Question / Help Audio issues, Stuttering / skipping, Single PC local recording

[Skiibs]

Hello all, I've read through all of the recent posts here that relate to my issue, but I can't seem to find anything in there that helps.

Basically, I'm trying to do the basic configuring for local recording with OBS and even after a complete re-install of OBS and using the most default of default settings my audio lags behind the video and skips. I have tried removing my overclock on the CPU, adjusting bitrates and encoding properties, defragmenting the destination drive, disabling downscaling entirely, reducing framerate, and using both x86 and x64 versions, and the problem still persists.

I've also checked to see if it's an issue with the sound card by recording with Audacity, and those recordings have no stuttering in them at all. Looking at the attached log files (one for x86 and the other for x64) basically confirms this.

At this point, I'm eating chips ahoy smothered in chocolate sauce while watching every episode of carbot I can find on youtube to ease the pain. Really, I'm out of ideas.
All jokes aside, any help that anyone could provide would be highly appreciated. There must be something I'm missing, I just can't find it.

Thank you all so much in advance.

-Skiibs

 

[Jack0r]

I think 1920x1080p on the very fast preset is stressing your CPU a bit too much. The scene pre-process takes quite a lot of time and the logs both show:
Audio timestamp for device 'Microphone (SB Recon3D PCIe)' was behind target timestamp by 80 (slowly going up)

So your Microphone timing seems to drift off. Now since you mentioned local recording, you could lower the CPU preset in the advanced settings to superfast or even ultrafast, and test if that helps your audio issues.
At the same time, deactive "Use CBR", select quality 10 and set your Buffer to 0 in the broadcast settings. Then test with these settings and show us a log of that test. (Uploading the current log)

 

[Skiibs]

I've tried the settings you recommended, and first off, the buffer cannot be set any lower than 1 under broadcast settings, all other things applied. Any attempt to do so resets the value to 1.

Second, I'm not sure how on earth veryfast preset is overstressing a (currently) overclocked Intel 6-core @ 4 Ghz (the log misreads this, as does every program in existence but cpu-z it would seem, although it does say 4079 MHz somehow which is puzzling).

I'm not currently running any game, and even without using monitor capture on previous attempts to fix the issue it persisted.

Even still, setting x264 to the ultrafast preset didn't solve the issue either.

Both logs are once again included.

EDIT: I have discovered what was causing the problem. After further digging through these and other forums, I noticed some people referring to problems caused by not using the HPET (High Precision Event Timer) which is not natively used in windows 7.

More info on what this is, how to test if you are using / in need of it, and how to enable / disable it in windows can be found here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/asu...-game-timing-problem-g60jx-2.html#post7364805

In short, I ran the testing application that the user quoted above wrote, and lo and behold the source of my problems! It turns out that the timers that Windows was using were actually so off that they were becoming divergent over time, hence why the amount by which my mic was behind the target timestamp consistently increased as the recording went on.

Enabling HPET in windows using the command bcdedit /set useplatformclock true and then rebooting solved my issue entirely, and no audio stuttering is seen in the OBS logs or can be heard in local recordings.

Sorry if I wasted anyone's time, and thanks to Jack0r for the prompt response. Even though it didn't solve my issue, Jack0r's post at least let me know that I had been heard and did give me some peace of mind.

I will leave this post here in the hope that it helps someone else in the future.

Attached now are some screencaps of the timertester program I used to uncover the real problem from before and after the fix was applied.

-Skiibs