Question / Help Mixer and monitor sliders vs Audio Input Capture Source

[Matt Franklin]

If I've posted this in the wrong spot, or if it's already been answered and my search-fu is no good here, I'll gladly look wherever I am directed.

I'm wondering what the point of "Audio Input Capture" as a source object is. Audio seems to work for any item listed in the mixer panel without adding an AIC to a scene's source list, where as adding an AIC to the source list, and then "disabling" that source has no effect on the recording.

I had hoped that using AICs would allow me to change audio configurations from scene to scene.

 

[zionsrevenge]

Audio seems to work for any item listed in the mixer panel without adding an AIC to a scene's source list

I don't know if I understood you correctly, but OBS basically captures your main audio output (Desktop Audio), which contains all audio signals in a "sum". Within Windows you can use its mixer panel to "create" the mix you want to hear in the main output.

where as adding an AIC to the source list, and then "disabling" that source has no effect on the recording.

Adding and/or disabling a certain audio source in OBS doesn't affect the main mix at all. This is only different for recording multiple audio tracks "separately" where you can choose later on which audio track you want to listen to. Some people just don't want anything else to hear on the recording than the game sound and their voice.
The Monitoring just makes it possible to hear your mic on the main mix for yourself, because this it is not beeing routed to the main mix by default. But I personally don't recommend monitoring if it's not necessary, because the signal lag can be pretty annoying.
I hope this was helpful.

 

[Matt Franklin]

I'd have deleted this thread last night if I could have found the right button in my 3am delirium. I know how to manipulate the Windows Volume Mixer to isolate certain sources, thank you.

Shortly after posting, I discovered that "Desktop Audio" in my mixer panel was anomalously remaining active even when all sources in a given scene were deactivated. After testing a fresh new Scene Collection, I see that it should NOT be present by default, and so I have no idea what caused it to show up there to begin with.

I'm currently rebuilding my scene collection from scratch to try and resolve the issue or identify the problem. Thanks for your reply!

Also, we don't monitor/listen to the actual sound on our streaming machine. We use a second device for that to avoid feedback and so forth. I suppose I was referring to the metering bars.

 

[Fenrir]

Being able to have scene-specific source settings (even for the same source added to multiple scenes) is planned, but no ETA.

Right now, one of the primary reasons you would add AIC or AOC to a scene as a source is for keeping audio out of a specific scene. Say, a "be right back" scene that doesn't have your microphone input, but has a custom music input you don't want anywhere else in your output.

 

[zionsrevenge]

Oh, that's a good approach, too. Anyway, I'm sure you'll get it to work the way you need it.

 

[Matt Franklin]

Thanks everyone! While I'm still scratching my head about the anomalous "Desktop Audio" listing in my original Scene Collection's mixer* which I never could remove, a complete re-building of the collection from scratch to now include AIC/AOC sources seems to have it all working as planned!

I hope. I haven't done a live test yet. For anyone who's interested, the underlying issue that prompted all this was a failure of interactive sound effects to transmit to a live audience through my Beam.pro channel the other night. I have my mic sources and desktop mix all going separately to channels 1-3 in the local recording, but they all get mixed into Channel 6 and sent out to the stream as Mono.

I'm about to do a live test, so, fingers crossed.

*Mixer? Meter? The panel with the sliders and green level meters.

 

[Fenrir]

Well, the Desktop Audio comes from Settings -> Audio as a global audio source. It's set to your default windows sound device out of the box. You would just set everything to disabled there to remove it.

 

[Matt Franklin]

Odd, since rebuilding the scene from the ground up did not result in the "Desktop Audio" source being added to my mixer without my ability to disable it, while the original scene collection is still piping that source in to my streams no matter what is on or off elsewhere.

Either way, the new scene collection works, and is actually making better use of a few other source types, so I'm happy.