Cheat-Sheet: The Best OBS Audio Settings

OBS Studio presents you with a powerful set of tools that will empower you to stream audio and video to any live streaming platform. The only downside is the sheer amount of options at your disposal. Fear not, a handy cheat-sheet to the best OBS audio settings and the most common questions and troubleshooting problems have been asked and answered below.


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OBS Audio Settings for Streaming

OBS audio settings for streaming

OBS Studio is the most popular, free, open-source live streaming software package that allows you to stream to Twitch, YouTube, Facebook, Zoom and more. By adjusting and improving your OBS audio settings for streaming, you can vastly improve the quality of your content but to understand how to accomplish this is not something most people know how to do.

In order to begin, let’s bring some awareness and a general understanding of how OBS Studio functions. We can accomplish this by defining some common terms in an effort to understand how they apply to us.

  • Audio bitrate denotes audio quality and bitrates means how much audio data you are choosing to upload to your streaming platform. A higher bitrate means more data and therefore requires more internet bandwidth

  • Video bitrate refers to the amount of video data you will be sending to the streaming platform and is limited by the hardware capability of your encoder and internet connection

  • Audio sample rate – is a number that relates to the amount of samples taken in a given time, higher the number refers to more samples within that given time. Most of the time these are represented as 44.1, 48, or 96

You can leverage this information into various topics all related to streaming and this will grant you a better understanding of live streaming technology and how it works. Audio bitrates and audio sample rates are two links in a long chain when connecting all of the pieces of your live streaming setup together.

Whether you are choosing to apply this to audio mixers or an audio interface the result will be the same; a more informed purchasing decision. Understanding how PC hardware, and more importantly for this article, streaming software works, will greatly improve your stream quality and your knowledge of the subject.

From this point forward, you will be able to apply this information to other categories of live streaming. You will be able make better purchasing decisions in regards to, microphones and how they benefit your gaming and streaming setup. In addition to which is better for your needs, audio interface vs mixer.

OBS Studio Default Settings

Upon installation of OBS Studio the default settings are generously low and offer you an opportunity to greatly improve your stream quality. You can accomplish this by taking a closer look at a handful of audio settings within OBS Studio.

OBS > Settings > Output

OBS audio settings output
OBS Studio Output settings

As you can see, this particular configuration denotes an AMD graphics card will be used as the encoder, however if you were using an NVIDIA graphics card it would appear as NVENC or if you were using an Intel iGPU it would appear as such here.

Note: Default audio bitrates are low and require adjustment to find optimal audio settings and audio bitrates and video bitrates are not tied together

With better hardware and better internet connection, you can increase audio and video bitrates, improving the quality of both.

For OBS Studio it’s wise to match the audio sample rate of OBS with that of your operating system. 

For most people this will be 48 KHz.

To change the default OBS Studio audio sample rate setting you will need to follow these steps:

  • Click on Settings

  • Click on the Audio settings on the left side of the Settings window

  • Under the General section at the top find Sample Rate

  • Adjust the sample rate per the settings of your operating system

Improve your OBS Audio Settings

In order to go a step further in improving your OBS audio settings you might want to consider a bitrate calculator. This can help you to fine tune the audio and video bitrates for your internet connection, hardware and additional software/OS settings.

It might be safe to consider this an advanced step and something not all novice users would require, but if you’re looking to tweak OBS audio settings to their max then perhaps consider the following:

OBS Lua – bitrate calculator

In order to use the OBS Lua calculator it requires a Lua editor, and if you’re inclined to use the calculator then you can find a Lua editor on Google – however further discussion on which editor you should choose is out of the scope of this article and is mostly down to personal preference. 

However, if you would prefer to skip the above step and you’re looking for safe, optimized settings that would get the most out of most computer hardware then perhaps consider this:

  • Audio Bitrate: 128 kbps

  • Audio Sample Rate: 48 KHz

  • Audio Codec: AAC

  • Audio Channels: 2 Stereo

It’s important to test your internet connection and this can help you to determine which audio and video bitrates are best for your needs. You can easily accomplish this by going to Google and query: ‘speed test’

This will directly test your internet connection with the closest Google server to you.

As an introduction to OBS audio settings for streaming, this has covered most of the novice and easy to accomplish steps for general, all-purpose use.

In order to supplement this information, let’s expand the introductory aspect of OBS Studio to include how to connect your webcam and how to enable a virtual camera in OBS Studio. This will become more important later on when enabling Zoom to work with OBS Studio.

How to connect my webcam to OBS Studio

Let’s explain in detail how to connect your webcam to OBS Studio. This can be done in five simple to follow steps and does not require technical know-how to complete.

Step 1: Open OBS Studio

If you have installed OBS Studio and followed the setup wizard within OBS Studio, then you’re ready to connect your webcam.

Step 2: Find the Sources section within OBS Studio

OBS studio webcam sources

You are presented with several sections when OBS Studio is opened, the Sources window is clearly defined and is the location to add new hardware.

Step 3: Add a new Source with the +(plus) icon

obs studio sources video capture device

OBS Studio will prompt you to select your new Source, for a webcam you would choose the Video Capture Device option. Additionally, you should notice it has a camera icon.

Step 4: Name your Video Capture Device

obs studio naming your video capture device

OBS Studio will present you with a pop-up window asking for the name of the new Video Capture Device source. Most people will use the name of their webcam to help identify what source this is.

Step 5: Adjust your settings(if needed)

Fine tune your OBS studio webcam settings

The final pop-up window after naming your Video Capture Device source is the configuration/settings window. From here you can select the hardware device, choose various settings and configure per your specific webcam, if needed.

Now that you have connected your webcam to OBS Studio, let’s jump into the next section on how to enable the virtual camera within OBS Studio.

How to enable the virtual camera in OBS Studio

OBS Studio has a plugin available called ‘VirtualCam” and this allows you to use your webcam that is already connected and setup within OBS Studio, to access software like Discord or Zoom without having to download and install additional software, thus saving you from potentially having conflicts.

Either you have a current version of OBS Studio, which the VirtualCam plugin is installed by default or download the plugin and install it manually.

To setup VirtualCam in OBS Studio, follow these steps:

Step 1: Open OBS Studio and navigate to the Tools menu

OBS studio virtualcam

Step 2: Once located, click the Tools menu and at the bottom of the drop down menu you will see VirtualCam

OBS Studio virtualcam plugin

Step 3: You will be prompted with the VirtualCam options window, within here you can select your webcam, adjust aspect ratios, auto start, image flip and more

OBS Studio virtualcam settings

Now you have VirtualCam setup to use your webcam and this will come into play later on when discussing how to use Zoom with OBS Studio. But for now, let’s take a closer look at how to fine tune your audio for Twitch.


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Best OBS Audio Settings for Twitch

How to stream on Twitch

Twitch provides recommendations based on popular streaming hardware configurations. These are broken down into sections: Encoding, Bitrate, Resolution and Framerate.

It’s helpful to learn what are the best settings of each category and how they can apply to your particular streaming hardware configuration. In order to better understand and how to define the best OBS audio settings for Twitch, we need to understand how the encoding, bitrate, resolution and framerate settings play a role in streaming.

Encoding Performance and Quality

Encoding is taxing on computers, it uses something called H.264 and it uses a tremendous amount of CPU power to do its job. This can and will result in lower FPS on less performant PCs. However, modern GPUs also have dedicated hardware encoders built-in and these are labeled within OBS Studio as NVIDIA NVENC, AMD GPU or INTEL iGPU.

You can leverage the power of the dedicated GPU encoders. These are far superior to H.264 encoders for streaming on Twitch and it’s important to understand using the GPU instead of your CPU for encoding can net you a ton of extra performance.

For a 1080p 60fps stream with NVIDIA NVENC you should consider the following settings:

  • Resolution: 1080p

  • Bitrate: 6000 kbps

  • Rate Control: CBR

  • Framerate: 60 fps

  • Preset: Quality

  • B-frames: 2

When you’re live streaming at a bitrate of 6000 kbps, it’s encoding high quality visuals without being taxing on your system. This is a great opportunity to also increase your audio bitrate. In addition to adjusting your audio sample rate in the first section of this article, you can also adjust your audio bitrate within OBS Studio.

Open OBS Studio > Settings > Output > Audio Bitrate

OBS studio audio bitrate

The default settings of OBS Studio are quite generous and often considered low by current standards. However, you can manually adjust and vastly improve your audio bitrate upwards of  320 kbps, which is comparable to high quality MP3, however it’s important to note that Twitch recommends 128 kbps for audio bitrate.

Resource:
https://stream.twitch.tv/encoding/

For further information on audio bitrate for streaming, OBS audio delay, noise gate and noise suppression in OBS Studio continue reading the sections below.

What audio bitrate is best for streaming?

In order to find out what audio bitrate is best for streaming we need to answer a couple of questions.

Can your PC handle a higher audio bitrate?

Is your internet connection capable of a higher audio bitrate?

When building a live streaming setup, all the links in the hardware chain matter. In order to answer these questions we’ll need to understand how these things work together. Generally speaking your hardware streaming chain might look something like this:

Microphone > audio mixer > PC > OBS Studio > Twitch

If you have a high quality gaming mic for the PC and you’re either using an audio mixer or an audio interface then there is a good chance you can vastly increase your audio bitrate. XLR microphones are capable of delivering much higher quality sound than most consumer headsets with built-in microphones.

Once the audio signal reaches your PC, it’s up to OBS Studio to pass-through a clean signal to Twitch’s ingest servers. There are additional filters and settings we can further tune and adjust in future and we’ll discuss that later on with noise gate and noise suppression, but most people won’t need to tweak those settings with a basic audio set up.

Next, you will want to make sure your internet connection is capable of delivering  a higher bitrate, both visually and for audio.

As mentioned above in the first section of the article, go to google and perform a speed test. This will help you to understand how much throughput you’re working with and from there you can adjust your encoding settings and audio bitrate.

As a handy note for future reference, audio bitrate definitions are as follows:

  • Low definition: 64 kbps

  • Standard definition: 128 kbps

  • High definition: 256 kbps

Open OBS Studio and click on the Settings button in the bottom right of the window. From here you are presented with several options, click on Output and you will be presented with Streaming and Recording options.

The default settings in OBS Studio can sometimes be woefully low and you can adjust these to reflect the capabilities of your live streaming hardware. Additionally, we know that with a modern GPU, using NVIDIA NVENC for an encoder at 6000 kbps, you can increase your audio bitrate to at least 128 kbps.

This is a good opportunity to tinker with the audio bitrate setting, perhaps going straight to 320 kbps is not for you, however as you can see from the audio definitions listed above, you have a range of settings to select and one of them will work for you.

Twitch recommends the standard definition, 128 kbps for audio bitrate.

To answer the question, what audio bitrate is best for streaming? It’s entirely dependent upon your PC and your internet connection and hopefully this was a helpful introduction.

Resource:
Understanding audio bitrate - Adobe

How to adjust OBS audio settings delay

This is a slightly advanced topic that won’t pertain to the vast majority of people streaming on Twitch. But if you need to adjust the audio delay within OBS Studio to sync the audio with the video on Twitch, then you can begin by finding the Audio Mixer window within OBS Studio.

obs studio audio mixer

Click on the cogwheel, to the right of your audio source.

obs studio audio mxier cogwheel

Select Advanced Audio Properties from the drop down menu

obs studio advanced audio properties

From here you are presented with several options, most of them  are not pertinent for this topic, but the key section here for audio delay is called “Sync Offset.” The delay is measured in milliseconds or ms. You can adjust by increasing or decreasing your audio delay by typing in a numerical value or using the up or down toggle buttons.

obs studio audio delay

If you’re looking to add an audio delay and don’t know where to start, it’s useful to begin with an offset of 50ms(milliseconds) and continue to adjust the Sync Offset until you have both audio and video sync on Twitch.

How to setup and use the noise gate in OBS

After you’ve added your microphone as a source by going to Source > Audio Input Capture > above the Sources window you will see a Filters button is now selectable.

Step 1: Click on Filters

obs studio filters

Step 2: A new window will appear and it will be blank, this is good. Either click on the plus sign down at the bottom to add a new filter or right click somewhere within the dark gray area

obs studio add new filter

Step 3: Add a new filter and select Noise Gate

obs studio noise gate filter

Step 4: Name the new Noise Gate filter

obs studio name your filter

It can be helpful to understand that using a Noise Gate or gate, as it’s sometimes called, is designed to set a threshold and to shut closed, when that threshold is met. It’s almost like a mute button, but one that is designed to only allow a certain sound level through.

This will allow you to control excess noise that would otherwise be captured by your microphone and then be heard on your Twitch stream. Be it, barking dogs, construction work, noisy roommates, etc. When set with the correct values, will not allow any of these background noises to be captured and only transmit your voice.

The next question you might have is, well what are the correct values? And this is difficult to answer because your particular live streaming setup is unique to you and you alone. However, you can perform a simple test to tweak and get an initial impression of how the noise gate works.

With the above images in mind, begin by adjusting the Close Threshold to make sure it mutes or closes the gate immediately after you’re done speaking into the microphone. Then you can tweak the Open Threshold to un-mute or open the gate when you are speaking with your normal voice.

This can take a little bit of time to adjust and find the right settings for your streaming setup, but once you get it just right, it’s not something you will ever need to play with or adjust again.

If you would like a little more information on what a noise gate is and how it’s used in recording studios when setting up microphones for vocals, drums, guitar etc, then you might find the below resource a handy guide.

Resource:
https://www.musicgateway.com/blog/how-to/what-is-a-noise-gate-how-do-you-use-it

How to setup noise suppression in OBS

Noise Suppression is another type of filter that can be useful for streaming and it can work in conjunction with the aforementioned Noise Gate.

In OBS Studio, Noise Suppression is a filter and you can find it in the same drop down menu that you found the Noise Gate filter. Click on the Filter button above your microphone source, right click or click on the +(plus) sign and select Noise Suppression.

You will be presented with two options, RNNoise and Speex. Both are designed to remove mild background noise or white noise that might be from a noisy computer or computer fans. It however isn’t designed to be effective against loud roommates, outside noise or a barking dog.

Generally effective against hum in your signal chain and can be useful when used in tandem with a Noise Gate.

If you are using an NVIDIA GPU then you have a third option from the Noise Suppression drop down menu and it’s called NVIDIA Noise Removal. You can read more about OBS Studio and their filters at the resource below.

Resource:
https://obsproject.com/ko/kb/noise-suppression-filter

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OBS Audio Settings for YouTube

obs audio settings for youtube

Many of the same settings described above for Twitch will also work with YouTube, but there are a few minor adjustments you could make to improve your streaming experience. Before we jump into the YouTube encoder differences with Twitch, let’s perform a quick checklist of audio settings to confirm everything is good to go.

OBS Audio Settings Checklist:

  • Set the audio sample rate of OBS Studio to match that of your Operating System

  • Make sure the audio codec in OBS Studio is set to AAC or MP3(YouTube)

  • Set the audio bitrate to 128 kbps(preferred by both YouTube and Twitch)

  • Adjust and tweak the sync offset or audio delay in OBS Studio(described above)

  • If needed, add a Noise Gate and Noise Suppression filters(described above)

If you’ve gone through the OBS audio settings checklist and made sure your streaming setup is configured for your needs, then we can jump into the differences in encoding that YouTube presents.

  • Resolution: 1920×1080

For 1080p 60fps YouTube stream these are the recommended settings:

  • Video Bitrate: 4,500 – 9,000 Kbps

The suggested video bitrate is higher for a 1080p 60fps YouTube stream compared to other live streaming platforms. Additionally, you can use either AAC or MP3 as your audio codec. It’s important to know that YouTube and Twitch recommend an audio bitrate of 128 kbps.

Encoder Settings are as follows:

  • RTMP streaming

  • Video Codec: H.264

  • Bitrate Encoding: CBR

  • Audio Sample Rate: 44.1 KHz

  • Audio Bitrate: 128 kbps

These are the recommended settings for a 1080p 60fps stream, however you are free to tweak and adjust to improve your audio settings for YouTube should your streaming hardware support it.

Note: YouTube also supports Stream HDR through HLS streaming instead of RTMP and HLS streaming is supported by OBS Studio and we’ll jump into that topic later on.

Resource:
https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2853702?hl=en

What is the best audio and video bitrate for YouTube videos in OBS?

Higher video bitrates can be reached on YouTube compared to other streaming platforms. Not many streaming platforms offer this kind of flexibility, nor the server capacity of YouTube.

You have several options, including some very high-end 4k options for video bitrates and finding the one that is supported by your hardware will net you a tremendous upgrade in stream quality.

4k/2160p 60fps

  • Resolution: 3840x2160p

  • Video Bitrate: 20,000 – 51,000 kbps

1440p 60 fps

  • Resolution: 2560×1440

  • Video Bitrate: 9,000 – 18,000 Kbps

1080p 60fps

  • Resolution: 1920×1080

  • Video Bitrate: 4,500 – 9,000 Kbps

YouTube recommends an audio bitrate of 128 kbps.

If you’re interested in recording gaming footage or a podcast and uploading to YouTube, what recording format should you use?

What recording format should I use in OBS for YouTube?

YouTube recommends the MP4 file format for uploading recorded footage of gameplay, clips, podcasts and more. Thankfully, OBS Studio makes this easy and within a few steps you can adjust the default settings to upload videos in the preferred format to YouTube.

Settings > Output > Recording > Select MP4

Step 1: First step you want to open OBS Studio and click Settings in the bottom right.

obs settings

Step 2: Click on Output.

obs output

Step 3: We need to find the section labeled Recording.

obs recording

Step 4: Select MP4 from the drop down menu.

obs youtube mp4

Step 5: Adjust your Recording Quality and Encoder settings to match that of your hardware.

obs youtube recording mp4

What is YouTube HLS in OBS Studio?

YouTube HLS stands for HTTP Live Streaming and it’s a streaming protocol that YouTube uses in order to deliver encrypted, high quality and even HDR content to users. This is not the default setting in OBS Studio however. By default OBS will use the RTMP protocol, which is used by other live streaming services.

If you would like to learn more about YouTube HLS, consider the link below.

Resource:
https://developers.google.com/youtube/v3/live/guides/ingestion-protocol-comparison

How to enable YouTube HLS in OBS Studio

You can enable OBS Studio to upload your stream to YouTube in the HLS protocol by following these steps:

OBS Settings > Stream > Service > Show All > YouTube HLS

obs studio youtube HLS

When enabling YouTube HLS you will notice that recommended streaming service configurations are presented.

Maximum Video Bitrate: 51000 kbps

Maximum Audio Bitrate: 160 kbps

It’s important to make sure your YouTube HLS stream respects the settings as these are recommendations provided by the platform. In order to stream the best possible quality video and audio, make sure your settings are within bounds.

Reference:
https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/10349430?hl=en

What is YouTube RTMP in OBS Studio?

YouTube RTMP is the other protocol for live streaming and it stands for real-time messaging protocol. RTMP is a protocol used by many other live streaming platforms like Twitch and it’s just a backend way of transferring your data to their servers. 

For the majority of people, the difference between HLS and RTMP is minimal as HLS is currently a niche protocol mainly designed for Live TV streaming. If you’re streaming to YouTube you’re better off using the RTMP protocol.

OBS Settings > Stream > Service > YouTube RTMPS

obs studio youtube RTMPS
Resource:
https://help.livestream.com/hc/en-us/articles/360002052068-What-is-RTMP-Cloud-Transcoding-

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OBS Audio Settings for Zoom

obs audio settings for zoom

Zoom is conferencing software, and it’s the alternative to Skype or Google Hangouts. Currently, the most popular feature is the Zoom meeting, where two or more people can hang out and converse.

Now the question to ask, what are the best OBS audio settings for Zoom? Fear not, OBS Studio will work flawlessly with Zoom and we’ll break down the steps in order to achieve the best possible video and audio for your conferencing needs.

This requires two additional steps before we can begin, namely making sure OBS VirtualCam is installed and configured properly and VB-Audio.com’s virtual cable also needs to be installed.

OBS VirtualCam

As mentioned in an earlier section above, installation, and setup of the OBS VirtualCam is a necessary bridge to send the video from OBS Studio and Zoom.

VB-Audio Cable

Another necessary step is to install a virtual cable to your PC and this can be done with software from VB-Audio. We will use this to connect the audio from OBS Studio and send it to Zoom.

Putting it all together

In order to put this all together we’ll need to first make sure the video resolution in OBS is properly configured and matches that of your Operating System. For most people this 1920×1080, check your settings to confirm and update OBS Studio accordingly.

The second step you will see below is setting up the virtual cable in Windows, just need to follow the image below and the cable output will be configured properly.

The final step will be to configure OBS Studio for the virtual cable, this means setting the right cable input as per the above step with Windows.

OBS > Settings > Video > Base Resolution & Output Resolution > 1080(or your PC resolution)

obs studio output resolution

Windows > Settings > System > Sound > Output

obs studio windows audio output

OBS > Settings > Audio > Cable Input

obs studio virtual cable input

OBS > Audio Mixer > Microphone Source > Cogwheel > Advanced Audio Properties > under Audio Monitoring select Monitor and Output

obs studio monitor and output

Zoom > Settings > Video > enable OBS Virtual Camera

obs studio and zoom virtualcam settings

Zoom > Share Screen > select Content from 2nd Camera > Share > Switch Camera

obs studio and zoom share settings

Now OBS Studio and Zoom are properly configured to work together.

How to fix audio sync issues with OBS Studio and Zoom?

You can adjust the audio sync offset within OBS Studio to match the video output within Zoom. This was discussed and explained in a previous section, How to adjust OBS audio settings delay.

OBS Studio > Audio Mixer > Cogwheel > Advanced Audio Properties

obs studio advanced audio properties

Select your audio input capture(microphone) in the audio mixer window, click on the cogwheel to the right. From the advanced audio properties window you will see something called Sync Offset. This is the audio delay function within OBS Studio and it’s defined in milliseconds or ms.

Begin by setting an offset of 50ms and adjust from there until you have synced or matched up the audio with video in Zoom.


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How to troubleshoot OBS audio issues

Troubleshooting OBS audio issues can be a frustrating and time consuming activity and what we need to understand is how to break down the most important audio parts of OBS and learn what isn’t working as intended.

Step 1: Perform a mic check

Test your microphone to make sure it’s working – in OBS Studio you can see the sound level in the Audio Mixer window and the green bar confirms that your microphone is connected and working properly.

Step 2: Check your Filters

Above the Sources window is a Filters button, click on it and open the Filters window. Here you can add Noise Gate and Noise Suppression filters. If these are enabled, please adjust their settings to make sure the Noise Gate is working properly – muting immediately after speaking into the microphone and opening the gate when using your normal voice.

Step 3: Make sure your microphone isn’t peaking

If you look to the Audio Mixer window in OBS Studio and when you’re using your microphone the audio levels hit the orange and red section of the sound bar, then you’re peaking. There is a simple fix for this, just under the sound bar is a slider. 

Adjust the slider until you’re no longer peaking. This is represented in -X db(decibel) and dropping your microphone a few db will fix this issue.

Let’s take a look at some other common troubleshooting issues with OBS Studio.

Why is OBS not recording audio?

If you’re having difficulty recording audio there is one place you can check immediately to confirm your microphone is installed and set up correctly.

OBS Studio > Settings > Audio > Global Audio Devices > Mic/Auxiliary Audio

obs studio mic check
Your microphone should appear from the drop down list above

Open OBS Studio, and in the bottom right hand you will see the Settings button. Press Settings, and from here you have several options, but for this we’re going to choose the Audio tab on the left.

Once you’ve opened the Audio tab, scan the middle of the window for Mic/Auxiliary Audio. Click on it and from the drop down menu, confirm that your microphone is selected.

Why does my audio sound bad in OBS?

There are three major reasons why your audio will sound bad in OBS. Peaking, Noise Gate and Noise Suppression that is improperly installed and configured.

Peaking

In the section above, How to troubleshoot OBS audio issues, Step 3 will help you to test and confirm that your microphone isn’t peaking. If it is however, you can quickly adjust the audio level by decreasing it a few db(decibel).

Noise Gate

Sometimes a Noise Gate that isn’t installed properly will create headaches with how your audio sounds in OBS. When you add/create the Noise Gate filter in OBS Studio you’re presented with 5 options to adjust.

  • Close Threshold

  • Open Threshold

  • Attack Time

  • Hold Time

  • Release Time

The most important two options are the first two, both Close and Open threshold, the other three are only good for minor tweaking and most people won’t need to touch them. Make sure the Close Threshold(Closed Gate) is muting your microphone immediately after you’re done speaking into the microphone. Adjust the slider until this behavior is met.

Adjust the Open Threshold(Open Gate) slider to open when you’re speaking into the microphone with normal voice levels. Once these three issues are cleared up and working as intended, it will solve 95% of the bad audio most people have with OBS Studio.

How do I enable audio input capture in OBS?

To enable audio input capture in OBS you will need to do the follow steps:

Step 1: Sources

Right click or press the +(plus) sign in the Sources window to add a brand new source.

Step 2: Audio Input Capture

From the drop down menu select Audio Input Capture, this is designed to capture the input from a microphone.

Step 3: Name Your Input

Naming your input will help you to better compartmentalize your live streaming equipment and as your streaming hardware continues to grow it’s easy to see what scenes are connected to which sources.

Step 4: Select Your Device

From the drop down menu, select your microphone. This is how you tell OBS Studio that you want to use your microphone as an audio input capture device, and once configured, will also appear in the Audio Mixer window and display sound levels.

What are OBS audio encoder settings?

After you open OBS Studio you can find where the audio encoder settings are by traveling to Settings, then select Output and from here you see two sections labeled Streaming and Recording.

In a previous section, we detailed Twitch Encoder Settings.

H.264 might be enabled by default and this will use your CPU to encode, however if you have an NVIDIA/AMD/Intel GPU then you can select one of those from the drop down menu for better performance with minimal to no loss in quality.

Once you’ve selected the correct encoder for your streaming setup, then you can adjust the audio encoder settings. Twitch recommends an audio bitrate of 128 kbps for optimal sound quality while streaming.

If you’re recording videos to post somewhere else later, then you should select the AAC codec and confirm that you’re recording with MP4. At 128 kbps, AAC and MP4 this allows for universal upload with high quality to any live streaming platform.

How to setup OBS audio settings per scene?

You can add Sources on a per scene basis with OBS Studio and it’s pretty easy to do. First you will need to create your Scene. Under the Scene window click on the +(plus) sign to add a new scene. Then name your scene and then you can move onto the Sources window.

From the Sources window add your source be it, Audio Input Capture(microphone), Game Capture, Display Capture, etc. Whichever you need for your scene, you can add the source here and it will only be active when you switch to this scene.

Follow this workflow for creating new Scenes and adding Sources to them.

OBS Studio > Scenes > create and name a new scene > Sources > add your microphone/game or desktop audio

Where is the OBS audio settings sample rate?

In order to adjust the OBS Studio audio settings sample rate we’ll need to open the Settings window from the bottom right and click on the Audio tab. Under General you will see Sample Rate and here you adjust the sample rate per your needs or match it with that of your Operating System.

Windows 10 > Speaker Icon > Sounds > Playback Devices > Properties > Advanced > Audio Sample Rate

OBS Studio > Settings > Audio > General > Sample Rate


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In Conclusion

There are a myriad of possible options when trying to search through OBS audio settings and for the uninitiated it can very well appear like a daunting task. Hopefully this can help clear up some issues that the majority of people are having with OBS audio settings. 

If you enjoy this kind of content, then please consider checking out some other articles on topics such as, Dual PC Streaming Setup Guide, How to Use Voicemeeter Banana, and Audio Interface vs Mixer: Which is better for gaming?

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