A really good looking stream or recording is meaningless if the audio sucks.
In this episode, we’ll cover how to best set up OBS Studio’s mixer to balance your
various sources and produce a high quality recording or live stream and be a mixer master.
Any high-tier live production needs a variety of scenes to show and quick, precise switching
between them.
The Elgato Stream Deck gives you 15 keys with customizable LCD screens behind each, that
can execute macros, application launchers, scene switching and source muting for OBS
- and you can nest folders for more actions and UNLIMITED POWAHHHH.
Grab yours today via the link in the video description.
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.
Whenever I help users with their OBS streaming setups, one of the biggest things that wasn’t
set up right was the Mixer.
You look at it, there are green bars bouncing around, it’s working right?
For a great live streaming experience, or even a recording that isn’t just trashed,
learning and utilizing the mixer in OBS Studio is super important.
Let’s start with the basics of how it works.
The mixer panel itself contains audio bars for the different audio sources in a given
scene.
This includes the Microphone and Desktop audio devices selected in your Audio settings, as
well as any specific sources in a scene that also give audio.
For example, if you add a capture card for capturing console gameplay to a scene, a volume
bar for the capture card’s audio input will also show up.
Audio sources are listed by name of the source - either the kind of source added or “Desktop
Audio Device”, “Desktop Audio Device 2”, “Mix/Aux” etc.
The green bar below the audio source name indicates the current level or volume that
the audio is at.
You want it to be somewhere close to 75% of the way towards the right.
If it stays all the way to the right, you’ll be clipping or peaking and your audio will
be very overwhelming or distorted.
Too far to the left and it will be hard to hear.
You can use the blue slider to adjust the volume of a source.
You’ll want to do this to lower the level of game sound or background music so that
it doesn’t overpower your voice.
You want your voice to be clearly heard over all other sound, but for the background sound
to still be heard.
The slider adjustments are reflected in the number on the far right, measured in decibels.
Keep in mind this is not a measurement of your audio levels, simply how much you’ve
reduced the input.
Where your sliders should be will vary based on your setup, but for full-volume inputs,
I usually knock my game sound and background music to around minus six to minus seven db.
The most important rule to keep in mind here is to do many test recordings to make sure
things are set up correctly.
I get asked all the time “How do I make sure volume levels are right before I stream?”
Do a test recording.
Every time you change something, do a test recording and play it back to see how it sounds.
Every.
Time.
Do.
It.
You can click the speaker icon to mute any sources that you’re not using.
For example, if you add a webcam as a facecam, you don’t want the webcam mic echoing around
when you have a good mic set up.
So you can mute out the webcam audio and not have to worry about it.
If you click the gear icon next to a specific audio source, you can click “Filters”
and add one of the available audio filters to a source.
This will generally apply to your microphone.
You can add more gain, if your microphone is too quiet.
You can add Noise Suppression or a Noise Gate to help reduce background noise from your
microphone.
These can wind up sounding pretty obnoxious for the viewer, as when the noise gate activates
and deactivates it makes an annoying noise.
But, you can do some testing for yourself and see if you like it.
You can also add a Compressor to help your mic sound better and more even.
Lastly, you can also add a VST plugin to your audio sources.
You can find plenty of these for free online, which can provide awesome fun effects that
you might want to play around with.
There’s a very important part of the Mixer that’s easy to miss.
Click the gear icon next to one of your sources and click to open the “Advanced Audio Properties”
window.
This lists your audio sources and allows you to separate the sources to different audio
tracks, as we covered in a previous video.
If you want your sources to record separately, you need to make sure only 1 source is checked
per column or track, and that multiple tracks are checked in your recording settings.
You can also enable “Audio Monitoring” - this lets you create an audio loopback of
your microphone so you can hear it in your headphones.
This makes it easier to monitor how loud you’re speaking and so on.
Choosing “Monitor Only (mute output)” just loops it out to your headphones.
“Monitor and output” also outputs it to your stream.
If you used this, you’d want to uncheck the audio track mapping so that your microphone
doesn’t go to your stream twice.
But this could cause a delay.
If you need to add a delay to your microphone to sync it with something like the older Elgato
capture cards, you can set that using the “Sync Offset” option.
If you want to control stereo separation of your audio device and pan it to the left or
right, you can do that here, as well as Downmixing the audio to mono.
You might want to downmix when you have an audio interface or microphone setup that only
plays through the left or right side.
By checking the “Downmix” box, it will mix your microphone to mono so that viewers
can hear it out of both left and right ears.
This is important.
Learning your way around these settings and utilizing them to their fullest extent can
both help you make the best streaming and recording experience possible, and also fix
any potential issues that may pop up.
So jump in!
Balance your microphones, game sounds, music, stream alerts, and have some fun.
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.
Click to learn more.
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