Audio stutters/dropouts only in OBS recordings

[Thebigcheese]

Since this forum lacks a block feature, ignoring will have to do. At any rate, I did some additional testing and may have solved the issue. Initially I did the same test but using Xsplit, which is truly awful software, but since it has the same purpose, I figured it would allow me to really determine if it was an OBS issue or not. However, at least in the free version it doesn't really let you dial in encoder settings, so I can't say for sure that it's a perfect match. At any rate, there were two small crackles but no dropouts like with OBS. So I did a little more digging and found that I had not disabled Windows from putting USB root hubs to sleep. I don't think that was the problem, but I disabled that anyway. I then set OBS to "above normal" process priority thinking that maybe it just isn't getting prioritized enough and ran another test, this time with LatencyMon running throughout. Although LatencyMon did flag a few things (Windows processes, no notable issues with the Audient driver), even when I can see it spiking on the recording there are no dropouts. We'll see how it goes when I do some actual streaming and recording later this week, but all this time it may just have been needing to give OBS more priority and not anything wrong with my hardware or drivers at all. I've included the results from LatencyMon for posterity.

 

[PaiSand]

You don't need and windows ignore the above normal priority. If you need this you must run OBS as admin, which does just that. Complains on this behavior goes to Microsoft.
The recommendations on the analyzer are there for a reason. Ignoring them always have the same effect.
What you don't notice is if this was an OBS issue everyone would have the same issue, not a few people over the course of 10 years.

 

[Thebigcheese]

I have been performing all of these tests while running OBS as admin. If that already sets the program to run above normal priority, then I will reset the OBS setting if it's not actually doing anything. It does not actually seem to have fixed the problem anyway. I've also tried disabling anti-lag, which has also not fixed it. Audient suggests that there can sometimes be conflicts with specific CPU / motherboard / GPU combinations and to try running with onboard graphics to rule that out. It's an annoying option to try, but I suppose it's worth a shot.

I would be careful about conflating people not noticing/reporting the issue with not having it, however. Sometimes it is more obvious than other times. For example, I had thought I might have fixed it, but it's more likely that the specific songs I had recorded to test made it less obvious. In testing today, I had to relisten to it several times while counting it out and comparing to the file on Spotify just to make sure I wasn't hearing things. It can often be extremely subtle and I suspect most people would just shrug and write it off as their computer just doing computer things. This doesn't mean they aren't having the problem, just that they don't notice and/or care about it. Unfortunately, my brain is not wired that way, so instead I have to spend weeks trying to fix a problem no one else cares about. I'm no longer convinced it is an OBS problem, but it's no less frustrating to be having it.

 

[Thebigcheese]

Hmm, really complicating this now is that I just noticed in one of my videos:

• In the mixed track I use for the stream, there's a part where my mic stutters. But on the third track, where I have a duplicate of the mic with no FX on it, it does not. This would lead me to believe that it is, in fact, the FX causing issues, but...
• Earlier on the same file, there's a part where the clean mic track stutters but the effected track does not. So maybe it just doesn't like having the same audio source on two tracks, but...
• When I have done all of these other tests, I'm not doing anything other than running desktop audio and a single mic track, both with no FX, and that still has problems sometimes.

I really don't know what to make of this any more, it's so inconsistent even on the same file. Maybe this is one of those stupid Windows things that ASIO was created to fix in the first place and I'm just going to have to deal with it.

 

[Thebigcheese]

Alright, this is my last post here about it. I am not, as it turns out, the only one having this problem. There is this thread about it and there's even already an open issue on GitHub (and a related open pull request) about it. Don't know how I missed those, but it's clear that someone is aware that it is an actual problem with OBS specifically and that a fix is being worked on. I will just deal with it for now.