Every online game player or live streamer knows the frustration of background noise coming through their microphone. Screaming family, construction work, police sirens, and so on can ruin an online experience. While various noise-canceling mics and software filters have been made to help, little works as well as voice users might hope. A new offering from Nvidia named RTX, however, appears to be the miracle many have long been hoping for. But there is a catch.
A video demo of Nvidia RTX from Barnacules went viral over the past week. The demo is eye-opening, revealing that RTX Voice seems to be the best background noise filter now available online. Barnacules' demo shows him putting noisy objects including a fan, a vacuum cleaner, a leaf blower within a foot of his microphone. Yet the mic doesn't pick up the noise at all. He even shows himself literally hammering his desk, which the mic is mounted on, with no noise being picked up.
To be fair, the software isn't perfect. With the leafblower less than a foot away there's a very clear degradation in voice quality. However, the filter still works excellently. It removes virtually all of the background noise and still lets through Barnacules' voice. It just sounds a bit like early Xbox Live on the Xbox 360.
As Barnacules describes in his video, RTX Voice could open up a variety of opportunities for livestreamers. They'll be able to do livestreams from crowded events or other very noisy locations while still being able to talk directly to their audience. Though, to be fair, the filter's efficacy in crowds with lots of other human voices hasn't been shown yet.
There is one big catch with RTX Voice, however. For the time being, RTX Voice is only supported for Nvidia RTX GPUs. That means Nvidia GeForce 20 and 20 Super cards. That could be because Nvidia wants PC gamers to purchase new video cards, but it could also be because the feature hasn't been tested on other cards and thus can't be guaranteed to work at a high-quality level. It could even potentially harm other video cards. Nevertheless, a hack to allow RTX Voice on other Nvidia cards is available and seems to work well.
RTX Voice is now available for Nvidia GeForce RTX video card users to download and try out for themselves. The software will add a virtual microphone and speakers to a PC, which can then be used in a dozen different applications, like OBS Studio, Streamlabs, Discord, Zoom, and others. The exact performance cost that comes with using the app isn't entirely clear as of yet.