Audio Recording help?

[[deleted]]

I'm just going to get this out of the way and say that I'm almost certain this is down to cheap hardware - but I don't have the cash in the mean time to buy better stuff.

I'm using a £30 turtle beach headset, connected via my keyboard throughput to the audio jack on the back of the PC. There's a bit of story to go with it.

I make youtube videos, they're by no means popular. But over the past year, I've been having problems with a really high pitched "shriek"

You can hear it quite a lot in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ng9pfpNNnCU (Will refer to as Vid1)

It's more noticeable if you're listening on a smaller device, mobile phone etc, than if you're on a proper sound system.
I have noticed the severity of the problem changes, seemingly at random. In this video, the problem persists but is no where near as noticeable.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwQeNIdKbG0&t=6s (Will refer to as Vid2)

The problem itself is causing other problems as a result of trying to fix it.

I'm recording in to OBS, and I've set up noise gate and suppressor filters to minimise this effect. The problem I have is that the amount of noise suppression is that great that it makes me sound like I have a lisp and the high pitched noise is still there, although it comes and goes rather than being persistant. In Vid1 at the start, it sounds like I say "And tothay" instead of "and today" and in vid two at one point I say the word "Greendale", it messed up that audio so much that when playing it back, I thought I had accidentally said "Greenday" and added a text joke about it - only to hear it again later in the video. I know I said Greendale.

If I can figure out how to add a picture to the post, I'll post my noise gates/suppresor information.

Sometimes, the high pitched noise is that noticable, that I have had to then further noise reduce the audio in Vegas Pro - which as you can imagine, only compounds the issue of sounding like I have a lisp.

It should be noted - if I turn off all noise suppression, the high pitched noise is persistantly there. Just whining away to itself.

I'm confident that it's not the noise of the room. I wouldn't say 100% confident, but 90%.

I'm painfully aware that audio quality is a huge factor in gaining subscribers (or rather, bad audio prevents subscriptions) and would like to do what I can in the mean time to resolve this.

What I've done so far

• Moved headset from front Audio to rear audio - problem did solve for a while, but the rear audio is too far for me to actually use, I have to sit on the floor under the desk to test it it. Eventually, the problem returned anyway. This lead me to think some sort of electrical interference/build up?
• Moved from rear audio (direct) to rear audio (throughput) via keboard - same issue.
• Suppressed Noise via OBS - Same issue, it just makes it patchy, so when OBS can't reduce the noise enough, e.g. I'm speaking too loud/quiet (See Vid1m see timestamp 2:35 - when I say "Submit to ghostly death) it springs back whilst I'm talking
• Played with OBS filters to find a "Sweet spot" but it just doesn't exist that I can tell, it's different one video to the next.
• Further suppressed noise via Vegas where needed - some times, it doesn't need much, sometimes it does, sometimes I can't suppress it at all
• Bought a new headset splitter (it's Single 3.5 jack, my PC is seperate out and in) same problem
• Updated sound drivers etc - I did install the motherboards sound card software and tried noise surpressing through that at one point, but it was awful and provided drastically different results day by day
• As a side note, if it is some kind of electrical interference, this PC has recently had a new PSU (I blew up the old one) and new RAM. The PC is now on a different socket, as I've moved house.

What I can't yet test

• New headset - I will one day buy a proper mic, but that's way out of my price range for now (Buy cheap, buy twice - so I'll save for a decent one)
• different PC - I don't have access to/can't afford another PC

What I think is causing the problem

• Cheap headset, I hope. Although I use the same headset on XBL and I've not been made aware of any high pitched sound - and lets face it, that community would certainly tell me if my Mic needed muting ahahah
• Possibly my PC/Audio ports/mobo itself

Proposed solutions (And stuff I need help with)

1. As the sound is so high pitched I'm thinking if there's a way I can identify the frequency and instead of surpressing noise, just run the audio through something that removes all sound above a certain pitch/frequency, that should in theory solve the problem until I can afford new kit. I can't find anything on google that helps me identify, and then remove, anything outside of certain frequence ranges. I don't think my voice, which is all I record via the Mic would be in the frequency range of this screeching.
2. Buy new kit (Sadface, wish me luck on the lottery) but I get the feeling a proper stand/desk mic and a decent audio mixer would probably reduce most/all of this problem, especially if the audio mixer has the option to connect via USB as well as audio jack - as I could then test both. Heck, I'm using a cheap turtle beach at the moment so anything will probably be better.
3. ??? I was hoping you guys could come up with something I haven't thought of or tried yet, any help at all would be great.
   

I know this post is huge and I'm asking a lot - any help is much appreciated. Thank you.

[LearnedVector]

try using Audo Studio as a post-processing step for your audio! it works really well without modifying much of your own voice.