OBS Audio Problem (Stutters/Cuts)

Reshkiy

New Member
I've been getting these random audio stutters/cuts in my recordings with OBS. With any other program, like Adobe Audition, everything is fine.

I recorded a 10-15 minute long sine wave going into two sources in OBS and they all presented these small stutters throughout the entire recording. I tried this 5 times with different settings, before and after installing CoreAudio ACC, etc.
obs audio stutter.png
(stutters shown in red boxes)

Would really appreciate some help solving this issue.

Thanks!
 

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  • 2020-08-12 00-35-00.txt
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rockbottom

Active Member
I'm only able to reproduce what you're hearing/seeing when I use the NDI Test Patterns as the 1k Test Tone source. I used other sources & it's fine.

OBS 1k Test Recording.JPG
 

rockbottom

Active Member
I'm not sure why you're having the trouble, I didn't notice anything in your log. Just pointing out that it's NOT an OBS issue.
 

Reshkiy

New Member
I'm not sure why you're having the trouble, I didn't notice anything in your log. Just pointing out that it's NOT an OBS issue.

I'm hoping you're right. But I can't really narrow it down any further than OBS because the same issue doesn't happen on other programs like Adobe Audition, whether I use ASIO or WASAPI.
 

rockbottom

Active Member
I looked at your log again, you have your main monitor @ 165Hz & your capturing @ 60Hz, this has to be causing stuttering in your recordings. Try setting your game & monitor @ 120Hz. Also turn off HDR if you have it on & give it another shot.
 

Reshkiy

New Member
I looked at your log again, you have your main monitor @ 165Hz & your capturing @ 60Hz, this has to be causing stuttering in your recordings. Try setting your game & monitor @ 120Hz. Also turn off HDR if you have it on & give it another shot.
Thanks again for your suggestions. But unfortunately the same thing still happens.

Just to make it more clear though, in a span of a 30 minute recording these stutters happen about 12-15 times. And it's usually just the audio that cuts out for like a microsecond. Hasn't caused any desync issues with video and audio as far as I can tell.

But because I also play and record music that I record with OBS, I'd prefer a more pristine recording without having to use another software to record my audio separately.

Here are two audio samples of what those stutters/cuts in my recordings:
Sample 1 Sample 2
 

rockbottom

Active Member
Have you tried adjusting the Audio Buffer Size setting on your Zeti-8? According to the manual, it should be set as low as possible but if it's too low there could be pops, clicks & dropouts. 6.2 Troubleshooting.
 

Reshkiy

New Member
Have you tried adjusting the Audio Buffer Size setting on your Zeti-8? According to the manual, it should be set as low as possible but if it's too low there could be pops, clicks & dropouts. 6.2 Troubleshooting.

I've tried adjusting that too, yes. However I believe it only affects the ASIO buffer size and not the WASAPI. I have it at the default 512 right now and that's the same setting I use on Adobe Audition which presents no audio glitches whatsoever.
 

rockbottom

Active Member
There's info in the attached that's not included in the manual. You are correct about the Buffer Size (Page 5). There's probably some simple setting somewhere in the audio chain causing the issue. Your log above is incomplete, do some recording & post the entire log. I'm calling it a night (early morning), I'll look at it later today. In the meantime, somebody else may be able to jump in & help after you post the updated log.
 

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  • ZEDi-USB-Windows-Driver-Help.pdf
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Reshkiy

New Member
There's info in the attached that's not included in the manual. You are correct about the Buffer Size (Page 5). There's probably some simple setting somewhere in the audio chain causing the issue. Your log above is incomplete, do some recording & post the entire log. I'm calling it a night (early morning), I'll look at it later today. In the meantime, somebody else may be able to jump in & help after you post the updated log.
Thanks again for being so helpful. Truly appreciate it! Rest well.
 

rockbottom

Active Member
So I was thinking about this & I believe it just might be a necessary evil. OBS is composting in real time, it has to keep everything in sync but it doesn't receive everything at the same time...

When I record a webcast, I almost always swap out the AAC audio & replace it with either the 16bit or 24bit soundboard. I pull my recordings into Avidemux, trim them & re-mux. I then pull the re-mux into Vegas where I sync up the lossless audio. When I'm syncing, I generally have to make minor adjustments every 5-12 minutes. I record @ 60fps & the adjustments are small, usually 4-5 frames. I believe this is what you are seeing. If you use an NLE, pull one of the recordings in & since you record @ 60fps, I bet you see the same 4-5 frames.

After I finish syncing up the audio, I only render it with Vegas. I then pull the remux from Avidemux & the lossless audio track I created into mkvmerge & remux them together so I never touch/re-render the video track.
 
Last edited:

Reshkiy

New Member
So I was thinking about this & I believe it just might be a necessary evil. OBS is composting in real time, it has to keep everything in sync but it doesn't receive everything at the same time...

When I record a webcast, I almost always swap out the AAC audio & replace it with either the 16bit or 24bit soundboard. I pull my recordings into Avidemux, trim them & re-mux. I then pull the re-mux into Vegas where I sync up the lossless audio. When I'm syncing, I generally have to make minor adjustments every 5-12 minutes. I record @ 60fps & the adjustments are small, usually 4-5 frames. I believe this is what you are seeing. If you use an NLE, pull one of the recordings in & since you record @ 60fps, I bet you see the same 4-5 frames.

After I finish syncing up the audio, I only render it with Vegas. I then pull the remux from Avidemux & the lossless audio track I created into mkvmerge & remux them together so I never touch/re-render the video track.
It's really strange because I never encountered this issue before. I've been using OBS for almost 3 years and my previous recordings never had this problem. Especially when live streaming.
 

rockbottom

Active Member
So I just finished a 30 minute test recording with OBS & the 1k test tone to see if I got any stutters. The file I used is 59 seconds long & I loaded it as a Media Source & looped the file. The only audio gaps that exist in the recording are at the file loop point every 59 seconds. Everything else is perfect. So, per my second post, it's not an OBS issue, there's something in your audio chain that needs to be adjusted or fixed & I'm still leaning toward the Zeti-8 as the problem. I would start here:

 

Reshkiy

New Member
So I just finished a 30 minute test recording with OBS & the 1k test tone to see if I got any stutters. The file I used is 59 seconds long & I loaded it as a Media Source & looped the file. The only audio gaps that exist in the recording are at the file loop point every 59 seconds. Everything else is perfect. So, per my second post, it's not an OBS issue, there's something in your audio chain that needs to be adjusted or fixed & I'm still leaning toward the Zeti-8 as the problem. I would start here:

Thanks very much for this. Read this article but I'm still not sure what to do. The ZEDi-8 perhaps has an issue with OBS, because the issues apparent in OBS don't show up at all from recordings on other software.
 

Reshkiy

New Member

Found another person with the same exact problem from a little over a year ago. It appears the ZEDi-8 and OBS just don't get along.
 

Reshkiy

New Member
Found a workaround to allow the ZEDi-8 to play nice with OBS. I had to use VoiceMeeter.

So the chain now is ZEDi-8 -> VoiceMeeter -> OBS

Everything seems to be working fine now. No more intermittent audio dropouts this way, and I can also use ASIO through VoiceMeeter which should provide the best latency for general audio consumption and recording.

I hope this helps anyone running into the same issues as I did.
 
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