**BUZZING/DISTORTION IN AUDIO RECORDINGS WHEN USING JBL QUATUM HEADSET**

[GM TicToz]

**BUZZING/DISTORTION IN AUDIO RECORDINGS WHEN USING JBL QUATUM HEADSET**
Some help please - there is a regular buzzing/distortion at loud/high points when my voice is raised in the recordings I am creating with OBS Studio.
I use the JBL Quantum 600 (see https://www.jbl.co.nz/QUANTUM600.html) for recording gaming videos and as you will hear in the following videos my (the guy on screen's) voice cracks/distorts a high/loud points in the recording.

https://youtu.be/zlZ4gQLk6K0 at 00:19:55 or 00:30:13 LOG FILE https://obsproject.com/logs/bsH6XE4xispsRTKa
https://youtu.be/Nv0YZvaQu0g at 01:25:07 or 02:02:33 LOG FILE https://obsproject.com/logs/ZYPTkTT33TMwGhBT

So I know the issue is caused by the Microphone that I use. In comparison using a pretty average Boya BY-M1 PRO Omnidirectional Lavalier Microphone the audio quality is at least (to my ears) okay as per this video https://youtu.be/a7cYZyhO1J4 (any point in the video).
Unfortunately for the meantime I need to keep using the JBL. I have done a fair bit of research via YouTube and have tried tweaking my setting but no luck.

Clearly my JBL mic isn't great quality but would love any insight into how to get better audio quality from OBS/what other filters should I be using or changing.

Any help/guidence/advice much appreciated thank you.


Thank you. :)

 

[AaronD]

If it's only when you're loud, then it's almost certainly clipping. The only solution for that is to reduce the volume at the problem point in the chain. OBS uses floating-point internally, so it's pretty much impossible to clip *between* filters, but the inputs and outputs still can.

I believe the meters in OBS are post-everything, so if you add a second source for the mic - no filters at all and doesn't go anywhere, it's just for a raw input meter - how do those two meters compare?

It would also be good to see what the settings are for your filters. I suspect you can get away without the Gain one, by folding that into the Expander and/or Compressor. I generally don't like the Gain filter, because it can hide where exactly this sort of problem is actually occurring. I'd use the gain setting of the mic preamp itself, which is in Windows, not OBS, to set the correct input level, and then go straight into the signal processing from there with no more explicit gain.