How to Reduce Keyboard Noise on Mic

If you regularly do vocal recordings, be it professional, or for a passion project, your ultimate goal is to have unmatched sound quality. But hey wait, that isn’t easily possible with the frustrating keyboard sounds and mouse clicks your mic keeps picking up while you record. Let’s dig deeper into the matter and help you figure out how to reduce keyboard noise on the mic so you can record peacefully.

Why reduce Keyboard noise on mic?

Whether you are a podcaster, gamer, streamer, voiceover artist, content creator of any sort, or need to do some audio recordings, you obviously want the vocal recordings to be crisp, clear, and smooth. Microphones are sensitive to sound, and they will naturally pick up on some background noise.

If you are using a mechanical keyboard, the movement of the underlying switches and keys creates a background noise. Every time you press a key, the movement triggers the switch lying underneath that key. Consequently, this creates a noise when the key touches the keyboard’s base. Your mic picks up that keyboard sound and projects it out into your audio affecting the overall sound quality.

To get impeccable audio recording, it is crucial to minimize the unwanted background noise. Here are some surefire hacks that can help you significantly reduce the noise from your keyboard.

Reposition Your Mechanical Keyboard

Annoyed by the clicking, ticking, and clackety sounds of your mechanical keyboard? Well, a very simple approach to reduce the keyboard sounds is to position your mechanical keyboard a bit far from your microphone. When both, your microphone and keyboard are far apart, about a palm’s length away, the unwanted noise of the keyboard on the mic reduces.

Moreover, if you can avoid using a keyboard while doing your vocal recording, opt for that.

Modify Your Mic’s Settings

Sometimes, your microphone may be picking up a tad too many keyboard sounds and mouse clicks. The problem in this case is with its settings. Try adjusting your mic’s settings to reduce keyboard clatter a bit more. Here’s a step-by-step guideline that you can use to adjust the software settings of your mic.

Once you are through with all the steps, record a minute-long video to check its sound quality. The odds will be in your favor, and you won’t hear the keystroke sound in your audio anymore.

Also, make sure that you try out all the tips to record clear audio in a noisy environment too for excellent results.

Set Up A Noise Gate With Voicemeter

To get excellent audio quality, kick out all sorts of unwanted noise including those by mechanical keyboards with a noise gate.

So What is a Noise Gate?

A noise gate, also commonly referred to as ‘gate’, is an audio processor of sorts to manage any excess sound including background noise in audio recordings. There are two types of basic noise gates: noise reduction software apps and hardware gates that come in the shape of pedals, hardware racks, and plugins.

With a noise gate, voice video recordings become easier because you don’t need to do a re-take in case the ambient noise interrupts the audio. If there is too much noise, be it that of the mechanical keyboard, or the air conditioner in the background, sticking a noise gate on the vocal recording instantly minimizes those unwanted noises.

How Do Noise Gates Work?

Noise gates work like those of limiters and compressors- they decrease the volume of audio when it crosses a fixed threshold. So basically you need to set a threshold, and the noise gate will regulate your audio signal’s amplitude. For that, you need to have an idea of the level of background noise being created in your environment. Audio software apps can help you determine that. You also need to know the input sensitivity of your mic, which is the indication of the least amount of input signal the mic (or any device) requires to give its maximum output.

So if you have figured out that the noise floor in your environment is around 11dB for your voice video recordings, you can add in a noise gate with a threshold of about 12 dB.

You will come across different kinds of noise gates in the market. Of all those, ‘voicemeeter’ is quite good. It is a free software that helps you make a virtual audio mixer on your computer. It will seem a bit complex at first, but it is quite easy to use and set up. Look it up online, and you’ll find many easy-to-use tutorials on setting up voice meters to minimize the noise coming from a keyboard.

Try Keyboard Shields to Manage Keyboard Noise

Another effective hack to reduce keyboard noise on a mic is to use keyboard shields on your keyboard.

What Do Keyboard Shields Do?

Just like a pop filter covers a microphone to reduce noise in the background, a keyboard shield is like a cover to lessen the noise from membrane and mechanical keyboards. It is fashioned out of rubber or foam that you can use to cover the keyboard keys. This extra layer of noise-filtering material over the keyboard muffles the typing and clicking sounds of the keyboard. With less keyboard noise, you get crisp and clear in your vocal recording.

Do Keyboard Shields Only Work for Membrane Keyboards?

Keyboard shields are most effective if you are using a membrane keyboard, but work for a mechanical one too. Membrane keyboards have pressure pads on a membrane system with all the keys structured on one membrane sheet whereas mechanical keyboards have individual mechanical switches for all their keys.

Also, membrane keyboards are quieter compared to mechanical keyboards, so they naturally make less noise. Adding a keyboard shield to them further mitigates the ambient noise including the clicking of the keys.

Earlier, keyboard shields were primarily available for membrane keyboards only, but now you can easily find those for mechanical keyboards too.

Save the Day with a Silent Keyboard and O-rings

While trying the methods above, you can also use a silent keyboard to rescue your voice video recordings from the unpleasant keyboard noise. Silent keyboards are especially created to dampen the keyboard sound when you press and release the keys. They use padded keycaps, special switches, O-rings, and other dampening rings to achieve the goal.

You can easily find a silent mechanical keyboard or a silent membrane one compatible with your operating system in the market. If you are using a silent mechanical keyboard, you can further improve the noise reduction by using O-rings. O-rings are little, circular rings usually made using rubber, or other flexible materials that help muffle the noise of the keystrokes. Just replace the default keycaps of your keyboard with O-rings, and you’ll notice a massive reduction in the keyboard noise.

If you cannot get a silent keyboard, you can modify your existing one and turn it into a silent mechanical keyboard. You can easily do that by getting MX keyboard switches and replacing your keyboard’s existing switches with them.

Get Your Hands on a Top-Notch Microphone

Perhaps, it’s your mic and not the keyboard that is the real issue behind the clickety clackety keyboard sounds in your vocal recording. If you have tried almost everything, but can still hear some keyboard noise and mouse clicks, try changing your microphone.

A high-end microphone has excellent input sensitivity and comes with added features such as a pop filter to mitigate unwanted sounds. We have talked about some of the finest mics for this purpose, so if you are looking for the best mic for a noisy environment, this guide will help you out.

What’s Next?

Well, the ball is entirely in your court now. The next step is to practice the hacks shared with you and see how it goes. Both you and your listeners deserve a smooth and clear audio experience. You can make sure to accomplish that by using the methods above.

An important thing to note is that if you have managed to muffle the noises of the keyboard completely, but still hear background noises in your audio, you need to focus on minimizing those. We have talked in detail about how to reduce background noise on the mic so those tips can be quite useful in achieving your objective.