Audio is something that often gets overlooked. But it is supposed to be the first thing that you take care of when starting to stream.

For the best streaming sound quality, we're talking about the audio tips for OBS. When you just start out to configure OBS, there are fancy settings that can bewilder you. But leave most of them unchanged, and your life will be simpler. Under the audio settings, keep the sample rate and the channel to the default.

For the best streaming sound quality, a noise filter will be helpful. What you should fiddle with are just the microphone filters, and you’re not going to use all of them. But you have to place the necessary ones in order. It’s the rule of thumb that noise filters should go first. Otherwise, the compressor will just increase the quiet background sound when the filter is taking effect to make the sound level even.

The suppression is for everyone, which is aimed at filtering out the noise of your microphone and does not have much practical effect generally. Because it only tries to block some of the frequencies of your voice, either you will sound distorted or sound no different. So you can save some time and focus more on the noise gate.

Literally, a noise gate sets the gate to cut off the mic when you’re not talking, or the volume level is below a certain amount. It is rather effective when you get silent in a very loud environment. Instead of making trials and errors in building with a noise gate from OBS, we recommend a plugin from Reaper, which is more straightforward to get a noise profile. Just a few clicks to create a profile of your voice or room noise and suppress that sound from your microphone from there.

The compressor helps with those situations when you’ve got an exciting moment or scream in your game. What it actually does is automatically turn down the volume. Normalize all the different volumes to make the sound more constant and even. It is also more intuitive to use one from Reaper than the internal one of OBS.

The settings you applied depend on how loud your voice is, what microphone you’re using, and what use environment you’re in. Such a setting is unique and personal to you. There’s no set-in-stone best setting for you. What you’re going to need to do is play around with and get to something that sounds good to you.

The last filter available from OBS is gain boost or reduction. But it’s not always the more filters you add, the better. There's not the best streaming sound quality for everyone. But the above three are enough to up your streaming sound quality to another league. And some USB microphones are even equipped with an on-body dial, with such a quick adjustment feature, there is less need to configure in software.