Nvidia RTX Voice The Budget Streamers’ Miracle

Ever since the introduction of smart assistants, they have always been taken with a grain of salt. Or some with a spoonful of it – yes, I’m looking at you Cortana. The reason being that a lot of the times the “AI” badge doesn’t always seem to work all that well, with lots of bugs and janky understanding. But maybe Nvidia has finally broken that stereotype against AI with the RTX Voice?

If you haven’t heard of RTX Voice, then you’re probably living under a rock. Okay fine, you’re basically the gamer that really just plays for fun – and there’s really nothing wrong with that. It does make sense that RTX Voice is more for those who take gaming a bit more seriously like game streamers or competitive gamers who rely heavily on voice communication.

In this case, the technology is potentially a godsend. As a low-end streamer, I don’t have the deep pockets to get the best hardware. Neither do I have the ability to spruce up my office with soundproofing and what not. So any software that can eliminate ambient noises and potentially awkward situations is a big help.

For the time being, I’ve relied on OBS Studio’s audio filters to clean out my audio. Even though I do have a Behringer Xenyz 302USB, it’s not in the best condition and my condenser mic is a cheap generic model. Luckily, it has worked out alright so far but I’m unable to use it during the day when I want to target an audience in the western hemisphere because I might accidentally pick up conversations with my wife or when she’s on a work call right beside me.

RTX Voice to The Rescue

These are the circumstances that can easily allow the RTX Voice technology to shine. A lot of the initial reviews seem to be gushing about it’s ability to remove ambient noise. And most impressive is the fact that it can muffle even other voices in the background as demoed by Linus in his video review.

Of course, it is not a 100% solution to the problem but I can see the potential it has if paired with audio filters like those on OBS, it may be the solution budget streamers are looking for. Although the RTX card requirement is a potential issue in and of itself. After all, if you can afford an RTX, then you can probably afford a proper audio setup. Unless the purchase of the RTX card emptied your wallet in the first place.

The good news is that apparently, RTX Voice doesn’t actually use RTX cores. Some reports actually claim that it only uses Cuda cores, which is readily available on most modern graphics cards that are already affordable. The bad news, on the other hand, is that Nvidia clearly wants to leverage the technology to sell more RTX cards. So until they are satisfied with RTX sales, they likely will not be “unlocking” the feature on older cards even if the technology is backward compatible.

But the fact that they’ve done something like this, we can be sure that other brands will want to level up their voice capabilities as well to stay competitive. I’m actually surprised Google has never thought of anything like this before, or at least, I haven’t heard of anything yet.