Audio Distortion in Recordings, Please Help!

[BeerBelliedBear]

I have found an audio distortion in my game recording several times. It is intermittent and I don't realize it's occurring until I watch the recording back. The sound going to my headphones while I play the game is not distorted. I have tried to ensure that all of my audio is set for 48KHz and the recording tracks have the highest bitrate option. My video recording bitrate is set to variable (VBR) between 6,000 and 50,000. Please advise me on what is going wrong; I'm currently out of ideas for fixing this.

Here is a clip that includes the distortion: https://youtu.be/4piYceWKTT8

Attached is my log file.

 

[BeerBelliedBear]

Anyone? I'm eager to resolve this issue. ^_^;

 

[Lawrence_SoCal]

That is an ANCIENT 10 generation old CPU trying to do computationally intensive real-time video work, granted certain portion largely offloaded to GPU, but you also have CPU impactful chroma-key ???
log shows audio buffer increasing, which I'm guessing is due to system overload? but could be something else...

I recommend monitoring hardware resource (CPU, GPU, RAM, Disk I/O, etc) utilization [for ex. using Task manager’s Performance tab and/or Resource Monitor] to see if your system is being maxed out with your settings https://obsproject.com/wiki/General-Performance-and-Encoding-Issues and https://obsproject.com/wiki/GPU-overload-issues
Beware CPU impactful settings, filters, effects, plugins, etc... I see a number of settings that could be pushing such an old into overload..

Personally, I'd expect you also need to make sure your OS (Win10) is optimized [and not following snake oil advice from fools who have no idea what they are talking about]. I tend to use VDI setup guides as a starting pointing. And that includes basic of making sure no unnecessary background tasks. And you may need to up the CPU priority level of OBS Studio to ensure it takes enough CPU cycles

 

[BeerBelliedBear]

That is an ANCIENT 10 generation old CPU trying to do computationally intensive real-time video work, granted certain portion largely offloaded to GPU, but you also have CPU impactful chroma-key ???
log shows audio buffer increasing, which I'm guessing is due to system overload? but could be something else...

I recommend monitoring hardware resource (CPU, GPU, RAM, Disk I/O, etc) utilization [for ex. using Task manager’s Performance tab and/or Resource Monitor] to see if your system is being maxed out with your settings https://obsproject.com/wiki/General-Performance-and-Encoding-Issues and https://obsproject.com/wiki/GPU-overload-issues
Beware CPU impactful settings, filters, effects, plugins, etc... I see a number of settings that could be pushing such an old into overload..

Personally, I'd expect you also need to make sure your OS (Win10) is optimized [and not following snake oil advice from fools who have no idea what they are talking about]. I tend to use VDI setup guides as a starting pointing. And that includes basic of making sure no unnecessary background tasks. And you may need to up the CPU priority level of OBS Studio to ensure it takes enough CPU cycles

Thank you for the reply! Yep, my CPU is ancient, but I've got it clocked at a static 4.4GHz on all 6 cores (12 threads). I was under the impression I shouldn't have problems with recording Minecraft gameplay with this CPU, but I bet you're right about me overloading it. XD I believe I was led astray by reading others saying things like, "Unused scenes don't interfere with recordings." When in reality, it seems my unused scenes are being prepped in the background, so that I can switch to them on the fly.

I have Rainmeter constantly on my second monitor. Occasionally a single thread makes it to 100% usage. Average thread usage never comes close to maxing out. Here's is what it looked like while recording gameplay before I made any of the changes listed below:

I read the article you linked, thank you for that! (Heads up: both links lead to the same article.) I have now:
- turned off Game Bar
- closed my browser
- removed the chroma keyed scene elements and the video filters from my scenes (which probably doesn't matter now, since I also:)
- created a new scene collection with only the scene I need for recording gameplay, no extra elements
- set OBS to run in administrator mode
- changed OBSs CPU priority from normal to high
- disabled studio mode

I'm not very familiar with which parts of OBS and scenes have high CPU impact. I appreciate your insight. You mentioned seeing a number of settings that could be pushing my CPU too hard; could I trouble you to please look at my latest log file and tell me specifically if the things you identified still remain? I have attached it below. Here is my Rainmeter graph (while recording) after the changes (the blue spike is where I tabbed out to get this still):

 

[BeerBelliedBear]

As for optimizing Windows, there is only so much I know about the OS, but I did my best. I don't remember everything I've done in the years I've had this PC, but I have at least:
- Enabled Game Mode, since my windows version is recent
- Gone through running services and changed to disabled or manual several things, like: Windows Search, Office Click-to-Run, Windows Backup, Connected User Experience and Telemetry, SysMain...
- Enabled automatic page file allocation, currently it's 4864MB
- Disabled mouse pointer shadow and trail
- Enabled hardware accelerated GPU scheduling
- Set a high performance graphics preference for Minecraft
- Set power options advanced settings to high performance
- Set processor power management to 100% for the minimum and maximum
- Set desktop background as a single still image
- Updated drivers for everything

For reference, info that isn't in the log file:
I'm running my OS on a 1TB NVME drive with 3,400/2,800 MB/s read/write.

 

[Suslik V]

...audio distortion in my game recording... I don't realize it's occurring until I watch the recording back. The sound going to my headphones while I play the game is not distorted.

12:06:09.701: Windows Version: 10.0 Build 19045 (release: 22H2; revision: 5247; 64-bit)
...
12:06:10.591:     win-capture-audio.dll
...
12:06:11.388:     - source: 'Game Audio' (audio_capture)
...

You are run into issue known as:

[Application Audio Capture (beta)] Sound becomes noisy after a long time · Issue #8064 · obsproject/obs-studio

Operating System Info Windows 10 Other OS No response OBS Studio Version 29.0.0 OBS Studio Version (Other) No response OBS Studio Log URL https://obsproject.com/logs/oF4ofzG6VIEKsq24 and https://ob...

github.com

it affects all solutions that uses same technologies from Microsoft. You are using "win-capture-audio.dll" plugin, so it's your case too. Only OS update may help (or don't use sound separation).

 

[BeerBelliedBear]

12:06:09.701: Windows Version: 10.0 Build 19045 (release: 22H2; revision: 5247; 64-bit)
...
12:06:10.591:     win-capture-audio.dll
...
12:06:11.388:     - source: 'Game Audio' (audio_capture)
...

You are run into issue known as:

[Application Audio Capture (beta)] Sound becomes noisy after a long time · Issue #8064 · obsproject/obs-studio

Operating System Info Windows 10 Other OS No response OBS Studio Version 29.0.0 OBS Studio Version (Other) No response OBS Studio Log URL https://obsproject.com/logs/oF4ofzG6VIEKsq24 and https://ob...

github.com

it affects all solutions that uses same technologies from Microsoft. You are using "win-capture-audio.dll" plugin, so it's your case too. Only OS update may help (or don't use sound separation).

Thank you very much for sharing this. My CPU isn't eligible for a Win11 upgrade. I guess it's time to pick a Linux distribution.

 

[BeerBelliedBear]

12:06:09.701: Windows Version: 10.0 Build 19045 (release: 22H2; revision: 5247; 64-bit)
...
12:06:10.591:     win-capture-audio.dll
...
12:06:11.388:     - source: 'Game Audio' (audio_capture)
...

You are run into issue known as:

[Application Audio Capture (beta)] Sound becomes noisy after a long time · Issue #8064 · obsproject/obs-studio

Operating System Info Windows 10 Other OS No response OBS Studio Version 29.0.0 OBS Studio Version (Other) No response OBS Studio Log URL https://obsproject.com/logs/oF4ofzG6VIEKsq24 and https://ob...

github.com

it affects all solutions that uses same technologies from Microsoft. You are using "win-capture-audio.dll" plugin, so it's your case too. Only OS update may help (or don't use sound separation).

Could I ask you to elaborate on your last statement? "or don't use sound separation"
I'm slow at choosing a new OS, can I avoid this Windows sound issue by recording to a specific file format? Or is it about how I set up my audio sources? Or is there something else?

 

[Suslik V]

Windows version of OBS captures audio from "devices". Every application in Windows produces sounds that becomes audible due to special devices named "sound cards". OBS captures final mix from these sound cards. You are running special 3rd-party plugin that tries to separate sound of the application from your sound card before it becomes audible (before it mixed with other sounds from other applications).

Here is source of application's sound from your log:

12:06:11.388:     - source: 'Game Audio' (audio_capture)

so you attempting to record not only "desktop speakers" (whole DEVICE) but also sound from specific application (software THREAD).

Windows OS has limitation ("bug") of how accurate/good it can be done because sound generation is continuous real-time process. Software solutions may not work well. Thus, if you do not attempt to separate sound of the application before it becomes audible then everything works quite fine - no distortion. OBS captures whole sound from the device without distortion. But if you try to intercept thread of the sound - there distortions may occur.

Windows may has two and more sound cards/devices. If some application will be configured to render its sounds through separate device (for example game allows to you to choose sound card in the config) then OBS can capture this whole device without problem. Of course, you can add two devices to OBS and mix them to different tracks but listening/monitoring for two pairs of headphones is not easy - you need external mixer... so everything is complicated.

In short, any new file format will not help.

 

[BeerBelliedBear]

Windows version of OBS captures audio from "devices". Every application in Windows produces sounds that becomes audible due to special devices named "sound cards". OBS captures final mix from these sound cards. You are running special 3rd-party plugin that tries to separate sound of the application from your sound card before it becomes audible (before it mixed with other sounds from other applications).

Here is source of application's sound from your log:

12:06:11.388:     - source: 'Game Audio' (audio_capture)

so you attempting to record not only "desktop speakers" (whole DEVICE) but also sound from specific application (software THREAD).

Windows OS has limitation ("bug") of how accurate/good it can be done because sound generation is continuous real-time process. Software solutions may not work well. Thus, if you do not attempt to separate sound of the application before it becomes audible then everything works quite fine - no distortion. OBS captures whole sound from the device without distortion. But if you try to intercept thread of the sound - there distortions may occur.

Windows may has two and more sound cards/devices. If some application will be configured to render its sounds through separate device (for example game allows to you to choose sound card in the config) then OBS can capture this whole device without problem. Of course, you can add two devices to OBS and mix them to different tracks but listening/monitoring for two pairs of headphones is not easy - you need external mixer... so everything is complicated.

In short, any new file format will not help.

Thank you for the detailed response!

Do I understand correctly that if I use a Game Capture source with Audio Capture Beta enabled, this is also separating the sound?

However, if I switch to a Game Capture source which only records video and an Audio Output Capture source, set to record the output going to my default sound device, that would not be separating the sound with software and should avoid the problem, right?

 

[Suslik V]

Do I understand correctly that if I use a Game Capture source with Audio Capture Beta enabled, this is also separating the sound?

Yes.

However, if I switch to a Game Capture source which only records video and an Audio Output Capture source, set to record the output going to my default sound device, that would not be separating the sound with software and should avoid the problem, right?

This is expected behavior. It is way more stable.
General recommendation: avoid resampling, do not overload PC, keep clocks at default, do not use power saving profiles.

The mentioned earlier bug was tested and proven many times. So, it is not like you have unique case. All myths about "not me!" collected in this old post: https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/random-audio-issues.170559/post-630092

 

[BeerBelliedBear]

Thank you very much for your advice @Suslik V !

 

[TrueDeviL]

I had this issue on Late Win10, & Win11 (Only upgraded to Win11 in May last year)..

The plugin used to work fine, then I got an OBS update, and it suddenly started crackling & causing audio issues, while recording & streaming, around the 20m mark, sometimes slightly later.

As the plugin caused the issue, I switched to the OBS Application Audio Capture beta version, only to fine out it had EXACTLY the same problem, and around the same time also.. Bit suspect that, makes me think the plugin was just integrated into OBS.

As this was useless to use, I looked for alternatives, I finally settled on using Steel Series Sonar GG app, this splits audio from games in an easy to use manner, and has ZERO audio issues.

Now I cannot say for sure what actually causes this issue, but as it worked perfectly fine for an OBS version in Windows, then after an OBS update it was broken, just makes me believe it's not a Windows problem as that wasn't updated, only OBS when it stopped working properly.

But, right now I don't care, I'm gonna use the GG app, until OBS fix it.