Beheringer X-32 to OBS USB issue

[Channel-14]

About a week ago I accidentally zeroed out my X-32 mixer to factory settings. We have a "scene" that I used to restore the settings to what they should have been before fumble-fingers hit the "confirm" button. Since that time I have not been able to get the USB output from the mixer to the sound card on our Windows 11 computer to pass anything to OBS. The mixer is set to 16x16, since we only use half the channels on the board for our church services. I've tried the full 32x32 with no luck. When I double-click on the X-32 audio source in OBS it seems to see the mixer board, in several iterations, all of which I've tried without success. If I crank the audio in OBS to max I get a weird electronic buzz, and the audio meter goes to red and clips all audio. I've tried everything I know on the mixer to get the audio to go, and I'm looking for a new place to start looking. I'm hoping one of the experts in this forum could take a look at the log file and let me know if it looks like there's an issue with OBS, with the computer, or the mixer.

 

[AaronD]

OBS has a problem with multitrack audio interfaces. It absolutely assumes (or demands, depending on how frustrated you are with it) that every device MUST be a single source, and the channel count of that device MUST indicate the surround-sound format. No more logic than that.

So it downmixes 5.1 (6 channels), 7.1 (8 channels), quadraphonic (4 channels), or whatever channel count it finds, into stereo or whatever OBS itself is set to, and THEN lets you play with the royal mess that that creates. No way to change that, or to pick out individual channels and ignore the rest, at least not natively. The ASIO plugin can do that, because it creates its own source that OBS only takes the output of. Other plugins might be similar.

Or, you could set the X32 expansion card to 2 channels. Then there's no conversion for OBS to do. This has nothing to do with the mixer itself, only the card. In fact, you've always been running all 48 mixing inputs all the time anyway: 32 normal + 8 aux + 8 FX returns. It's easier to write the firmware that way, and to guarantee that it always works, if it's always running the worst case regardless of anything. The setting for the card, probably just discards the other channels *in the card*, if I were to guess, nothing more than that.

For the buzz, there's a possibility of a ground loop picking up the AC power line on one of the higher channel numbers that you want to ignore, and OBS's downmixer insists on including it...