Your stream audio has two kinds of background noise: the steady hum you hear between words, and the racket that sneaks in while you are actually talking. OBS and most audio software give you two different tools for these — a noise gate and noise suppression — and streamers constantly confuse them. Used correctly together, they make even a noisy room sound broadcast-clean.
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Two tools, two jobs
A noise gate is a volume switch. When your voice drops below a set threshold, the gate closes and mutes the channel entirely, silencing that between-words hiss, fan hum, and distant chatter. Noise suppression is a filter that runs constantly, analyzing the signal and subtracting steady background noise even while you speak. One silences the gaps; the other cleans what remains during speech.
Comparison at a glance
| Aspect | Noise gate | Noise suppression |
|---|---|---|
| When it works | Only in silent gaps | Continuously, even while talking |
| How it works | Mutes below a threshold | Subtracts steady noise from signal |
| Kills fan hum during speech? | No | Yes |
| Kills fan hum between words? | Yes | Yes |
| Main risk | Chopping quiet words | Robotic or watery voice |
How a noise gate behaves
Set a threshold — say -40 dBFS — and anything quieter is muted. When you speak, you cross the threshold, the gate opens, and your voice comes through with whatever background noise happens to be there too. The moment you stop, it snaps shut and the channel goes dead silent. That is why a gate cleans your pauses beautifully but does nothing while you are mid-sentence.
How noise suppression behaves
Suppression profiles the constant noise floor — the drone of a PC, an air conditioner, a fridge — and mathematically removes it from the signal in real time. Because it runs during speech, it is the only one of the two that actually cleans the noise underneath your voice. Push it too hard and your voice starts sounding thin, watery, or robotic, so restraint matters.
Using them together
The pro approach is to stack both in order: suppression first to strip the steady noise from your live voice, then a gate to mute the near-silent gaps between phrases. Suppression handles the “during”, the gate handles the “between”, and the result is clean speech and truly silent pauses. In OBS, add a Noise Suppression filter above a Noise Gate filter on your mic source.
Sensible starting settings
For the gate, try a close threshold around -35 to -45 dBFS, with a short attack (1–5 ms) so words are not clipped and a slower release (150–250 ms) so trailing words do not get chopped. For suppression, start with a moderate RNNoise-style setting and only increase it if hum survives. Always test with your loud gaming voice and your quiet muttering voice, because aggressive settings punish soft speech first.
What neither can fix
Sudden, loud noises during speech — a slammed door, a dog bark, a mechanical keyboard — defeat both tools, because the gate is already open and suppression only targets steady noise. The real fix for those is a directional mic placed close, room treatment, and good habits. Software cleanup is the last 10%, not a substitute for capturing clean audio in the first place.
Frequently asked questions
Should I use a noise gate or noise suppression first?
Run noise suppression before the gate. Suppression cleans the steady noise from your voice while it plays, and the gate then mutes the quiet gaps. Reversing the order can cause the gate to react to already-processed audio and behave unpredictably.
Why does my voice sound robotic after adding noise suppression?
You have the suppression turned up too aggressively, so it is removing parts of your actual voice along with the noise. Lower the strength until your voice sounds natural again, then lean on a directional mic and closer placement to handle the rest of the background noise.
Bottom line
A noise gate mutes the silence between your words; noise suppression cleans the noise underneath them. Neither replaces the other, so stack suppression first and the gate second for the cleanest result. Keep both settings gentle, capture clean audio with a close directional mic, and reserve the software as polish rather than rescue.
