Audio Help

[orchteach]

I'm sure there are multiple threads on this but I couldn't find them.

I'm an orchestra teacher working on live streams for my groups. The audio is NEVER clean.

Here are some unlisted videos I have made playing in OBS while working with the sound.

Some things I have tried:

Compressor, limiter, gain, noise reduction/gate, changing the sample rate for 44.1 to 48. Changing the Bitrate from 160 to 256. Playing with the equalizer on the soundboard. Changing gain on the soundboard.

Equipment we are currently using:
1. Alesis Multimix8 USB FX
2. Two Neewer NW-410 (Instrument Condenser Microphones)

Please excuse the players - they're still learning. Thanks in advance!

Kings Orchestras​

youtu.be

Kings Orchestras​

youtu.be

Kings Orchestras​

youtu.be

Kings Orchestras​

youtu.be


Latest attempt

Kings Orchestras​

youtu.be
increased levels on the soundboard to get more volume

also - using a dell with 16gigs of ram and an i5 processor

 

[Zidakuh]

I work in a live sound venue and do a bit of studio recording as well, so I might be able to give an answer, but I will have to ask first:

1. Do you place the microphones as close as possible to the source you are trying to capture?
2. How many sources are you trying to capture?
3. What exactly do you mean by "not clean audio"? Since it can mean a different thing depending on the person.

Regards
Zidakuh

 

[orchteach]

I work in a live sound venue and do a bit of studio recording as well, so I might be able to give an answer, but I will have to ask first:

1. Do you place the microphones as close as possible to the source you are trying to capture?
2. How many sources are you trying to capture?
3. What exactly do you mean by "not clean audio"? Since it can mean a different thing depending on the person.

Regards
Zidakuh

https://obsproject.com/logs/u0apZa3nMJfuK7PY

 

[orchteach]

I work in a live sound venue and do a bit of studio recording as well, so I might be able to give an answer, but I will have to ask first:

1. Do you place the microphones as close as possible to the source you are trying to capture?
2. How many sources are you trying to capture?
3. What exactly do you mean by "not clean audio"? Since it can mean a different thing depending on the person.

Regards
Zidakuh

1. at the moment for testing purposes, the mics are not as close as possible and when we have our concert, they will be closer. past performances I have the microphones up close and the audio was even worse.
2. I'm capturing one source, a string orchestra of violins, violas, cellos, and basses.
3. Clean audio as in - it seems metallic to me, kind of an underwater sound, the bass and treble feel like they're being cut off

 

[Zidakuh]

Alright. Here's my two cent on it:

1. Pretty much allways have the mics as close as possible, especially for live performances to avoid bleed. However in your case, you have two condenser microphones to work with, and should actually have them at a little distance to get the best out of it and to avoid accidental clipping of the input. Keep the gain a little lower than you might want to, you can always boost it with clean digital gain (the "gain" filter inside of OBS as the first in the chain)

2. In sources I mean how many individual soundsources are you trying to capture. The more sources, the harder it is to separate without multiple mics/inputs on a mixing board, and/or really careful EQ'ing.

3. If you need to boost the low end and high end of the signal, OBS does support VST plugins. With this, I'd suggest getting the Reaplug Suite (it's free) and use the ReaEQ to boost those two areas. Just remember, a little goes a long way.

In short:
- Try to keep the mics as close as possible to the entire ensemble, also don't overgain the inputs. That can and will sound bad.
- If possible, try different combinations of microphones, if you have any available. Also more inputs might be necessary.
- Try adding an Equalizer through VST and see if that can help ballance things out. (Probably cut 500Hz by about 3 to 4 dB, that one can really muddy up any sound, also maybe cut 2 dB around 2 to 3 kHz)
- Compress the signal to taste.


Also, allways have a limiter at the bottom of the FX chain to avoid clipping. -3dB is about the loudest you want your peaks.

I hope this can help.

 

[orchteach]

Alright. Here's my two cent on it:

1. Pretty much allways have the mics as close as possible, especially for live performances to avoid bleed. However in your case, you have two condenser microphones to work with, and should actually have them at a little distance to get the best out of it and to avoid accidental clipping of the input. Keep the gain a little lower than you might want to, you can always boost it with clean digital gain (the "gain" filter inside of OBS as the first in the chain)

2. In sources I mean how many individual soundsources are you trying to capture. The more sources, the harder it is to separate without multiple mics/inputs on a mixing board, and/or really careful EQ'ing.

3. If you need to boost the low end and high end of the signal, OBS does support VST plugins. With this, I'd suggest getting the Reaplug Suite (it's free) and use the ReaEQ to boost those two areas. Just remember, a little goes a long way.

In short:
- Try to keep the mics as close as possible to the entire ensemble, also don't overgain the inputs. That can and will sound bad.
- If possible, try different combinations of microphones, if you have any available. Also more inputs might be necessary.
- Try adding an Equalizer through VST and see if that can help ballance things out. (Probably cut 500Hz by about 3 to 4 dB, that one can really muddy up any sound, also maybe cut 2 dB around 2 to 3 kHz)
- Compress the signal to taste.


Also, allways have a limiter at the bottom of the FX chain to avoid clipping. -3dB is about the loudest you want your peaks.

I hope this can help.

Here's my latest attempt on youtube. I screen recorded what I was doing with the equalizer you suggested as well as a limiter. I feel like this is a computer/processing issue and not an audio issue.

- YouTube

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

www.youtube.com

here's the log: https://obsproject.com/logs/-nVjHzg23AaZXh4M

 

[Zidakuh]

Here's my latest attempt on youtube. I screen recorded what I was doing with the equalizer you suggested as well as a limiter. I feel like this is a computer/processing issue and not an audio issue.

- YouTube

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

www.youtube.com

here's the log: https://obsproject.com/logs/-nVjHzg23AaZXh4M

I can hear what you mean, it sounds like the audio is "fluttery" for lack of a better word. It is artifacting quite a bit.
But wheter that is OBS, the audio interface, or a software issue, I don't know.
What I can say is it does remind me of reconversion/recompression. E.g. Take the same file and convert it multiple times with the exact same setting, in the end it sounds really bad. If that is the case, it is most likely a Youtube problem, and therefore out of your hands.

Out of curiousity, does local recordings have the same issues? If it sounds more clear on a local recording, as opposed to how a stream sounds, then it's definitely Youtubes recompression.

Sidenote, there is a fix to using a slightly higher quality audio codec, a guide on how to enable that can be found here.

 

[Lawrence_SoCal]

The log indicates an ultra LOW power laptop, and you are doing real-time encoding with it. at 60 frames per second?!?!?!?!?!
but I'm not seeing a camera source?? If not doing video, why use OBS? there are more appropriate audio-only compositing/recording tools.
If I'm reading the log correctly, and the intent was to add video later, realize your processing load will go up exponentially (like orders of magnitude .. so any hardware resource bottlenecks you are seeing now will get a LOT worse)

Game DVR Mode is on (be default). My understanding is you will benefit from disabling that for OBS

That is a lower-end CPU, optimized for battery life, not the computationally demanding task of real-time video encoding. 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
*IF* you are having bottlenecks, then you may be able to improve matters by optimizing your Operating System (OS) to minimize background processing tasks (ie don't be that user that has lots of apps/processes auto-starting and interfering). How much difference will this make? unfortunately... it depends

And from your last log, it appears you have already enabled CoreAudio AAC encoder, right?

 

[konsolenritter]

DROP OFF THE NOISE REDUCTION, PLEASE... PLEASE!

It causes those kind of flutter. The reason is: Searching for noise nature all sustaining signals (legato as strings or sung "aaaaahs" and "ooooohs", for instance) will be recognized in the category as noise. So after a couple of fractions of tenths of seconds or even seconds the algorithm learns exactly those sustaining signal parts as "bad" and tries to filter them out from the sum.

The sound weakens and thins out alot then while all transient material comes thru.

As far as you work with a capable mixer/interface and condenser mics, the signal should be good enough to omit those algorithms. So urgently drop off noise reduction. It works well with speech alone.

Compression and limiting should be okay. But don't over-compress, because it raises the ground-noise. So with smart/small portions of compression your audio should work better. If too much noise from other sources (there is alot of babble and chattiness in the room) your condenser mics should be placed not more than 1.5 or 2 meters from the instruments.

Sound will become more clear when recording in open-air conditions or in a larger hall. The smaller the room, the more early reflections and room-based modes you'll earn instead.

Regarding your last try: I could see you drag filter settings while having them disabled (the grayed-out eye symbol). Thats odd.
Additional i could see that your mic/aux from usb seems to be mono instead of stereo. So i assume that there is alot of cancellation in between your two mics.

Can you make (even by hand) a drawing that shows the situaiton in your recording room?
Using two condenser mics not exactly in XY pairing should build up any kind of stereo image. Otherwise there is comb-filtering and cancellation in the sum. How comes your audio is mono?

The Alesis seem to have onboard fx dsp. Do you have disabled all mixer effects, hopefully?

(Aside of that lesson: Nice and funny to hear such rehearsals. Your folks seem to enjoy the music alot. Congrats! Makes fun, really.)

 

[konsolenritter]

Which capsule do you have on your neewer mics selected?

 

[khaver]

As konsolenritter said, make sure you don't have any noise suppression filters anywhere in the chain. This includes in the mics properties in Windows where you have the option to add noise suppression and/or acoustic echo cancellation. Make sure these are off. These noise reduction filters should only be used, and sparingly, on dialog, not music. They are not designed for music.

Also, in the OBS audio settings, increase the bitrate for the channels you are streaming and recording to 320.