Question / Help Sound Cuts out while recording. OBS + Steinberg UR22 USB Interface

[NighthawKillian]

Hi,

PC Specs:
AMD 8350
8 GB Ram @ 1866
SSD
Windows 10 (issue also present on Windows 7!)
Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3 rev 4
Gigabyte G1 Gaming nVidia 970.

Sound specs:
Steinberg UR22 USB interface
Rode M1-S dynamic mic.

When trying to record using x264 or nVenc at 1080p with a high bitrate (10K for nVenc, 6k for x264) I am seeing the following issue:
Once in a while the sound will cut out. Meaning that both the game's audio and the mic's audio get muted for a 1-3 second period.

If using a downscale to 720p with 3500 bitrate it gets better a bit, but if streaming and recording at the same time the cut out appears once per minute.

This happens on older games and newer games.I doubt it's a situation of the system running out of available memory.

In the bios I have disabled all power saving features I could find. I've tried using both the latest and some older drivers for both the GPU and the interface. I've tried to disable/enable all other sound devices. I've tried all settings I could think of in the interface's menu.

I am detecting the issue by using the interface as a sound card so both for input and for output.

I ran one of the latency tools available online and got a "this pc is perfectly capable to stream audio and video" result.

With my Plantronics GameCom 780 headset (also on USB) I never got this issue and I don't seem to have it now either (didn't test all that much with that now as I want this new setup to work).


What could be causing this?

Next step is to test with obs multiplatform and see what that does and if the issue is still there.

Log uploaded. 2015-10-04-1811-33.log



LATER EDIT

Ran some tests with multiplatform. Managed to record without the "hiccups" and then they came back later on. Interestingly task manager shows that multiplatform taxes my cpu an extra 10% vs regular OBS. Yet for a great 10 minutes there I had no audio hiccups.

The hiccups came back when I opened regular OBS to check some settings.

I've also uploaded the log from multiplatform 2015-10-04 18-49-36.txt . I am seeing a CoreAudio.dll error in there. What is that?

LATER EDIT 2:

So with Multiplatform the issue appears with the preview window working, I don't need to be recording nor streaming for it to manifest.

Tested with my headset and zero issues with the Plantronics.

Any thoughts / ideas ?

While not having OBS working / running, sound is great.

 

[NighthawKillian]

Ok. I think:

1) OBS hates having the same device as input and output.
2) my motherboard's usb chipset/controller is crap.

Moved things around in the usb ports.
Set my usb headset as output.

I had done both of these things before, but no luck at those times. Seems I've found a situatiuon that is ok now.

Things are ok for now.

 

[NighthawKillian]

UPDATE: disabled all CPU power saving features in bios (minus AMD Cool & Quiet). Disabled CPU Core Parking in Windows.
Reseated my RAM sticks to be in channel A. Disabled the RAM XMP profile (could be a source of issues on AMD motherboards, had no issues until now, but wanted to play it safe) and set it to 1333 MHZ (again to be safe).

I tinkered with the RAM because I noticed that sometimes Win likes to disable 1 of my 2 sticks of 4 gb RAM and the things I disabled could have been why.

With 8 GB of ram always usable, with all the above mentioned things disabled I seem to be ok, no cut outs.

Reseating the RAM and tinkering with it also reduced my CPU usage by 10% while recording which was unexpected.

So with CPU @ 70-80% use and with the RAM at 60% full it seems to be ok.

For those who have issues, tinker with the RAM. Dual Channel can lead to compatibility issues with the RAM. Look into disabling CPU power saving features in the BIOS. And cross your fingers.

Will update if I have any other news (positive/negative).