Hello, hoping someone can help me. I've been streaming for a little over a month with no issues, but this past week have started getting a horrible audio stutter problem. The audio, during the stutter portions, is pretty much unusable. I'm writing this up in great detail, as some of the problems became evident in later review, and I'm not sure which details are relevant or not.
If anyone wants to hear it, you can see my VoDs here: https://www.twitch.tv/dorthak42/videos?filter=archives&sort=time. If you go to the second oldest video, the one that's only 1:46 long, it's very evident around the 0:50 mark. May need to turn your audio up, it might be very quiet.
I'm using a dual PC setup with a GoXLR, using, more or less, the set up Harris Heller shows in his Alpha Gaming YT videos. The stream PC gets its audio input entirely on the line-in jack of the MB/sound card, so as far as I can tell, none of the settings on the gaming PC should matter. Mic, especially, doesn't go through the game PC, only through the GoXLR and then out to the stream PC. Stream PC specs below, but it's basically a brand new build with a fresh Win10 Pro install and not much else running besides OBS. It gets game video via an HDMI capture card and camera via an Elgato Camlink.
Two streams ago (4/28/2020) one of my very few viewers notfied me of really bad stutter in the audio. I could hear nothing problematic on my end, so tried a bunch of things on the game PC and GoXLR to no avail. I also tried restarting the stream with a different audio bitrate. After verifying that the GoXLR output was good, I went to google and found that a possible issue was the audio sample rate in OBS and/or windows. OBS was set to 44.1kHz, I changed it to 48 kHz, and life seemed good. Viewers reported that the stuttering went away... for a while. However, later in the stream, a different viewer reported "clipping" and left without staying long enough to help me figure out the issue. I assumed it was an audio clipping issue as I had messed with various levels, and left it for after the stream to deal with. Reviewing the VoD, however I realized it was the same stutter. It had come back.
Between streams, I went through and checked sample rates. I found that the Line-in in windows was set to 44.1kHz the audio sample rate in OBS was set to 48kHz (from the change mentioned above), and the speaker output in windows was set to 48kHz. I set all three to 48kHz and was hoping that would do it.
Last night's stream (5/2/2020) started just fine, but about an hour and a half in, the stutter came back (you can see it at the 1:27:40 mark in the third-from-start VoD posted above, the one with a 1:56:41 run time). This seemed to coincide with a scene change, but the two scenes use the exact same audio source, the only difference is in the video sources... It was another 30 min before anyone let me know the problem came back. I tried restarting the stream to no avail, and then restarted again, changing both the Windows Line-in and OBS sample rate back to 44.1. Again, this fixed it.... until the same scene change (seen around the 30:19 mark in the last VoD seen above, the one with the 1:33:00 run time.
Looking back at the 4/28/2020 VoDs, it appears that the change to that same scene triggered the start of the stuttering. This doesn't seem to happen every time - the first scene change to that scene in the 5/1/2020 stream didn't cause the issue.
The scenes are set up as follows:
Starting. Ending, and BRB scenes include the "Line In from GoXLR" audio source and a browser source that points to a Streamelements overlay & alerts page. The three are substantially identical except the text in the overlay.
The "Factorio Stream" scene includes the same "Line In from GoXLR", a different Streamelements browser source (just for alerts), a "Webcam Insert" scene source (which itself is a cropped and filtered scene with a single scene source, "Webcam Full", which is a scene that contains a single video capture source, the CamLink 4k for the camera), and a "Game PC Scaled" scene source (which itself is a scene with some scaling filters applied that includes a single video capture source, the Elgato 4k60 game screen capture).
Finally, my "Talking head 2" scene includes the same "Line In from GoXLR", a "Webcam for talking head" scene source (which itself is a scene exactly like the "Webcam Insert" scene above, but with different cropping), yet another Streamelements browser source (for alerts), and "Backdrop", an Image Source that shows a static background.
In all of these scenes, all audio sources except the "Line In from GoXLR" are muted.
The stuttering appears to happen when I change from "Talking head 2" to "Factorio Stream" (not every time), or from "BRB" to "Factorio Stream". Interestingly, switching from "Factorio Stream" to the "Ending" scene appears to make the stutter go away.
I should add that this doesn't seem to be a network issues, as I had almost no dropped frames for either stream - sometimes it was literally zero, but at all times the percentage stayed at "0,0%"
Please help? This is fairly untenable as is...
I'm happy to post more info, if it'll help, please let me know what would be helpful.
Streaming PC details:
ASUS Tuf Gaming B450M-Plus motherboard
AMD Ryzen 5 2600X CPU
16GB RAM
Drives are a pair of older Intel SSDs
ASUS Strix GeForce GTX 1660 Super GPU
Windows 10 Pro Version 1909
Elgato 4k60Pro Mk2 HDMI capture card
Elgato Camlink 4k USB HDMI capture device
Logs from the streams, broken up since I had to restart the stream each time:
Day 1 (4/28/2020):
Log 1: https://pastebin.com/RvQ6g6Ts
Log 2: https://pastebin.com/Mz42MPTZ
Log 3: https://pastebin.com/thCGGw71
Day 2 (5/2/2020):
Log 1: https://pastebin.com/TRrkcdXy
Log 2: https://pastebin.com/UVECdkGm
Log 3: https://pastebin.com/PiKib69N
If anyone wants to hear it, you can see my VoDs here: https://www.twitch.tv/dorthak42/videos?filter=archives&sort=time. If you go to the second oldest video, the one that's only 1:46 long, it's very evident around the 0:50 mark. May need to turn your audio up, it might be very quiet.
I'm using a dual PC setup with a GoXLR, using, more or less, the set up Harris Heller shows in his Alpha Gaming YT videos. The stream PC gets its audio input entirely on the line-in jack of the MB/sound card, so as far as I can tell, none of the settings on the gaming PC should matter. Mic, especially, doesn't go through the game PC, only through the GoXLR and then out to the stream PC. Stream PC specs below, but it's basically a brand new build with a fresh Win10 Pro install and not much else running besides OBS. It gets game video via an HDMI capture card and camera via an Elgato Camlink.
Two streams ago (4/28/2020) one of my very few viewers notfied me of really bad stutter in the audio. I could hear nothing problematic on my end, so tried a bunch of things on the game PC and GoXLR to no avail. I also tried restarting the stream with a different audio bitrate. After verifying that the GoXLR output was good, I went to google and found that a possible issue was the audio sample rate in OBS and/or windows. OBS was set to 44.1kHz, I changed it to 48 kHz, and life seemed good. Viewers reported that the stuttering went away... for a while. However, later in the stream, a different viewer reported "clipping" and left without staying long enough to help me figure out the issue. I assumed it was an audio clipping issue as I had messed with various levels, and left it for after the stream to deal with. Reviewing the VoD, however I realized it was the same stutter. It had come back.
Between streams, I went through and checked sample rates. I found that the Line-in in windows was set to 44.1kHz the audio sample rate in OBS was set to 48kHz (from the change mentioned above), and the speaker output in windows was set to 48kHz. I set all three to 48kHz and was hoping that would do it.
Last night's stream (5/2/2020) started just fine, but about an hour and a half in, the stutter came back (you can see it at the 1:27:40 mark in the third-from-start VoD posted above, the one with a 1:56:41 run time). This seemed to coincide with a scene change, but the two scenes use the exact same audio source, the only difference is in the video sources... It was another 30 min before anyone let me know the problem came back. I tried restarting the stream to no avail, and then restarted again, changing both the Windows Line-in and OBS sample rate back to 44.1. Again, this fixed it.... until the same scene change (seen around the 30:19 mark in the last VoD seen above, the one with the 1:33:00 run time.
Looking back at the 4/28/2020 VoDs, it appears that the change to that same scene triggered the start of the stuttering. This doesn't seem to happen every time - the first scene change to that scene in the 5/1/2020 stream didn't cause the issue.
The scenes are set up as follows:
Starting. Ending, and BRB scenes include the "Line In from GoXLR" audio source and a browser source that points to a Streamelements overlay & alerts page. The three are substantially identical except the text in the overlay.
The "Factorio Stream" scene includes the same "Line In from GoXLR", a different Streamelements browser source (just for alerts), a "Webcam Insert" scene source (which itself is a cropped and filtered scene with a single scene source, "Webcam Full", which is a scene that contains a single video capture source, the CamLink 4k for the camera), and a "Game PC Scaled" scene source (which itself is a scene with some scaling filters applied that includes a single video capture source, the Elgato 4k60 game screen capture).
Finally, my "Talking head 2" scene includes the same "Line In from GoXLR", a "Webcam for talking head" scene source (which itself is a scene exactly like the "Webcam Insert" scene above, but with different cropping), yet another Streamelements browser source (for alerts), and "Backdrop", an Image Source that shows a static background.
In all of these scenes, all audio sources except the "Line In from GoXLR" are muted.
The stuttering appears to happen when I change from "Talking head 2" to "Factorio Stream" (not every time), or from "BRB" to "Factorio Stream". Interestingly, switching from "Factorio Stream" to the "Ending" scene appears to make the stutter go away.
I should add that this doesn't seem to be a network issues, as I had almost no dropped frames for either stream - sometimes it was literally zero, but at all times the percentage stayed at "0,0%"
Please help? This is fairly untenable as is...
I'm happy to post more info, if it'll help, please let me know what would be helpful.
Streaming PC details:
ASUS Tuf Gaming B450M-Plus motherboard
AMD Ryzen 5 2600X CPU
16GB RAM
Drives are a pair of older Intel SSDs
ASUS Strix GeForce GTX 1660 Super GPU
Windows 10 Pro Version 1909
Elgato 4k60Pro Mk2 HDMI capture card
Elgato Camlink 4k USB HDMI capture device
Logs from the streams, broken up since I had to restart the stream each time:
Day 1 (4/28/2020):
Log 1: https://pastebin.com/RvQ6g6Ts
Log 2: https://pastebin.com/Mz42MPTZ
Log 3: https://pastebin.com/thCGGw71
Day 2 (5/2/2020):
Log 1: https://pastebin.com/TRrkcdXy
Log 2: https://pastebin.com/UVECdkGm
Log 3: https://pastebin.com/PiKib69N