OBS Compressor & Limiter EXPLAINED!

welcome back everybody today's video we're going to be talking about compressors and limiters finally i know it's been a minute i'm going to show you guys what they do how they can improve your microphone's audio quality and how to actually set them up properly so let's get started so let's get started with compressors a compressor is designed to reduce the dynamic range of an incoming audio signal so it's going to take loud sounds and turn them down a little bit and it's going to take low sounds and kind of turn them up a little bit and normalize the incoming audio signal of a microphone or an audio source this is very helpful for when you may move around a lot or you get really loud on the mic or you just want a more punchy sound coming from your microphone it gives it a little more of a podcast or broadcast quality so before we get into the settings and how to actually get this thing set up on your microphone i want to show you guys what it sounds like with the compressor off versus the compressor on let's go over here and pull up obs and we're going to oh my stomach's rumbling let's open up the microphone properties and our filters rather and go to compressor i'm going to go ahead and turn this off and i want to show you what this is going to sound like with the compressor off so now here's the compressor off i'm going to get a little bit closer i'm going to come back further you're going to hear a huge um volume difference as i move around as i get close to the mic as i pass by it most streamers aren't you know sitting here doing this but if they do adjust position and they're over here or they're back over here you're going to hear a huge you know huge difference in the in the volume level so let's let's engage our compressor now you're going to hear my voice is much fuller uh it's much more punchy and now my volume levels are very stable they stay the same all over the place and that's kind of what i want i want to be able to have some freedom to be able to move around so let's get into the settings here these are the settings that i use there's a couple of settings here that are going to be different for everybody because your microphone gain is different depending on the mic setup and your voice is going to be naturally and tonally different than mine too so the first setting we're going to get into is the ratio now the ratio we're gonna set and lock it at four to one that's kind of a recording and broadcast industry standard it's used in a lot of studios i highly recommend sticking with a four to one compression ratio the next is our threshold this is one of those that's going to be variable so depending on your mic and your voice and your room this threshold is going to be a little bit different for everybody so the way we're going to set up the threshold is with a little trick what you're going to want to do is close out of this and pull up your advanced audio properties you want to go to your microphone and turn on monitoring so that we can hear ourselves inside the headphones i'm going to leave mine off because it starts to echo it with the recording but with this you'll be able to hear yourself coming through the mic passing through the obs filters and processing and we want to open up our filters again go back to our compressor and start with our threshold slider at 0 db so you want to start by just speaking into your microphone normally and start this at 0 db and as you're talking into the mic slowly slide it to the left and the very second that you hear the volume level of your voice decrease let it go once we're to that point and you hear your volume decrease just a hair add another 5 to 10 db to your threshold so here i'm at minus 35 i'm gonna go that's how i ended up at 40 and now that's that's kind of the setting i use i'll flip back and forth between minus 40 minus 45 minus 50 sometimes just play with it once you once you find that little sweet spot for your microphone move it around a little bit and and you'll notice you'll notice a little bit of difference so the attack and the release the attack we're going to leave at 6 milliseconds the release we're also going to leave at 60 milliseconds they're perfectly fine where they're at the attack is how fast the compressor engages and the release is how fast it releases there you go output gain so let's talk about output gain a little bit when you engage the compressor the compressor is actually taking your higher volume levels and squishing them down a little bit so overall you're going to be a little bit quieter the output gain is going to take your compressed audio signal and just make it a little bit louder we need to bring it back up to where it's at and what i recommend doing is bringing it up until as you can see on my mic here until it's right in about the middle of the yellow portion of your meter which is right at -15 db now it's okay to go into the red don't be afraid of the red a lot of people are afraid of the red they're afraid of the yellow it's okay but clipping does not begin to occur until after 0 db until after the top of the meter here so it's okay to go into the red it's okay to go into the yellow don't be afraid of those zones but be wary that even with a compressor you still can clip we can exceed that 0db mark with very loud sounds and this kind of leads us into the next filter which is a limiter which let me tell you guys limiters are the most underutilized and most effective thing that a streamer can do to their microphone what a limiter does is it applies a hard volume ceiling to your signal so it will not allow it to pass a certain point no matter what it won't allow it to clip so my limiter i like to set at -12 db that way i'm still in the middle of the yellow zone the yellow zone but i i won't ever enter the red you know the red begins at -10 and higher if you like to play scary games like we do we scream a lot like a lot and i don't want to blow out my listeners ear drums we used to do it by setting this to 12 it allows us to be as loud as we want here and not have to worry about blowing out anyone's eardrums so that kind of concludes a video on compressors and limiters i hope this was helpful to you guys and i let me know in the comments below you know play around with some of these settings and and tell me if you like them tell me if you prefer to not have them uh if there's something else you guys like to see me cover as far as audio is concerned or obs let me know in the comments if you like this video smash that like button if you don't like it definitely smash dislike and let me know what i can do to improve i'm all about open constructive criticism is only our second video and we're just getting started so let me know what you guys would like to see in the future and come hang out with us on twitch we're at uh twitch.tv r station my wife and i are duo streamers we like to play scary stuff mmos retro games all kinds of fun stuff hope you guys enjoyed this video until next time we'll see you take care all right i'm stuck i'm running away from him but i think something is up down here i don't want to die [Music] ramen you freaked me out

Channel: rStation

Views: 18,318

Keywords: obs, compressor, microphone, filter, quality, limiter, levels, audio, sound, podcast, broadcast, dynamic

Id: OPkz70LRiKU

Length: 7min 26sec (446 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 08 2020