Hi, I'm Stryxnine. I'm an esports broadcast producer and audio producer. In this chost I'll be explaining the key ways to immediately improve the audio on your livestreams.
Why should I care?
Glad you asked! The biggest reason is because advertisements are fucking loud. Unfortunately, with advertisers constantly in a loudness war with each other, we have to care about our audio levels so when ads pop up for our viewers they don't scare the everloving piss out of them with the immediate difference in volume. Beyond that, we wanna make sure we can be heard over the game and the music playing in the background.
Ok, so how do I do it?
It's pretty easy, but it's also a bit of a process!
I abstained from talking about EQ's in the above post because it requires a lot more tinkering and a bit of a trained ear. A good EQ will change based on your microphone, your recording environment and even appliances like oscillating fans or A/C units nearby. This guide to EQ's won't be tackling those specifics, but instead tackling the most common problem with un-equalized microphone inputs - The Woofer Thump.
A Woofer Thump most commonly happens when you speak a plosive into the microphone without adequate pop filtering, voice training and/or distance to the microphone. A plosive is a loud rush of air your mouth creates when you make sounds, like the P in Peel or the T and TH in Teeth. The rush of air caused by your mouth will cause low frequency thumps that might not be heard in your headphones, but can definitely be felt by anyone watching your stream with a good computer speaker setup. There is a very quick EQ trick you can use to keep your voice from sounding like a kick drum, though!
The trickiest part of this process is installing a VST so you can use it in OBS. I personally use ReaPlugs VST FX Suite for my EQ needs since it's really lightweight, and it's a graphic EQ so you can see the audio waveform as you adjust it.
There are A LOT of places OBS looks for VST plugins. Use this guide to make sure you're putting the ReaPlugs VSTs in the correct folder.
Once installed, we can open OBS and open the Filters menu for our microphone input, like we did in the original post I made. Then click the Plus button, and select "VST 2.x Plugin" to be presented with a simple dropdown menu.
Open the dropdown menu and select "reaeq-standalone," then click Open Plug-in Interface.
Now all we have to do is select the #1 Node on the graphic EQ, change the Type in the dropdown menu to High Pass, and drag the Frequency slider to about 90Hz and change your frequency to 1.7oct. Then use the arrows at the bottom of the Filter menu to move the VST plugin so that it's immediately after your Noise Gate filter and before your Compressor filter.
And there you go! No more woofer thump! Plus, you can tweak the tone of your microphone's audio using this EQ plugin to improve audio quality even if you have a less-than-optimal microphone. Don't be afraid to mess around with the EQ, record a little bit of your voice (try "The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over A Lazy Dog" for a good plosive and general voice test) and repeat so you can learn what the EQ is doing at certain frequencies via experimentation. That's ultimately how I learned to use an equalizer, just trial and error! But if you wanna keep it simple, just this small adjustment to the #1 Node is going to keep your viewers from sounding like they're thumping a kick drum through the walls.
If you'd like me to fine-tune your EQ to make your microphone audio sound good, you can DM me at HOOTwheelz#0666 and I'll use my ears to set you up with a good EQ profile! And if you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave a comment on this chost. <3
