Question / Help Microphone quality great, Music quality bad

[MessageRS]

Hello everyone,

I'm a small YouTuber just starting off doing streaming through Twitch. I've always added music to my videos through importing them into sony-vegas directly, this made the audio quality seem to be the exact same as listening to music through soundcloud/YouTube or the like. However, once I stream the music quality just deteriorates completely and it sounds absolutely shit.

Before heading into the video that I made to showcase the loss in quality through recording my music via OBS Studio (17.0.2 / 64bit on Windows), I'd like to give you my current settings:

OVERALL SETTINGS

• Encoder - Software (x264)
• Audio Bitrate - 192
• Encoder Preset - veryfast
• Recording Format - .MP4

AUDIO SETTINGS

• Sample Rate - 48khz
• Channels - Stereo

Please tell me if I missed an important setting and I'll add it asap.


The video that displays the drop in audio quality can be found here:

- https://youtu.be/raTws96xqko
(log of the recording that was used while performing the test): https://gist.github.com/0790f05f2a1a0b6fe087ef06bb4a4ac0

I already had to add the CoreAudio AAC encoder manually, as I saw that was previously not available on my computer. I do not know however how/why the AMF Encoder is not present and how I should go about adding this.

If you'd like to listen what it sounds like on my livestream you can hear it in a past broadcast:

- https://www.twitch.tv/messageosrs/v/116599412

At about 3:38:00 you can clearly hear that the microphone quality sounds perfectly fine, even though the music quality is hollow as displayed in the YouTube video.

I have tried for three days to fix this myself and that is why I came here to ask your help. Already tried out the Twitch Reddit page to no avail and that is why I have come here.

 

[EBrito]

Is your windows audio also 48 Khz?

 

[MessageRS]

Is your windows audio also 48 Khz?

My windows audio is on the highest available to me, which is 24bit/192khz.

 

[EBrito]

First things first, I´m not an expert in audio.
In other threads some audio issues where solved configuring both OBS and Windows at same setting 48Khz or 44.1 Khz.
So, you can try configuring Windows to 48Khz
Maybe this solves your issue.

 

[MessageRS]

First things first, I´m not an expert in audio.
In other threads some audio issues where solved configuring both OBS and Windows at same setting 48Khz or 44.1 Khz.
So, you can try configuring Windows to 48Khz
Maybe this solves your issue.

No problem at all, any help is welcome! I have tried what you suggested, this does not however seem to fix the issue unfortunately.

 

[Simes]

What's being routed through Voicemeeter?

 

[MessageRS]

What's being routed through Voicemeeter?

My microphone is. Makes it sound a lot better. I have tried removing Voicemeeter, unfortunately to no avail.

 

[Simes]

I ask because routing your desktop audio through Voicemeeter in addition to capturing it in OBS directly could well cause issues like the ones you're having. But if your desktop audio's not going through VM, that's clearly not the problem.

Is your desktop audio surround? That's another thing that can give audio quality issues.

 

[MessageRS]

I ask because routing your desktop audio through Voicemeeter in addition to capturing it in OBS directly could well cause issues like the ones you're having. But if your desktop audio's not going through VM, that's clearly not the problem.

Is your desktop audio surround? That's another thing that can give audio quality issues.

Thank you for your tips. I have no clue in the slightest what I did to fix it but after starting up my computer again today the audio quality is amazing again!

 

[MessageRS]

For anyone that experiences the same issues, let me display what I've done to fix it (I only noticed it working after restarting my computer so please keep that in mind):

- Sample rate of playback device on windows at the same rate as is in your OBS Studio settings
- Manually installed the CoreAudio AAC Encoder by using this guide: https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-6562#components
- Made sure that nothing was routing my audio through it (e.g. a program like Voicemeeter can do).
- Restarted my computer after doing all of this.

Hope this helps to some of you that are experiencing the same issue, I've been looking for 4 days on the internet to find the solution but this seemed to have fixed it for me. Good luck streaming all!