How To Set Up Obs Audio

This mixer is available in OBS Studio 21.0 or newer.

Full general Overview

Clipping refers to the actual distortion that is heard when an audio signal cannot be accurately reproduced past the gear through which information technology is passing.

Each entry in the mixer is made up of five parts

Mixer with number indicators

The (Volume) Meter - the coloured bars that calorie-free up as audio goes through a source
The Fader - the book slider for that source
Mute push - a speaker icon to mute the source without adjusting the fader
Options button - provides extra settings for the source
Volume level - The exact value adjusted by the fader or volume % number, measured in decibels

Most of the time, you lot desire to keep a close centre on the meters. The rest should be 'ready once run forever'.

Reading the Book Meter

Zones

The volume meter is made upwards of iii principal sections signified past the green, yellowish and blood-red zones.

Mixer zones

Carmine Zone - this expanse should be avoided every bit it can cause clipping which sounds unpleasant
Yellowish Zone - Voice communication (your own & friends') should always stay in here, occasionally touching the red zone
Greenish Zone - Everything else including music, game audio and alert audio effects should remain here
1. Fifty-fifty if other sounds look to exist the same volume as your vox, they may in reality sound louder to viewers

Channels

Each sound source volition have at to the lowest degree one volume meter assigned to it.

Mono, Stereo and Surround example devices

(1) Mono source - viewers will automatically hear this in both left and right channels (headphones/speakers)
(2) Stereo source - left is shown first, right second. Viewers will only hear these as they're assigned.
1. If only the offset meter lights up, enable "Mixdown to Mono" in the Advanced Audio Properties, otherwise your viewers will simply hear that source in their left aqueduct
(3 or more) Surround source - when Settings->Audio->Channels is fix to Stereo (default), you lot won't run into surround channels
1. OBS automatically mixes down surround sources to Stereo unless otherwise specified
2. Ordered equally Front Left, Front Right, Forepart Centre, LFE/Sub, Rear Left (5.one), Rear Correct (v.1), Side Left (seven.1), Side Right (vii.1)

Indicators

Animated Indicators Example

Left Dot (static): Input level - Alive indicator of the volume meter's status (light-green/yellowish/reddish)
Black Dot (always moving): Vu-meter - Shows 'sound pressure', a more than accurate indicator of 'loudness'
Primary Line (always moving): Peak Programme Meter - Has a 'autumn-off disuse'. After sound stops the bar will slowly go down rather than displaying completely live data, until it reaches -60 dB (empty) or receives new, louder data
- The 'Sound Meter Disuse Rate' (how rapidly the bar goes down) tin can be changed in the Audio screen of Settings
Right Dot (sometimes static): Meridian - Displays the loudest the meter has been in 20 seconds, a great way to see if y'all're clipping

Setting Audio Levels

At that place are a number of ways to configure an audio source's book.

As yous adjust the volume at each step of the process, listen to the device both every bit early on as possible (some devices will have a 'headphone' output or a 'monitor' jack) and again when it hits OBS using Audio Monitoring via Edit->Advanced Audio Properties.

Always commencement at the device in question.
1. Microphones: check if information technology has a physical knob (unremarkably labeled "Gain")
2. Games/consoles: well-nigh game applications and gaming consoles take their own volume sliders usually hidden in a Settings/Options screen
3. Physical mixers: these have individual gain knobs for their ain sources, and a 'Primary' before information technology'south sent to your figurer & OBS
4. For other devices including audio interfaces, check their user manuals to see how to configure them, as they may require tertiary party software by the manufacturer.
Your Operating System (Windows, macOS, Linux, etc) also has its own volume sliders and mixer
1. Note that some devices may accept a 'prophylactic zone' that is well beneath the 100% marking.
  - In Windows for instance, Control Console->Hardware and Sound->Sound, under the Recording tab, select the device in question (like your mic) and click Properties. In the Levels tab, right click the % value and cull 'decibels'. Y'all desire this to be at (or effectually) 0.0dB for the to the lowest degree amount of clipping. Information technology will retain the setting when you switch back to 'percent'.
2. Your organisation'southward primary book slider does not bear upon the volume of the sound that OBS hears
3. Individual awarding volume sliders do affect the volume of the sound that OBS hears

Finally, be sure to record a session as y'all normally would and then listen back to the file before going live.

If you all the same feel the audio needs to be tweaked, now is the fourth dimension to adjust the Fader within OBS.
1. If you need something college than the maximum, yous tin insert custom percentage (%) values that tin can go well above 100% using Edit->Advanced Sound Properties.

Other things to continue in listen:

Microphones volition naturally be quieter than anything computer generated – be it games, music or full general audio effects. Accept that into business relationship when balancing your audio.
Voice advice software like TeamSpeak, Discord and Mumble allow you to 'heave' the phonation book of other members (both overall and individual users) to a higher place the 100% mark if needed.
Nearly games exercise non allow per-user volume control and then go along this in mind when playing in a matchmaking system.

Technical Details

decibel relative to Full Calibration (dBFS)

Audio is measured in decibel (dB), which is a logarithmic calibration which closely resembles how our ears and brain perceive audio book.

dB is a relative measurement. We could put the value 0 dB anywhere on the meter and exist right. In digital audio information technology is the convention to use 0 dBFS (the FS suffix is to indicate this convention) as the maximum volume that the sound card, audio interface, DA/AD-converter tin handle. Lower volume levels are shown with negative dBFS values.

OBS internally uses floating point calculations for audio processing, and then it does have the ability to process audio that is louder than 0 dBFS. Even so in the end when OBS records or streams the video, the audio will need be below 0 dBFS or the viewer will hear a nasty baloney chosen clipping (described at this showtime of this guide).

The Acme Programme Meter (PPM)

The PPM is the chief visual feature on the OBS meter, lighting up equally part of the overall volume meter.
The length of the bar indicates the peak volume level of what the viewer will hear when playing your video or stream. You tin can change the volume by moving the fader which is directly below.

The meter is split into 3 different coloured sections. At -twenty dBFS we have the Alignment Level (AL) and at -ix dBFS nosotros take the Permitted Maximum Level (PML).

Traditionally a sinus tone is played through the whole organisation and gain is configured for each piece of equipment to show the tone to be at exactly the -xx dBFS Alignment Level (AL). This way the level on your mixing desk will match that of OBS. This is important if you have a lot of audio equipment in a chain. The value for the alignment level was chosen to exist near the average audio level for oral communication.

The Permitted Maximum Level (PML) is the level where if you lot become higher up this value there is a modest but potential hazard that the audio volition get clipped before it reaches the viewer. -9 dBFS was chosen because:

With most PPMs, including the 1 in OBS, the audio may accept a meridian level 3 dB higher than what is read from the meter.
When reading PPMs information technology is hard to see the bodily peak, and then another 3 dB margin is added. This problem is eliminated in OBS due to the tiptop-hold feature which makes reading accurate.
Alignment errors, with multiple pieces of equipment in the chain an actress 3 dB margin was added for difference is levels.

OBS currently implements a "Sample peak program meter (SPPM)", in the future it would exist preferred to supervene upon it with a proper "4x Over-sampling elevation plan meter", which would make it more accurate for measuring maximum peaks.

Superlative and Hold

There is a small line that moves correct with the PPM meter, but then stays at that place when the PPM moves left again. It will stay there for xx seconds before returning dorsum to where the PPM meter currently is. This allows you to easily cheque what the maximum level was after you accidentally made a loud noise.

VU-meter

A second small-scale line on the meter, blackness and inside the bar of the PPM meter, is a VU-meter. This meter was traditionally used to decide loudness, because it was inexpensive to manufacture, and in OBS piece of cake to implement.

Information technology measure the root-mean-foursquare, integrated over a menses of 300 ms. Due to the adding it shows more closely the sound pressure levels than does a peak-meter.

This meter is less useful, but it kept some structure of the code intact and so we can supersede information technology with a proper loudness meter based on ITU-R BS.1770-2.

Input Level

The input level are the pocket-sized square indicator at the far left of the meter. This is the best place to run across if the audio is too loud for the audio interface that captures your microphone.

The colours have the following meters:

dark light-green: the input level is less than -50 dBFS
low-cal green: the input level is between -50 and -20 dBFS
yellowish: the input level is between -20 and -9 dBFS
blood-red: the input level is between -nine dBFS and -0.5 dBFS
white: the input level is larger than -0.v dBFS

If the indicator is missing information technology means in that location is no audio streaming toward OBS. This may be simply due to no audio being available yet, waiting for the user to start playback of an audio file. Or information technology may indicate a problem like the audio interface having been disconnected.

The input level meter is earlier the volume fader, only it is behind whatsoever filters that are in utilize by a source. To correctly determine input level you volition need to disable the filters for this source.