Linux/OBS Audio Input/Output

[RickM]

I am running 64x Ubuntu 22.04.01 LTS with OBS 29.0.0 and I am trying to get my audio to go through BT headphones and into OBS, as well as use my headphones as a mic.

I know in Windows that can be done through device management but I spent all afternoon digging through Ubuntu forums and the only solution I found was to use PulseAudio preferences to create a dual output, but I can't figure out for the life of me how to get PulseAudio to recognize my Bluetooth headset. I dug through their documentation and installed BlueZ but Ofono won't install... So I think PA is out.

Returning to OBS, I tried switching the Desktop Audio device to the Bluetooth headset, figuring I would just pipe everything through there and problem would be solved... But OBS detects the mic, but not the audio running to the headset. Which makes sense, but leaves a solution.

Ultimately, if there is no software solution, I can figure out a hardware solution, but I am HOPING there's something I am missing to make this work.

Any help?

Thanks in advance.

 

[RickM]

Oh, one other thing - I am running video through a logitech webcam, and I CAN just use that for all of the audio, but the quality isn't great, so Ideally I can DI the computer audio and the BT audio as two separate tracks. But still need to be able to hear the computer audio myself, hence the need to split outputs.

 

[vapeahoy]

Linux is very specific to usb devices in general, or devices in general that's hot pluggable or similar. I'm nooo expert on this, but i'd look into setting up binding rules to the devices, to make sure the addresses of the devices your using have the same local dev code each time.
On windows devices are remembered automatically, they're not on linux. It's probably one of the biggest annoyances to get around when switching platforms.. If this was me... I think i would use an old phone to connect the bluetooth, which i could then use a usb cable to simply send the audio from phone to a mixer or something. Then you would rule out all technical babble.

 

[AaronD]

Pipewire is reported to fix all that, so it all "just works" out of the box, including vastly improved bluetooth support, transport between apps (not just to hardware), and a few other things. It even fools everything into thinking they're still working with PA or JACK, whichever each app prefers, including the control popup.

Unfortunately, it's still a bit too new for the more conservative "must never crash" distros like Ubuntu to be comfortable with, but if you want to try it yourself, I'm sure you can find some tutorials. It's been around long enough that people are doing that now. It's just not in mainstream Ubuntu by default yet.

 

[AaronD]

That said, if you're running BT audio into OBS, it makes me wonder why. For me at least, the potential for interference would rule out any kind of wireless unless I absolutely HAD to, and digital anything (BT is digital) adds latency.

Most of the time, that latency is not noticeable (until you add software buffers so that a multitasking system can do something else for a while without dropping samples), but a digital radio that operates in a famously congested band (2.4GHz) will likely add enough of its own buffer that it can send the same packet several times and still catch up without losing anything.

Variable latency up to a second or so is okay for a phone call, where you don't hear its rendition of your own voice and there's no requirement to sync to a different stream, but for the soundtrack to a live video, it doesn't really work. Not guaranteed anyway. You might get lucky, like maybe you're in a quiet enough radio environment that it doesn't need to resend that much, so it can use a smaller buffer with less latency, but again not guaranteed.