How to Reduce Background Noise on a Microphone With a Noise Gate

A fan humming in the background, a fridge two rooms away, the faint hiss of an aircon: a noise gate deals with all of it by doing one simple thing. It mutes your microphone whenever the sound level drops below a line you set, then opens again the instant you speak. Set that line just above your room's steady hum and the gate closes in the gaps between sentences, so listeners hear your voice and silence, not your room.

Quick Answer

Set the close threshold about 5dB above your room's noise floor and the open threshold roughly 5 to 8dB higher than that. Use a fast attack near 6ms so your first syllable is not clipped, a hold of about 100ms, and a release of 60 to 100ms for a natural close. The gate does not clean your voice, it only silences the quiet bits between phrases.

How a Noise Gate Works

Think of the gate as a switch tied to volume. Above the threshold, sound passes through untouched. Below it, the signal is muted. Your spoken words sit well above a quiet room's hum, so they pass cleanly. The fan and the aircon sit below, so they vanish the moment you stop talking.

The important limitation: a gate does nothing while you are actually speaking. If a fan is audible underneath your voice, the gate cannot remove it, because the gate is open and letting everything through. That is the job of noise suppression, which is a separate filter. The gate's only trick is killing the noise in the pauses, and for most home setups that alone makes recordings sound dramatically tidier.

Setting Up a Noise Gate in OBS

OBS Studio ships with a noise gate filter, which makes it the easiest place to learn the controls.

1. In the Audio Mixer, click the gear icon next to your microphone and choose Filters.
2. Click the plus button and add Noise Gate.
3. Watch your mic meter while you stay silent. Note the dB level your room noise reaches. Set the Close Threshold about 5dB above that figure.
4. Set the Open Threshold 5 to 8dB higher than the close threshold. The gap between the two stops the gate flickering open and shut on borderline sounds.
5. Set Attack to roughly 6ms, Hold near 100ms, and Release between 60 and 100ms. Speak normally and adjust until the gate opens cleanly on your first word and closes smoothly after you finish.

Tuning Attack, Hold and Release

These three timings decide whether the gate sounds natural or robotic. Attack is how fast the gate opens; too slow and the start of each sentence gets swallowed, so keep it short. Hold is how long the gate stays open after your level drops, which bridges the brief dips between words so it does not chatter mid-sentence. Release is how quickly it fades to silence once hold expires; a slightly longer release sounds gentler than an abrupt cut.

If the gate clips the front of your words, shorten the attack or lower the open threshold a touch. If it cuts out between syllables, lengthen the hold. South African home offices often sit near busy roads or share walls with a kitchen, so soft furnishings plus a sensible gate beat cranking settings to extremes. A good headset with a decent boom mic gives the gate cleaner input to work with; our headset best sellers show what local streamers are reaching for.

Gate Versus Noise Suppression

Use both, in the right order. A noise gate handles the silences. Noise suppression, which strips steady background sound from underneath your voice while you talk, handles the rest. The common chain is suppression first, then the gate, then a compressor. If you only add one filter, the gate gives the most obvious improvement for the least fuss. When you are ready to upgrade the hardware feeding the chain, the microphones and headsets we keep in stock range from entry USB mics to interface-driven setups.

Frequently Asked Questions

What threshold should I set my noise gate to?

Set the close threshold about 5dB above the level your room noise shows on the meter when you are silent, and the open threshold 5 to 8dB above that. Exact numbers vary by room, so watch the meter rather than copying a fixed value.

Why does my noise gate cut off the start of my words?

Your attack time is too slow or your open threshold is too high. Shorten the attack toward a few milliseconds so the gate opens instantly, and lower the open threshold slightly so normal speech triggers it cleanly.

Can a noise gate remove a fan I can hear while I talk?

No. A gate only mutes sound in the pauses; while you are speaking it is open and passes everything, including the fan. To reduce noise underneath your voice you need noise suppression, which is a different filter.

Do I need a noise gate if I already use noise suppression?

They solve different problems and work well together. Suppression cleans noise under your voice, the gate silences the gaps. Most clean-sounding streams run suppression first, then a gate.

Will a noise gate work outside OBS?

Yes. Discord, most audio interfaces, and standalone audio software include gates with the same threshold, attack, hold and release controls. The settings transfer directly between them.