---
title: 'Best OBS Audio Settings for Beginners in 2026 (No Plugins)'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=B4AMkcmrNpo'
video_id: 'B4AMkcmrNpo'
date: 2026-08-01
duration_sec: 804
---

# Best OBS Audio Settings for Beginners in 2026 (No Plugins)

> Source: [Best OBS Audio Settings for Beginners in 2026 (No Plugins)](https://youtube.com/watch?v=B4AMkcmrNpo)

## Summary

This video is a comprehensive beginner's guide to improving audio quality in OBS Studio without any plugins. It covers global audio device setup, microphone placement, a full chain of built-in filters, per-app audio capture, and advanced tricks like track separation and monitoring.

### Key Points

- **Audio is the most important aspect** [00:02] — Poor audio makes it almost impossible to retain viewers; this video covers OBS audio setup without plugins.
- **Configure global audio devices** [00:44] — In Settings > Audio, disable desktop audio if you want granular per-app control; select your microphone under Mic/Auxiliary Audio.
- **Global vs source audio** [01:51] — Global audio devices (like your mic) carry across all scenes, while source audio (like a capture card) only stays in the scene it was added to.
- **Set healthy audio levels** [02:34] — Game audio should sit between -25 and -20 dB and not stretch into the yellow; the microphone should consistently hit yellow without peaking.
- **Optimize microphone placement** [02:59] — Keep the mic 6 to 12 inches from your mouth and use a mic stand to avoid desk bumps and keep distance consistent.
- **Adjust gain to avoid peaking** [03:27] — Set the hardware gain knob on your mic so it doesn't max out during loud speech.
- **Improve room acoustics** [04:06] — Add soft objects like carpets, couches, and wall panels to reduce echo and reverb in hard-surface rooms.
- **Add noise suppression filter** [04:34] — Use RNNoise method: high quality, removes droning/fan sounds, and uses minimal CPU on modern PCs.
- **Configure noise gate** [05:03] — Mute the mic below a set dB; for the Tonor TC310, use close threshold -43 and open threshold -38 to avoid clipping.
- **Use three-band equalizer** [06:08] — Set high frequency to 2, mid as default, low frequency to 2 for a fuller, radio-like tone.
- **Tune compressor and limiter** [06:47] — Compressor: threshold -18 dB, ratio 3:1, output gain 4 dB. Limiter: -3 to -6 dB to prevent clipping.
- **Capture app-specific audio** [08:57] — Add Application Audio Capture sources for Spotify, Discord, etc., so you can control each app's volume independently.
- **Balance audio levels by source** [09:35] — Music should sit around -40 to -35 dB, gameplay above that, and your voice above everything else.
- **Use audio tracks for VOD separation** [10:16] — In Advanced Audio Properties, assign sources to specific tracks; use Twitch VOD track to exclude music from your VOD.
- **Monitor audio and fix sync delay** [11:43] — Set the capture card's audio monitoring to 'Monitor and Output' to hear it; use sync offset if audio is delayed.

## Transcript

how frustrating it can be not having good audio quality in your videos and live streams. After all, audio is probably the most important aspect when If that's not good, it can be close to impossible to retain viewers. That's why
covering everything OBS audio from adding sources correctly, improving the quality of cheap microphones, balancing your game audio, and much more, all without plugins. All right, so jumping into my OBS project, all I've set up
here is one scene with one source, that being the Elgato 4K S capture card, along with its audio that you see here in the mixer, which was added automatically when adding this video capture device source. The first thing
we want to take a look at here are our global audio settings. So, to get to right-hand side and select the settings button. That's going to pop up this window, where you can go to the audio tab, and this is where you're going to
find the global audio devices. Now, within this section, you're going to see two different types of audio, desktop audio and mic auxiliary audio. The desktop audio you may have enabled by default, but ideally, unless you just
plan on capturing whatever audio flows through your desktop or your speakers, I would recommend disabling this because you're going to see later in this video how you can set granular audio controls based on the application that you want
to pull audio from versus just pulling all of the audio that might be playing through the computer. As for the mic auxiliary audio device, this is where you can select your microphone. So, in this case, we're going to go with the
cheap microphone that I plugged in here, that being the Tonor TC310 USB mic. So, any additional microphones I'm planning on adding, so we will select apply and
okay, and then you'll see within the mixer here my microphone audio source added. Now, one key thing to understand here are the global audio devices versus your source audio devices. Since the microphone here that I added falls under
global audio devices, any additional scenes that I add and I eventually switch to, that microphone will follow in each of those scenes. Now, the Elgato in each of those scenes. Now, the Elgato 4K S audio that you see above that, that
is from a particular source within this scene. So, that will not carry to the other scenes that might be in my OBS project. Now, right now you can see the decibel level or the volume output set to the max for both of these audio
sources. And that's not how you would typically want to keep it. As a general with a gameplay and microphone audio source, the game audio should not stretch into the yellow area. And ideally, you'd want to test this out
while playing a game to see how loud it will truly get. But, you want to have that game audio coming in at the minus 25 to minus 20 decibel levels. And then looking at the microphone, first things first, you're going to want to have this
about 6 in to a foot away from your mouth. That way you can get the best sounding audio quality because if it's too far away, your mic audio is just not going to sound very good. I also highly recommend to get a microphone stand.
This is what I have my Elgato Wave: 3 on microphone up off the desk so that you don't hear those bumps and boops that accidentally. And you can much more easily control how far away the
microphone is from your mouth. The one I have here is from FIFINE and I will link it out. The next thing you're going to want to do with your microphone is physically adjust the gain knob so that you have it comfortably set and not
peaking on the microphone itself. And I have mine set pretty comfortably here. I don't want it to to max out like that. See, that's that's peaking like crazy. So, now I'm going to go into the software and reduce the gain just a
little bit until we are consistently hitting the yellow with this microphone. That's pretty good. Before we mess with any settings, take a look at the environment that your microphone is sitting in. Are you in a space with a
lot of hard surfaces like a hardwood floor? You can improve the audio by just changing what is around you in the room. Like add soft objects, add carpets, add couches. All of these types of things can reduce the echo and the overall
best effort with that, there's some great filters that you can add to make your microphone sound studio level even if it isn't. So, to do that, we're going to go to our microphone audio source in our mixer, right click, and then go to
filters. And this is where we're going to be able to add these OBS filters that are built right within the software. Let's click on the plus button and the first filter we are going to add is noise suppression. Select okay, and the
method we're going to use is RNNoise, which is good quality, more CPU usage, but if you have a, you know, relatively newer, modern PC, this really doesn't take up much resources at all, and it does a really good job at getting rid of
any remaining droning or fan sounds in your background. The next audio source we're going to add is the noise gate. Select that, select okay. The purpose of this filter is to mute your microphone audio if it drops below a certain
decibel level. This is great for when you stop talking, so background noises or droning sounds won't come through the microphone when you're not speaking. Now, the numbers that they give you here are a great starting point, but since
I've already tested this out with this cheaper microphone, I found that the cheaper microphone, I found that the best numbers for me are minus 43 for the close threshold, and then open threshold 38. And the reason why I pushed these
down is because at the higher points that were set by default, I experienced some clipping in the audio due to the fact that a louder volume of sound needed to come through in order to open up this gate. So, if you're experiencing
audio that doesn't sound quite right when you start talking or end talking, tweak these to be lower, but not low enough to where background noise starts coming through. The next filter you guys can add is the three-band equalizer. Go
ahead and select okay, and the purpose of this filter is to adjust the tone, shape, and character of your voice. So, if you want to get that more radio or high-quality podcasting sound, this is where you can make that magic happen.
to set this at is having the high frequency at about two. The mid frequency, I keep that as is, and then I put the low frequency also at around
two. You can feel free to play around with this, but I would recommend keeping the shape the way that I have it. The next filter we're going to want to add here is the compressor. The purpose of this filter is to reduce the microphone
the microphone to prevent it from peaking or clipping, but at the same time boost the audio if you are talking very quietly into the microphone so that it can still be heard. So, let's start here by looking at the threshold. This
is how much we want the audio to be reduced once it hits that maximum point. between minus 15 and minus 20 decibel levels. I liked minus 18, so we're just
going to keep that. Looking at the ratio is how much we want that audio to be minimized or compressed once it does hit this threshold. 10 is definitely too high. It should really be between three to four. I'm going to go with three here
for my ratio. The output gain down here boosts the level of the audio after the anywhere between three and six is pretty good. I'm going to go with about four. that as default. One more filter we want to add to the microphone, so let's
select the plus button, and this time we are going to add a limiter. Select okay. The way that this filter works is literally in its name, as it limits the level of audio that is allowed to be hit. So, whatever you set here, once it
hits that point, any audio that tries to go above it is going to be automatically three to minus six is a good range for this, and possibly a little bit more, depending on how you've set the gain of
your microphone up on the hardware itself. But for this microphone, I'm comfortable with it there. Let's go ahead and close this out, and I think now we got to hear a little compare and contrast test. This is a test of the
Tonor microphone without any filters applied whatsoever. Listen to the audio. How does it sound? Do you like the way it sounds naturally without any filters microphone sounds like with the filters that we just added in OBS applied to the
microphone. How do you like the quality? Does it sound better than what it which one you think is the best in the comment section below. Now up next, I'm specific application audio sources to your OBS project. That means Discord
chat, Spotify, your browser sources. So, to do that within one of your scenes, in the sources section, go ahead and select the plus button, and then here you're going to want to add an application audio capture source. Once you select
that, we can name it Spotify, for example. Select the window drop down and find the corresponding app that you're looking for. In my case, it's Spotify Premium, so I'm going to select that. Window match priority, you can keep the
same. Select okay. Now if I play some audio through that source, you're going to see that it is coming through. Now just like we did earlier in the video, audio out as well. You don't want to have your music blaring all over your
gameplay and your own voice. That's just not going to sound good. So, I put together a more detailed guideline for where you want your audio to fall under depending on the source type that it is. Your music, you want to put that on the
lowest end of the spectrum, somewhere around the -40 to -35 dB level at the maximum. Your gameplay audio should be able to be heard over the music. Discord gameplay, and then the sound coming from
your microphone, your own voice, should be heard over everything because you are the star of the show. Just as another reminder, make sure it's not peaking share with you guys a very handy audio trick that a lot of people aren't aware
if you go into your advanced audio properties, so you can just right-click anywhere within the mixture, select advanced audio properties, and you right-hand side where you see tracks. Under that heading, you're going to see
six different tracks across each of the audio sources within your OBS project. If you have an audio source selected under any of these track numbers, the audio will be recorded as a part of that track. Now, if I don't want the audio
say track number one, I don't want Spotify audio, then I can uncheck track number one across from this Spotify audio source, and then if I close this out and I go to my settings, and I go to
output, and let's just go to advanced real quick. Here within the stream settings, you can see the audio track that will be utilized for recording to the stream itself. Maybe for the stream, I'm okay with having the Spotify audio
in the track, but for my VOD, I want to have that to be cleaner. I don't want to case, we're going to check off Twitch VOD track, and that is going to be track it. This same approach can be applied to recordings as well. As you can see, we
can choose a specific audio track for that. It is very handy, to say the least, and keeps you out of copyright trouble. The next audio trick I have here for you guys is listening to your gameplay audio from the computer. Give
it a try to have your audio go over HDMI. That's how I have my audio coming through for my setup right now, and the beauty of this is that I can actually hear my gameplay audio here while being able to hear alerts, Discord chat,
Spotify, all the same time. So, to do that, we're going to go back to our advanced audio properties, and for the Elgato 4K S capture card that I have the game audio coming over HDMI on, I can set the audio monitoring to be monitored
and outputted. So, that way it's still being recorded as a part part of the stream or the video, but I also get to hear it at the same time with a pair of into the computer. If you're not hearing your audio, just make sure to
double-check your operating system-level audio settings to ensure your audio is being routed to the correct location. Additionally here, I have also seen where people's capture card audio is delayed coming into their computer, so
it's literally not synced up. So, back in your advanced audio properties, section. So, under that, this is where you can set, in milliseconds, so 1
second equals 1,000 milliseconds, you want to set how much the delay is. There you guys have it. Those are all of your basic need-to-know audio settings within OBS Studio to get your audio sounding better for your videos and live streams.
know in the comment section below. Like the video, subscribe if you're new if you're struggling to get your game and chat audio from the PlayStation 5 into your capture card into OBS Studio, this video help you out here. Thanks for
watching. I'll see you all in the next one. Peace.