OBS Sound Issues

[Wayne'O]

Hi Guys, this may be lengthy, please bare with me.... Running Windows 11 Pro, 16 meg ram on an I5 processor. Using OBS to Facebook Live Stream. Audio input is a Yamaha MG10XU through a USB connection. (I think this is where my issue is). Inputs to the mixer are 2 microphones and a line in from a second PC which supplies the music audio for the tracks. The issue I am having on my live stream is low volume sound and also poor quality (compared to others using the same setup). I do have sound, but low volume. When using headphones (connected to the mixer), the sound is fine. The LED's are sitting between 0 - +6 and the sound is great, however (compared to others using the same) my streaming audio is low. I went into sound settings on the PC and did a microphone test (Yamaha Mixer through USB) and I am only getting a maximum of 16% with every slider control in Audio Settings set top maximum. I have changed USB cable, updated drivers, Even tried it on another computer using USB cable with low volume again. Not sure if this is a setting in OBS / Windows or what. I will post several screen capture shots also. I am using a Limiter and a Compressor Filter, but I have found that by adding a Gain filter, it only causes distortion and even poorer quality. Any help on this low volume streaming issue will be greatly appreciated.

Log File https://obsproject.com/logs/VQdv2wHzRKF2mP8t

 

[AaronD]

Yet another person who's discovering the difference between live and broadcast sound.

• For live sound, you don't know what's coming, so you need to leave some headroom to account for the unexpected spikes that WILL come. 0dB on the console is roughly 1 volt RMS in the circuitry, which can handle up to about 12 volts or so peak, from a 15 volt internal power supply. That's usually enough headroom for most things.
• For broadcast, you're supposed to have everything tamed already, know EXACTLY what's coming, and turn it up to EXACTLY full-scale (as loud as it can possibly be) to overcome the deficiencies in the distribution medium. The listeners already expect that because everyone else already does it.

When converting between analog and digital, full-scale is full-scale, which means that 0dBFS in OBS corresponds to about 12 volts or so in your console. Completely slammed meter on both sides.

But of course you can't do that with a live signal without clipping horribly! So you keep the "live" level until you've compressed and limited it enough to be that well-behaved, and *then* you turn it up.

Typically, you'd have the compressor first, maybe even two of them, to do most of the work, and then a limiter at the end as a "safety net". You can use the compressor's makeup gain to do the boost, or you can have it just enough to not lose any on average (the compressor action itself only turns things down), and use the limiter's input gain to do it instead.

For my home rig, I use a single compressor in a DAW, not OBS, with the ratio all the way up and a really soft knee, and "ride the knee" as a sort of "automatic ratio". My limiter after that is actually the same compressor plugin with a hard knee. Then I pass that, already mixed with everything else, to OBS as a finished soundtrack to pass through unchanged. If you can't get a really soft knee, then you might approximate it by cascading multiple compressors with progressively higher ratios, until you finally get a limiter at the end. A limiter is simply a compressor with the ratio at infinity, and its gain usually comes first instead of after.

For a different rig, I have a Behringer X32 that also does live Front-of-House, and I control an auxiliary mix from that. All of the audio processing in that rig - individual compression, mix, bus compression, and final limiting - is done in the X32, so what actually comes out is already finished and ready for broadcast.