Audio Dropping during church stream

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kcerezo

New Member
Let me start by saying I'm not very tech savvy. Our system was set up by someone else, who is no longer at the church. So, I'm trying to figure out the best We use OBS to livestream our church services to FB and YouTube. The past two weeks, our audio will periodically drop for around 2-3 seconds throughout the service. Video continues to play with no glitch or any dropping. It's just audio. All mics, all instruments, everything. I just updated to the latest version of OBS, hoping that it may fix the issue, but it is still occurring. We use the X32 mixer, run audio through Logic Pro. We use a Blackmagic Television Studio Pro Switcher.

Any help is greatly appreciated! Remember, not tech savvy, so reply like I have no idea what you're talking about. LOL!
 
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Lawrence_SoCal

Active Member
FYI
- Just updating OBS Studio is NOT something to take lightly... 3rd party plugins can sometimes stop working. you have to check every plugin you use in advance.
- OBS Studio, by default (that I recall), can NOT stream to multiple platforms at same time. There are, however, 3rd party plugins that enable such. You'd have to figure out the details of your specific setup (non of us can tell you what was done)

note the pinned posts in this forum, ESPECIALLY the one about posting OBS Studio log when asking for help (support) [link in my .sig]

I presume in-house audio is fine from the X32?

Are you also Recording locally (not just streaming)? I do, as locally recorded video is MUCH higher quality, when used as snippets for marketing, or providing service recordings (Baptism, Wedding, etc) to members.
- If yes to Recording, is audio drop out there as well?
Is the Audio drop out noticeable (visible in Audiio Monitor) in OBS Studio?

Have you made sure you aren't overloading the Mac (System Monitor) by doing something now that wasn't done before? or OS update that changed hardware resource utilization rates? or installed something causing extra background processing? you could have a CPU bottleneck, or config issue /change in Logic Pro causing audio to not get to OBS Studio?

Basic scientific method likely will be required (to efficiently and confidently diagnose and resolve the problem. I personally cringe at the random button press approach ;^)... in this case, that means following Audio at every step of the process and checking/confirming it (not assuming anything)

I'd recommend finding someone un parish that is MacOS tech savvy, as you will save a lot of time/effort by having someone who knows their way around the OS assisting in the troubleshooting process. And beware the immature types who immediately want to change things 'cuz that's how they do it/like it' without specific documentation on each and every change, and why made [too easy to make situation worse]
 
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AaronD

Active Member
kcerezo said:
The past two weeks, our audio will periodically drop for around 2-3 seconds throughout the service.

We use the X32 mixer, run audio through Logic Pro.
Click to expand...
One possibility is that Logic Pro is a free trial, and that's how they motivate you to buy the non-trial version.

Since you already have a capable digital mixer (X32), I'd recommend dropping the DAW entirely (Logic). Do ALL of your audio work in the X32, so that OBS can be fed directly from it as a dumb, straight-wire passthrough.
  • No filters at all in OBS.
  • OBS's fader all the way up. (0dB, 100%)
  • Only one audio source at all, and that's in Settings -> Audio. Only one not Disabled there, and no audio sources at all in the scenes.
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Then we have the fun task of setting up a broadcast mastering chain in the X32! The idea there is to take a live mix that sits around -20dBFS or so, just to allow that much headroom for unexpected peaks, and bring it up close to 0dBFS as OBS sees it without *ever* going over that. Not even a momentary peak like a P-pop or even just normal emphasis.

I have several stages of compression on mine, involving the channel compressors to make each thing better behaved by itself, a vintage LA-2A emulation on the entire mix ("Leisure Compressor" in the X/M32 and X/M-Air), and a final channel/bus compressor just as it leaves the board, set to be a limiter. The level controls after that limiter are set mathematically to exactly fill OBS's meter, and never moved. OBS often warns me that it's clipping, but it's actually not. I'm just using the top few values legitimately.

You would NOT do all of that on the main PA! Keep that one "live". You need a separate mix for each, so you can treat them differently. Different mix, different processing, etc. The main PA is *not* what it sounds like in the room; it's missing what spills off the stage by itself, and it's subconsciously corrected for what the room itself does. Not so good to stream that.
 
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