Bug Report Audio Monitoring bug?

[MrFrenglish]

Hello everyone!

I have a weird problem right now and I dont know how to fix it. Hopefully someone can help me.

Basically I want to hear (monitor) my mic/music while desktop is muted (to remove in game audio for coffee breaks). However for some reason, everytime I mute my desktop audio (in OBS), my mic/music is also muted. Im at a lost. I dont know how to fix this.

Log: https://obsproject.com/logs/ALlR-kskqfI1pAC0
Video: https://streamable.com/pocfl

Anyone has any ideas? Thanks!

EDIT: Even uninstalling/reinstalling did not work.

 

[MrFrenglish]

Bump before bed!

 

[Narcogen]

That's pretty much working as designed. The monitor & output setting sends audio to both the stream and your monitoring device, but when you mute that source in OBS, that's it-- it's muted, both for monitoring and output.

 

[MrFrenglish]

Wait so you're telling me theres no way I can let the mic/music output play in my streams while desktop audio is muted?

I just want to mute my game music directly through obs instead of having to go in options and lower the volume to have a chat with viewers when I am on breaks. How would I do that?

Thanks for the help!

 

[Narcogen]

18:58:58.595: WASAPI: Device 'Haut-parleurs (Realtek High Definition Audio)' initialized
18:58:58.603: WASAPI: Device 'Microphone (2- AT2020USB+)' initialized

You've only got two audio devices. OBS can control them separately from each other, but it doesn't know anything about what is playing on them.

So you can hit the "mute" button for your desktop audio-- that will stop you from hearing desktop audio AND stop the stream from hearing it, but shouldn't affect your mic. I don't know where your music is coming from because I don't see another audio device or a VLC source, so assuming that is also playing through the default Windows desktop audio device, then no, you can't use OBS to mute the game but not the music. OBS has no way of controlling the output of your game, it's just capturing Windows audio.

You may want to look at creating a setup with at least one virtual audio device, so you can have your game on one and other audio (like music) on another, so you can mute them independently:

https://obsproject.com/forum/resour...nagement-for-1-and-2-pc-streaming-setups.397/


As an alternative, I would suggest adding a Filter to your desktop audio. Choose Compressor, and in the pulldown for "Sidechain" choose your microphone.

This will dynamically reduce the volume of game/system audio when you speak through your microphone. You can adjust the settings to control how dramatic this effect is, and you can hide/show the filter (with the eyeball button) if you want to use this feature only for chatting and not during gameplay.

 

[MrFrenglish]

The "music" is coming from a VLC source and I play songs directly from a directory.

So you can hit the "mute" button for your desktop audio-- that will stop you from hearing desktop audio AND stop the stream from hearing it, but shouldn't affect your mic

But it does affect the mic and I dont get why. You can clearly see I am speaking to the mic when I mute the desktop audio in the video and its not picking up anything until I unmute the desktop audio.

Let me show you something else: https://streamable.com/rvrg5 (same settings)

First part of the video has monitor only (mute ouput) on, mic is muted as soon as I mute the desktop audio.
2nd part of the video has monitor off, mic works fine when I mute the desktop.

What the hell? Its like my all of my OBS audio suddenly switch to the desktop audio track only when I turn on monitoring. Is this really how its supposed to work??? I feel like its not supposed to be like that.

EDIT: As for voicemeeter banana, you always have to have it on for it work. Its not the solution I am looking for.
EDIT: I guess I get it... I just really wish I didnt need a third party software to do what I want to accomplish.

 

[Narcogen]

It muting your desktop audio affects your microphone, it sounds possible to me that you don't actually have your microphone assigned to your streaming track, but you do have audio monitoring on, with the output going to your default output, and your microphone set to "monitor and output".

If that were the case, then muting your desktop audio would affect both... but it's not supposed to be set up that way.

 

[MrFrenglish]

Okay... How would I verifiy if thats the case then? Im not sur to completely understand here.

 

[Narcogen]

In Edit > Advanced Audio Properties, take a look at your audio devices, what track(s) they are assigned to, and whether they are set to output, monitor, or monitor and output. Take a screenshot if you can.

In Edit > Settings > Advanced, take a look at what your Audio Monitoring device is. Is it your default Windows output device?

In Settings > Output > Streaming, which audio track is set to stream? Is it the one your device(s) are assigned to?

 

[MrFrenglish]

Pictures as requested.

In streaming, audio track is set to only 1. But If I want to add more tracks, it doesn't work. It just switched to 2 or 3 or etc.
Can you see anything wrong?

Thanks again for your help, very appreciated!

 

[Narcogen]

In Edit > Settings > Advanced you have your monitoring going to the same device you are capturing. You can't do this. You either need another second physical output, or something like Voicemeeter which gives you a virtual output.

You have Mic/Aux and Music set to "monitor only" which means they would NOT be going to the stream-- except that they ARE going to the monitor, which is your default windows audio device, which you are capturing.

In short, with those two devices set to "monitor only" they would be playing ONLY to you and not to the stream-- except that your monitor source is your default audio device which you are also capturing. This isn't how things are supposed to be set up-- it means that your microphone, your music, and your default Windows audio are all going to the same device, which means you can't control any of them independently. It's why muting desktop audio mutes everything, because you're capturing audio through your monitoring device.

The audio devices you want to stream should either be set to "output only" or "monitor and output". If you need to have monitoring on for one or more sources so that you can hear it, you need either another physical interface to use for monitoring other than your default windows device, or a virtual device provided by Voicemeeter or something similar so that you can separate your output from your monitoring.

 

[MrFrenglish]

Downloaded VM Banana. I figured how to separate sounds but still not exactly what I would like.

The reason why I added music with a VLC source was to stop the music from playing all the time when I switch scenes. My perfect idea of streaming is having everything ready at the tip of my fingers. So when I switch scenes (from brb to live), my music stop. When I switch back, it starts again.

My problem with the VM banana setup is I have to manually turn off my music software to stop hearing it myself.
Any way for me to stop the music from problem depending on the scene I switch to, while excluding desktop audio from OBS only?

I might be asking too much of OBS yet maybe. Or maybe Im just too dumb to get how to do this.

 

[Narcogen]

Set VLC to output somewhere other than your default output. (Doesn't even matter where-- some output that doesn't exist or that you're not using)

Set your VLC source to "output and monitor" in Advanced Audio Properties.

Set your OBS monitoring output to one of your Voicemeeter outputs in Edit > Settings > Advanced.

Set voicemeeter to send that output to the device you're physically listening to.

In the above scenario you will only hear VLC's output when it is live on stream. When you switch to a scene that does not include the VLC source, you will not hear the VLC source.

 

[MrFrenglish]

EUREKA!

Dude... I finally did it. I actually found a work around that is much easier than using voicemeeter banana. That said your way also worked in the end.

We were just thinking too hard probably. I just disabled my audio device (speakers) in the settings and then added an audio output source in the gameplay scene. Tada!

That said I will keep voicemeeter banana installed because there is less delay for the mic monitoring than OBS for me.
Thank you for the help though, it was helpful and appreciated!

Uh.... What a headache.