I have a similar issue where my mic peaks very frequently and will not pick up quiet speaking.

I have messed with every combination of audio settings within steam and the quality remains terrible compared to other mic tests that do no post processing.

Yep, played with all the settings but it just peaks and clips.

This is my problem too, haven't found anything to help with that as of yet.

What helped me but didn't fully fix the issue is to turn the "Input volume / gain" under "Voice" in the Steam settings almost all the way down, so it's just on the first setting after nothing.

My mic used to sound perfectly fine and now I have the same problem. Extremely poppy and just sounds like crap in general. It used to sound perfect and I never changed the settings. Gotta be a bug or something. Also my discord chat fails to record sometimes so idk what to do.

Very poppy indeed

There is a cheeky fix but it has a trade-off, you can adjust your microphone sensitivity (amplitude) in your Windows/Linux sound settings, this would make the boost effect seen in your steam recordings (obv future ones) less bassy and much clearer. The trade-off is that your mic would pick up less of your voice now incase you use the same mic for ingame communication.

I wrote this comment on others forums, I'll just leave it here, since it might help someone. IF you have another microphone (Webcam, mic, anything with mic and connected to your computer), the recording might use that mic as the main one. Let it be known, the microphone connected under the "Voice" option, is not the same used for the "Recording" option. So that must be why some of the people here solved by disconnecting all the others audio devices, and also because the audio seemed "poor".

Although for others it's like cracking in and out. I also had that before, and I solved by playing with the voice and record configs. I'm not sure which one, the best bet is to disable all non-essencial voice related option. If that didn't work, i'm afraid i'm not of much use. I hope I helped someone.

Originally posted by Spartan_S-007:

I wrote this comment on others forums, I'll just leave it here, since it might help someone. IF you have another microphone (Webcam, mic, anything with mic and connected to your computer), the recording might use that mic as the main one. Let it be known, the microphone connected under the "Voice" option, is not the same used for the "Recording" option. So that must be why some of the people here solved by disconnecting all the others audio devices, and also because the audio seemed "poor".

Although for others it's like cracking in and out. I also had that before, and I solved by playing with the voice and record configs. I'm not sure which one, the best bet is to disable all non-essencial voice related option. If that didn't work, i'm afraid i'm not of much use. I hope I helped someone. :sarah5:

This was the exact issue for me. My voice was cutting in and out in all recordings no matter what settings I played with.

My headset is both wireless and daisy-chained through a USB port and an extension chord. No issues on discord. No apparent issues through mic testing in Steam's voice settings. But Steam Recording only picks up a quarter of the transmitted sound for some reason. I assumed this was the root issue and busted out an old VA mic I got as a gift more than a decade ago. Plugged that into the back of my machine, selected this device as the default mic in steam's voice settings, and proceeded to spend the next hour pulling my hair out troubleshooting the choppy voice issue.

Then I found your post. I went into control panel, set the VA mic as the default microphone, went into discord, set my headset as the preferred microphone. Tested recording. Everything loud and clear. SO FRUSTRATING.

I don't really participate in steam community beyond troubleshooting, but I'm gonna find the feedback channel and insist they add a hardware select option for steam recording. This was just asinine.

I had the same issue and this is what helped me a bit:
- Click on steam logo
- Settings
- Game recording
- Force Microphone to Mono (turn off)
- Automatic Gain Control (turn off)

Hope it helps.