Which OBS mic filters should you use, and in what order?

Twenty minutes into a stream, chat starts typing the same thing in different words: "you keep cutting out", "the ends of your sentences vanish", "why do you sound like a phone call". The OBS mixer looks healthy. The mic meter jumps when you talk. You copied five filters from a popular tutorial, and each one is doing its job. They are just doing it in the wrong order.

OBS runs audio filters from the top of the list to the bottom. Each filter hears only what the one above it handed down. A compressor placed above a noise gate squeezes the gap between your voice and the room, and the gate below it can no longer tell them apart, so it chops the quiet consonants at the end of every word. Same filters, same values, different order, and the stream sounds broken.

Short answer first, reasons after.

The order that works for a voice in OBS

Mic source > Filters (top to bottom)

1. Gain                only if the mic is still too quiet after its own knob and macOS
2. Noise Suppression   RNNoise
3. Noise Gate          or Expander, never both
4. 3-Band Equalizer    small cuts, not boosts
5. Compressor          ratio 3:1 to 4:1, threshold around -18 dB
6. Limiter             threshold -6 dB, always last

Not every stream needs all six. A dynamic mic in a quiet room often gets away with a compressor and a limiter. A condenser next to a gaming PC needs the full stack. The order stays the same either way: clean the signal first, shape it second, protect the peaks last.

If your only complaint is keyboard clicks and breathing between sentences, you are really asking about one filter, and the OBS noise gate settings guide goes through it threshold by threshold. This page is for the whole chain.

Where OBS audio filters live

Open the Audio Mixer dock, find your microphone, open the menu next to it (or right-click the source) and choose Filters. The window that opens has a list on the left and the settings of the selected filter on the right. The plus button at the bottom adds a filter, the arrows move it up and down. That up-and-down order is the entire subject of this article.

The OBS Knowledge Base lists eight audio filters: Compressor, Expander, Gain, Invert Polarity, Limiter, Noise Gate, Noise Suppression and VST 2.x Plugin. OBS 29 added two more, an Upward Compressor and a 3-Band Equalizer, according to the 29.0 release notes. OBS describes Invert Polarity as a fix for phase cancellation, which typically shows up when two mics pick up the same voice, so a single-mic streamer can skip it.

Before any filter: get the OBS mic settings right

Filters cannot rescue a signal that is wrong when it arrives. Three checks come first, and they take five minutes.

Level. The OBS Audio Mixer guide says speech should sit in the upper yellow zone and just touch the bottom of the red. The technical details page puts numbers on it: -20 dBFS is the alignment level, chosen because it is close to the average level of speech, and -9 dBFS is the permitted maximum. One trap hides here. The small input level square on the meter shows the level after your filters, so to read the raw mic you have to switch the filters off for a moment.

Gain at the source. OBS's own Gain filter page says gain should generally be applied before the audio reaches OBS. Turn the knob on the mic or interface first, then the input level in macOS System Settings, and only then reach for the Gain filter. Gain added in software lifts the noise by exactly as much as it lifts the voice.

Sample rate. OBS has its own sample rate in Settings, Audio. Set it to 48 kHz and make sure the mic agrees: on a Mac, open Audio MIDI Setup, select the mic and look at the Format menu, which Apple documents as the place to set sample rate and bit depth. A mismatch is a common cause of OBS mic crackling, which gets its own section below.

Each filter, what it does, and where to start

The defaults below come from the OBS Knowledge Base page for each filter. The starting points are for a single speaking voice, not for music or singing. The equalizer has no documented defaults to quote, so it gets its own section below instead of a row.

Gain

The OBS Gain filter has one slider, in decibels. Put it first only when you have already run out of hardware and system gain. A Gain filter at +15 dB on a mic that was set too low is a common reason streams hiss: the hiss was always there, and the filter made it audible.

Noise suppression in OBS

The Noise Suppression filter offers RNNoise, Speex and, on some machines, NVIDIA Noise Removal. OBS describes RNNoise as higher quality at a higher CPU cost. It is the default, and it has no slider to get wrong. Speex has a suppression level that defaults to -30 dB. Streamlabs, in its own mic guide, recommends starting at 0 instead and watching your levels as you adjust.

Two limits matter. OBS itself says the filter handles mild noise such as a PC fan and is not effective in a loud room. And NVIDIA Noise Removal needs the NVIDIA Broadcast SDK, which NVIDIA lists for GeForce RTX 2060 or better on 64-bit Windows 10. On a Mac that option simply never appears.

Suppression goes before the gate because a gate decides open or closed by level. Take the fan hum out first and the gap between "talking" and "not talking" gets wider, so the gate has an easier call to make.

Noise gate or expander

A gate is a switch. Below the close threshold the mic goes silent, above the open threshold it comes back. OBS's own gate page gives the rule: close threshold above the noise, open threshold slightly below your voice. The defaults of -32 and -26 dB suit a fairly loud mic. On a quiet one they cut your words in half.

The Expander does the same job with a dimmer instead of a switch. Below the threshold it lowers the sound by a ratio, so breathing gets quieter instead of vanishing and coming back with a click. OBS suggests 4:1 as a balance between light reduction and a full gate. For a talking stream the expander is the better pick, because a viewer notices a hard gate opening and closing long before they notice a quiet breath. Use one or the other. Two noise reducers in a row fight over the same quiet moments.

Equalizer

The 3-Band Equalizer added in OBS 29 has three sliders: low, mid and high. Three bands are coarse, so use them for small corrections. Pull the low band down a few dB if the voice booms because the mic sits close to your mouth, nudge the high band if the voice sounds dull. Big boosts raise whatever noise survived the stages above, and the compressor below will then pump it.

Compressor

The compressor makes loud moments quieter so that you can raise the whole voice without a laugh or a shout hitting the ceiling. OBS's compressor page ships it at 10:1, which is heavy for speech; 3:1 or 4:1 leaves the voice its natural rise and fall. After compression the voice is quieter on average, which is what the Output Gain slider is for.

Here OBS's own documentation disagrees with this article, and the reason matters. The compressor page says it typically goes at or near the beginning of the chain. The expander page says an expander goes after compression. That works when the expander is gentle. With a hard gate, though, compressing first is exactly the failure from the opening of this article: the compressor lowers your peaks, the output gain lifts everything including the room, the gap between voice and noise shrinks, and the gate starts guessing. Clean first, compress second.

The same compressor has a second use: ducking. Put a compressor on the desktop audio, choose the mic as the sidechain source, and the game or music dips when you talk. OBS's suggested start is 32:1, -36 dB, attack 100 ms, release 600 ms.

Limiter

The Limiter is a compressor with a very fast attack and a very high ratio, and OBS says plainly that it should be the last filter in the chain. The default -6 dB ceiling is sensible for a stream. Its job is insurance: a cough or a slammed desk does not distort for viewers.

A ready chain you can copy

These are starting values for a USB mic around 15 to 25 cm from the mouth in an ordinary room. Speak at stream volume, watch the meter, then adjust one value at a time.

Noise Suppression   Method: RNNoise
Expander            Preset: Expander, Ratio 4:1, Threshold -40 dB
                    Attack 8 ms, Release 80 ms, Detection RMS
3-Band Equalizer    Low -2 dB, Mid 0 dB, High +1 dB
Compressor          Ratio 3:1, Threshold -18 dB, Attack 6 ms
                    Release 60 ms, Output Gain +4 dB
Limiter             Threshold -6 dB, Release 60 ms

To hear the result yourself, open Edit, Advanced Audio Properties and set the mic's Audio Monitoring to Monitor Only with headphones on. The OBS mixer guide gives the better test: record a short session the way you normally stream and listen to the file before going live. Your voice in your own skull sounds nothing like your voice in a recording.

Streamlabs OBS mic filters

Streamlabs Desktop, the app many people still call Streamlabs OBS, offers the same core audio filters: Gain, Noise Suppression, Noise Gate, Compressor, Expander and Limiter. The logic of the chain carries over unchanged, order included. Two details from the Streamlabs guide are worth taking: keep the gate's close threshold about 5 dB below the open threshold, and use Monitor Only in the advanced audio settings to hear exactly what viewers hear. Streamlabs Desktop has a macOS build, listed on that page for macOS 10.14 and newer.

OBS mic crackling: what filters cannot fix

Crackle, pops and a frying-pan sizzle usually come from before the filter chain, which is why adding filters makes no difference. Check in this order:

1. Sample rate mismatch. OBS at 48 kHz while the mic runs at 44.1 kHz, or the other way round. Match them in OBS Settings, Audio and in Audio MIDI Setup, then restart OBS.
2. Clipping at the input. With the filters switched off, a white input level square means the mic signal itself is above -0.5 dBFS. A limiter cannot repair a peak that was already flattened in the converter. Turn the hardware gain down.
3. A heavy VST plugin. OBS warns that some VST plugins are very hungry for CPU. Disable plugins one by one and listen.
4. Monitoring loops. Monitor and Output on the mic with speakers instead of headphones feeds your own voice back into the mic.
5. Bluetooth. A Bluetooth headset mic sends a narrow, compressed signal. Filters polish it but cannot add back detail that never left the headset.

OBS Mac audio: what differs from Windows guides

The current OBS release, 32.2.2, supports macOS 13 and newer with separate Intel and Apple silicon installers, per the download page. A few things work differently from the Windows tutorials most people copy:

• Desktop audio. OBS 30 and later on macOS 13+ has a macOS Audio Capture source for system or per-app sound. Older setups needed extra software such as VB-CABLE or Rogue Amoeba's Loopback, as the macOS capture guide describes.
• Plugins. The VST filter loads VST 2.x only. VST3 and shell plugins are not supported, and on a Mac OBS looks in /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST/ and the same folder inside your home Library. The free ReaPlugs suite is on OBS's tested list.
• No NVIDIA. The RTX noise removal from Windows guides does not exist on a Mac, so RNNoise is the strongest built-in option.

The catch: OBS filters only exist inside OBS

Everything above shapes the voice that goes into your stream and your recordings. It does nothing for Discord, where your team hears you while you play, or for the Zoom call you take with the same mic an hour later. Those apps open the raw microphone. OBS has a Virtual Camera, but as of October 2026 a virtual microphone is still an open request on the OBS ideas board.

The usual workaround on a Mac is routing. Install a free loopback driver such as BlackHole, set it as the OBS monitoring device, monitor the mic, and pick BlackHole as the input in Discord. It works, with costs: monitoring has to stay on, there is one more device to keep in sync, and people have reported monitoring buffers drifting out of sync over long sessions (OBS issue 4531). If that setup sounds like more plumbing than you want, the guide to virtual microphones on a Mac explains what the extra device actually does and when it pays off.

The other route: build the chain once, at the mic level

The filter chain in this article exists because the raw mic needs cleaning, shaping and levelling. That work does not have to live inside one app. It can happen once, between the microphone and every app that uses it.

That is what TunedMic does on a Mac. It adds a virtual microphone called TunedMic. During a one-minute Sound Check you read a short passage aloud, and TunedMic takes more than 30 measurements of your voice, your mic and your room. From those it builds nine profiles; the Creator family (Balanced, Broadcast, Crisp) is meant for streams, videos and podcasts. You pick TunedMic as the mic in OBS, and the same processed voice reaches Discord, Zoom or Telegram without a second chain. There are optional manual controls for noise, room echo, clarity, loudness and a 12-band equalizer, and it adds less than a tenth of a second of delay.

If you go this way, simplify the OBS side. Remove Noise Suppression and the gate from the TunedMic source, because two noise reducers in series fight over the same quiet moments. Keep the Limiter at the end as insurance, since a desk slam is still a desk slam.

TunedMic is the wrong tool in several cases, and they are easy to spot:

• You stream from Windows. There is no Windows version. It needs a Mac with Apple silicon (M1 or newer) and macOS 14 or later, so an Intel Mac is out too.
• You only ever use the mic in OBS and the chain above already sounds right to you. Free filters that work are the right answer.
• The mic itself is the limit, such as a Bluetooth headset or a laptop mic across a desk. Processing works with what the capsule sends. If you are shopping, the streaming mic guide compares real options.

It costs $39 once (the launch price as of October 2026), with no refunds, and you can use it free for 3 days inside your own OBS scene. The home page also has before and after recordings from three mics: a Hollyland Lark M2 clip-on (once with a Dyson hair dryer running a meter away), a MacBook's built-in mic and a cheap wired headset, so you can judge with your ears first. Prices and what the license includes are on the pricing page.

What to do tonight

Open your mic's Filters window and switch every filter off. Record thirty seconds of normal talk with a few seconds of silence, and note where the input level sits. Then switch the filters on one at a time, top to bottom, in the order from the first block of this article, recording the same thirty seconds after each. The filter that makes the recording worse is the one to fix or delete. If you would rather skip the chain and fix the mic once for every app, listen to the recordings on the home page first and decide from there.