How to make the Quadcast sound better - HyperX Quadcast and Quadcast S sound settings and tweaks

Hello this is the Provoked Prawn and in this video  I'm talking to you about how to improve the sound   of your HyperX Quadcast or Quadcast S I'm going to  be showing you various different things that you   can do to improve the sound capture quality of  your Quadcast to make it sound a lot richer and   I'm using the microphone now to do the voiceover  for this video with some of the tweaks so I'm   going to show you what to do the first and most  important thing to do if you can do this is to get   it off its mic stand and onto a boom arm taking it  off the mic stand removes it away from any noises   that might include keyboard and mouse clicks and  other sounds on your desk that could otherwise   negatively impact the sound quality also getting  it on a boom on means that you can move it closer   to your mouth which then means that you can turn  the gain down which makes a drastic difference the   amount of background noise that it picks up and  also improves the overall quality you can see it   here with the Blue Compass boom arm which I've  done a video on separately on how to tighten it   and make sure it works with your Quadcast S so  check that out on the link in the description   but now I want to talk to you about the various  other things that you need to do so obviously   getting it on a boom arm is the first step of it  but you need to make sure it's close to your mouth   and facing the right direction and that's really  important point because this microphone is able   to capture from multiple different directions but  in an ideal world you want to be talking into the   front that's where the logo is so roughly here  where that RGB is obviously this has the bonus   that you also get to see the RGB a lot more  and show it off on stream if you're into that   and obviously on the s this is one of the nicest  things about it it's very fancy looking it's very   swish and it will give you a nice calming glow on  your face now one of the other things to do is to   make sure that it's in cardioid mode so you have  a polar pattern selector on the rear and you want   to select cardioid which looks like a bottom or an  upside down heart and that is seen here what that   does is it makes sure that it picks up the sound  from the front of the microphone and minimizes any   other sound from the surrounding areas next  thing to do is to go to the Microsoft store   on your windows PC and download HyperX's ingenuity  software this is a free bit of software that you   can get from the store and basically click and  download that and install it and then launch it   and the reason to do this is to check for firmware  updates so open the software up click on the   settings in the bottom left and check to make sure  that you have the latest firmware if you don't you   should see a prompt that'll let you know that you  need to download an update make sure you do that   because it will improve the quality and make  sure that everything's running as it should be   you can also go into the microphone sound  settings from here and adjust things like the mic   volume and mic monitoring so if you're plugging  a 3.5 mm headset into this mic which you really   should be because it will help you with monitoring  the sound then you can adjust the volume here and   get an idea of what the mic sounds like for  some of the other steps that I'm about to do   next thing to do is to go into the sound settings  by right clicking the speaker in the bottom right   of windows and then click down here to more sound  settings this is in windows 11 then go into the   recordings tab and find the Quadcast or Quadcast  S you can see it here go into the properties tab   and then click through into advanced when you're  in advanced make sure you select the default   format for the sample rate and bit depth of 16  bit 48 000 Hertz this will ensure that you have   really good capture quality also right click and  click set as a default device this will ensure   that the microphone is the only thing and the main  thing that's used for your microphone capture and   to ensure that the audio is coming through  there and you can see it's selected as the input   device here so you need to make sure all those  things are ticked once all that's done the next   step is to adjust the gain so as I said already  getting the gain down will ensure that you have   a better capture quality because it reduces the  amount of background noise that's being picked up   you don't want your sound being ruined by fans  on your PC cars passing by birds tweeting wind   blowing or whatever else this is done by simply  rolling the wheel at the bottom and you can see   which way you need to roll it essentially  the bigger the dots the louder the gain so   you need to roll it towards the small dots and  make sure that it's in that position easy way   to do this is to use OBS studio or Streamlabs OBS  you can see from the mic monitoring at the bottom   where that green bar is lighting up that shows  you just how much the microphone is picking up   when you're not talking so if you're quiet  in your room and just roll that gain slider   you'll see just how much it's picking up as each  adjustment is made so you can see now that it's   barely any sound going through to the microphone  at this point so I have it at a good level or it's   not going to be picking up any of that excessive  background noise and instead will sound good   when I'm using it next step is to go into the  OBS settings if you're planning on using OBS   make sure that the mic audio is selected as the  Quadcast S I'm assuming here that you're going   to be using it for streaming purposes also make  sure that your sample rate is set to 48 kilohertz   under that audio that makes the most of the mic's  capabilities head over to the output tab and go to   audio and find the audio bitrate drop down select  a higher audio bitrate than the standard one   and that will ensure again that you have a  better quality of sound out of your recordings   and streamings as well you will notice that there  are audio tracks for streaming and recording   this is a bit more detailed view there are other  videos from a lot more intelligent people than me   on all the different things you can do with that  another thing you can do is apply filters so if   you go down to the bottom of OBS and click  on the little cog icon next to your mic you   then get the option to apply filters and you can  see that there's a noise suppression filter here   so you have two different options in here it's  worth trying out both to see which one works   best for you and your environment one at a time  obviously but when you turn those on you'll notice   again that the mic volume has dropped right  down on the mixer at the bottom so you can   see immediately that's done a good job of  blocking out that noise using one of these   means that you can turn the gain up a little bit  if you need to if you found that the gains too   low in the original demonstration I made it does  however take away some of the quality so it's   preferable to reduce the gain if possible another  thing that you can do is to use NVIDIA's broadcast   so if you have an NVIDIA graphics card head  over to google and search for NVIDIA broadcast   download this free software and run through  the steps for installing it NVIDIA broadcast   essentially uses AI to reduce the background noise  and it's really intelligent software that means   that you can minimize the amount of background  noise once that's installed it will launch and   you basically just need to select your microphone  from the software so there's a few different steps   here essentially go into the microphone tab and  we find the Quadcast or Quadcast S again you can   see it listed as one of the microphones here you  can also see the effect of noise removal and the   strength that's being applied and you can test  it in there now go back into the windows sound   settings and you need to change things a little  bit because instead of having the mic set to the   Quadcast in windows sound settings we now just  need to say it to NVIDIA broadcast so what you're   doing is you're basically sending your mic through  the NVIDIA broadcast software and then telling   windows that's the main one that you're going to  be using for the sound settings you also need to   select a speaker setup so we're going to choose  Astro 50 because that's the headset I'm using   make sure that's selected in windows sound  settings and in NVIDIA broadcast this ensures   the sound comes through your headset correctly  as it should do when you're playing games and   doing other things like streaming so this  little bit of software obviously will put a   bit of extra pressure on your graphics card and it  doesn't work with all GPUs so you need NVIDIA one   and the more recent the better but it does help to  reduce a lot of the background noise and minimize   problems that you might have so if you found that  turning the game down isn't working for you and   the other things I've suggested this is another  option you also have the option to use this   through OBS as well so it will eliminate some  of that noise and it means that you can improve   the quality of your stream and the sound of  your voice when you're doing it so different   steps go back into the sound settings find  the mic drop down and select microphone in   video broadcast instead of the Quadcast and that  will then mean that it was then passing through   and you can check to see whether that's showing up  and how much background noise is being picked up   and you can see when it's running through  broadcast that it isn't actually picking up   any background noise and you can turn the gain up  in this way so then you have a better setup there   so there's quite a few different steps now  I want to show you what I would do if I'm   recording voiceovers so if you're not doing a live  recording and you want to do a voiceover instead   I like to use Audacity and I'll show you why in a  second but what we need to do is basically select   the microphone from the drop down also make  sure that your project sample rate is at 48   000 Hertz so that matches the microphone quality  and ensures that you've got the best quality there   now without talking any sound just press record  and you'll then start to talk a bit later on the   reason for this I'll show you in a second but  essentially you want to see how things work   in there now select all control a and then select  to normalize from the effects tab you'll then see   that all the levels have been pushed up including  this area at the beginning where I wasn't talking   this is background noise and it's a horrid noise  that you want to get rid of so select that part   and select noise reduction get noise profile then  ctrl I to select everything again and then apply   this noise reduction you can see that then wipes  out that background noise from the recording and   ensures that you have good sound there you  can then go in and export and I'd recommend   exporting as a wav file because that allows you  to have a better quality and I use the 32 bit pcm   signed as well so you can then export your file  there this is obviously a different use case but   if you're doing voiceovers for YouTube videos or  other things and you aren't doing live capture and   this is a good way to reduce background noise and  also to make sure the mic sounds great for those   as well so hopefully you found this video useful  smash that subscribe button to say thanks let me   know in the comments if you've got any questions  check out the description for more information   links that you might find useful this has been  the Provoked Prawn thanks for watching this has   been the Provoked Prawn hope you found this video  useful interesting hilarious or otherwise take a   look at these other videos I think you might  find interesting as well and have a look at   the description for links and other information  you might find useful click that join button to   see the benefits of being a member of my YouTube  channel and most importantly have a great life

Channel: The Provoked Prawn

Views: 555,510

Keywords: Provoked Prawn, The Provoked Prawn, hyperx quacast, hyperx quadcast, hyperx microphone, quadcast how to, how to quadcast, hyperx quadcast setup, hyperx quadcast best settings, hyperx quadcast best settings for streaming, hyperx quadcast settings obs

Id: _w86PMeFSz4

Length: 11min 13sec (673 seconds)

Published: Thu May 19 2022