Help! Analog Mixer, OBS, and Mac

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mkilgo01

New Member
I am a novice at sound and it's been a long time since I was considered and IT expert. So, I speak some of the language, but there have been a lot of changes since I worked in IT. That being said, I have an analog 2404 VLZ4 mixing board and I am trying to set it as the audio input for OBS. Since the MAC doesn't have an audio input port, so I'm trying to connect the board through a Phoinkas hub. I am able to get sound from the main mix output but I'm only able to get either the music OR vocals. I thought maybe it was crossing with the onboard Mac Mic, which I can't figure out how to disable and OBS won't allow me to completely remove it from the system. Do I have to run the sound through and independent software on the Mac before it goes to OBS? If so, are there any recommendations?
 
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AaronD

Active Member
Assuming you mean this:
That's a terrible device to get finished audio into. Just a mono mic input and stereo headphone output, like all the other cheap stuff. No line in, which is what you need.

Try one of these with an unbalanced or impedance-balanced output of your board (read the board's manual to see which is what):
or one of these with a signal-balanced output:

For why you only get music OR vocals with your present rig, there are at least two possibilities:
  1. You have a noise suppressor in OBS, or possibly in the operating system to make conference calls better in general. Those are designed only for a spoken voice, and try to kill everything else. It doesn't know the difference between intended music, and exceptionally-intrusive background/lobby music, so it kills the music regardless.
  2. You have one panned hard left and the other panned hard right, and you have a mismatch of incompatible analog standards that both use the same plug.
    • Unbalanced stereo on TRS is:
      • Tip = Left signal
      • Ring = Right signal
      • Sleeve = Ground reference
    • Computer mic on TRS is:
      • Tip = Mic signal
      • Right = Mic power, as +5V through a resistor, to power a cheap electret capsule
      • Sleeve = Ground reference and power return
    • Headset on TRRS is:
      • Tip = Left headphone
      • Ring1 = Right headphone
      • Ring2 = Ground reference and power return
      • Sleeve = Mic signal and power combined
If you're trying to get two separate sources in OBS, that you can control separately in OBS, you need two separate physical devices, both of which are compatible with the signals that you're going to give them. OBS is designed for a bedroom streamer that has a USB mic and a 5.1 game or something like that, and will be confused with anything beyond that. Thus, every device must be one source, full stop. Yes, that's annoying.

I often recommend that people don't do any audio work at all in OBS, and only use OBS's audio system as a single-dumb-wire passthrough from something else that does everything. In your case, that something else is probably your analog mixer. Bring everything into the mixer, not OBS, so that OBS is silent except for the one single finished source that comes from the mixer.
 
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