Just recording the audio from your game or microphone is nice, but about as basic as
it gets.
Quality video content or live streams involve multiple audio sources mixed together to form
the final viewing experience.
This is where OBS Studio’s Mixer comes in.
I’m EposVox, here to make tech easier and more fun, and welcome back to my OBS Studio
tutorial course.
I have many, many more videos on the software in the playlist linked in the description.
Check that before asking questions, and check the introduction video to learn how this course
works, if you get confused.
Full production setups – be it for live broadcasting or post-production – use lots
of big mixer boards for managing many audio tracks, sources, and devices.
This is critical to creating a well-mixed final audio track for a video.
While you can achieve much better results by utilizing a real mixer for live streaming
and many of the top streamers do so, OBS’s built-in Mixer is great for managing audio
for a small or more normal workflow stream.
We will be utilizing a few different parts of the OBS Studio interface to make the most
of a mixer workflow.
First and foremost, we need to set up our proper audio devices within the “Audio”
settings menu.
Here you can choose your microphone, desktop audio source – typically where your game
sound, music, or stream alerts would come from – as well as additional inputs for
both of these.
You may not have multiple audio devices to choose from.
You may just have a microphone and speakers or headphones and that’s it.
That’s okay.
Set those appropriately and we’ll move on from there.
However, if you want to get fancy with it, you can install a second sound card, multiple
microphones, and so on to really configure an advanced sound setup.
Due to my webcams and setup, I usually have about 5 microphone inputs on my computer – though
I usually only use one of them – and I have a big complicated mixer and audio processing
rack setup for my streams.
I don’t expect you to want to jump into that right now.
So for now, we’ll focus on separating your audio tracks.
The really awesome part about OBS Studio’s audio capabilities and the reason I switched
to using it to record EVERYTHING is the ability to record your different audio sources – such
as your microphone, desktop sound, and so on – to completely different audio tracks.
That way, you can mix them better in editing, apply processing to your microphone recording,
and so on.
This is a hugely awesome feature.
To set this up, you’ll need to go into your Output settings and switch to Advanced mode,
if you haven’t already.
I have plenty of other videos on configuring these actual settings in the Course playlist.
First and foremost, let’s talk about the “Recording” tab, as this is where the
multiple audio tracks are actually relevant.
Here, you can tell your recording to save up to 6 different audio tracks.
We’ll focus on just 2 or 3 for right now, for a more standard setup.
First, you have checkboxes to indicate which tracks you want to record.
Think about your audio sources and which ones you’d want to separate.
If you’re just recording, then that’s probably your Desktop Audio and your microphone.
That would count as tracks 1 and 2.
Check those boxes.
However, if this is a profile for live streaming and you’re recording the VODs or the source
copy of the broadcast – to create highlights, upload to YouTube, and so on – then you’ll
want to check the third track box, too.
You’ll see why when you go back to the “Streaming” tab.
Here, you have to choose a single track to go to your live stream.
You only get to choose one to stream, which means one of your tracks needs to contain
all of your audio sources mixed together.
Typically, that’s track 1.
This is why even if you just have game sound and a microphone, you’ll still want to record
3 tracks.
Or, you could just tell it to only record tracks 2 and 3, and stream track 1.
You get the idea.
Unfortunately, most tutorials stop here and miss the most critical part of the mixer workflow
– actually separating your audio tracks!
As things are right now, if you were to record something, all 3 tracks would have both your
mic and your game sound.
That’s not what you want!!
Close your settings menu after hitting Apply, and look to the Mixer section of the OBS Studio
window.
There is a gear icon next to each audio source.
Click it and click “Advanced Audio Properties”.
Alternatively, you can click “Edit” and click “Advanced Audio Properties.”
This window, this window right here, is the most important step.
This mass of check boxes is how you actually assign your audio devices to different tracks.
Currently, every check box is checked, which means all devices listed go to all 6 audio
tracks.
You don’t want this.
If you’re recording, you want a track that only has the microphone checked and a track
that only has the desktop audio checked.
If you’re recording and streaming, you want track 1 to have both devices checked, track
2 to just have your microphone, and track 3 to just have your desktop audio – or some
similar configuration.
With this set up, all of your audio goes to the live stream, just your microphone goes
to one track for you to edit later, and just your game sound goes to the other track.
Now if you are streaming, you will still need to adjust the game and microphone sound levels
using the sliders or faders so that your game sound doesn’t overpower your mic on stream.
Typically you need to reduce game sound to -7 or so, but this may vary based on how loud
your microphone is, and so on.
Do some test recordings before going live to get it right.
The BIG thing is to make sure your audio is not too hot, or “too loud.”
The VU meters can actually be a little misleading when it comes to this.
You never want the green bar to be filled all the way, and you DEFINITELY don’t want
it turning red.
Red means you’ve clipped at 0db, too loud and become distorted - when really, you should
be a lot closer to -10 or -6db.
Your entire stream’s audio mix should be around -6db, that is, not each individual
source.
Quieter is better - to a degree.
Aim to have your main, loudest source - probably your microphone - around two-thirds of the
way up, or here.
Then balance your game sound and quieter tracks accordingly.
Also, don’t worry if when you try to play back the video file you can’t hear all of
the tracks.
Media players can only play back one track at a time.
VLC media player and Media Player Classic (both free) let you switch between tracks
while playing the file.
Importing your video file into recent versions of Vegas Pro or Premiere Pro CC will load
the separated audio tracks and you can edit from there.
If your video editor doesn’t load the multiple audio tracks, you can use Audacity to split
them up.
We have a separate video on this in the course playlist.
Just to rehash – add the correct audio devices in the Audio settings, select the check boxes
in Output settings, then separate the tracks by check boxes in the Mixer settings.
And that’s it!
You now have the ability to mix and master multiple audio tracks within OBS Studio.
It’s worth noting that this only works if you record to a MP4, MKV or sometimes a MOV
file.
FLV for sure cannot record multiple audio tracks.
I hope this has cleared up any confusion regarding multiple audio tracks, I know my last video
on the subject was a little iffy.
I hope this episode of my OBS Studio tutorial course has been helpful for you.
If it was, drop-kick that like button and subscribe for awesome tech videos.
If you like game streaming, come follow me on Twitch and drop a message in chat.
Until next time, I’m EposVox, Happy Streaming!
Thanks for watching this episode of my OBS Studio tutorial course.
More videos like this and a full master class are linked in the playlist in the video description.
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