How To Make A USB Mic Sound Like A $2000 Studio Microphone

all right find the difference between these two mics [Music] thanks they're the same microphone [Music] most of you uh probably have a microphone like this one it's a usb microphone this is the elgato wave one it's 129 which is actually one of the cheaper ones to come out this year uh but most of you want it to sound like well this guy which is a studio microphone i bought 10 years ago while i was studying music and recording in college and thought i was going to be a recording engineer so invested in a super nice microphone that i now use for my live stream the thing is there are ways you can make this sound similar to this on a live stream now let's be realistic here by the way that mic is about 20 times more than this mic taylor swift is not going to be recording an album on this microphone anytime soon when you're in a studio setting there's just so many more details that you need to capture however when you're sending information to twitch or to youtube that information is so heavily compressed that those high-end details don't mean as much anymore and with the proper tools like eq and compression you can make a microphone like this sound almost indistinguishable from this one so if you remember ryan from the last video we did on audio solutions ryan used to work professionally as an audio engineer in a professional recording studio before he joined me to work on stream beats at senpai records so i thought it would be interesting to see if i spoke into both microphones at the same time both the 129 microphone and the 2 000 microphone if he could hear the difference and if he could what could we do to this microphone to bring the quality up to par with this one for free so if you have yourself some kind of usb microphone and you've been looking to make it sound better here you go also important note by the way this video is sponsored by elgato thank you elgato for sending out some of these microphones if you've seen my streams you've heard me talk about it in non-sponsored stuff it is my favorite usb microphone there are a lot of great sounding usb microphones the quality has improved so much however what you're really missing from usb microphones is control generally you only have one maybe two knobs which is why my top recommendation has been the elgato wave it comes with the wavelink software which allows you to control all the inputs and outputs separately like your game audio your voice audio your team audio your music audio and you can control it with either your pc your stream deck or even your phone so for the sake of transparency we will be using an elgato wave mic throughout this video one because it is my favorite usb mic and two because they are sponsoring this video however important note these plugins we're using will apply to any usb microphone they are built into obs not into the mic so any of you can use this if you'd like to pick up an elgato wave either the wave 1 or the wave three use the link in the description below did you listen to him yeah am i gonna be able to tell the difference oh yeah okay kid listen to stream beats because it's the best non-copyright music for streamers and content creators listen to stream beats because it's the best non-copyright music for streamers and content creators do you know i think so grab the microphone with the top one yeah this is the top one yeah yeah this is the bottom one yeah honestly though i'm pretty impressed they're not usb likes aren't bad yeah i was expecting a much greater difference but uh the biggest difference is the eq yeah and i can i could hear the compression there's definitely a big definitely a big eq difference this polar pattern is probably tighter like it's picking up less of the surrounding stuff i can hear fan more fan noise in this one i think that's also probably due to the noise game being on this one all right but even when the noise gate is open i can hear more fan the fan noise in this i noticed that it doesn't pick up like almost any of it which is crazy yeah yeah it's i mean super sensitive mic but it doesn't hear any of the fans right next to me the the cardioid pattern is probably pretty tight on that yeah i'm guessing they have this be a like a a wider polar pattern just because people might be placing it further away i can hear a little bit of a difference in the like the high frequencies yeah the highs the highs on this are much smoother if that makes any sense the high frequencies like this one the high frequencies on this one are a little harsher a little more present i guess this is a very bright microphone i know that just from experience recording it but uh it's smoother it's not as abrasive on the high and the high frequencies so let's talk about how to make this one sound similar to this one i'm going to be using reaper plugins to make this mic sound as good as possible namely noise gate eq and compression so we just got to download them first free reaper obs plug-ins and there you go first one re-plugs a uh awesome abbreviation for reaper plug-ins let's say there's a scene in here that's named pokey i just saw it what is it oh no it probably is it's probably that background that you used oh it was because i was doing nvidia broadcast the best way i've found to really perfect my own audio settings is to record myself in obs and loop it as a media source so that way i can hear myself without talking and then i can adjust everything let me just do that real quick record something first i want to make sure that my voice is hitting at a good spot in obs they suggest having my speech land in the yellow so i'll do that it looks looks like we're in a good spot and i'll start recording it's true stream beats really is the best copyright free music to use on twitch and youtube it's totally safe it's beautiful it'll make all your dreams come true yeah so that woo wasn't just for the memes i wanted something loud in there because that will affect how we set our compressor now that we have something recorded um we have to make a media source click the plus sign add a media source and let's name this woo we want to find the file now it should be in obs recordings we can open that and below the file name you want to make sure you check loop after you've recorded your loop you want to make sure that your audio settings and obs are set so that you can hear the recording first thing to do to make sure that you're able to monitor your recorded audio is go to settings audio and down here in advanced you want to set your monitoring device and in my case it is headphones then you want to go down to the settings of your recording audio meter hit that little thing again go to advanced audio properties and then you want to turn your monitoring on now that we have our monitor settings correct you should be able to hear your recording looping this is where we get to use our reaper plugins now we're going to put the reaper plugins that we downloaded onto our audio loop let's go to the audio meter of the clip that's looping hit the settings button go to filters and in the audio video filters section you can hit the plus sign now as you can see obs already has a lot of audio plug-ins they don't have an eq plug-in though that's why we need the reaper plug-ins and since we're already using the reaper eq plug-in we might as well use the other plug-ins as well they're a little nicer and i'll go into more detail about why so to use a reaper plug-in you hit vst 2x and let's start with a noise gate so i'll name it that you want to select your plugin here and there is regate just all the abbreviations regate now open plug-in interface now you can see there's already visual feedback that's going on and that's one reason why these are a little nicer than obs plugins if you don't have all the audio ear training this visual feedback will help you get decent audio settings let me unmute this so open plugin interface okay now the question is can i do this while i'm listening to myself what a noise gate does is cut out all the background noise um below the threshold that you set you want to bring this fader here on the left you want to bring it up so that your voice is still above that fader and everything else background noise typing on a keyboard unless you really got hammer hands you want to keep all that stuff below the fader anything below the fader will get turned down so let's set this if you have the fader too high you'll hear it cutting out your voice and you don't want that to happen really is the best copyright music so it's kind of cutting out my voice there that means it's too high i'll bring it down just so all of my vocals are coming through clearly there's some other settings here for the most part if you don't understand what they are you probably don't have to worry about it now that we have our noise gate set let's add eq so go to the same spot vst2 plug-in let's name this eq select it here where is it requeue requeue oh yeah that's so good open plugin interface so this is the eq plugin down here on this side of the graph is low frequencies and up here are high frequencies you can see the numbers down below and i'll reference those a little bit the way you use this eq is by clicking the different nodes and moving them up or down there's a couple things i need to do to get it the way i want so right now i'm going to change this eq to a band shape basically just changes the amount of frequencies that it's affecting i'm also going to change this to a band um compared to the kiwi this is lacking some presence i'm going to bring up this frequency between 100 and 200. one tip i have is if you can't hear what the eq is doing boost the eq to the point where you can hear what it's doing and then you can adjust it to your taste for example if i turn this up a lot you start to hear the stuff that sounds like this so i want to take a little bit of that out i'm going to add a little bit of the 1 1k back in to give it a little more clarity i'm going to boost the stuff above 5k to make it feel a little more open it's true stream beats really is the best copyright free music to use on twitch and youtube it's true stream beats really is the best copyright free music to use on twitch and youtube so that's sounding pretty good to me it's so hard to think when i'm listening to myself keep in mind that every voice is different and will sound different on the same microphone what i eq'd here is a good starting point but make sure that you tweak it to make your voice sound the best on your microphone the third plugin we're going to use is compression vst2 compressor select it down here recomp open plug-in interface as i mentioned in other videos compressors turn down the loudest parts of your voice and turn up the quieter parts of your voice my goal with the compressor is to make sure that it's only really touching the loudest average volume that i'm speaking at that way it'll be really catching the super loud stuff and maybe not touching the super quiet stuff too much the goal here is to make the volume i'm speaking at more consistent the first thing i'm going to do is set the ratio this determines how much the compressor turns down your voice once it crosses that threshold you set this threshold fader here i want to set this at a spot that's kind of catching the the loudest average volume that i'm speaking at that way it's just barely controlling my average voice really turning down the super loud stuff and then maybe not even touching the very quietest stuff i want this to make my volume more consistent so once i set this at a certain spot where i'm crossing the threshold you can see this red fader over here turning down my vocal it tells me how many decibels it's turning down let me listen in stream beats really is the best copyright free music to use on twitch and youtube all right so i have it so my really loud woo is getting turned down by about negative 10 decibels when i'm talking normally you can see the meter turning my voice down maybe negative one negative two decibels sometimes up to negative five i wouldn't really go above that it starts to sound really compressed but again every voice is different so you can mess around with this to your taste attack and release no if you feel like the compressor is changing the sound of your voice too much i would look to see if your threshold is set too low or you can try increasing the attack a little bit this makes the compressor work a little slower and you might not hear it affect your voice as much if it's a little slower because the compressor is turning down the louder parts of our vocal we might need to turn it up with makeup gain after the compressor and you do that right here on this wet fader i might turn it up a little bit just to make sure that i'm hitting right in the middle of this yellow part of the meter so let's take a listen to how the voice is sounding now it's true stream beats really is the best copyright free music to use you know it's natural as you go through and tweak stuff for the sound to change a little bit um i might go back to the eq here and turn up my high frequencies a little more okay i gotta turn this loop off it's driving me nuts that's sounding pretty good to me again things might sound different on your phone things will sound different because your voice is different than mine you used a different microphone than i did so again make sure you listen record yourself and make sure it's sounding the way that you like it now that we have our audio filter set on our loop let's transfer these settings to our microphone right click on the audio meter of your loop hit copy filters right click on your microphone audio meter and hit paste filters now if we check the filters on your microphone they're all there we can open up the settings they're all there all right let's see if harris can hear the difference between this microphone and the kiwi but it's good to go yeah it's all good you may or may not have reordered them so i don't know which one's which yes okay i feel like there's gonna be a bias in this like if i can if i can tell the difference it ruins the purpose of the whole video so i'm gonna be like i can't hear the difference people love that so i just unmute them yeah they're looping okay it's the best copyright free music to use on twitch and youtube it's totally safe it's beautiful it'll make all your dreams come true it's true stream beats really is the best copyright free music to use on twitch and youtube it's totally safe it's totally safe it's beautiful it'll make all your okay i think the second one wait wait wait yeah i think the second one's the elgato yeah it is yeah okay you know how i could tell though by the way the quality is like they're both like it's not like one is better than the other yeah i just know i'm a little more aggressive with my eq and i cut out the mids more than you did i think if you cut out them it's more to make a match i don't think i would have been able to tell yeah they both sound great though that's pretty good yeah that's a really good sounding usb microphone yeah and by the way uh this video is sponsored by elgato however this what everything we did here can 100 be done on any usb microphone so sorry elgato i'm not sorry it is still sponsored by elgato and it is a great microphone but yeah any usb microphone will work fine just another reminder ryan streams music stuff every wednesday and and friday wednesday friday yeah cool yeah link to his channel below so if you have any audio questions microphone questions feel free to jump in there hit em up hope this was helpful this is a fun video this took a little longer than i expected but uh cool and as always happy streaming happy listening happy listening i hate that

Channel: Alpha Gaming

Views: 774,609

Rating: 4.9427729 out of 5

Keywords: Alpha Gaming, Stream Doctor, OBS, Tips, Streaming, Harris Heller, Alpha, Gaming, Live, Overlay, Design, Stream, Twitch, Doctor, How, To, How To, Help, Mixer, Youtube, Broadcast, Alerts, Streamlabs, youtuber, growth, stream, streamelements, harris, heller, money, monetize, income, full-time, full time, career, beginner, beginners, setup, widget, graphics, audio, review, mic, microphone, pc, usb, elgato, starting, new, Audio, Mic, Foam, Acoustic, Dynamic, Condenser, Compressor, Eq, elgato wave, wave 1, wave 3, hyperx, quadcast, blue, yeti

Id: ToHuInqVEHE

Length: 17min 9sec (1029 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 19 2020