Can't monitor sound with Audient iD4 sound controller

[chriscompany]

I'm so stuck. I have an audient id4 sound controller for my mic which is going to OBS, and while I am getting a signal into it (I can see the OBS mic levels moving), and I can hear the mic just when the id4 dial is turned to 'mic', I can't hear what's being outputted from OBS. I need to hear the difference audio filters are making for instance.

I have all the relevent 'monitor' checkboxes checked in the software and I presume on the iD4 that the dial needs to be set to 'DAW' to monitor. But I can't work it out.

Please help if you have a similar controller. Thanks

 

[AaronD]

What device is OBS using for the Monitor?

If it's set to Default, choose a specific one from the list. Default is the most likely option to prove that a fresh installation works, but the exact same mechanism that makes it good for that, also makes it a ticking time bomb for everything else. It could be that yours just happened to go off immediately. Always use specific audio devices, never Default.

 

[chriscompany]

Thanks for the reply. Monitoring device is set to Audient. I seem to have it working now, I think, but now the issue is that annoying echo effect you get from the mic feedback to the headphones. Headphones are plugged into the audient device. How do you prevent that delay effect?

 

[AaronD]

Don't Monitor the mic in OBS. You can't remove the delay - that comes more from Windows sending audio to an app and then getting audio from an app, than it does from the app itself - so you just don't complete the loop.

 

[chriscompany]

Don't Monitor the mic in OBS. You can't remove the delay - that comes more from Windows sending audio to an app and then getting audio from an app, than it does from the app itself - so you just don't complete the loop.

Thanks, much appreciated. I wish OBS made that pretty clear at the start, although maybe they do. So final question, if you can't monitor your mic in OBS, how can you tell what effect the audio filters are having? Is it a case of recording some tests and playing them back?

 

[AaronD]

I wish OBS made that pretty clear at the start, although maybe they do.

OBS's audio is both obvious and annoying to someone who comes from this world:

- YouTube

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

www.youtube.com

- YouTube

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

www.youtube.com

Obvious because it kinda works the same way. Pro gear works the way it does for good reasons, and OBS came at the same reasons from a different direction.
Annoying because that different direction had already entrenched some bad habits by the time it wandered into "serious" production work. So some of the basic things in the pro world, are backwards, convoluted, or impossible in OBS.

It appears to me, across lots of different threads, that the devs recognize that, and they do want to fix it......but it's going to take a complete wipe and rewrite to make it happen. They also know *that*, and so they're waiting to figure out just exactly what they want to do and how it will affect their ongoing maintenance, user complaints, etc.

One thing, I think, is for certain though: *nobody's* rig is going to survive that update, unless they also make a purpose-specific conversion tool as part of the first new version.

---

In the meantime, if you want to do any more with audio than just a single "clean" mic and speaker-capture, you need to at least take a serious look, at using an external tool like a DAW or physical console, and only give OBS the final result of that, as its only audio source, to pass through unchanged. One of my rigs even goes so far as to run OBS's internal sound (videos, etc.) out the Monitor to the DAW, and not the Output, so that *everything* is included in DAW's return to OBS, and that return goes only to the Output, not the Monitor.

DAW = Digital Audio Workstation. Essentially a complete sound studio in one app. It's designed to only do sound, and it does it REALLY WELL!!! Lots to choose from, some free, some paid, some better-featured than others, and not much correlation between functionality and price.

The DAW takes the raw mics and everything else, does all the processing, and drives the headphones, speakers, etc., in addition to OBS, all independently. Most DAW's can use ASIO drivers, which bypass Windows' mess and allow near-imperceptible latency (delay), which means you probably *could* put the DAW-processed mic in your headphones. OBS still can't do that, even in a DAW-based rig: no-ASIO means that OBS has to go through Windows, with the associated problems.

• The Playback channel here, in green, is fed from OBS's Monitor, and I've also set it up to be the system default "speaker", so that other apps go there too.
• The Record channel, in purple, goes back to OBS in addition to recording a WAV file directly from the DAW.
• If you need to control things in OBS, the Ctrl channel, in black, is an example of one way to do that. It's a 20kHz sinewave generator, sent to the side-chain inputs of several different processors on other channels. Each of those sends has its own volume, that can be controlled by an Open Sound Control (OSC) message from the Advanced Scene Switcher plugin in OBS. The reason to do that instead of directly controlling the volume, is because the OSC message is only an instant change and I want a fade. So I use the timing controls of the side-chained processors to create that fade, when their control signals only cut on or off.

Advanced Scene Switcher

This plugin will allow you to automate various tasks using "Macros". Macros consist of a list of conditions under which a list of actions will be performed. Examples and guides can be found in the wiki. Feel free to contribute! If you run...

obsproject.com

Read the documentation for your specific DAW to see what message format it wants. This one, if I remember correctly, sets the 2nd send level of the 1st channel strip to 0dB (100%). That would be Ctrl_Play in the screenshot above this one, which I've routed to the last processor of the Playback channel strip.

If you can't monitor your mic in OBS, how can you tell what effect the audio filters are having? Is it a case of recording some tests and playing them back?

If you're sticking with OBS alone, pretty much yes.

 

[chriscompany]

Awesome, thank you so much.