Audio setup: speakers and mic?

[wullxz]

Hi,

I currently use a headset for simracing and -driving.
But I'd really like to put my subwoofer to good work and also enjoy the comfort of a free head by using speakers (studio monitors). The question is: Can I also get a microphone to work in that setup?

I've read about cardiodic mics that primarily pick up sound from one direction while restricting sound from other directions. There are also "shotgun" microphones that are supposedly even better at restricting sound from other directions *and* can be placed further away. Placing them further away would be nice because they wouldn't invade my field of view - I'm using a triple screen setup - and they wouldn't be in the way when flailing with my arms around my wheel, shifter, brake and button box.

But how much sound would those microphones pick up from the speakers placed either behind or to the side of the mic, depending on the location of the mic being either in the center between me and the speakers or coming in from the side at an angle pointing at my face?
Would the sound pickup from my speakers be either non existent or at least low enough that software noise filters like the one from discord or noise activation gates would take care of the rest?

Has anyone any experience with a setup like this?

 

[Mr Latte]

I would recommend considering a shotgun mic, below are some videos that may help with an overview

Rode Shotgun models like the NTG4 are very popular with many YTers

 

[RasmusP]

Alternatively:
If you have a nvidia graphics card that's compatible with nvidia broadcast (rtx voice), then I can highly recommend the AI noise filtering from that little program.
Taskmanager will show pretty high GPU loads but it's not the actual part for gaming, it's a different part.

No fps loss and it's really filtering everything that's not a human voice.
So it won't work for echoing from other people or crew chief, but having racing action plus your shifters and rig won't be an issue, no matter the microphone.

If you have a spotter and mates, you can combine that with a mic on/off toggle (push to talk isn't great for racing..), no one would notice that you're not sitting in silence.

Additionally, but that's quite advanced, I'm using "virtual cable" from the same company of "voice meeter".
Super lightweight, simply adds a virtual input and output that are linked together.
You can select the virtual "input" as an audio output and then select the virtual "output" as audio input in another program.
That way I can use OBS as an effects loader and record that output into my OBS video plus sending it to Teamspeak etc. instead of OBS being the "dead end" for the microphone signal.
OBS has a really great noise reduction effect!

Signal route:
Mic - > PC - > nvidia broadcast AI noise filtering - > OBS Mic Input - > OBS effects chain - > video recording and sending to "virtual cable Input" in parallel via "monitoring device"=VirtualCableInput.
Then selecting "virtual cable Output" as the "microphone" in TS/Discord.

Yes, quite crazy but not that complex once you understood the basics of it.
No fps loss on the GPU side and about 1% CPU Load from OBS.

Sounds complex but before you buy an expensive shotgun mic and still have issues because you don't have good noise filtering, I thought I'd post my own signal chain that costs nothing


---------- not important blahblah---------
I once did some audio engineering so I really wanted to use my VST plugins in my live microphone sound.
Voice Meeter can do that too, but it was a bit too overloaded for my needs.
Since I was already using OBS to record any videos on my PC, it was quite straight forward.

I'm actually using:
- FabFilter Pro-EQ
- OBS' Noise Suppression (RNNoise)
- FabFilter De-Esser (WideBand)
- FabFilter De-Esser (SplitBand)
- FabFilter C1 Compressor
- FabFilter L1 Limiter
- LoudMax64 maximizer

My Microphone isn't one for you, but it's a cheap v-moda boom pro non-x that's attached to my standard headphones with a 1/8" stereo jack (3.5mm).
No matter if I speak quietly or scream in action, I don't sound too distorted and my output level is almost identical all the time

 

[Clover11]

While it is not prefect, there are programs that can flip the sound wave and reverse the sound/negating it. This is used to test gear, though it has some significant handicaps.

They feed a sound to a speaker, than measure the sound they receive, That difference is them flipped and played back to remove the sound that should not be there. It actually works pretty well and is part of the noice cancelation concept. However, there is always noise in a rom that will be picked up as sound that should not have been present.

However, I would think you could find a program, which would basically play the inverse of your music into the mic to cancel out the sound of you music on the mic. You would get a bit of delay to your music.

You could also just post a Botton to mute you music next to your radio button.

 

[Botmeister]

Reply removed. Asking questions but not responding afterwards (and being online several times - I checked) is pretty much useless. There was a time forums asked for +10 posts before you can start asking questions, to prevent these topics. Waste of disk space.

 

[wullxz]

Sorry for the long absence, I've been pretty busy with RL stuff but I've also been researching - also using the input I received here. @Botmeister: yea, I have been online because the tab is still open in my browser window with my (ongoing) research about the topic which also reopens after booting my PC. I haven't replied yet because I don't really have any results yet. It's a difficult topic because what is described in forums or shown in videos is not easily verifiable.

@Mr Latte: Can you name any YTers who use a setup with speakers and a mic? I've checked the ones I follow but most of them use either headsets or mic + headset. I've also asked some of them if they tried speakers + mic in the past but none of the ones I follow have.

@RasmusP: Thank you for your input. I fully expect some sort of processing to be necessary. The trick of using OBS is really neat and is definitely something I'm going to try if and when I settle for a setup. I like that it'll work regardless of what program uses the mic input (Discord, Mumble, ingame VC, ...).

@Clover11: Physically cancelling sound is not so easy from what I've read. If the proper sound source and the source with the cancelling inverse are at different distances to the mic, the waves don't match up. Also, I imagine that the echoes present in a room make this really hard.
But maybe there's some software that'll "just" try to calculate the sound going over line out out of my mic input? I'll have to look into that but I think algorithms to suppress noise like Discords built in krisp or what OBS offers is easier to setup and might already work well enough.

I've ordered the speakers for my rig (had to wait a bit because the ebay auction only ended on monday) and I have another project that I'll build first (an automatic switch that'll switch output between speakers on my desktop and at my rig depending on power turned on or off at the rig).
When I have my speakers set up, I'll think about where I could put a mic around my rig and how sound would arrive at the mic. My thoughts right now: If I used a shotgun mic like the Rode NTG4+, I could maybe get away with speakers + mic if I placed the mic in a way that my screens block line of sight (or line of sound?) between mic and speakers? Or maybe I have to place it behind/above the speakers so that sound waves can't directly reach the mic - only echoes can - and hope that the supressing capabilities of the mic are enough to cancel out the rest.
I hoped I could find more resources on how to place speakers and (shotgun-)mics so that the mic would pick up as minimal speaker output as possible but apparently that's not done or spoken about very often. Maybe with good reason but I hoped that if that's the case, I'd also find information about why I shouldn't try this ^^
Mr Lattes first video was actually the most helpful in this regard so far because it showed shotgun mics in different settings and also showed the difference between positioning in front of that machinery right at the start of the video.

 

[blekenbleu]

Would the sound pickup from my speakers be either non existent or at least low enough that software noise filters like the one from discord or noise activation gates would take care of the rest?

A noise gate is unlikely to work;
after your voice breaks squelch, feedback would keep it open.
I have good experience for amateur theater productions
(with actors wearing Shure wireless mics) using Behringer's DSP1124P;
presumably, better anti-feedback devices are now available.

 

[Mr Latte]

Sorry for the long absence, I've been pretty busy with RL stuff but I've also been researching - also using the input I received here. @Botmeister: yea, I have been online because the tab is still open in my browser window with my (ongoing) research about the topic which also reopens after booting my PC. I haven't replied yet because I don't really have any results yet. It's a difficult topic because what is described in forums or shown in videos is not easily verifiable.

@Mr Latte: Can you name any YTers who use a setup with speakers and a mic? I've checked the ones I follow but most of them use either headsets or mic + headset. I've also asked some of them if they tried speakers + mic in the past but none of the ones I follow have.

@RasmusP: Thank you for your input. I fully expect some sort of processing to be necessary. The trick of using OBS is really neat and is definitely something I'm going to try if and when I settle for a setup. I like that it'll work regardless of what program uses the mic input (Discord, Mumble, ingame VC, ...).

@Clover11: Physically cancelling sound is not so easy from what I've read. If the proper sound source and the source with the cancelling inverse are at different distances to the mic, the waves don't match up. Also, I imagine that the echoes present in a room make this really hard.
But maybe there's some software that'll "just" try to calculate the sound going over line out out of my mic input? I'll have to look into that but I think algorithms to suppress noise like Discords built in krisp or what OBS offers is easier to setup and might already work well enough.

I've ordered the speakers for my rig (had to wait a bit because the ebay auction only ended on monday) and I have another project that I'll build first (an automatic switch that'll switch output between speakers on my desktop and at my rig depending on power turned on or off at the rig).
When I have my speakers set up, I'll think about where I could put a mic around my rig and how sound would arrive at the mic. My thoughts right now: If I used a shotgun mic like the Rode NTG4+, I could maybe get away with speakers + mic if I placed the mic in a way that my screens block line of sight (or line of sound?) between mic and speakers? Or maybe I have to place it behind/above the speakers so that sound waves can't directly reach the mic - only echoes can - and hope that the supressing capabilities of the mic are enough to cancel out the rest.
I hoped I could find more resources on how to place speakers and (shotgun-)mics so that the mic would pick up as minimal speaker output as possible but apparently that's not done or spoken about very often. Maybe with good reason but I hoped that if that's the case, I'd also find information about why I shouldn't try this ^^
Mr Lattes first video was actually the most helpful in this regard so far because it showed shotgun mics in different settings and also showed the difference between positioning in front of that machinery right at the start of the video.

I cant name specific YT channels that I know use speakers with the mic but I recommended the product as I know it is a good performance model and you can find lots of reviews often by content creators about it.

The mic has its own settings you can apply but I expect most using such then for best results will have some form of hardware interface and also possible usage of a DAW.

Within these the typical thing is to apply a noisegate to basically let you control the operation of the mic so that it is tuned more for the specific use case you have for it and that it reduces or eliminates other external sounds. In your case only when you speak would it open the gate and that the background sounds will not activate the mic, and thats the general purpose, so I dont think what your needing to do is much different to live bands or multiple instruments from stage noise, but only wanting to have a specific mic operate for that instrument or vocals.

This video might offer some help on the possibilities.

More explanations contained in this video too

Haven't watched all this but it seems relevant

 

[wullxz]

I've set up my speakers on my simrig yesterday. I might change something here and there but for now I'm content with the sound.
Before using the speakers, I used a Beyerdynamic MMX300, which I used only for the mic yesterday. According to the website, it uses a condenser mic with cardioid pattern.
I did a first test with loud music over the speakers and talking to my brother on discord and a race with the AMG GT3 and my brothers voice through the speakers (instead of the headset) additionally to the game sound.
Discord didn't activate at all when I wasn't talking and my brother said that he could barely hear the sound in the background when I was talking - only when he paid attention to it - my voice drowned it out almost completely.

That seems to be reassuring. I'll test Discord without krisp and Mumble in the next days when I have the chance.
The MMX300 mic is obviously not what I want to use in the end since it needs to be near my mouth.

I think, the optimal position for the mic would be above one of my side screens of my triple screen setup because my speakers for the rig are below the screens. The distance would be around 60-70cm.
I need to research more about different kinds of mics (cardiod, pencil, shotgun) and in what ranges they work best to pick up my voice.

Do you have any of those mic types? How far away are they from you?