OBS's Noise Suppression Filter: The Free Tool You Already Installed

By the FreeHush crew · Published July 28, 2026 · Last updated July 28, 2026

What's free — everything, within OBS

How it holds up

From OBS documentation and the two algorithms' known shapes:

RNNoise for voice streams: the default recommendation. It's a small neural model tuned for speech; steady noise and moderate clatter drop away convincingly, and the CPU cost is light enough to ignore on anything modern. For a talking-head stream or tutorial recording, it's routinely all you need.

Speex when CPU is precious: the older method with an adjustable suppression level — noticeably lighter, noticeably cruder. It's the right pick on genuinely weak hardware, wrong pick if quality matters more than frames.

What to check yourself: record 60 seconds with your usual background (fan on, keyboard busy) with the filter off, then on — OBS makes A/B trivially easy. Also stack order matters: put suppression before any compressor in your filter chain, or you'll amplify the noise before removing it.

Enabling it

1. In OBS, find your mic under Audio Mixer, click the ⋮ → Filters.
2. Click + under Audio Filters and choose Noise Suppression.
3. Pick RNNoise (or Speex if the machine is struggling).
4. Speak with your normal background noise and watch/listen on the mixer meter — then close; it stays active for streams and recordings.
5. Optional order-check: suppression first, then gate/compressor, so downstream effects work on clean audio.

When you'll outgrow it

• Your problem is meetings, not content — you want a system-wide virtual mic (Krisp Free's daily minutes, or NVIDIA Broadcast on RTX) rather than routing gymnastics.
• You need finer rescue — heavy or variable noise in produced content is better served by post-processing (Audacity for craft, Adobe Enhance or Auphonic for automation).
• You left OBS — the filter doesn't exist outside it; it's a feature, not a product.

RNNoise vs Speex vs NVIDIA: picking the method

The filter's dropdown hides three different engines. RNNoise is the default and the right answer for most people: AI-based, zero configuration, paid for in a little CPU. Speex is the lightweight classic — it adds a suppression slider (default −30 dB) and costs almost nothing, but push the slider hard and it starts eating consonants; move it in small steps. NVIDIA Noise Removal appears if you have an RTX card with the Broadcast SDK installed — it's the Broadcast engine living inside OBS, GPU-billed, and the pick when only OBS needs cleanup and you'd rather not run the separate app.

Filter order: the part everyone gets wrong

OBS applies filters top-to-bottom, and the order changes the result. Noise Suppression goes first — let it lower the floor. A Noise Gate goes after it, with an easier job now that the floor is quiet. Compressors and limiters come last; compress before suppressing and you've amplified the exact hiss you're trying to delete. Drag to reorder in the Filters list. And remember the scope: this chain cleans your stream and recordings — your meeting apps never hear OBS filters. For calls, that's Krisp free or your app's built-in toggle, compared in the desktop roundup.

Quick questions