[Guide] Remove static from mic / mic voice activation

I have been doing some searching myself for this problem and found multiple solutions both on this forum and others. But the solutions didn't quite cut it for me. Audio lag or quality loss was usually the problem (or just my inability to get a local TS server running). I know there is some new plugin being worked on for OBS that would try to remove the white microphone noise and give voice activation, but the method I use is working very well, so I don't know if they can even top it. EDIT: There is no static or anything to hear unless you speak and even when you speak there is only your voice. It works great!

Method: use mumble and a free mumble server to capture your voice and send it with virtual audio cable to OBS

TimeConsuming: 1 hour tops, tho fiddling with the voice bars to get things sounding exactly the way you like it, can take longer.

Requirements:

Mumble. Mumble is an open source, low-latency, high quality voice chat software primarily intended for use while gaming. Its a program very like teamspeak/ventrillo/raidcall. There was another guide that used teamspeak for this problem on the OBS forum but I found mumble to be far superior on its audio quality, noise cancellation and customization. Download here: http://mumble.sourceforge.net/

Mumble Server (Murmur). Follow the instructions this guy give you to create a server you can connect to with mumble. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMh7IJhfEm8

Virtual Audio Cable (VAC). This is a program you have to pay for. Otherwise if you use the trial a perfectly annoying girl will scream "TRIAL" every 5 secs or so. This is a very simple program that will run a virtual cable to connect your voice from mumble to your OBS. Once installed your pc will boot it up automatically every time and you don't need to configure anything.

Howto: Once you got the programs and the server its time to get the settings right. Let's start with mumble.




Mumble will boot up with the audio wizard. You need to tweak and try out the settings for voice activation and noise supression yourself to figure out the best configuration for you. The only important part here is that you have your input device set to your normal microphone. As long as you got the right one selected you should see the audio bar jump up and down if you talk.




Two things you need to fill in here. Put the audio output device on the Line 1 (Virtual Audio Cable). This one will later go in OBS. Second is to put Loopback on Local, so your voice gets played back to you. You need to reconfigure Loopback>Local everytime you boot up mumble. For some reason mumble saves every setting but this.




Now simply boot up OBS, go to the settings, audio, microphone/auxiliary audio device and select Line 1 (Virtual Audio Cable). Just keep mumble running and you are good to go!

Great guide ! Ideal to get top notch audio quality. The voice activation feature in OBS improved quality a lot since viewers don't hear my very loud computer fan all the time.
But this guide seems to have what I needed to suppress the fan noise even when speaking :)
I'll try it out for sure !

O.o they already added the voice activation to OBS?

It's currently present in the test versions. But not yet in the latest release.

Free Shady Russian Mumble Server.

Click to expand...

You know you can easy make a local server with murmur? and dont use your bandwith with an external server

ah yes. Thought there were only paid servers, but now I see. Found a youtube vid that easily explains how to do it and I got it working. Ill be using this from now on. Thanks

And if you dont want to use Mumble, I made a Teamspeak guide a long time back. But both will probably soon be unnecessary.

viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2019

Question: is there a program that directly controls the sound from your microphone to delete the static/background noise?
What I'd like to find is a direct and overall answer (i guess this also works with skype anyway), like the option from Windows/Realtek "Noise suppression". That kinda works, but it's not good enough, even though the background noise is 100% removed, your own voice suffers quality loss, it sounds like if you were inside a cave or something like that. It's not so bad, but it could be better.

So, after reading that there's no quality loss and no background noise when using Mumble even when you talk, is there something that directly deals with your microphone like that? It'd be nice (and a better solution?) to avoid having to send your sound to a 3rd party and then it being sent to skype/obs/whatever.

ShoMek said:

Question: is there a program that directly controls the sound from your microphone to delete the static/background noise?
What I'd like to find is a direct and overall answer (i guess this also works with skype anyway), like the option from Windows/Realtek "Noise suppression". That kinda works, but it's not good enough, even though the background noise is 100% removed, your own voice suffers quality loss, it sounds like if you were inside a cave or something like that. It's not so bad, but it could be better.

So, after reading that there's no quality loss and no background noise when using Mumble even when you talk, is there something that directly deals with your microphone like that? It'd be nice (and a better solution?) to avoid having to send your sound to a 3rd party and then it being sent to skype/obs/whatever.

Click to expand...

bump?

https://obsproject.com/forum/resources/microphone-cleanup-with-adobe-audition-and-vac.7/

apparently audacity can do something like that as well, but dont ask me how to do that :D

I know this is a bit of an older post but I wanted to pop in and say thank you. Using this guide helped me out with excessive noise from a noisy room.

Also wanted to point out something I discovered while going over this guide. Simple put, the mumble server isn't needed for this to work. Because you set the loopback setting to local, the audio will automatically be picked up even when your not connected to a server. So while the Mumble server (murmur) takes up very little cpu usage it's still better to not have it running at all. :)

Hi i have some problems with this, i followed your steps and i get noise registration in mumble. But the "Line 1" in OBS dont give any sound. There is no registration in redording devices at Line 1 neither. What am i missing?

Its like the local loop dont activate. When i test my mic, and the voice talks, the delay setting part, that sound register in Line 1. ?

are you leaving the mumble program running in the background? It has to always run for the loopback to work. If you want I could do a quick how to video on how I use mumble and virtual audio cable to do it without a server.

Also forgot to mention, anytime you close and re-open mumble you will have to go back into the setting and re enable the local loopback

Mumble is on. send back to Local is on.. i have the Line 1 in speaker settings.Mic works etc. Yes would like a video.

Found anotherway. I used the Audio Repeater to send mic to Line 1. Then i can use Line 1 in OBS.

I have the same problem. And i can use Audio Repeater, but then i wont get the noise reduction from Mumble, as it is not playing through mumble but through VAC itself. Also BUMP

Hello,

How do you configure VAC? I have followed your guide but I'm trying to make skype have a clear voice, using mumbles filtering.

In VAC, i'm not sure what should be the audio repeater settings. Wave in to line 1 and wave out to line 1?

Never mind I used VB, http://vb-audio.pagesperso-orange.fr/Cable/

and don't have to pay for VAC. Good shit... Thanks!! singed up just for this good info.

Dude, thanks so much! i was able to find the correct settings for my really bad microphone, now it doesnt have that annoying static noise!! I'll make a tutorial for my kind of mic!