Over-driven Audio

[Hyppe]

Hi All,

My church uses OBS to broadcast our services to Youtube. I've setup and tested the audio on our system thoroughly. Line level audio comes the soundboard to a dedicated sound card (Creative Sound Blaster Audigy FX). It is then inserted into the stream. During the service, someone noticed crackling audio that I associated with overdriven audio. We were monitoring the sound through OBS and we did not hear the crackling. I muted the OBS monitor and checked the audio from the sound card; no crackling was observed. I then checked my Youtube Livestream; lots of crackling. I also recorded a video during the service and it had crackling video similar to the Youtube Live stream. Suspecting OBS was somehow distorting the audio, I restarted OBS and the problem vanished. This leads me to believe that the audio monitoring on OBS does not monitor the true output but the something between the audio input and output. Is this a true statement and is there a plan to change the monitoring to the true output?

Thanks,
Hyppe

P.s. I can provide some A/V clips if needed.

 

[Al Floyd]

Can you get the audio from your sound board using USB?
That solved all of our static, crackling, popping, hissing, echoing problems.

 

[Fierelier]

Try turning off any audio enhancements in Windows, those can cause issues. Make sure you explicitly tick "Disable all enhancements". Even if you untick all the enhancements, it can be that there are still some internal enhancements activated, unless "Disable all enhancements" is unticked.

 

[Fbosman]

The question was about the monitoring of OBS. At what point is the monitor connected? We also had some issues that the monitor sound was ok, but the feed to YouTube not. It seems that the output of OBS is not monitored.

 

[Hyppe]

I'm sorry for the extremely delayed response; we just got a new soundboard and new projection software that I've been setting up. Thank you for your replies. I will endeavor to address them.

Can you get the audio from your sound board using USB?
That solved all of our static, crackling, popping, hissing, echoing problems.

Al Floyd, I'm using a dedicated sound card and I didn't hear the crackling when I listened to the input directly. I don't think using a different sound card would help. In fact, I changed to a dedicated analogue sound card (Sound Blaster Audigy Fx) because we having bad ground issues. However, these issues were fixed by the sound card before this event so I don't think it contributed.

Try turning off any audio enhancements in Windows, those can cause issues. Make sure you explicitly tick "Disable all enhancements". Even if you untick all the enhancements, it can be that there are still some internal enhancements activated, unless "Disable all enhancements" is unticked.

Fierelier, I don't have audio enhancements in either the mic or speaker options.

The question was about the monitoring of OBS. At what point is the monitor connected? We also had some issues that the monitor sound was ok, but the feed to YouTube not. It seems that the output of OBS is not monitored.

Fbosman, I generally monitor the audio mix through OBS (advanced audio properties, monitor and output selected). On this event, I listened to the mix when it gets to windows (Sound, Recording, Properties, Listen, Listen To this device). There was no crackling. I also listened the monitor function in OBS. There was no crackling. Is there a better place to monitor the live stream audio? YouTube is not a viable option because it is delayed ~20s. Would it be helpful if I posted a configuration file?