If you are chasing after that radio voice and are looking for ways to improve the way your microphone sounds, then you should look into a pop filter. A pop filter is needed to take care of the plosives and the harsh sound that would otherwise be picked up by your mic allowing you to get a lot more intimate (close) with the microphone for better sound quality.

Unlike other types of issues, you cannot fix this problem with software tweaking or Windows sound settings, because this is not some background noise but is the main signal being processed along with your voice.

The question remains – can you live without a pop filter or should you buy one anyways?

A pop filter, like a mic arm, is an extra piece of hardware you can buy that will make your life a lot easier. As mentioned previously if you would like to get closer to your microphone so it can pick up all of the details from your voice you will inevitably run into the issue of plosives blowing up the eardrums of your listeners.

The dense foam that you would put over the microphone capsule will absorb the harsh sounds allowing for a much nicer audio experience. There have been tries at bootleg pop filters (things like socks) but the conclusion was that these will mostly just muffle your voice and reduce the audio quality, unlike a proper pop filter.

Pop filters are not exactly an expensive item either so you might as well just buy a proper dense foam filter and call it a day instead of trying to rig one yourself and failing miserably.

There are also microphones with built-in pop filters which do help a bit, but the layer of foam inside is not enough to fully get rid of plosives, so buying a separate one is a better course of action.

As you might have noticed there are no real downsides to getting a pop filter besides the initial investment of around 10-15$. You might also argue that these things will ruin the looks of your microphone but that is a very specific issue only certain people will look at.

Overall, a pop filter is a simple and cheap tool to get better audio quality from your mic that requires no technical knowledge when installing or procuring.

Custom Windows ISO enjoyer, FPS optimizer, and aim improvement enthusiast. Will disassemble all of his peripherals (and sometimes PC parts) to mod them even if all of them work perfectly fine. Overall, Chris is a BIG nerd and he is absolutely proud of it! Follow him on Twitch.

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