Question / Help Intermittent voice distortion.

[Fenric]

Edit 10/15: I believe I have this fixed now. I've only had time to do about a 30 minute broadcast but I could not find any interference/distortion like I was having before.

It was an issue with sample rate settings. I had been adjusting sample rates in the Windows audio devices as well as in the Sentey control panel. I think somehow a conflict was created.

As an aside, I was able to reduce the level of noise the mic recorded by removing the power strip and surge protector the PC was plugged into and hooking it up directly to the wall outlet. It was a pretty significant difference.

Hello,

I've just started streaming a bit over the past few days, so I am very new to it and still learning. Also, because I am new, I don't have any viewers so no one pointed this out to me, however I was watching some of my stream to check out the quality afterwards and noticed this:

http://www.twitch.tv/fenric/c/5274139

This happened about 15 minutes into that stream, and the mic was working fine up to this point. It lasted about 30 seconds and the audio from the game was not affected. After 30 seconds or so, it was normal again. I haven't taken time to sit and watch much of my broadcasts so I do not know how frequently it could be happening.

I believe this is the correct log file from that broadcast, but I haven't changed anything today. I was experimenting with settings a lot yesterday trying to see what kind of quality I could get.

http://pastebin.com/D4SJdhuY

As I said I'm just starting out, so any other suggestions for settings are welcomed.

The headset is a usb Sentey Vibros GS-4540 and is maybe a month old. I have not used the microphone on it for anything else yet.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[Fenric]

I went back and watched most of the video the above highlight was made from. I noticed two more times the microphone input was distorted at around roughly 30 minutes and 45 minutes. The nearly 15 minute intervals seems odd to me but I have no idea why. I couldn't find anything near the 1 hour mark either.

I also noticed at around roughly 30 minutes and 60 minutes the stream playback cut to a black screen for a second and then came back. I don't know how to tell if this happened because of OBS or if there was a momentary connection problem to the Twitch server during the broadcast, or while I was watching the broadcast afterwards. I don't recall noticing any dropped frames.

 

[Fenric]

Still hoping for some help with these two problems. I am at a loss as to what else to try and my searching isn't turning up anything that appears to be similar.

 

[Lain]

You're using kind of an old default for 'scene buffering time', raise that to 700 in advanced. May not be related to any of your problems though.

Your volume is very low in the video. I can barely even hear it. Having low volume might also be related.

 

[Fenric]

Hi Jim, thanks for responding.

Yes I have changed the scene buffering time to 700 now, but I haven't done any streaming since changing it yet.

I'm aware of how low the audio is in my videos. I don't know what to do about the audio levels. I have to enable microphone boost and set the level to around 40, with the mic volume in OBS at max. The speaker audio in OBS is only at 40%.

If I turn off mic boost (in the device settings, not OBS) and set the level to 100, it's super quiet.

Most streams I visit on Twitch, I have to keep my system volume around 20-30 and still have the volume slider on the stream itself barely raised. I have no idea why the levels are like this on my PC.

I tried experimenting with the device boost and OBS boost when I was initially setting things up. I can get the mic input a lot louder but then there is a lot of static.

 

[Fenric]

I'm still spending a lot of time searching for information on this. I found a video on YouTube suggesting using Adobe Audition plus Virtual Audio Cable as a way to boost your voice volume and make it sound cleaner so I tried that tonight. I also turned on the microphone noise gate in OBS.

Overall I'm not sure I like how Audition makes my voice sound. I will have to learn how to adjust the filters the guide said to use and see if that helps.

With Audition I now have microphone boost turned off in the device settings and the level at 100. In OBS desktop boost is at 1 and mic boost is at 3. On the main OBS page both mic and desktop volume is at 100%. The overall volume from what I streamed tonight is much better, however the problem I had initially is still happening.

Here is a highlight from tonight. Be warned that this time the interference is very very loud. At the beginning you hear only the game sound as the microphone gate is working. Then the interference occurs, followed by a noise from my room. After that I make a comment to someone that was in my stream, and you can hear how I sound normally with this setup.

Again be warned that this is really loud this time. Turn your volume down please.
http://www.twitch.tv/fenric/c/5286519

I've been playing this broadcast in the background while doing other things to listen to the volume. At the very beginning of the broadcast there is similar interference as this but not nearly as loud. It's hard to tell if the microphone gate was open or not for this because I wasn't talking, and was tabbed out of the game. For the next 90 minutes of the broadcast I can't really notice anything unusual, but as I said before since I don't have any viewers most of the time, I'm not talking, and the noise gate is closed, so I think the interference is still happening but being blocked.

I'm probably going to delete this broadcast as I'd hate for someone to blow out their speakers listening to it.