Audio quality with music fluctuates horribly

M

mcrockharbor

New Member
Hey all,

I am helping a nearby church in my community with their streaming setup.

I've used OBS in the past without issue.

Here is the setup:

Laptop with 16 GB ram, Geofroce RTX 5050 graphics card, Windows 11 home, USB 3.2 port.

Running an Osee Streamdeck which has two cameras connected via HDMI and a send from the digital mixer for audio going into "Mic 1".

This is going from the computer to Restream to Youtube and Facebook.

It all connected and started streaming without any issue.

However, when Sunday rolled around, they started the stream - speaking on a microphone sounds fine but when they do music - it suffers greatly.

There are no filters whatsoever applied in OBS or anywhere else, but it acts like something is attacking it with a limiter / noise suppressor / something of the sort because you can hear it fluctuate - in quality and in volume.

I read one thread that said disabling audio enhancements in Windows can help with that sort of issue. It didn't help.

I've tried multiple bit rate settings for the stream to no avail.

Anyone have any other ideas for me?

Thanks.
 
First
- laptop - so beware thermal throttling. Sorry no easy/consistent way to check.. diagnostics is make/model dependent (as far as I'm aware). Thermal throttling (ie reduce CPU/GPU and other performance) could cause all kinds of issues


then
- Beware that good audio for in-house listening, and good audio for livestream viewing are usually 2 completely different things. There are a number of YouTube videos on House of Worship (HoW) audio and setups for livestreaming. Basically, the recommendation is to use a alternate/sub mix- 1 for in-house, 1 for streaming (usually benefits from compression and slightly louder default level to accommodate typical listening environment).
Does this HoW have a sound tech? has anyone checked audio coming out of mixer to OBS Studio PC? in other words, make sure it isn't an issue with your audio mixer source material. Maybe try testing by adding some pre-recorded music on OBS PC to combine with regular speaking only via mixer/mic
- Then, how is digital mixer connected? beware Windows default audio sub-system (specifically its limitations). It is why some folks bypass Windows default audio processing using ASIO or other. Depends on your mixer, if you are using a DAW (and what audio output options you have).
- Yes, leave Windows Audio enhancements disabled (especially if routing audio through Windows Audio sub-system... completely inappropriate for this use case
and in that vein, With the nVidia card, did any of its audio noise suppression drivers/settings get applied? something to check. Also, check the audio driver/settings from computer mfg

Finally, I'd test by recording, not streaming, and check the audio sound there (maybe during rehearsal?) and adjust until you get that right.
 
Lawrence_SoCal said:
First
- laptop - so beware thermal throttling. Sorry no easy/consistent way to check.. diagnostics is make/model dependent (as far as I'm aware). Thermal throttling (ie reduce CPU/GPU and other performance) could cause all kinds of issues


then
- Beware that good audio for in-house listening, and good audio for livestream viewing are usually 2 completely different things. There are a number of YouTube videos on House of Worship (HoW) audio and setups for livestreaming. Basically, the recommendation is to use a alternate/sub mix- 1 for in-house, 1 for streaming (usually benefits from compression and slightly louder default level to accommodate typical listening environment).
Does this HoW have a sound tech? has anyone checked audio coming out of mixer to OBS Studio PC? in other words, make sure it isn't an issue with your audio mixer source material. Maybe try testing by adding some pre-recorded music on OBS PC to combine with regular speaking only via mixer/mic
- Then, how is digital mixer connected? beware Windows default audio sub-system (specifically its limitations). It is why some folks bypass Windows default audio processing using ASIO or other. Depends on your mixer, if you are using a DAW (and what audio output options you have).
- Yes, leave Windows Audio enhancements disabled (especially if routing audio through Windows Audio sub-system... completely inappropriate for this use case
and in that vein, With the nVidia card, did any of its audio noise suppression drivers/settings get applied? something to check. Also, check the audio driver/settings from computer mfg

Finally, I'd test by recording, not streaming, and check the audio sound there (maybe during rehearsal?) and adjust until you get that right.
Click to expand...
Thanks, Lawrence.

To answer a few of your questions and to give some context - I am a pastor of one of the other churches in this community and I manage our streaming setup here and it works beautifully.

We have *similar* setups. The church I am helping has a Yamaha TF1 and we have a separate sub-mix being routed through its own Aux channel and that goes out over 2 xlrs to a single stereo 1/8" cable.

The headphone out of the Osee device sounds excellent.

I know for certain that the Yamaha mixer has nothing to do with the issue.

For testing purposes, I've connected a bluetooth receiver connected to the Osee streamdeck via an 1/8" cable and used only that to stream and the issue was the same as when it was connected to the Yamaha mixer.

I will check and see if anything on the Nvidia side could be factoring in. I am also going to check and see if any there is any Alienware software factoring into the audio processing.

I also used my own ATEM Mini on the same computer at the other church and it had the same problem.

So the issue is definitely somewhere with either the computer or OBS.

So I have eliminated all hardware minus the laptop (which I might try at some point but am hoping it is not the case as they just bought it) - so I am hoping there is something software wise I can resolve.

Thanks,

Kyle
 
Alienware ships with Nahimic audio software (bundled through SteelSeries GG) that applies aggressive dynamic processing to everything going through the audio stack - sounds fine for speech but absolutely kills music dynamics. Also worth checking Nvidia's control panel or any Nvidia RTX Audio Effects that might be active with the 5050. Either running silently in the background would explain exactly this pattern where speech is clean but music gets mangled even after disabling Windows enhancements.
 
mcrockharbor said:
We have *similar* setups. The church I am helping has a Yamaha TF1 and we have a separate sub-mix being routed through its own Aux channel and that goes out over 2 xlrs to a single stereo 1/8" cable.
Click to expand...

Sounds like you are on the right path with Operating System Audio path software/driver issue

But... just in the interest of truly eliminating the analog Audio Source as the issue, have you plugged a set of headphones into the XLR to 1/8" cable to test? Only if you've done that, have you tested the actual audio signal coming from the mixer to the OBS Studio PC [granted, other tests are likely representative, but....]

On our Dell Optiplex, we ran into an issue where the rear panel Audio input port did NOT work as well as the front panel 3.5mm audio port (same dual XLR analog output from Mixer to PC.. In our case, we initially used some adapters to adjust level before getting to PC.. since removed).
As to why material audio signal difference between our front and rear panel audio input ports? no idea, Go figure.. wasn't worth my time/effort to figure out exactly why... we simply what used what worked better and moved onto more important issues

More importantly, sometimes the analog connection works better... _but_ you are doing multiple analog/digital conversions in the process [and that usually isn't good]. And you are dependent on audio chip inside electronically noisy motherboard... not ideal.
- sometimes, for better audio quality, an external, USB audio adapter works better than motherboard audio chip. [again, unlikely your specific major issue, but potentially relevant to optimizing setup]
- Though much more complicated on Windows OS with OBS Studio, from a technical perspective, I'd prefer taking digitally processed signal on mixer, transport over USB, and then use that signal. I'm not familiar with specifics of USB audio output config on Yamaha and TF1 . I know it got tricky with our digital mixer. Issues of ASIO straight into OBS Studio (using 3rd party OBS plugin to enable ASIO source) vs mixer driver config to set desired sub-mix and L/R USB Audio primary channels, vs DAW on PC and using VST or other to get audio into Windows Audio sub-system to OBS Studio... If one has sound engineer running mixer, you probably don't need (or want) DAW on OBS Studio PC. Ideally you can find a way to configure the TF1 to send your livestream audio sub-mix as USB audio output... and be running compression on that sub-mix on the mixer itself
 
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