Selective Audio Recording in OBS 28.1.2

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nhowardtx

New Member
We have been livestreaming at our church since March 2020. We recently purchased a brand-new Dell OptiPlex 7000 small form factor computer (Intel Core i7-12700, 32GB RAM, 500GB NVMe drive, Windows 10 Pro 64-bit, v21H2) to run the live streaming system. I installed the latest version of OBS, v28.1.2, and upgraded the firmware on our ATEM Mini HDMI live video switcher to the latest v8.10. I saved and re-used the same OBS configuration (C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\obs-studio) which was working just fine on our previous live streaming computer.

Last Sunday was a big problem for our live streaming system! We were able to live stream video just fine, but the audio portion of the live stream was completely devoid of any piano music and choir singing. This was especially unfortunate since the choir was presenting their Christmas Cantata! Yikes!!! They sounded great but our few live stream participants only heard our pastor and those who read verses using a handheld mic. No music. Yuk! (You can sample the entire 1:08:36 service at https://youtu.be/EtIGPGHYT2s.) to see what I mean.

I spent time Sunday afternoon troubleshooting. I checked every mic (all 6 of them) individually. They all worked perfectly as I spoke into them. Here is the video of that test:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1107XylzFI7kKLbO-FUETLvCV1CC-93vY/view?usp=share_link (10:39)

So everything is just fine, right? Well, somehow, NO.

The problem is not with the mics, it somehow seems to be with the type of audio being recorded/livestreamed. Somehow our new system is able to distinguish between spoken vocals and music! This short test (1:04) that my wife and I recorded today shows what happens:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1O_j96X43HX3OrneHbmUdYvc5oVQdb1_c/view?usp=share_link (1:04)

The system somehow seems to be able to selectively ignore audio if it is music (piano, vocal, recorded)!

Believe me, I did not ORDER this feature when I got the new livestreaming computer, installed the most recent version of OBS and installed the latest ATEM Mini firmware!

The last video (1:04) shows (in ATEM Software Control) that the audio signal is coming out of the ATEM Mini seemingly OK. But the musical audio levels do not appear in the OBS Audio Mixer section. All we get is a few random scratchy bursts interrupted by long periods of silence.

Thanks for any help or ideas that you can provide for fixing this weird situation!

Neil Howard
 
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nhowardtx

New Member
After testing the rebuilt OBS and ATEM Mini apps in the new Dell OptiPlex 7000, the result is still the same. OBS seems to be able, somehow, to selectively "filter-out" music from regular vocal audio. This is really perplexing! I though that sound was sound whether or not it was spoken vocals or played music? Does anyone have any ideas on this audio recording issue?
 
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AaronD

Active Member
What does this window look like for you?:
1671150653251.png

(uncheck Active Sources Only - that's only a visual setting, nothing more, to show *everything* instead of only what's playing now)

And likewise for the Output tab of Settings. Specifically, which Tracks are selected over there, across all of the sub-tabs?

Once the signals are mixed, it's impossible to "unmix" them so as to process them separately again. From the mix point on (which may even be acoustic, *before* any mics), everything that gets into that mix must be processed as a group. So, for example, if your mix has one thing that REALLY stands out and then you compress it, everything else seems to disappear because that one loud thing makes the compressor turn the entire mix down.

That might be what's happening, or it could be that you're trying to use OBS as your mixing console and somehow have different routing for each input so that they're not even getting mixed.

The settings should at least give some clues.
 
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nhowardtx

New Member
I found the problem. Dell has a "feature" called Dell Optimizer which is turned ON by default. Once I turned off the offending features of Dell Optimizer, all is well. See the livestreamed video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMW_zpV7oOA

Thanks very much to all of you who gave me suggestions. I learned a lot about OBS even though that was not the source of the problem.

Neil Howard
 
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AaronD

Active Member
nhowardtx said:
Dell has a "feature" called Dell Optimizer which is turned ON by default. Once I turned off the offending features of Dell Optimizer, all is well.
Click to expand...
Ah yes. Manufacturer bloatware strikes again! Or in this case, they try to make the machine outsmart the user, and it ends up being stupid and hurtful. (since you're a church, there might be a sermon illustration in there)

On a new machine, I go through EVERYTHING before I even think about installing anything. Update the system first, and keep going back until there aren't any, then look at ALL the settings and preinstalled software. Understand each setting and each app, uninstall the stuff that's only going to be in the way, and set everything else to also stay out of the way except for when *I* need it. Reboot.

ONLY THEN, when the preinstalled mess is dealt with, do I start installing anything. And the same applies to the new stuff: go through ALL of its settings, understand what's there and what it does, and set it to what I need.

I never rely on defaults, and I never just buy one, plunk it down, and expect it to "just work". Spend the full day or so that it really needs, to set it up *right*, and that's if everything is straight-forward. Any troubleshooting is *in addition to* that full day of normal setup.
 
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