Alright, so some people might not think that Summit has the best sounding voice, but his audio still sounds really great. That is why we wanted to go over how he achieves his sound and what mic he uses. So, what mic does Summit1g use? As it turns out, Summit uses the Audio-Technica AT2035 which is one of the best budget XLR mics you can get! We love the sound the Audio-Technica AT2035 produces as it sounds really natural and doesn’t take much post-processing to sound amazing. We know Summit is applying some processing to his mic though, so lets go over what plugins we need to use to achieve Summit’s sound.
Setting Up A Noise Gate
The first thing we’re going to do is add a noise gate to our chain. We’re noticing that Summit has a very quite room to begin with, but there is definitely some noise being filtered out. So we’re going to apply a very minimal noise gate and use mild settings. We don’t want to be aggressive at all here because Summit has a very natural sound. We’re just removing the background noise when we are not talking. We want to keep the threshold very low.
The Summit1g EQ Settings
The next thing we’re going to add is some EQ. We’re not hearing too much processing going on here but we do notice he has quite a bit of high end. So, in order to emulate that sound, we’re going to boost 4dB at 10000hz. We’re also going to use a high pass filter at 90hz. This will clean up our low end a bit and also make our mic sound slightly brighter.
Simple But Effective Compression
Alright, now that the EQ is done we’re going to add some compression. Once again, Summit has a very natural sound so we’re not trying to go crazy here. What we’re trying to do is just add a cherry to our ice cream sundae. We’re applying about 2.5dB of gain reduction with a ratio of 3:1. This is going to compress our audio levels so that our levels are a bit more evened out.
A Little Something Extra
The final step for the Summit1g sound is to add a de-esser to our chain. This will tame the harshness in our voice and tame any sibilance that we might have introduced with the EQ. If you don’t own a de-esser, that’s fine too. This last step is completely optional as we did not introduce that much high end into our chain. However, if you are in the market for a de-esser we highly recommend FabFilter’s de-esser. It is one of my favorite de-essing plugins to use. If your audio happens to be too harsh, lower the 10000hz boost that we did from 4dB to 3dB.
Relax Now Your Audio Is In Heaven
Alright, that’s it! We’ve achieved the Summit1g sound! With this mic and the processing that we did you should be sounding very close to Summit. Feel free to play around with the EQ as this largely depends on your distance from the mic. The Audio-Technica AT2035 is one of our favorite mics and it really is a magical piece of hardware. It sounds fantastic on the voice and it is no wonder why so many streamers are using this bad boy. We hope you learned something about Summit’s sound! Thanks for sticking around! Cheers and have a lovely day! Buy Summit’s mic here. And, check out our other news stories here! P.S. Did you know that Lirik uses the same mic? Pretty cool if you ask me.
