The Importance of the Backup Mic - Game Videos

23 March, 2025. 1,242 words.

You’ve just recorded a 30 minute game session, you said some really witty and insightful stuff about the game, better than you usually do. This is going to be one of your best videos yet! As you’re signing off, you look over and see that your microphone has been muted the entire time.

We’ve all been there.

If you haven’t yet, you probably will be. If you’re a streamer, your audience will tell you they can’t hear you, but if you’re recording local files, you might not know until the recording is done.

This just happened to me in the past week, which is what made me think of writing this post. I’ve been recording game videos since 2015 and have a fairly routine process now. But despite my best efforts to automate everything, human error still happens. It’s inevitable.

What do you do if you lost the live commentary for a whole video? There’s a few options.

Maybe you can load a previous save file and play that section of the game again, but all the spontaneity is gone. You can pretend you’re seeing everything again for the first time, and try to remember all that great stuff you said, but unless you’re a trained actor, the commentary is probably going to turn out flat and boring. And it defeats the entire purpose of recording game videos, because you want your initial reactions to everything. At least, I do.

Or maybe it’s a game that doesn’t have save files, and you can’t go back, so you have to do the dreaded “hey guys, guess what, I lost 30 minutes of the game, sorry about that, here’s everything you missed” at the start of the next video, the thing that every viewer hates more than anything and causes them to instantly unsubscribe and unlike your videos. (I assume.)

You could also record an overdub of new commentary over the game video, but that takes time and effort and it might sound weird in the context of the rest of the videos. Plus it will still lack spontaneity.

As a last resort, you could upload the game video with no commentary. Some people like that, but I don’t. Especially if it’s the only one in a series that’s missing a commentary track.

I’ve done all of these things with various success. The thing that I hate most about those options (except the last one) is how long it takes. Anything that takes time away from playing the game is usually something I want to avoid during the recording process.

So, a long time ago I set up an emergency backup microphone.

Your main microphone records to one audio track, the backup microphone records to a different audio track. If something goes wrong with the main microphone track, you use the backup microphone track. Easy peasy.

The key to an effective backup microphone for me is to make sure it’s not connected to the same mute keys as the main microphone, so it’s always recording no matter what. In OBS, you can setup each audio source with different mute hotkeys.

If you have a lot of money, you can setup an expensive microphone as a backup. But if you’re like me starting out, you can also use a $10 USB Logitech video conference desk microphone taped to the boom arm of the main microphone, which I used until a few years ago when I splurged on a Blue Snowball.

It’s really hard to see in this old photo, but here’s how I used to tape that old Logitech backup mic to the main mic arm:

Another tip if you’re worried about accidentally toggling off a microphone is to use push-to-mute instead of a toggle. I have both setup. I use push-to-mute for momentary coughs or clearing my throat, so there’s no chance of accidentally leaving the mic muted, something I used to do with annoying regularity. I use a toggle for longer periods of muting like actually getting up or during long cut scenes.

Note that for push-to-mute to work in OBS, you have to enable push-to-mute for that audio source. It’s stupid. I don’t know what OBS was thinking. Literally every time I setup a push-to-mute hotkey, I try it, it doesn’t work, I scratch my head for a long time, then I remember: Oh yeah, OBS has this silly thing where you have to enable push-to-mute on a totally different screen first. OBS has never been particularly good at user interface design.

In olden times, I used a wireless numeric keypad for my recording hotkeys, then I splurged on a Stream Deck to be cool like everyone else. Now I use a foot switch for push-to-mute so I can cough even in the middle of a hairy boss fight.

I don’t worry about using push-to-mute on the backup microphone track, because I’d have to keep my foot down on the pedal to accidentally leave the mute on, which isn’t likely to happen. It’s only the mute toggle that I disable for the backup microphone track.

You will probably find that the backup microphone doesn’t sound nearly as good as the main microphone. In my case, there’s a lot more room noise, it picks up the sounds of clacking keys and mouse buttons and the thumping of moving the mouse around on the table, so I only use it for emergencies. If I have time, I can improve the sound by using some noise gates or other filters in REAPER, which is my go-to audio post-processing software.

In the case of my most recent mic failure, I needed to use REAPER anyway because I needed to amend some of my commentary. I misattributed the song It’s Probably Me to Eric Clapton instead of Sting, a crucial mistake that needed to be corrected. (I don’t correct verbal mistakes very often, unless it’s a massive pop culture mistake like that, and usually I’m in the file editing for other reasons.) Here’s the corrected clip of video. The full video probably won’t get uploaded to my channel for months at my current upload rate.

(For pedants out there, on further reflection, the song is technically credited to Sting, Eric Clapton, and Michael Kamen, but I’m not re-recording another correction.)

(That game is Monster Hunter World on the PC, if you’re wondering, which is what I’m currently playing.)

The point of all this is that thanks to a backup microphone, I was still able to use what might otherwise have been a completely ruined recording, which helps with the primary goal of not spending too much time on videos after the recording is done.

P.S. If you end up in a situation where you’ve recorded a video with commentary but no game sound, you’re screwed. I’ve never found a way to solve for that problem. You have no choice but to throw out the video. Unless you want to get creative and make your own game sound effects like I did once:

That’s the only time I ever lost a crucial piece of game sound (the first time encountering a Souls boss is a must-have recording situation). I still think it’s pretty funny, in a cringy sort of way.

P.P.S. Those two videos back to back highlight how much my audio loudness policies have changed in the last six or seven years. A subject for a different post. (Read up on LUFS if you want a preview.)

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