Intermittent Distorted Audio Issues on Output to streaming service

[MaelstromMac]

Hi

I'm experiencing an audio issue which I believe to be an issue within OBS and it's output to Twitch as I myself cannot hear the audio issue but my viewers can. All of my audio stays crystal clear, and I have to rely on my viewers to let me know it's happening so that I can pause, and wait for a couple of minutes and it will fix itself. Refreshing the sources, or pausing and unpausing the source does not fix it, but waiting a minute or so allows it to fix itself without any interference from me.

I have all of my audio travelling through my XLR, and was previously using Streamlabs without the same issue. The issue started when I moved everything to OBS. The only difference between the two set ups was in Streamlabs I was using 'Desktop Audio' and in OBS I am using separate audio sources to capture Game Audio and Apple Music Audio. The reason they are now separate is so that I can split my audio and send Apple Music to Track 2 to avoid hitting my VOD.
The audio issue is intermittent, and will mean that several times during stream two of my audio sources experience brief periods (30 seconds to 2 minutes) of distorted audio that only my viewers can hear, not myself. The two affected sources are my Apple Music and my Game Audio Capture. My microphone is never affected. I've not noticed any other sound sources being affected such as Sound Alerts or MixItUp however, as these are only used in short bursts, this could be why it appears that way.

I have not noticed a general trend with when or how the issue occurs. I can sometimes stream for 2 hours or 6 hours before the issue occurs, other times it can happen very often, as close together as every 30 minutes. It can happen whether or not I pause the sources, or tab out of my game etc so there is no consistency with occurrences.

We have tried some fixes already, such as decreasing the audio bitrate, making sure the audio settings in my PC settings match OBS audio settings, updating all audio drivers etc but I am still experiencing the same issue.

I am unsure if it is important or not, but I only capture sound directly from the PC itself, and do not have a capture card.

We have also used the OBS reporting tool and it has thrown up 2 issues but we don't think these are likely to berelated to the audio issues.
One issue was a Critical Issue regarding HAGS, recommending for it to be turned OFF, but during testing, we found that having HAGS off, meant that my clips from SideKick integration would freeze, but this was fixed by having it on. I do not have any other issues with having HAGS on.
The other issue was OBS recommending I turn ON 'SLI' on my graphics card control panel, but upon opening NVIDIA control panel, this is not an option I have, and upon further reading on Google, this is related to having 2 graphics cards which I don't have so the capability is not available to me as far as I understand. I'm unsure why OBS might think it is? But again, I feel it's unlikely to be causing my audio issue.

Below are my PC specs and other equipment being used:

PC
MEDION Erazer Engineer P10
Intel® Core™ i7-12700 Processor
RAM: 32 GB / Storage: 512 GB SSD
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti 8 GB

Monitors
Gigabyte G27Q 27 Inch x2

Peripherals
Microphone - Fallout Limited Edition Elgato Wave DX, Elgato Wave XLR & Elgato Wave Mic Arm
Stream Deck - Elgato Stream Deck +

The audio issue has occurred both when a game is and is not being played, for example it can happen to the music source when I am in 'Just Chatting' and a game is not open. I have played both small and more intensive games and have experienced the audio issue on all of them.

I am unable to attach a clip as the file is too big to upload, but here's a link to the supporting clip to show an example of the issue.

Twitch

Twitch is the world's leading video platform and community for gamers.

www.twitch.tv

Thanks

 

[patterroni]

It sounds like a tricky issue! The problem might be related to how OBS handles separate audio sources compared to Streamlabs. Since the distortion only affects specific audio sources (Apple Music and Game Audio) and resolves on its own, try these steps:

1. Audio Monitoring Settings: Check OBS' advanced audio settings and ensure monitoring is set correctly for affected sources.
2. Buffer Size: Adjust the audio buffer size in OBS settings to avoid potential syncing issues.
3. OBS Plugins/Filters: If you’re using plugins or filters, temporarily disable them to see if it helps.
4. System Resources: Monitor system usage during streams; high resource use might cause temporary audio distortions.
5. Audio Drivers: Even if updated, consider reinstalling audio drivers or testing with default Windows audio drivers.

 

[MaelstromMac]

It sounds like a tricky issue! The problem might be related to how OBS handles separate audio sources compared to Streamlabs. Since the distortion only affects specific audio sources (Apple Music and Game Audio) and resolves on its own, try these steps:

1. Audio Monitoring Settings: Check OBS' advanced audio settings and ensure monitoring is set correctly for affected sources.
2. Buffer Size: Adjust the audio buffer size in OBS settings to avoid potential syncing issues.
3. OBS Plugins/Filters: If you’re using plugins or filters, temporarily disable them to see if it helps.
4. System Resources: Monitor system usage during streams; high resource use might cause temporary audio distortions.
5. Audio Drivers: Even if updated, consider reinstalling audio drivers or testing with default Windows audio drivers.

Hey Patterroni!

Thanks for the response last year, apologies I'm only just getting back to you on it.

We're sadly still experiencing the same issue :(

1. We checked the monitoring settings and played around with these, nothing impacted the random static sound.
2. Again, something we played around with, disabled too, but couldn't find anything that impacted us.
3. We tried this one too, we've not actually got any plugins it turns out, so that's not it! :/
4. We didn't see any crazy high system resources.
5. Did a clean install and sadly no luck.

Some other viewers/streamers have told us it's a Windows issue with audio codecs, and that it effects people randomly... BUT, we have no idea!

Thanks for all the efforts though, we'll try to fix it and if we figure something out, i'll post a response here for anyone who is somehow impacted by the same problems :)