Question / Help Audio coming premixed from a soundboard, sounds great in house, but awful on the stream..

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Froggyfixit

New Member
I just started livestreaming for the church I attend, and am 100% new to all of this. Today was our first livestream, The audio comes from a very nice soundboard to my spot where I use a 3.5 mm jack in my mic port on the computer to add it to the video. Normal talking and instruments alone sounded fine on the video, but when they began singing, it clipped and distorted badly. All audio sounds great in the building through the speakers, so I heistate to just say turn them down on that spot. Is there a way I can help this in the obs program? I can post a link to the video if needed, just didnt want to violate any rules.

Thanks!
 
Narcogen

Narcogen

Active Member
Turn down the gain.

If that makes the quiet portions too low, add a compressor filter to the audio source.
 
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Froggyfixit

New Member
Okay, I think the answer will be a compressor filter. I was trying to keep the vu-meter at the edge of the green, with it occasionally spiking into the yellow. While they were singing, the vu was staying near the end of the peak meter while they were singing. Should that be lower?
 
Narcogen

Narcogen

Active Member
Broadcast standard would be -12, which in OBS is just below the border between yellow and red.

There's no really agreed-upon consensus on mixing for youtube or streaming services, but I think a lot of things are mixed to something between -1 and -5, both of which are in the red.

I use a limiter at -1 to stop clipping.

When you say it clipped and distorted-- where? Watching on a computer? Got a link to a recording and a timestamp?

Should not be clipping at all as long as you're under 0, unless it's being distorted somewhere upstream of OBS-- which shouldn't be at the mixer as long as there's no clipping from your PA.
 
Narcogen

Narcogen

Active Member
How many channels are on your mixer? Are all those handhelds separate?

To be honest it sounds like I'm hearing a bit of distortion when they get close to the handhelds even before the music starts, but several of the handhelds aren't used before that-- so maybe one or more of them have their gain up way too high and we only notice when the band starts playing?

However, if the OBS meter is reading way below 0 then the distortion is happening upstream of OBS. So either in Windows or upstream of the PC, the gain is too high, and then you're turning down the gain in OBS but it's too late because the distortion has already happened.
 
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Froggyfixit

New Member
32 channel sound board, and yes each device up there has it's own channel.

Late in the stream I googled and found windows can apply it's own gain to mics, I went and it was at +10 I think it was. I set that to zero and I think at the end of the stream it was better. The other slider in that option screen was at 89% . Compression filter until I find the main culprit is what it sounds like. I'll see if the sound people can decrease the gain at the board coming to just my channel and see if that does it.


Thanks for the help!
 
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