Terrible Streaming Audio

[ConnorM]

I'm working with somebody on a youtube streaming setup and just had them purchase a new audio interface and mic. The audio is not performing as good as it should, and I can't figure out why. Here are the symptoms:

1. There is lobby music played before and after the stream. This sounds fine.
2. The vocal audio on the stream sometimes sounds like the mic could be too hot, but neither the interface or OBS are peaking at any point. There are also weird noise artifacts.
3. Recorded audio from OBS sounds fine. Great actually. We have not tested a recording while streaming, so not sure if that would affect, but standalone recording sounds good.

Here is a recent stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QVL_yvYOx4
At the beginning of this you can hear how much better the mic sounds pulled from an OBS recording (not streamed): https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/...ing--and-FedNow-Hot-Topics-in-Finance-e23cu92

I've attached a log file from that above stream.

Any suggestions on what to do? I have read some things about a possible audio codec issue with windows? Can't find reliable current info to test that. This Friday I might have her try downloading iTunes for those codec though.

 

[AaronD]

Both sound fine to me. The podcast intro sounds *different* from YouTube - YT is thinner, more "top heavy" in terms of frequency content - but it's nothing that I would flag as "wrong".

Nothing jumps out at me from the log except:

09:55:22.151: [win-wasapi: 'Mic/Aux'] update settings:
09:55:22.151: device id: {0.0.1.00000000}.{156b84f3-b9b3-4cd0-a379-f0e63febc9ce}
09:55:22.151: use device timing: 0
09:55:22.151: [Loaded global audio device]: 'Mic/Aux'
09:55:22.152: [WASAPISource::TryInitialize]:[{0.0.1.00000000}.{156b84f3-b9b3-4cd0-a379-f0e63febc9ce}] Failed to enumerate device: 80070490
09:55:22.152: WASAPI: Device '{0.0.1.00000000}.{156b84f3-b9b3-4cd0-a379-f0e63febc9ce}' failed to start (source: Mic/Aux)

Looks like the global mic source doesn't work, but you have it the scenes too and that does. I might try to troubleshoot that, as I like global sources better, and then you can take it out of the scenes. But if it works as-is and you like the result, it's probably fine.

If you keep it in the scenes, you might consider disabling the global one so that it's not trying something anymore that doesn't work, and cluttering the log with failure messages.

 

[ConnorM]

Both sound fine to me. The podcast intro sounds *different* from YouTube - YT is thinner, more "top heavy" in terms of frequency content - but it's nothing that I would flag as "wrong".

Nothing jumps out at me from the log except:

Looks like the global mic source doesn't work, but you have it the scenes too and that does. I might try to troubleshoot that, as I like global sources better, and then you can take it out of the scenes. But if it works as-is and you like the result, it's probably fine.

If you keep it in the scenes, you might consider disabling the global one so that it's not trying something anymore that doesn't work, and cluttering the log with failure messages.

Thanks for the response. I'll look into the global mic issue.

I'm a music composer, so I'm probably more particular with audio than most, but the difference is definitely pretty significant to me. I edited the podcast episode to try and clean up the mic source as pulled from the stream. But even still, scrubbing between the clean recording of the intro and the streamed episode content is painful to me.

In any case, there is a difference. Since the the clean recording from OBS sounds fine I can only figure it has something to do with the encoding or something on YouTube's end. Other streams I've listened to on YouTube sound much better to me.