Phase cancelling question

schmoward

New Member
I wonder if anyone can help me...

I'm streaming to youtube using OBS and noticed that I'm getting almost complete phase cancellation on the audio (I discovered this because you can hear the sound on stereo devices like a laptop, but not cell phones with a single speaker). I only have one audio input, which is a stereo jack coming in from my mixer. Therefore I don't think applying the phase inverter filter would help. It does seems strange that there would be phase issues given this set up. I can always switch this input to mono using advanced audio setting but wondered if anyone had another obvious explanation or solution.

Thanks!
 

schmoward

New Member
I'm going to post an answer to my own question - just in case anyone else is struggling with this or missed the audio 101 class like I did :)

It turns out I was running a line from a balanced mono TRS line into a stereo input. The balanced mono jack splits the mono signal across the positive and negative poles and when you run this into a stereo jack (by mistake) the left and right channels will be out of phase (one corresponding to positive, one to negative). You don't notice this on a stereo device but the signals will cancel each other out when reduced down to mono. All I need to do was add the right splitter cable and it will work fine.

You learn something new every day!
 

Taylaca

New Member
Hi, thanks so much for writing this, since this is the only place I could find someone describing the same problem I'm having and what the cause is! I don't know how likely it is that you'll see a message here, but if you do see this can you please give me some more details about how exactly you solved the problem? I have a line running from a mixer into a camera and then the input from the camera goes into OBS. I know the camera has a stereo input, and based on your description I guess the cable is splitting a mono signal like you described. I'm still confused about how to fix this though. I'm not sure how I would add a splitter cable, since splitter cables have two inputs or two outputs but I only have one input and one output. How did you do it?

Hoping you see this!

Thanks!
 
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