OBS breaks microphone audio seemingly at random

[diamondpumpkin]

I have a HyperX Quadcast microphone and its worked great with obs up until I got a 4k monitor and started recording in 4k. My microphone's audio stays fine until some point into recording with OBS. It will break and be completely unintelligible for any program. I've looked up similar issues and the typical problem was the sampling rate, both my microphone and OBS are set to 48kHz. I have a youtube clip of gameplay footage demonstrating the issue. I was recording for about 9 minutes before this issue occurred. If I don't record the game, my microphone works fine.

Log file
Microphone properties
OBS Version 28.1.2 64bit
Enabling/Disabling exclusive mode makes no difference

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[diamondpumpkin]

I tested it again with some changes, and without my game running, so the scene is empty. It breaks almost immediately which you can see here. Here's the log file for the that clip.

I ran the program as admin, changed my color space to partial as the analyzer recommended and set processing priority to high.

 

[diamondpumpkin]

I've tried a ton of different combinations of changes to pinpoint the issue, and I think I found it. It makes absolutely no sense but its the only thing that works. I'm using a USB hub that has all my peripherals in it (mouse, keyboard, audio, microphone and an optical drive). Moving my microphone directly to computer seems to work fine, I can't get it to break. For most people this would be fine, but I have my computer in a different room, using a USB extender and optical display port cables I'm able to use it. I've also plugged the microphone directly into the extender itself and that also seemed fine, so the microphone for whatever reason decided to stop working with the USB hub but only when I record with OBS. So I suppose my only solution is to get a second USB extender dedicated to my microphone.

Just in case this is something the OBS team can fix (frankly I'm totally lost as to why this is happening in the first place) here's all my hardware involved with this issue:

Anker 7 port USB Hub (AK-68ANHUB-BV7A-0004)
StarTech.com 32.8 ft Active USB 3.0 Extension Cable (USB3AAEXT10M)
HyperX Quadcast (4P5P6AA)
My rig on pcpartpicker
Windows 10 21H2 (OS Build 19044.1348)

Feel free to inquiry for any additional information, as my solution doesn't actually fix the problem its simply a workaround.

 

[Tomasz Góral]

Too long cable.
Not enought power?

 

[diamondpumpkin]

Too long cable.
Not enought power?

The USB hub has its own power source.

 

[Tomasz Góral]

Check HUB on short cable.

 

[diamondpumpkin]

Check HUB on short cable.

I've tried a different cable for the microphone, only scenario where it worked was directly into the extender (see below). No other devices on the hub have issues, so I don't think this is a hub exclusive issue. Just in case though, I ordered a different hub that can deliver more power, not gonna be here for a while though.

I did some more testing, and found out that the microphone does work in the hub, but only if its the only device. Once I plug in another device that sends/receives data it breaks. But I'll reiterate, this only happens when recording with OBS, if I skip recording Discord, game VOIP and windows listen to feature all work just fine.

 

[diamondpumpkin]

Well I'm stumped. I received a new USB Hub with higher power output and a new USB extension. Apparently my original testing was a fluke. I tested both devices independently and the microphone broke both times. I'm getting a replacement microphone soon, if that doesn't fix the issue I guess I'm reinstalling Windows.

 

[diamondpumpkin]

Probably should've tested this first, but it appears if I downscale the 4k canvas to 1440p in OBS, everything works as expected. This is definitely an OBS issue, what exactly the issue is is far over my head.

 

[PaiSand]

Normally you don't want to use an USB hub. Connect the mic derectly to the PC, restart PC and test.
If the issue still happens try using NVENC instead of custom ffmpg settings, simple output mode.

 

[diamondpumpkin]

Normally you don't want to use an USB hub. Connect the mic derectly to the PC, restart PC and test.
If the issue still happens try using NVENC instead of custom ffmpg settings, simple output mode.

I also tried a dedicated USB extension, didn't work either. What does work however is switching off of Custom Output (FFmpeg). Using either Simple or Advanced Standard seems to work fine.