Delay between my voice and music on stream

[sarahmelyne]

Hi there !
I have a problem when streaming with obs. I'm a singer, I use obs to sing on youtube.
I use my laptop and an external Beringer Audio Device to sing with my Shure Microphone.

I sing on MP3 files through my PC, and I have 2 problems:

When monitoring my voice from OBS, there's a light delay, so I have to only hear my voice through my beringer external audio device
and, when I look to my stream replay, my voice and the music are not really synchronized, there's a little delay...

My question is: where does the problem come from ? my pc ? (8GB RAM Core i3) or my Internet connection ? I'm on wifi, 18MB download and 2MB upload.
Or is this delay inevitable ? I tried to set a snyc delay manualy on obs but it failed (and it's really hard to tell how much ms the delay is)

Thank you !
Sarah

p.s: here is my log file but my beringer IS NOT plugged at this time.

 

[FerretBomb]

Unfortunately a logfile that doesn't contain all elements of the problem isn't... really useful.

Generally there can be a few places where capture latency can happen. From my experience, Behringer's USB interfaces aren't great. Especially if you run them in full-duplex mode, sending system audio to the device for monitoring, and receiving the mic signal into the PC. They also tend to drift if you are using device timestamps or allowing buffering on the audio source.

If you click on the cogwheel next to an audio source in the mixer in OBS, you can go to Advanced Audio Properties, and set up an audio delay. With audio sources, the delay CAN be negative, so you can sync up with system audio like MP3s.
The down side, if you use a webcam, that CANNOT be negative-delayed to line up with your mic signal. You have to 'push' everything forward... the mic, as well as the desktop audio. It's a HUGE hassle to do manually. I've been requesting a 'global audio sync offset' feature be added to OBS to automatically bring everything into line, but it's not a high priority.

 

[sarahmelyne]

Hum okay T_T
It's quite a huge mess.

by the way, is this possible to sing with obs without delay? what would be the solution?

my behringer interface has 2 entries, what if I plug my mic on entry 1 and my music (maybe on my phone or an mp3 player) by Jack plug on entry 2?

to avoid music coming from pc going faster my mic on stream?

thank you for your answer. I will post a log with my interface plugged tomorrow.

 

[sarahmelyne]

Hi, see my log with all my devices plugged.

 

[Lawrence_SoCal]

sorry - lots of technical stuff... but you are pushing an old computer, so dealing with optimizing the Operating System, etc may be required

by the way, is this possible to sing with obs without delay? what would be the solution?
my behringer interface has 2 entries, what if I plug my mic on entry 1 and my music (maybe on my phone or an mp3 player) by Jack plug on entry 2?
to avoid music coming from pc going faster my mic on stream?

The overarching issue is that a computer processing, even when at the speed of light, isn't that fast. Sending audio over a physical interface (ie through a mixer, amp and out to speakers) can be very fast. As soon as a computer gets involved, some latency (delay) is inevitable. Video takes longer to process that audio, hence sync issues between those when coming from different sources (ie microphone not attached to camera). An older. ultra-low power CPU only makes it harder to avoid sync issues

So, in your first example, you have Music file(MP3) playing on PC vs your microphone externally connected, routed over USB interface? which has its own latency). My question to you, is the delay your issue? or getting audio in sync? IF you are trying to hear a music source after it plays in OBS, and use that to sync your singing.... not my area of expertise, but I'd expect significant technical challenges (regardless if OBS or other software) due to nature of audio routing and required processing time in OBS (or similar).
In terms of getting your voice and background music in sync, and avoid complexity of manually doing offsets in software (OBS), then playing music then having music and microphone plugged into the same sound 'mixer' provides a single (combined) audio source to PC... then again, you still have sync with video to deal with.

to make matters worse, you have a 7 generation old low-end CPU, optimized for battery life (the U in CPU model is for Ultra low power), not the computationally demanding task of real-time video encoding. I recommend monitoring hardware resource (CPU, GPU, RAM, etc) utilization [for ex. using Task manager’s Performance tab and/or Resource Monitor] to see if your system is being maxed out with your settings which could cause sync drift.

 

[sarahmelyne]

thanks a lot for your answer. by the way I absolutely don't mind about the video. since the delay is minor, but enough to be heard, it's not so bad if my video is not sync perfectly.

my problem is : when I sing, I monitor my mic and music by plugging my headphones on the USB interface. I have no problem to monitor myself.

the problem is that while streaming, the viewers hear a little delay between my voice and the music.

And I was wondering if it's an unsolvable problem or not.

By the way I may try to stream on my boyfriend desktop pc maybe, he has an i5 Asus rog on an ethernet connexion...

but maybe, it's just that there will always be a latency due to the fact that music comes directly from the pc and my microphone goes through the USB interface before going to the pc...

 

[Lawrence_SoCal]

Having audio route over 2 different paths, especially on an older system, can be a problem
OBS has the ability to Delay audio, so I think you should be able to add a delay to the music audio to sync with your mic (assuming you have those set as separate audio inputs, NOT using Desktop Audio as your Audio source)

 

[sarahmelyne]

Having audio route over 2 different paths, especially on an older system, can be a problem
OBS has the ability to Delay audio, so I think you should be able to add a delay to the music audio to sync with your mic (assuming you have those set as separate audio inputs, NOT using Desktop Audio as your Audio source)

Okay so I was right when I tried to set custom delay on obs... yeah I use VLC source + mic source, not desktop source ;)

thanks a lot for the help!!!!