If your stream or recordings pick up keyboard clatter, PC fans, and room hum whenever you’re not talking, a noise gate is the fix. It’s an audio filter that mutes your microphone until your voice crosses a volume threshold, then opens to let you through — giving viewers silence between sentences instead of a wall of background noise. OBS has one built in, and it takes two minutes to dial in.
Add the filter
Open filters
In OBS, find your microphone in the Audio Mixer, click the gear icon, and choose Filters. Click the + and add Noise Gate. For the cleanest chain, order matters: put Noise Suppression first if you use it, then the Noise Gate, then a Compressor last.
Understand the two thresholds
A noise gate has a Close Threshold (below this, the mic mutes) and an Open Threshold (above this, it un-mutes). The gap between them prevents the gate “chattering” open and closed on borderline sounds. Set the open threshold just below your normal speaking level and the close threshold a few decibels lower.
Recommended starting values
| Setting | Typical starting value | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Close Threshold | -40 to -35 dB | Mutes when you stop talking |
| Open Threshold | -32 to -26 dB | Un-mutes when you speak |
| Attack Time | 10–25 ms | How fast the gate opens |
| Hold Time | 150–250 ms | Keeps gate open between words |
| Release Time | 100–200 ms | How fast it fades to mute |
These are starting points, not gospel — a loud mechanical keyboard or a noisy room needs higher thresholds; a quiet space and a quality mic can go lower.
Tune it by ear
Find your levels
Watch the mixer meter while you talk normally: note the decibel level your voice hits, and the level the room noise sits at. Set the open threshold between the two. If the gate cuts off the start of your words, lower the open threshold or shorten the attack. If it clips quiet words or word endings, raise the hold and release times.
Don’t over-gate
An aggressive gate that slams shut sounds unnatural and swallows soft speech. The goal is transparent: viewers should never notice it working. If you’re constantly getting cut off, your mic gain may be too low — raise input gain first, then re-set the gate.
FAQ
Noise gate vs noise suppression — what’s the difference?
A noise gate mutes the mic entirely when you’re not speaking; it does nothing while you talk. Noise suppression actively reduces steady background noise (fan hum, hiss) while you speak. They complement each other: suppression cleans your voice, the gate silences the gaps. Use both for the best result.
Will a noise gate remove keyboard sounds while I’m talking?
No — the gate is open while you speak, so key clicks during speech still pass through. To reduce those, add noise suppression, position the mic closer and off-axis from the keyboard, or use a dynamic mic. The gate’s job is only to kill noise in the silences.
Build the full filter chain
A noise gate works best as one link in a short chain. A proven order for gaming mics is: Noise Suppression first (to knock down steady fan hum and hiss), then the Noise Gate (to silence the gaps between speech), then a Compressor (to even out your volume so quiet and loud words sit at a consistent level), and optionally a Gain or Limiter last to set final loudness without clipping. Getting the order right matters: gating before suppression, for example, can cause the gate to chatter on residual noise.
Hardware beats software
Filters clean up a signal, but they can’t rescue a fundamentally noisy source. The single biggest improvement is mic placement: get the microphone within 10–20 cm of your mouth and slightly off-axis so it captures your voice loudly relative to room noise, which lets the gate work with a wide, comfortable threshold gap. A cardioid dynamic microphone rejects off-axis room sound far better than a sensitive condenser, so it naturally picks up less keyboard clatter and fan noise in an untreated room. Combine good placement and the right mic with a modest gate, and you’ll sound clean without the over-processed, gated-off artifacts that come from leaning too hard on software to fix a bad recording setup.
Bottom line
Add a Noise Gate filter, set the open threshold just under your speaking volume and the close threshold a few dB below, then fine-tune attack, hold, and release by ear. Pair it with noise suppression and a compressor, and your mic will sound clean and professional with no background clutter between sentences.
