Stream Audio That Does Not Sound Terrible
Mic placement, gain staging, separating game and voice channels, and the noise suppression settings that make you sound worse.
The short answer
Stream audio quality depends far more on microphone placement and gain staging than on which microphone you own, and a modestly priced microphone positioned correctly outperforms an expensive one placed badly. Separating game, voice and music into distinct audio channels prevents copyright issues and gives viewers a usable balance. Aggressive noise suppression damages voice quality more than the background noise it removes.
Verified and last updated August 12, 2026.
- Time needed
- 16 min
- Difficulty
- Intermediate
- Read time
- 4 min
The most common streaming audio problem is not the microphone. It is that the microphone is too far away and the gain is turned up to compensate, which amplifies the room, the fans and the keyboard along with the voice.
Distance is the whole game. Everything else is refinement.
Closer microphone, lower gain
Within a hand's width of your mouth, gain low enough that normal speech peaks well below the maximum. This one change improves most streams more than any plugin.
Placement
The specifics:
- Distance: roughly six inches, closer for quiet speakers
- Angle: slightly off-axis, pointing at the corner of your mouth rather than straight at it, which reduces plosives without a pop filter doing all the work
- Height: below or above the mouth line, not directly in front, for the same reason
- Isolation: on a boom arm rather than a desk stand, so keyboard and desk vibration do not travel up the stand
A boom arm is the single best inexpensive purchase in a streaming audio chain, ahead of upgrading the microphone.
Gain staging
Order matters. Gate before compressor, compressor before limiter. Putting the compressor first means it amplifies the noise floor and the gate then has a harder job.
The most common mistake in this chain is a noise gate set too aggressively, which cuts the start of quiet words. If your speech sounds clipped at the beginning of sentences, lower the gate threshold.
Noise suppression, carefully
Suppression works by removing frequency content that resembles noise. Your voice occupies those frequencies too.
Light suppression: removes hiss, leaves the voice largely intact.
Heavy suppression: removes the fan, and also the body of your voice, producing the underwater quality common on streams that over-process.
Fix noise physically where you can:
- Move the microphone closer, which improves the ratio of voice to noise at source
- Use a directional pattern, cardioid rather than omnidirectional
- Move noisy hardware away from the microphone
- Soft furnishings in the room, which cost nothing and reduce reflections
Then apply light suppression at the end if you still need it.
Separate your audio channels
Set up distinct tracks for:
- Microphone
- Game audio
- Desktop and voice chat
- Music, separately, always
- Alerts, separately, because they are always too loud
Reasons this matters: viewers get a sensible balance, you can adjust one without the other, and a copyright claim affects only the track containing the music rather than the whole recording. Repurposing clips later becomes possible rather than a compromise.
Alerts deserve the specific mention. They are set at a default level tuned for nobody and are consistently the loudest thing on a new stream. Set them well below your voice and test with headphones off.
Check what viewers hear
Record two minutes, watch it back on a phone speaker.
Phone speakers are what a large share of your audience uses, and they reveal balance problems that headphones hide entirely. Voice buried under game audio is the most common finding, and it is invisible on studio headphones.
What works
What doesn't
Key takeaways
For the encoder side of the setup, the OBS settings guide covers bitrate and encoding.
Frequently asked questions
Does an expensive microphone make a big difference?
Less than placement does. A modestly priced microphone six inches from your mouth sounds better than an expensive one two feet away on a desk, because distance introduces room reflections that no processing removes cleanly. Get placement right first, then consider upgrading. Most people do this in the wrong order and are disappointed.
Why do I sound quiet and distant?
Almost always because the microphone is too far away and the gain has been raised to compensate, which amplifies the room along with your voice. The fix is physical: move the microphone closer, ideally within a hand's width, and reduce the gain. This single change improves most streams more than any software processing.
Should I use noise suppression?
Lightly if at all. Aggressive noise suppression removes background noise by removing frequency content, and your voice occupies the same frequencies, so it takes the character of your voice with it. Fix noise physically where possible: closer microphone, quieter fans, a directional pattern. Use suppression as a light final touch rather than a primary tool.
Why should game and voice be separate audio tracks?
So that viewers hear a sensible balance, so you can adjust one without the other, and so a music strike affects only the track containing music rather than the whole recording. Separating tracks costs nothing in setup and makes the recording far more useful afterwards, particularly if you repurpose clips.
About the author
Competitive & Settings Editor
Dan played CS:GO semi-professionally in a regional ESEA Main roster between 2017 and 2020, and has hit Radiant in VALORANT in three separate acts. He now spends most of his competitive energy on the unglamorous side of the game: input latency, sensitivity consistency and warm-up routines that actually transfer.
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