Question / Help My condensor microphone sounds better in original OBS. Why?

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eyehesitatee

Member
I'm just curious: Does OBS Studio currently handle microphone input differently than the original OBS? My microphone (blue snowball, nothing special) sounds much better in OBS. Very clear. In OBS studio, it just seems like the bitrate needs turning up or something, despite the settings being the exact same in both programs.

Note: I'm an audiophile and some people probably wouldn't even notice the difference.

But I would like to know .... is there a different codec being used? or some kind of difference?
 
dodgepong

dodgepong

Administrator
Forum Admin
It is using a different codec, yes. I believe it's using FFmpeg's AAC encoder due to licensing restrictions, which does sound worse than the one that OBS1 uses, unfortunately.
 
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eyehesitatee

Member
Oh okay. Licensing restrictions? I'm ignorant to this kind of stuff, but, if both programs are free, why is there a license restriction to use it on OBS studio if it is in OBS1?

Also, does this mean OBS1 should not have the good codec because of licensing problems?

Sorry to be all up in the kool-aide; I'm just curious.
 
Joe33345

Joe33345

Member
I've been following this as well for about a week on the AAC codec licensing issue. I'd also like to know what the licensing issue exactly is in detail please :D
 
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Lain

Forum Admin
Lain
Forum Moderator
Developer
In the original OBS it was a super old version of FAAC that was GPL, they later updated their license to be non-free, so instead I just started using FFmpeg's AAC implementation, which wasn't very good either. Optionally you can compile OBS-MP with libfdk support manually yourself (the best AAC encoder but non-free), or you can build a custom version of FFmpeg that implements whatever AAC encoder you want to use, which OBS will automatically use otherwise. FFmpeg will only use the experimental AAC build if none other are built in to FFmpeg, so you're comlpetely free to customize the encoder.

But honestly, with FFmpeg's AAC, the difference isn't really noticeable as long as you keep at 160+ bitrate for audio. If you go lower you start to notice it, and below 100 you begin to notice the quality difference a lot.
 
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eyehesitatee

Member
Thanks, Jim. I have thanked you in the past for all of the work that you do... but, again, thanks for everything; I really enjoy OBS and OBS-MP.
 
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