Unable to hear filters/Auto Ducking in Headphones

[hypuk]

Hi

So I've applied auto ducking to my Spotify for when I speak into my mic.

when I do a recording via obs and play the clip back, I can hear everything, but I don't hear the auto ducking real time in my headphones, I can hear my mic and Spotify but not the auto ducking kicking in.

I hope that makes sense.

Any help would be much appreciated

 

[AaronD]

OBS's audio is terrible. The quality is there, but the tools are some of the hardest to use that I've ever seen. In this particular case, the near-complete lack of metering and lack of transparency as to *where* each thing actually connects, means that you're pretty much in the dark as to what the "correct" settings really are. Compare that to a DAW plugin:

That's also a side-chainable compressor (side-chain source and settings on the bottom left, compressor settings to the right of that), with metering and graphs all over it so you can see what's actually going on!

For this one in particular, the left graph is a nice history of what it saw and what it did over the last 5 seconds, and the right graph is what it's doing right now. You can see the classic compression curve, and the dot "dances" along that curve to show you exactly where you are on it. So if you want to "ride the knee", for example, you simply adjust the Threshold with your eyes to put the dot on that part of the graph.

Note: That does NOT mean that you should mix with your eyes! Always mix with your ears, and *then* look at how things ended up. If you want to copy something, then you copy it by eye and then check it by ear.

I suspect in your case, that your side-chain source is below the compressor's threshold. But with hardly any metering in OBS, it's hard to tell.

Or it could be that OBS's Monitor tap is pre-filters. Again, lack of transparency.

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Also, if you're using the side-chain, then you're right on the edge of usefulness in OBS anyway. It won't do much more. So I'd also look at moving all of your audio work out of OBS and into a DAW, and then pipe the finished soundtrack from the DAW into OBS as its only audio source at all, to pass through completely unchanged. Your headphones, then, would come from the DAW, not OBS.

 

[hypuk]

I might of mis explained, when I do a recording in OBS the sound ducking works perfect, what I'm aiming to do is have all this done in real time so I can hear the sound duck when i talk into my mic so it's coming through my speakers if that makes sense

 

[AaronD]

That's pretty much what I understood. You want this, right?:

And I'm wondering if you're actually getting this:

I also noticed just now, that you don't have any video sources. Are you using OBS for just audio?

 

[hypuk]

Hi, Yes no video sources just using it for audio

 

[AaronD]

Hi, Yes no video sources just using it for audio

Yeah, OBS is not the tool for you. Like I said, it's one of worst things I've seen for audio production. Use a DAW instead.

A Digital Audio Workstation is a complete sound studio in one app. It'll do anything and everything you can think of with sound and a whole lot more. Live mixing and processing, multitrack recording and playback through the live processing, composing, sped-up rendering to a final mix, etc. And that's *all* it does - just audio - so it's good at it!
Unlike OBS and other video tools, where the focus is on the picture, and the soundtrack is pretty much an afterthought.

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If you want to do both well, then you use each tool for what it's good at, and combine them at the end: picture in OBS, sound in a DAW, and the DAW feeds OBS the final finished soundtrack to pass through unchanged, as OBS's only audio source at all. All of the raw sources go directly to the DAW, not OBS. If OBS has a video to play, then you can use OBS's Monitor to send that soundtrack to the DAW, not the stream or recording, and then take the final result from the DAW as usual. Audio Monitoring also comes from the DAW, not OBS.

Or you can replace the DAW and the loopbacks that are required to connect it to OBS, with a physical console and physical soundcards. Same idea.

In summary, OBS is terrible for sound production. Use something else for that.