macOS Double Sound Problem!

[Galesz1980]

Hy There!

I hope you can help me. Situation: stream from two machines, PC (games) and MacBook (OBS). I connect them to an Elgato HD60 X. Everything is perfect, nice picture, good game sound. But! I made myself a desktop audio channel in obs with Blackhole Audio 2ch or 16ch, but this makes the game sound double. Jack input is on the earpiece and is recognized as external headphones by the Mac. To have game sound, the external headphones must be active. If the Blackhole is active in 2ch or 16ch, it doubles the game sound, if it is not active there is no game sound in obs. Ventura on my macOS system, and my OBS is 29.1.3. Has anyone encountered this problem?

Andrew

 

[AaronD]

Are you Monitoring the original sound, using the same device that the Desktop source captures? That'll do it.

If you think it through, the Desktop source has to capture *after* all of the apps are mixed together, because it's really meant to capture what the *speakers* do, regardless of what app(s) drive that. From that perspective, there's no difference between OBS and everything else, and so OBS's own Monitor also gets included in the Desktop capture...with a slight delay as it takes another trip through the operating system's sound driver.

This happens on *every* OS - Windows, Mac, and Linux - and there's really nothing to do about it, except to think through your audio routing and intentionally break that loop.

 

[Galesz1980]

Are you Monitoring the original sound, using the same device that the Desktop source captures? That'll do it.

If you think it through, the Desktop source has to capture *after* all of the apps are mixed together, because it's really meant to capture what the *speakers* do, regardless of what app(s) drive that. From that perspective, there's no difference between OBS and everything else, and so OBS's own Monitor also gets included in the Desktop capture...with a slight delay as it takes another trip through the operating system's sound driver.

This happens on *every* OS - Windows, Mac, and Linux - and there's really nothing to do about it, except to think through your audio routing and intentionally break that loop.

I understand! I just have to solve it somehow :D !
On the PC, the sound is transmitted via HDMI on the HD60X Nvidia High Definition channel. If this is active on the Windows machine, there is game sound in OBS. The headphones are connected to the input jack so that I can hear them too, I see this as external headphones on the Mac. If only these are active, then everything is fine, there is picture, there is sound, the stream can go. The only question is how to make discord sound so that viewers can hear the conversation. In Blackhole audio, I can do the desktop sound by turning on 2ch or 16ch. That's all I know. What can be the next step? So that there is no double playing sound? Because when I create a multi-channel signal on a Mac, where 2ch blackhole audio is active, I definitely have to add the external headphones and that's where the problem will be.

 

[AaronD]

I understand! I just have to solve it somehow :D !
On the PC, the sound is transmitted via HDMI on the HD60X Nvidia High Definition channel. If this is active on the Windows machine, there is game sound in OBS. The headphones are connected to the input jack so that I can hear them too, I see this as external headphones on the Mac. If only these are active, then everything is fine, there is picture, there is sound, the stream can go. The only question is how to make discord sound so that viewers can hear the conversation. In Blackhole audio, I can do the desktop sound by turning on 2ch or 16ch. That's all I know. What can be the next step? So that there is no double playing sound? Because when I create a multi-channel signal on a Mac, where 2ch blackhole audio is active, I definitely have to add the external headphones and that's where the problem will be.

I think only you can answer that. :-)

Draw out your entire audio system, including every device and every connection to every app. Then trace every signal through that diagram separately. It's a bit like the "city planning" games, where you have to get the cars, water, etc., to everywhere that each thing needs to go, without letting it spill anywhere else.

You might need to use two devices with dedicated jobs, where you currently have one that does two jobs. And there's also the possibility that you give up and run *everything*, individually, into a DAW or physical console; do all the mixing, processing, and routing in there; and then feed everything, individually, from there. In that case, OBS would get its finished soundtrack from the external mixer as its only audio source at all, and pass it through completely unchanged.