Hardware

Prepping your space

• Close your window(s) and door(s)
• Turn off your air conditioners, noisy fans, or other white noise that will pick up on OBS
• You can acoustically treat your space, but this is probably overkill for the vast majority of use cases
• Try not to be too far away from your mic.
• A pop filter can help reduce plosive noise for listeners (puh, fuh, vuh, buh)

Miscellaneous equipment to capture clear audio

• Pop filter
• Microphone (I use an Shure SM57 or Sennheiser MD421II)
• Inline preamp (optional but can help boost clean signal of your mic w/o introducing noise, I use an sE Electronics DM1)
• Boom arm for mic (optional)
• XLR cable (required for my mics, optional depending on your setup)
• USB-Audio Interface (I use a Behringer UMC202HD, it's alright but I wish I had gone with a more spec'd out model)
• USB Cable (for USB audio interface connection to computer, some mics too)
• Headphones (I use Sennheiser ATH-M50x headphones with wired connection to USB Audio interface)
• 1/4 to 1/8 adapter for headphones into USB audio interface (optional depending on your setup)

Software

Global Settings button

• Click Settings
• Navigate to Audio pane
• Update Sample Rate to 44.1 kHz
• Press Apply or OK

Sources

Disable Global Audio Devices

• Click Settings button (if not already in Settings)
• Navigate to Audio pane
• Disable all sources in the Global Audio Devices section
• Press Apply or OK

Add input audio source to Sources section

• Click "+" symbol at bottom of Sources section
• Select "Audio Input Capture (PulseAudio)
• Select your USB-Audio interface from the Device drop-down
• Click OK
  • You can selectively use this source across scenes

Add output audio source to Sources section

• Click "+" symbol at bottom of Sources section
• Select "Audio Output Capture (PulseAudio)
• Select your USB-Audio interface from the Device drop-down
• Click OK
  • You can selectively use this source across scenes

(Optional) Group audio sources in the Sources section of main view

• Select your Audio Input Capture device by clicking it in the Sources section with your cursor
• While pressing down the shift key, select your Audio Output Capture device by clicking it in the Sources section with your cursor
• Right-click or CNTRL/CMD+Click the highlighted sources then select Add > Group to group the sources
• Name the group as desired, I usually pick something like "Audio Group"
  • Now you can add both Audio Sources in a single step using "+" > "Group" > "Audio Group" > OK

Filters

Audio Input Capture (PulseAudio)

• Select your Audio Input Capture source in the Sources section
• Click the "Filters" button
• Click the "+" symbol and select Noise Suppression
  • I use "RNNoise (good quality, more CPU usage)" method
• Click the "+" symbol and select Limiter
  • Leave defaults
• Click the "+" symbol and select Compressor
  • Leave defaults

Audio Output Capture (PulseAudio)

• Select your Audio Input Capture source in the Sources section
• Click the "Filters" button
• Click the "+" symbol and select Noise Suppression
  • I use "RNNoise (good quality, more CPU usage)" method
• Click the "+" symbol and select Limiter
  • Leave defaults
• Click the "+" symbol and select Compressor
  • Leave defaults
  • You can optionally set your Audio Input Capture source as "Sidechain/Ducking Source" to reduce Output source level when Input source is "speaking", especially useful in scenarios where a presenter is live-coding over backing music.

Audio Mixer settings

• Try to balance audio levels between Input and Output sources (will need to play around with levels)
• Generally speaking, your inputs should be in the green/orange zone. If a source is consistently in red (clipping), then reduce the Audio Mixer level for that source until it's back in the green-orange sweet spot.
• Use your USB Audio interface to control mic audio level (I generally set Input Audio Source level to -0.3 dB)

Convert Input Audio Capture source to Mono

• Click "three vertical dots" symbol next to Input Audio Capture source in Audio Mixer section
• Select Advanced Audio Properties
• Click the Mono checkbox in the Input Audio Capture row then close the window