Audio stutters/dropouts only in OBS recordings

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Thebigcheese

Member
Just so I don't lose track of it, here is the thread I was referring to: https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/max-audio-buffer-reached.114961/. It's from 2020, though a poster there suggests the same issue had been around 4 years (or more) prior to that, which leaves us with 8 years now of this issue. 3 pages of users all having audio buffering issues, still unresolved today. I will try to do a little more testing today now that I have HAGS off, if that doesn't help I'll try at 60 FPS, if that doesn't help I'll try with onboard audio, and if all that doesn't fix it, I'm just going to put in a bug report so someone who actually knows what they're talking about can look at it. Though it is worth mentioning that my original log from 2022 did not have audio buffering issues and still had the same dropouts, so I don't think it's that.
 
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rockbottom

Active Member
Make the changes & test. After testing, close & re-open OBS & then post the previous log. The Profiler Results on the bottom of the log are helpful & can be compared to results from previous logs to see if the audio timing & timing in general is improving.

Like I said before, you most likely will need to switch to the on-board audio. With the Audient there appears to be analog to digital conversion going on & it's not quite fast enough.
 
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rockbottom

Active Member
Think of your PC as an engine. It's running but it's sputtering, backfiring & maybe even a cylinder is out. That's what your PC is doing, it's running but not very good or efficient. It needs a tune up/optimization. Get all the timings in check & things should start to fall into place.
 
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rockbottom

Active Member
For reference purposes as it is important & needs to be factored in to what's going on. The 12400 isn't a real good partner for the 7900. The CPU is a bottleneck & a significant one at that. Even a 12900k is a potential bottleneck. A 13900k or 14900k would have been a much better choice as they are powerful enough to allow the 7900 to operate at it's maximum level. Right now it's probably limited to about 60% of what it can actually do.

 
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Thebigcheese

Member
Here is another log, this time completely free of errors or dropped frames and running without HAGS, still the issue occurs. The next test will be to run at 60 FPS and see if OBS just doesn't handle 59.94 correctly. This is in my clean recording profile, so no overlays or anything else, just a desktop capture and audio capture with no filters other than makeup gain for the mic. I understand that the 12400 is a bottleneck and I may upgrade it at some point when I can justify the expenditure, but it is not the problem in this case.

For reference, I have been working with digital video and audio, both hardware and software, for over 20 years at this point, long before OBS was conceived and even before justin.tv launched. The concept of a buffer is not new to me. The Audient is more than fast enough, it is capable of some of the lowest RTL (round trip latency) on the market, generally hitting around 9 ms with the ASIO buffer size I use (it can go lower, but I run into issues if I use too many effects with a lower buffer size). If I switch to the WASAPI drivers that OBS uses, the 42 ms reported by OBS seems about right, though it can go lower. Like all audio devices, yes, it has analog to digital (and digital to analog) converters, just like the onboard audio. But it is not converting the computer's output to analog and back again for OBS, that is just not how these things work. Furthermore, you have often suggested decreasing the buffer to get things in shape, but that is also just not how these things work. If you run into stuttering, popping, etc, the fix is always to increase the buffer size to allow your CPU more time to process it. That is why OBS increases the buffer when it runs into issues.

If this was a hardware issue, I would have seen the dropouts in my DAW recording in the OP because I was using the same WASAPI driver that OBS uses. As mentioned then, this was recorded simultaneously in OBS and Reaper (my DAW of choice) specifically to test if it was a hardware or driver issue, which it clearly is not as the issue is only present in the audio coming from OBS even when using the same driver in other software.
 

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  • 2024-07-19 09-50-55.txt
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rockbottom

Active Member
Timings are improving, no Max Audio Buffering reached either, getting better. Some settings weren't adjusted. Set both monitors @ 60 or 120HZ. I would avoid high frame-rates to take load off the CPU.

09:50:55.131: Game Bar: On
09:50:55.131: Game DVR: On

Audient....
 
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rockbottom

Active Member
Looking at the release notes for the 7900 driver. I see something called Anti-Lag 2. If that's enabled by chance, kill it.
 
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Thebigcheese

Member
I am intentionally changing only one setting at a time, in my life as a QA tester I find it to be the best way to pinpoint the problem. If I change a bunch of things at once, I have no idea which one fixed it. Changing to 60 FPS has also not fixed the issue. I should add that I am not doing anything at all on the computer (literally not even touching it) other than playing audio via Spotify for these, so the refresh rate of the monitors is irrelevant as the computer is under only an idle load. I have attached the result of the 60 fps test. Again there are no errors or dropped frames but the issue persists. Regarding anti-lag, I do have it enabled, but when I first encountered this issue in 2022 I wasn't even using an AMD GPU nor was the feature available then, so that is unlikely to have any effect. That was a laptop, I should add, that was set to 120 Hz, so again, changing the monitor FPS has no effect. The only other reasonable thing I can test here is to change to the onboard audio as you have suggested; after that, I will just submit a bug report as this is a frankly absurd number of hours of testing I have already put in to go through every possible configuration across two computers, two OSes, 4 audio devices, 4 encoders, 2 GPUs, 2 CPUs....

To answer your question, this is my motherboard: https://www.microcenter.com/product/648356/B660I_AORUS_Pro_DDR4_Intel_LGA_1700_Mini-ITX_Motherboard.
 

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  • 2024-07-19 60fps.txt
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rockbottom

Active Member
Next test

My testing with refresh rates proves otherwise. Anti-lag must be disabled.

Some history, I started with OBS before OBS Studio was released. Running a 2600k, I had small gaps in my OBS recordings too, while my Audacity recordings were perfect. I was routing my audio to a Asus Xonar Essence STX at the time. Nothing I tried worked. I finally tried the the on-board audio about 8 years ago. The 2600k is still around, along with the 6700k & the 12900k, all using on-board audio & no gaps.
 
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Thebigcheese

Member
These are all handy conjectures, but largely useless in practice. I've had no problem gaming and streaming at both 1080p and 1440p at high refresh rates. Yes, the 12400 is a bottleneck, it's just not one that is relevant to anything I do nor have I experienced any noticeable bottlenecking in use. As I said, I will eventually deal with it, but as I am about to demonstrate, it is not the current issue.

I've done several more tests since the last post (I'm not going to bother posting the logs, they're all the same with no errors) and I think that's about all I can handle today. Each test is a 30 minute recording and I listen back to each one until I hear an issue or it ends. I've spent hours on this now, just as I spent hours on it before.

Next thing I changed, still leaving HAGS disabled and OBS set to 60 fps, was switching to the onboard audio. This is not a valid long-term solution as I need a mic to stream and record, but as an experiment, it gives us data. That recording did not seem to have any issues. Because this is not a long-term solution and because I have had the same issue with two other interfaces, one of which was a different brand entirely, and you say you had issues with some sort of sound card (I guess internal, so my next point doesn't apply to you), I wondered if it was just an issue with USB devices generally. Found the USB selective suspend option, disabled that, tested with the Audient again. Same issue. Plugged in a THX Onyx, a small DAC/amp, and tested with that. No issues. I have a DAC/amp from JDS Labs and another from Schiit that I could do further testing with. Then again, it's also possible that I just got lucky or the dropouts only happened in silent portions or some other copium.

This could point to an issue with the Audient driver, which I don't like but is useful data. It does not seem to point to any of the other settings suggested as this is the only change so far that has seemed to make any difference with this particular issue. Still, it is odd that the PreSonus device I tested with years ago also had the issue and that I do not have the same issue using the same WASAPI driver in other programs, which could still potentially suggest an issue on OBS's end with the way it handles certain drivers. I do not know enough about the underlying code to say. The Audient is connected to a USB-C 3.2 port on the back of my computer, so it's unlikely to be a bandwidth issue.

I'll give it some more thought and maybe some more testing with the other DAC/amps to see if any of them have issues. The other difference is that the devices that haven't had issues I also did not have any inputs set up for. That is, I only set up the desktop audio capture, I disabled all other outputs and inputs. I could try them again with inputs enabled or try the Audient with no input set up. I am a very thorough QA and am willing to put in work if it means a bug gets fixed. But not now, that is enough testing for now.
 
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rockbottom

Active Member
Like I said, it's your rig not OBS. I tried to help but you seem hell bent on getting that Audient to bend to your will. Take your time, think about it....
 
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Thebigcheese

Member
Of course I want it to work. It has some of the best specs of any interface on the market, something which those of us who actually use interfaces for recording care about, and an incredibly useful feature set for streaming on top of that. It is easily one of the best possible choices for this application.... Except that OBS doesn't like it for some reason when every other piece of software does. Maybe, MAYBE it's something with the interface, but when the issue exists only and exclusively with OBS, yeah I'm not willing to write it off as a hardware problem. Meanwhile, you are willing to blame any and everything except OBS. We are at odds and honestly I wish you would just stop responding. I post here only for posterity, it is clear I'll not get any actual help on this forum.
 
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Thebigcheese

Member
Did another test with the JDS DAC/amp and that didn't seem to have any issues. That's a device that also has an ASIO driver, so my hypothesis from 2022 about OBS just not liking devices with both WASAPI and ASIO drivers doesn't seem to hold up. I've put in a support ticket with Audient as I don't know what else it could be at this point and I would really like to be able to use this interface.
 
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rockbottom

Active Member
I saw that after I posted, didn't bother to edit. At least it's over, the decade long problem is solved. Lucky for you I read your post, you're welcome.
 
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