Question / Help Max Audio Buffer Reached

[PPgEthan]

bumping as well. Recently ran into this issue and it is frustrating.

I don't use a capture card for video, just a ndi source over a wired gigabit connection. I use my goxlr for audio between my 2 PC setup, and I only use 1 NDI source on my streaming PC for audio and video between the 2 PCs.

Tried going back and using different versions of obs-ndi, and runtime but with no fix. (currently using versions 4.6.2 for runtime and 3.8 for runtime.)

Hoping we are able to come together and find a solution to this common issue or at least a work around.

 

[moey_c]

same issue, definitely not resolved in OBS 26.0.2
Max audio buffering reached!
19:19:04.650: adding 1021 milliseconds of audio buffering, total audio buffering is now 1044 milliseconds (source: (null))

i can only "resolve" the audio drop issue by hard restart of my laptop (macbook pro, high sierra OS) but nothing else works.
i've tried removing all .mp4s from my scenes, verifying sample rates, straight up buying a new mixer... no luck. help please!

 

[pleitos78]

Hello, having the same issue. It started right after I put my elgato in a nested scene. My HDD is always at 100% usage. And OBS starts to use additional 5GB of RAM! But only at my Streaming-PC. Tried the same setup on my Gaminng-PC. No Problems.

 

[kemuri]

I also have the similar issue although on linux. My audio also stopped after a short while. My logs said:

21:18:50.425: adding 64 milliseconds of audio buffering, total audio buffering is now 64 milliseconds (source: Desktop Audio)
21:18:50.425:
21:20:38.593: Max audio buffering reached!
21:20:38.593: adding 896 milliseconds of audio buffering, total audio buffering is now 960 milliseconds (source: JACK Input Client)

 

[Vinstream]

Bump. been having this issue for months and still having it. I'm just running a single PC setup, my desktop audio cuts out completely, I found a link that it occurs whenever i unplug a usb cable.

adding 597 milliseconds of audio buffering, total audio buffering is now 618 milliseconds (source: Desktop Audio)
20:04:47.921:
20:04:59.419: Max audio buffering reached!
20:04:59.419: adding 341 milliseconds of audio buffering, total audio buffering is now 960 milliseconds (source: Desktop Audio)

 

[itrends]

Also having this problem.

Absolutely not hitting CPU limits (always below 20%)

The issue is on an elgato capture card 4k for me.

When the issue occurs, if Unplug the device and plug it back in, all goes back to normal.

What appears to trigger it is a video/media source playing. But is intermitted so I can't currently re-produce on demand.

It is possible the device is not the issue, but is the one that ends up impacted due to whatever else is going on. So I actually suspect a broken media file causing the issue.

What is really annoying is that there is no way to DISABLE audio capture for the elgato in OBS. It just has 'capture only', output desktop, output waveout. I just want to entirely disable it and see if that resolves the issue.

Other threads and issues people have with 'media stuttering audio' lead me to think there may be an audio / ffmpeg issue that's really the cause, but it's 'killing' a device input as a result.

God I hope this gets fixed. I am at a loss now.

 

[FortuN]

Having the same problem, and this is with the Obs 27 RC4, and Elgato 60 pro

 

[Nick-2]

bump - same here!
Super strong PC, in OBS everything looks finde but sound is stuttering . . .

12:01:08.930: User switched to scene 'Messefilm'
12:02:02.071: Max audio buffering reached!
12:02:02.071: adding 832 milliseconds of audio buffering, total audio buffering is now 960 milliseconds (source: Präsi Grün)
12:02:02.071:

 

[Nick-2]

Does anyone know "where" the audio get buffered? A friend recommended writing a script, that emptys the audio buffer every few minutes. Did someone ever try this?

 

[leathan]

Sigh.... 5 years and not even a workaround?

 

[konsolenritter]

The last one who sent a log of his(!) issue was edwing in december. Shure, too much silence then.
What i can see from his log is that he uses three independent audio sources at once: onboard sound, an usb(?) mic and the Camlink-4k.

For those who have numerous sound sources in obs (which are most of us) this may be an approach to understand the reason/base for the audio desaster of buffering:

Audio desync on stream only with ElGato HD60S+, I'm desperate

Good morning everyone. I recently purchased a ElGato HD60S+ to stream on Twitch my gameplay.I'm using a Xbox Series X console, paired with a Astro Mixamp TR 4th gen and Astro A40 4th gen. Due to the lack of optical out on series X, I was forced to buy a HDMI audio extractor to get optical to...

obsproject.com

 

[Lambeauleap80]

Here is something I stumbled upon the internet that may help:

I had this exact same issue with both my 4K60 Pro MK1 and Cam Link 4K.

I managed to fix it by going to the Advanced Audio Properties and switching both sources to "Monitor Only (Mute Output)".

However, I realize this isn't a perfect solution as you might need audio output if you're not getting your game audio via something like a mixer.

I hope this points you in the right direction, though!

 

[_xyz_]

Same problem
I started using OBS early on in COVID to make my zoom meetings more fun and better.

However, I could never keep audio in sync
At times it dropped many seconds behind even though I had a pretty beefy PC only doing OBS and zoom itself was on my laptop.

I read a lot of comments on other discussions saying it is because your PC is too slow (pretty sure my PC is not too slow!!!), but tested an atem mini to learn more about those solutions and eventually kept that just for green screen and to bring in stable audio.

This week I decided to try without the atem again but same problem still there.

Random increases in audio buffer.
It never reduces the buffer without restart either.

as buffer gets into hundreds of milliseconds (sometimes into several second) the whole zoom call is a mess.

Tuning audio delay does now help as buffering keeps increasing

I tested vmix, this all seems 100% stable
No audio delay at all, but I prefer the workflow in OBS for the more adhoc/improvised stuff I may do in a zoom meeting

 

[Laczkó]

In my setup this problem appears very strangely:
as the buffer size increasing, the audio on my DeckLink 4K Extreme 12G output starts to delay however the YouTube stream at the same time still in perfect sync.

 

[I3ordo]

well "elgato" is a crappy company and they are liars when it comes to after-sale support so you will have to salvage out a solution for your crappy video capture device.
You will still have to set audio mode to " output desktop audio (wave out) " (because if not, obs will produce warning about elgato's crappy sound solution that reach max audio buffering) and you wont use audio from elgato device but your display/monitor instead..

You will use a 3.5mm stereo cable from your monitor/tv's headphone jack into your pc's line-in jack (may have to use a "ground loop isolator" (5-10$) to eliminate some weird interference noise. and will have to adjust (syncronise)audio delay of the line-in (monitor's incoming sound) to match the elgato's video feed. never will have to use elgato's crappy sound interface again.

 

[TribuCast]

After following these threads, and posting a few queries that didn't result in a solution we tried the Vmix Basic app with one of our clients which solved their similar audio issues. That leads us to wonder (because we want to solve the OBS issue and get this client back to using it) if the OBS issue is being caused by the way OBS receives or manages audio inputs. In Vmix there is only one audio input for a given video input so when you switch from one input to another both the audio and video are switched - and there's no way for a second audio source to interfere with the stream. This might not be entirely accurate and there may be a work around in Vmix but in the default configuration this is how it seems to work.

A question posed by my business partner has me wondering if OBS is pushing all audio through one specific channel or port which may be causing the audio issues with IP cameras....

 

[Tomasz Góral]

Some one say, OBS have two ‚type’ of audio globally and private.
Globally is always open, when scene is change, but private type, even is on source scene and target scene, every time is close and open.
I think is some badly on scene switch, it’s only theory.
e.g. avermedia c875 video and audio in one channel, time to time lost video signal for one frame, after this audio pause on every half second, to repair must remove device from all scenes and add again or disconnect from usb and connect to other sockets.

Globally add via Settings / Audio
Private add via Audio Input / Output Device on every scene.

 

[Gotji]

For me, I think there are multiple causes for the issue.

I could reproduce the issue by adding a media source on multiple scenes. Then, changing between the scenes very aggressively during streaming.

My so-far-so-good workaround, which I’m still testing right now, is changing advanced audio properties of all my not-meant-to-have-sound sources to "Monitor Only (mute output)", and changing their volume to "0%".

This should eliminate the issue caused by scene changing.

However, sometimes, I still experience the issue that randomly started at the beginning of the stream. So, I still have to consistently check my stream audio at the beginning of each streaming, at least.

I hope this works for you guys too.

 

[equalf]

out of curiosity, what audio bitrate you have? i have this issue sometimes since i changed mine to 256kb. i dont know if i had this issue when i had it in default 128kb but even when the log analyse says i reached max audio buffering my audio is just fine in the twitch vod i watch after. no delays no other issues just the log filre mention. i dont use any external mixers or other programms, i purely track my audio direct from its sources.

 

[iliketoDJ999]

Bump. After months of troubleshooting why my all my media sources are laggy and messing up, its BECAUSE OF THIS STUPID CAPTURE CARD. I also get this issue of max audio buffer reached. Seems like no one has an answer to this. I don't even have to actually start stream for this capture card to mess up my media sources in all my scenes. It happens often as soon as I open up OBS. Tinkering with this thing is a absolute nightmare - sometimes it fixes the media source lag, most of the time it doesn't.