Bug Report Ryzen bug and audio issue

[BK-Morpheus]

Hi guys,

I have two minor problems with OBS studio (v 20.0.1).
My first problem is the audio quality, but this has been an issue for years now.
The aac encoder is pretty bad, that's why I switched back from 64bit OBS to 32bit OBS since the 32bit version will automatically utilize the apple aac encoder, if apple quicktime is installed in the OS.
This can be checked in the OBS log (I have quicktime installed):
32bit OBS: "[CoreAudio encoder]: Adding CoreAudio AAC encoder"
64bit OBS: "[CoreAudio encoder]: CoreAudio AAC encoder not installed on the system or couldn't be loaded"

Especially with a decent audio setup (good mic, good headphones) you can easily hear the encoding quality difference between those two (no matter if I only use 128bit or 192kbit audio bitrate).

It would be great, if this issue can be fixed with future updates (but maybe it's not easy because of codec licenses).

Next problem is kind of strange.
After I switched to the new Ryzen 8 core CPU, I can't set a higher quality x264 profile than medium. As soon as I set it to "slow" or even "slower", OBS will not create a video file and I can't stop the recording (OBS needs to be killed via taskmanager at this point).
Funny thin is: This only occurs with the 32bit OBS client. With 64bit OBS I can record with "slow" or "slower" x264 preset without a problem.
If it wasn't for the audio issue (that I mentioned first), I would simply use OBS 64bit, but for now I will stick with OBS 32bit (superior audio quality via apple aac encoder) and leave the x264 profile at medium or fast, as the difference in video-quality is insignificant.

 

[BK-Morpheus]

update: Found more features, that are not working correctly with the 32bit OBS Studio Version:
720p 30fps and 60fps not problem, but 1080p in general gives me this error:
[x264 encoder: 'streaming_h264'] x264 failed to load

No overclocking, no errors in Memtest
64bit Version of obs studio runs 1080p without errors.

Another update:
I can make OBS Studio 32bit run with 1080p, FullHD etc. (but not with "slower" x264 presets), if I simply change the CPU affinity of the OBS process down from all 16 cores to just ~4 cores!

 

[Fenrir]

I'm able to use the CoreAudio encoder on 64bit OBS with no issues. Are you sure you have the 64bit libraries installed for it?

15:27:48.101: CPU Name: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4790K CPU @ 4.00GHz
15:27:48.101: CPU Speed: 4000MHz
15:27:48.101: Physical Cores: 4, Logical Cores: 8
15:27:48.101: Physical Memory: 32643MB Total, 24922MB Free
15:27:48.101: Windows Version: 10.0 Build 14393 (revision: 1198; 64-bit)
15:27:48.101: Running as administrator: true
15:27:48.101: Aero is Enabled (Aero is always on for windows 8 and above)
15:27:48.101: Portable mode: false
15:27:48.128: OBS 20.0.1 (64bit, windows)
15:27:48.128: ---------------------------------
...
15:27:48.672: [CoreAudio encoder]: Adding CoreAudio AAC encoder

Ryzen is also notorious right now for having buggy microcode. Make sure your motherboard BIOS is fully up to date, as many of the issues have been resolved.

 

[BK-Morpheus]

Hi Fenrir, just googled the aac encoder topic again to find, that -yes there is a way to get the CoreAudio encoder to work in 64bit OBS. A few years back, the guide only referred to the quicktime setup which is 32bit only, but I found that I just need to download the itunes 64bit setup and extract the AppleApplicationSupport64.msi and install it.
CoreAudio is now working with my OBS Studio 64bit and so is 1080p. Nevertheless it's pretty weird, that OBS Studio 32bit is having so much trouble with 1080p and slow x264 presets (at least on a Ryzen platform).

My BIOS is up to date and the known microcode/VME bug will only result in a system crash, not in strange behaviour of applications (and from what i read, it is not affecting Win10 x64).

 

[Fenrir]

Hi Fenrir, just googled the aac encoder topic again to find, that -yes there is a way to get the CoreAudio encoder to work in 64bit OBS. A few years back, the guide only referred to the quicktime setup which is 32bit only, but I found that I just need to download the itunes 64bit setup and extract the AppleApplicationSupport64.msi and install it.
CoreAudio is now working with my OBS Studio 64bit and so is 1080p. Nevertheless it's pretty weird, that OBS Studio 32bit is having so much trouble with 1080p and slow x264 presets (at least on a Ryzen platform).

My BIOS is up to date and the known microcode/VME bug will only result in a system crash, not in strange behaviour of applications (and from what i read, it is not affecting Win10 x64).

It is definitely strange, but the bugs have resulted in more than just crashes, and they absolutely do affect win10 x264. I suspected you already were up to date (since your post definitely gives the impression you know what you're doing), but just figured I would ask anyway.

I don't have an answer as to why things would be failing so much on 32bit, the code is identical for both versions, which is why I lean towards system/hardware compatibility issues rather than OBS. This is the first time I've heard of something like this, as well.