OBS creates digital dropouts on M1 Max Pro

[troy252]

I'm running a MacBook Pro with M1 Max Pro chip and 8TB ssd for audio/video production.

Trying to record DAW tutorials for music production using Cubase 12, porting audio into OBS via Loopback (to control exactly which mixing board channels will be recorded from Allen&Heath Qu16 mixing board).

Running a big mix... 20 virtual instruments, 30 tracks+ is no big deal for this machine. And for video I'm recording from a 1080p webcam and window capture of the DAW at same (1920x1080) and outputting to mp4 at same. No problems with the video... all smooth as silk.

But there is intermittent crackling in the audio (digital dropouts) about 30% of the time when I start playing Cubase. This NEVER happens when OBS is not running.

I have increased the buffers in Cubase massively as well as set 'ASIO guard' to high. Still crackling. The audio performance meters in Cubase are under 20% cpu load and less on disk load (everything is on SSD).

Any ideas how I can resolve this OSB problem? Can't be a load issue because the machine is barely breaking a sweat here. Has to be some kind of unhappy software problem.

 

[thomaslfessler]

1) Check your audio settings in cubase and obs to make sure they match. For example, dont use 48Hz in one app and 41Hz in the other.
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2) If you are using a newer version of OBS, capture cubase an application and also capture the audio instead of bringing it in with loopback (which I use)
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3) I also use loopback and have had lots of issues. Try building a new virtual device to see if that clears up the problem.
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Have you tried a different video / audio recording codec?
How is GPU utilization on your mac. OBS easily uses >90% of my M1 Ultra's GPU and it's not much better on the M2 Ultra.