Question / Help Microphone sounds distorted and unbearable in OBS, but sounds perfectly fine in other applications.

[DoDeChehedron]

I use an AT2035 condenser microphone through a Roland VT-3 Voice Transformer on Windows 7. It has worked fine for months, but suddenly it sounds like some unbearable static sound. No matter what the settings are on the transformer or which version of the latest driver is installed, the same result happens. Disgusting sound in OBS, crisp sound with properly transformed effects in Sound Recorder. I know streamers who also use a VT-3 but have not had this issue. I'm not able to find any other such instances of this occurring.

See examples below of me saying "hello" with the same exact settings for Sound Recorder and OBS:

Sample 1, using Sound Recorder (.wma file)

Sample 2, using OBS (.mkv file)

I would appreciate any help with this issue,
Dode

 

[dodgepong]

Can you post your log? (Here's how)

 

[DoDeChehedron]

Whoops, sorry for forgetting that.

Here it is

Thanks,
Dode

 

[dodgepong]

While the log doesn't show a recording session, so I don't know how encoder load might affect things, I do notice that you don't have the CoreAudio encoder installed, which means you're going to use the FFmpeg AAC encoder which...isn't great. As a first step, I recommend installing the CoreAudio encoder (OBS will automatically detect it once you do) and then see if anything improves.

https://obsproject.com/forum/resources/obs-studio-enable-coreaudio-aac-encoder-windows.220/

 

[DoDeChehedron]

Hm, the issue still persists with CoreAudio.

Here's the latest log, this time with a short recording session. I'm not sure how important this is, but one possible issue is that the sample rates do not match. With the VT-3, I can't change it to anything other than 96kHz, and OBS only samples at 44.1kHz and 48kHz (both of which sound equally bad in this scenario). I'm confused if this is the issue since I had it working just fine before.

 

[DoDeChehedron]

I did some additional testing using Voice Meeter, and it turns out that just having OBS running (not recording) gave me a distorted output (through Voice Meeter). I'm not sure what this means other than something running in OBS uses something that my microphone doesn't like.

 

[Warchamp7]

This definitely sounds as if it could be a sample rate conversion problem. If you can't change the VT-3 to 44.1 kHz or 48 kHz I'm not sure how you would test that

 

[DoDeChehedron]

Okay, after much tinkering and chatting with friends, I've resolved the issue. Since I had recently installed a new capture card (DVI so no audio), the audio needed to be ported in separately. For that, I used a GV-USB2, which apparently has conflicting driver issues with the VT-3. So when OBS was running, the GV-USB2 was running, and something with the drivers caused a conflict resulting in distorted sound. I've instead opted to port my sound in using an RCA>3.5mm audio cable I had lying around. Everything works fine now, and I greatly appreciate your time and assistance!