Random Audio Glitch / Crackling From Elgato 4K60 Pro – Fixed Temporarily by Disabling/Re-Enabling Source

[Troley]

Hi,


I’m experiencing a random audio glitch issue while streaming with a dual PC setup and I’m trying to determine whether this is an OBS buffering/timestamp issue or a capture card limitation.

Setup:​

• Dual PC setup (Gaming PC → HDMI → Streaming PC)
• Elgato 4K60 Pro (used as Video Capture Device in OBS)
• OBS Studio (latest version)
• NVENC (new), CBR 6000 kbps
• Audio bitrate 160 kbps
• 48 kHz everywhere (Windows playback/recording + OBS)
• Elgato source → Buffering set to Disable

The Issue:​

After some time (not always, and not at a specific interval), the audio from the Elgato source starts glitching. Viewers report:

• crackling / digital distortion
• brief corrupted audio bursts
• sounds like a buffer glitch

Important details:

• I do NOT hear the glitch locally.
• It only happens on the stream output.
• Resetting (disabling and re-enabling) the Elgato source immediately fixes the issue.
• No dropped frames.
• No encoding lag.
• No rendering lag.
• CPU/GPU usage stable.

What I’ve already tried:​

• All devices forced to 48 kHz
• Disabled buffering in the Elgato source
• No duplicate audio captures
• Monitoring set to Monitor Off
• NVENC preset set to Quality (no Look-ahead, no Psycho Visual Tuning)
• OBS priority set to High

The issue still happens randomly after some time, but not every stream.

Here is the clip how it sound like: Audio Glitch The audio switch from normal to corrupted happens at 8 second.

It's driving me crazy because I cant monitor my output all the time, and viewers ekhm not always report that the issue is present. What can it be?

Thanks.​