Audio Capture Problems

[Jonathan Griffey]

I've just started using capture (Like, JUST THE DAY I'M POSTING THIS) and the audio isn't working AT ALL.
This is what the mixer looks like
Either:

Or:

This is a problem.
It sounds like this:

I use this capture card:

If someone could help me solve this problem, it would be much appreciated.
Maybe show me settings to explain this, and guide me through, or tell me if it's just the capture card and it sucks.

 

[AaronD]

That looks like one of the ubiquitous $20 deceptively-marketed chinesium cards. I had one of those too, with a different shape and branding.

Often, they make a big deal about how USB 3 is so much better than USB 2......only to have a USB 2 chip behind the well-advertised USB 3 connector! So they have to compress the video *in the card*, sometimes a lot or just not support certain formats, just to cram it through USB 2 despite having the better connector.

Stick with the name brands, just to have a chance at some actual honesty and accountability, and expect to spend about $100 per channel.

Also, do some research and try to find one that works on Linux, even if you'll never use Linux yourself. That's a test of their attitude towards e-waste. Linux has built-in drivers for almost every standard, so if it works with that, it means that they've followed one of those standards, and so it's easy for anyone to write a driver for the next new system, and someone probably will. If it requires their own proprietary driver to work at all, anywhere, then they can kill it remotely, simply by not making a new driver and letting you upgrade everything else on threat of getting hacked.

 

[Jonathan Griffey]

That looks like one of the ubiquitous $20 deceptively-marketed chinesium cards. I had one of those too, with a different shape and branding.

Often, they make a big deal about how USB 3 is so much better than USB 2......only to have a USB 2 chip behind the well-advertised USB 3 connector! So they have to compress the video *in the card*, sometimes a lot or just not support certain formats, just to cram it through USB 2 despite having the better connector.

Stick with the name brands, just to have a chance at some actual honesty and accountability, and expect to spend about $100 per channel.

The problem with that statement is that it shows it as a USB 1 connector. that could also be a big problem.
Link to the item here.

 

[Jonathan Griffey]

I think personally its more of an OBS problem. Or it's broken.

 

[KingKong77]

Jonathan,

What do you have directly in OBS when you activate the HDMI Capture? I mean do you hear the same crazy noise in OBS?
If you hear nothing, you should activate the Audio Monitor as following:

1 - Click the cog button

2 - Select 'Monitor and Output', in your case the 'HDMI Capture'

Then you can make some tests and tell us what do you hear in OBS from your HDMI Capture.
If it makes the same bad noise, you can presume your capture device has an issue.

 

[Jonathan Griffey]

It sounds like this when there isn't an input:

You may need to turn up the volume.

 

[Jonathan Griffey]

Jonathan,

What do you have directly in OBS when you activate the HDMI Capture? I mean do you hear the same crazy noise in OBS?
If you hear nothing, you should activate the Audio Monitor as following:

View attachment 99343
1 - Click the cog button

View attachment 99344
2 - Select 'Monitor and Output', in your case the 'HDMI Capture'

Then you can make some tests and tell us what do you hear in OBS from your HDMI Capture.
If it makes the same bad noise, you can presume your capture device has an issue.

Also, what do you propose me do if the capture card has a problem?
Link to capture card here.
It also uses USB 1, which could be an issue.

 

[KingKong77]

I was asking you what do you hear in OBS monitoring?
Check my original post where i indicate you how activate the Audio Monitoring output.
Is there the same crazy noise in OBS monitoring when you HDMI capture is running?

 

[Jonathan Griffey]

I was asking you what do you hear in OBS monitoring?
Check my original post where i indicate you how activate the Audio Monitoring output.
Is there the same crazy noise in OBS monitoring when you HDMI capture is running?

It only makes that sound with an input.

 

[AaronD]

The problem with that statement is that it shows it as a USB 1 connector. that could also be a big problem.
Link to the item here.

Hey look! An honest one! Sort-of.

It does say that it's USB 2 (the connector didn't change at all until USB 3), but it also has a version that it calls USB 3, and that I doubt. Probably the same chip behind a different connector.

You still have the problem of USB 2 not being a big enough hose for HD video. So it has to compress *in the card* just to cram it through there. Maybe downconvert too.

It sounds like this when there isn't an input:

You may need to turn up the volume.

A pure digital thing (like HDMI -> USB) should be dead silent with no signal, because the concept of "no signal" actually exists in digital.

Analog things make noise when they're unplugged, because they *don't* have a concept of "no signal". Analog signals are just wiggling electrons, and if there's nothing to control them, they just wiggle how they want to, and that's a signal!

Digital signals are more like a language with words and grammar. If there's just noise and no coherent words, it's pretty obvious that there's no signal, so it should output silence instead.

The fact that you have *something* when you should have nothing, tells me that there's something wrong already.

---

Getting audio from a video capture device should be trivial, but enough people have asked about it that apparently it's not. The two general ways for it to work are:

• Keep the audio and video together as a single stream. Then a single source in OBS gets both.
• Separate them into a silent video stream and a separate "sound card". Then you need to grab the audio separately from the "sound card" that appears when you plug the video capture device into the USB port. Depending on how many "don't care's" there are in a cheap chip, there may still be a junk audio track along with the video that you should ignore or mute.

(the manufacturer chooses which option to use; you don't)