Question / Help Couple Streaming Discord Echo

[Shnackaran]

Hey everyone. My wife and I have been wanting to get into streaming for over two years now but we’ve never been able to figure out a solution to what I feel should be a rather straightforward problem. Our issue isn’t the classic audio echo that most people on these forums are asking about - it is an explicit and self-induced echo that we wish to mitigate.

We have our PCs set up next to each other, and we both use headsets. The complication is that we both hop into the same discord server to communicate with each other. Here’s the end result:

• She gets picked up in my mic
• I get picked up in her mic
• My stream hears both the output from Discord as well as her coming in through my mic, resulting in obnoxious echo
• Her stream hears both the output from Discord as well as me coming in through her mic, resulting in obnoxious echo
• Anyone we are playing with hears both of us through both mics, resulting in obnoxious echo

Our current solution to this is that we simply don’t stream, and we both have to use push-to-talk. We really want to be able to play without using push to talk without being picked up by each other’s input. So far I’ve lightly experimented with trying to configure a noise gate in OBS, but while my initial experiments with this approach seem like they might solve the feedback issue for the stream directly (as OBS processes my microphone input directly) it doesn’t help alleviate the very real feedback that all of our other party members in Discord experience. Discord unfortunately doesn’t offer a robust noise gate configuration.

I’m wondering if anyone here might have some additional thoughts on this. I feel like at its core it’s a simple problem as far as audio problems go - it’s very clear why the behavior is occurring. Perhaps noise gate remains the proper approach and there’s a way I can implement one at a system level, or perhaps I just need some of the fancy audio processing hardware recommended in various threads across this forum. Either way, I just can’t seem to get my head around a solution that doesn’t involve me putting up a barrier between us with egg crate foam.

We are currently using Turtle Beach EarForce Stealth 450 headsets, and are currently using the microphone from these headsets as our primary input. I did purchase two “Audio Technica AT2005USB Handheld Dynamic Microphone“s in the past with the hope that a (more) proper microphone would yield better results, but still found no success. The good news, however, is that we ARE open to spending money to solve this issue the proper way.

I’m aware that this question could have just as reasonably been asked over at the Discord forums, but I figured the sheer audio expertise in this forum would yield more insightful solutions.

Thank you for taking the time to read this, any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

[koala]

The problem is that you're sending both the audio from your mics as well as the returned audio from discord to your streams. Both mics pick up both voices, and each stream picks up its mic as well as the feedback from discord.

This cannot be solved by filters, echo suppression or other audio mangling that tries to remove part of the recorded audio.
You have to avoid picking up both voices and sending both to discord on multiple connections.

For example, you can stream from separate rooms. This way, your mic isn't able to pick up your wife's voice and vice versa.

Another idea is to send only one voice data stream to discord. For example, connect both mics to the same computer and mix both of them to one virtual audio device. A mixing app is Voicemeeter Banana, for example. Send the resulting mixed voice with one discord session and don't send any voice with the other discord session (isn't possible anyway, since the mic isn't connected on that computer). Both streamings should still be able to pick up both voices, one directly the from virtual device and the other indirectly from discord.

 

[Shnackaran]

Thanks for the response Koala. We get the most fun playing games next to each other, and we'd rather do that and not stream than stream and be split up in different rooms. Working with your last idea about solution, it's essentially the following scenario:

• Computer A connected to Discord, audio output through Player A's headphones as per usual. Microphone muted.
• Computer B connected to Discord, audio output through Player B's headphones as per usual. Microphone muted.
• Player A & B's mics mixed (or third microphone altogether) set as input to either player's Discord (let's just assume it's Player A's input).

This setup solves the issue where members of our Discord hear us twice, so that's good. The problem with this setup is that (assuming we set the input to go through Player A's computer), Player A would not be able to hear Player B, as on Discord you don't hear your own audio from your microphone (nor do you want to). Additionally, Player B would actually hear an echo of themselves.

However, this train of thought did get me thinking of another potential solution along this same vein:

• Computer A connected to Discord, audio output through Player A's headphones as per usual. Microphone muted.
• Computer B connected to Discord, audio output through Player B's headphones as per usual. Microphone muted.
• Player A & B's mics mixed (or third microphone altogether) set as input to an entirely separate Discord Account in the same server - let's just call it "PlayerAB".
• Discord group members mute Player A and Player B manually.
• Player A and Player B do NOT mute their mics, but instead mute PlayerAB. This way they can hear each other without hearing themselves.

This setup I feel gets us 80% of the way there. The last hurdle with this setup would be the problem of isolating Microphone input for our respective streams - which is still something we desire. However, this setup does facilitate that, as we could now be in a much better position to leverage a noise gate to tune the sensitivity just from our Microphone -> OBS. The reason this plan didn't work from the outset is because we couldn't figure out a way to set a system-wide noise gate that Discord would also respect.

As a side note, even without solving the microphone isolation for our respective streams and dealing with just the shared input to each stream, it still puts us in a much better predicament than before.

What are your thoughts on this?

 

[koala]

If that works out for you, fine. I admit I don't have any additional idea, since I don't have that challenge myself. Myself, I would perhaps look for some low range microphone, like the things they use in TV shows. They are clipped to the cloths or are held next to your mouth like a headset mic, and there is absolutely no background noise to hear, even if the audience cheers very loud. I assume such mics pick up the voice of the bearer only, and of no one else.

 

[Shnackaran]

Yeah, I initially began my search by starting for such microphones. If I was able to find a microphone like that I don't think I'd have any problem whatsoever. The difficulty is that I was never able to find any - I think one of the key problems was that I don't know what they are officially called, so I didn't know what to search for. Do you by chance know of where I might start looking for such microphones?

Even if not, I appreciate you taking the time to brainstorm with me. Your initial post did lead to a potential solution in any case. I'm going to leave this post open to hopefully gather other thoughts on the matter.