesn't obstruct you.
You might be thinking okay but my game or my music is really loud, what do I do? Then don't worry I’m going to show you how to mix all of that at the end of the video, let's just get your mic set up first.
Okay so the next step is to level yourself on your desktop before leveling yourself in your broadcasting software, this is a step that so many people miss, now if you don't know what leveling is, leveling is changing the sensitivity of your microphone to affect how much it picks up aka changing how loud or quiet everything around the microphone is.
So as you can see I’ve gone into my settings here and i can manage my devices and device properties so what i'm going to do is i'm going to go device properties with my microphone selected make sure you don't have your webcam or any other sound devices on go to your device properties and you can see that you can start leveling it here, now you’re listening to me through slob so just watch what happens when i change my desktop? yeah it’s it can be pretty bad and you need to be very very careful.
Adjust Your Microphone in OBS/StreamLabs
So what you're going to do is you're going to find a good middle ground turn on test and you'll hear yourself and you can make it work, once you’re happy with that head into your broadcasting software such as streamlabs or obs and look at where your mic is sitting, now you want to be hitting the yellow area and not the red area, if you’re hitting green you might be a little bit too quiet so just do your best to hit that yellow mark once you're leveling your desktop you’re going to come into your broadcasting software and you’re going to start leveling yourself, now you can see i'm hitting yellow just fine when i yell or speak a bit louder it goes into red but we're going to fix that in a bit.
Right now just when I talk normally I'm in yellow which is good. I know it's important sometimes to er on the idea of being quieter but I just don’t like losing that kind of business. I don't exactly have the best voice so i do aim for the yellow and that’s fine.
While you're leveling you're probably going to hear some background noise like a fan or maybe some dogs or your keyboard clackering, don't worry we're going to have filters that'll fix all of that soon for now just get your voice sounding good and to a nice volume.
So before i show you guys those filters and how to mix your different audio sources i just want to show you guys this cool animated overlay pack, it's one of 13 different animated overlays coming out in the next two weeks they’re entirely free we've built them we're very very proud of them and they’re completely set up and good for you to go from the start when you get into it you're gonna get this little welcome here which teaches you how to install, it shows you where the fonts are, it takes you through just chatting, takes you through be right backstream ending, it even has little countdowns and the in-game is all set up with vertical support bars horizontal support bars and different webcam borders for you the entire packs animated, it is free all you need to do is subscribe to the youtube channels you know when it's coming out it should be out in the next two weeks though so get hyped i hope you guys enjoy it we’re super proud of these products and we can't wait to give them to you for free!
Setting Up Noise Suppression in OBS/StreamLabs
So filters, filters are something that I think you're going to want to use almost all the time, now the three main ones that I use all the time are noise suppression limiter and a noise gate, now they each do different things but all along the same lines.
So the first filter we're going to set up and the one that i think is most important is noise suppression, now if i have a fan going next to me or if i was lucky enough to have air conditioning in my office then this would be perfect because noise suppression is able to pick up that fan depending on your settings and remove it from your audio, now obviously it's going to strip a little bit from your voice so be careful not to push it too far but it does a pretty good job at the end of the day, sometimes it is better to simply just remove the audio source turn the fan off turn the ac off but if you're stuck with it and can't change it then this is a fantastic filter for solving that problem.
Okay so getting straight into filters, now you this is just my base microphone still i haven’t got any filters on it yet I’m about to turn on a fan that's right next to me which is where i have it during my stream not as loud as i would normally have my phone on as much as i actually have on in this particular one but i want to show you an extreme case, my pc is still running right next to me and i'm going to screen record the entire process.
First things first i want you to head into your settings here you need to turn on your monitor only I’m turning on monitor and output because i need you guys to still be able to hear my voice and i need to be able to hear it, okay so let's turn this fan on and hear, you'll be able to hear the difference pretty pretty extremely.
So what we're gonna do is you're gonna come into your microphone on this cog wheel filters uh and you've got my three filters i mentioned here first things first we’ll turn on noise suppression yeah, yeah you can still hear it a bit so you can lift it up more i have it on 10 because that's usually good enough because the fan's only on one normally and i've got it on three for the example well there you go that's pretty crazy.
Setting Up a Limiter
It’s important the next filter is a limiter, now a limiter does exactly what it says on the box, it limits how loud you can be, pretty simple, you set a max db or a max loudness and when you scream, laugh, joke or even just like pop into the mic it won't blow out your viewers eardrums.
Now i'm going to kind of level this in post because i want to blow your ears out but i don't have a leveler on right now and you can see i'm starting to hit red, now i'm going to yell again i'm going to level it in post just watch this red thing you see it goes all the way to the top, now i'm going to turn my limiter on you’ll see my limiter is there i'm still hitting red a bit uh i'll maxed out the gain and just watch, see that time it doesn't go higher than that even if i'm louder.
It’s super important, make sure you set it up and finally setting up the noise gate filter, now this just means that anything that isn’t certain loudness won't get transmitted through the microphone, so you might be thinking isn't this just like noise suppression no no it's not noise suppression strips things out entirely a noise gate just turns off your mic pretty much until a certain loudness is met and then it will quickly turn on so clackering on your keyboard won’t appear speaking will however when you start speaking the clackering on your keyboard the fan all that stuff will come through with your voice so i've just turned the fan off because i just want to show you the noise gate.
Now so let's just show you the clicking can you hear it i think you can so we're gonna turn on the noise gate i'm still clicking watch i don't know how i can show it to you it's just not gonna pick it up unless i speak while it's there so you might not be able to hear it it's pretty good you'll close an open threshold you just need to balance so that your voice can come in and your clicks won't.
I have found that for my microphone the settings work quite good your attack hold and release time come down to whether or not it's going to close that gate backup after you finish speaking instantly or a little bit after and the same thing whether it opens straight away to let your voice come through or if it gives it a second I’ve left these on default because they seem to work great but if you're having trouble where your voice is getting cut off at the start or the end you can play with these settings a bit after.
This is why i say to use all three of these things because if you imagine that your audio is simply just a gate or a dam letting water through a noise gate will hold it until enough is there it'll let your audio through a noise suppression is like a filter to catch the bad stuff and the limiter is in case too much is letting through and it stops it, that's a pretty good analogy i didn't write that in the script i just came up with that okay.
How to Mix Your Audio
So the final step and the most important one is mixing your microphone and your music and your game all together so it is a good viewing experience for your audience there are huge streamers who still get this confusing who still you can barely hear their audio from their game or even their voice because their game's too loud so we're gonna cover mixing now quickly.
This one's really tough because you can't just do the monitoring system i taught you at the start of this video because obviously when you start speaking into your microphone it's going to come through your desktop into your headphones which is going to count as another audio source and it's all going to get mixed up so i'd recommend getting a game up or a YouTube video or music whatever the other audio sources you're going to use in your streamer, turn them on get your mic going hit record you don't have to go live just hit record and start speaking start talking, try level it as best you can usually you want your game or your other stuff to be a little bit lower and then stop recording and listen back to it and make adjustments.
So how to mix your game audio, now i'm gonna have to go in here and i'm gonna have to turn off my monitor and my output otherwise it's gonna be impossible for me to mix these but you'll still be able to hear me and that's fine now first things first i need to have some background track so I’m going to chuck on some music now and i can see on my bars there it is playing pretty, well i'm a bit louder than it so i'm just going to drop myself down a little bit and you should still be able to hear me now look at the way my levels work here, you’ve got this fairly solid and then this is fairly solid.
Now if this doesn't look good in post I’m going to look real silly but essentially you want to be higher than its highest now mixing is always a bit of a tricky game so just try and keep yourself louder than where your music is, if it’s too low then no one's gonna be able to hear your music if it's too high then no one's gonna be able to hear you properly so it's a balancing act find a nice place for it and just work on it.
When it comes to mixing you need to be very much on top of it and pretty much just practice makes perfect every single different game every single song is going to have a different loudness to it a different db if someone’s firing a gun it's obviously going to be quite loud compared to say the sounds of farming sim so you have to pretty much be on top of your audio at all times and just be careful once you get an idea for monitoring it using the recording you'll you'll be pretty good at doing it live.
A big bonus tip for this is turn on subtitles where you can most games have them included these days and there's also a lot of really good extensions for twitch. I use one on my stream so if you want help with that check me out or i'll make a video on it soon.
So now with all those things you should be able to get your mic set up and sounding like pro, if you enjoyed this content if it helped you out at all please consider throwing a cheeky subscribe or a cheeky like on the video it's entirely free and it really helps us out.
If you have any questions comment them down below i answer within five minutes currently i haven't broken my streak even though we are getting way bigger so yeah that's all i'll see you next week thanks guys!
