Question / Help OBS is lowering audio quality of other applications.

AGamez101

AGamez101

New Member
Whenever I open OBS to record, it lowers audio quality slightly as stated in the title. No, this is not ducking. I have already disabled that, which was half of this issue before. Now that ducking is gone it's a bit better but still remains. I use Turtle Beach Ear Force XO One TBS-2218-01 headphones, please respond if you are aware of a solution. If this is an issue with my PC, please let me know as well since my PC isn't exactly the greatest.
 
Narcogen

Narcogen

Active Member
You'll have to be more specific about what you mean by quality.

Ducking is a reduction in volume, so I assume you don't mean that.

Audio stuttering and crackling can be caused by a number of issues-- system overload, sample rate mismatch.

Check in the advanced properties of your audio devices in the Sound control panel and check that the sample rate there matches the sample rate of OBS set in Settings > Audio.

This value is most likely 48khz or 44.1khz, but they should match, you may have issues if they don't.
 
AGamez101

AGamez101

New Member
They do match, apologies for not being specific enough. It's not ducking, crackling, or stuttering. I'll provide two examples, one of them will be mine, and another will be a copy that is identical to what it should sound like. When OBS is opened, it changes how things sound and then records that worse audio that it makes.

Mine:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bmem8O7owfA

Proper version:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLvm8-VMRDk

You can tell a clear difference between them, mine is just sort of... I don't even really know how to explain it, stuffier?

(my apologies for the somewhat late response, I'm getting new internet so I couldn't respond)
 
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Narcogen

Narcogen

Active Member
Is that 2nd one the original download source for the first? I'm a bit confused.

OBS will record audio it's given. The only thing it changes about that audio will be affected by the sample rate and bitrates for audio encoding in Settings > Audio.

If you have a high quality original media file you wish to test on, set OBS to the simple profile and use "indistinguishable quality, large file size" and record that media file. The result should look and sound almost exactly like the original.

The bad audio in the other file could be caused by-- recording audio coming out of room speakers through a built-in microphone; specifying a very low bitrate for audio encoding; using a browser source for an online video and getting improper quality settings as a result.

A logfile might help, but generally speaking unless you ask it to, OBS does not perform any transformations on audio unless you ask it to, by adding filters to sources.
 
AGamez101

AGamez101

New Member
It's not just when I record, I'm pretty sure this is an issue with my PC or something. Even when I just open OBS, the audio becomes fuzzier.
 
Narcogen

Narcogen

Active Member
I'm not aware of any mechanism that would cause that.

Capturing your default audio and monitoring it would cause an echo.

Overloading a machine can cause stuttering or buffering.

Sample rate mismatch can cause stuttering or artifacts.

Low bitrate can result in poor quality recordings.


If you're saying that you're listening to a video in VLC in your headphones and then jus *launching* OBS is causing the audio you hear to be degraded... then I'm at a loss. I'm not saying you're not experiencing that, I'm just saying I have no way of even guessing at how that would happen.

Again, it might be helpful to see a log, but I'm not even sure what I would be looking for. But I'll still look.
 
Narcogen

Narcogen

Active Member
Your computer's specs are on the low side for trying to do anything useful with the latest version of OBS, but I'm still not aware of any mechanism that would cause the problem as you describe. (Not saying there isn't one, just saying I am not aware of one or how it would work.)
 
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