Bad sound while recording display capture, nothing at all helps!

[DuleSavic]

Hi, It would really mean a lot if someone could help me figure this out...
I'm having sound problems while recording display capture. In this case, it's videos from a streaming website. Everything is fine with the video, but the sound is completely changed and sounds nothing at all like the source. It sounds as if some weird bass has been added, which makes it sound unclear and muffled somehow, with some weird background distortions every now and then, as if it's too loud but it isn't.
I didn't have that problem in the beginning, first few longer videos i recorded were all fine, both videos and sound. Sound was the same as the source. And then right after installing the latest update of obs, these sound issues started out of nowhere. I didn't touch any settings, in both laptop system or obs, it simply happened out of nowhere and to this day nothing i tried could fix it. And i tried literally everything i could possibly think of. Reinstalled obs. Then reinstalled obs again but previous version that used to work fine. No effect. Tried every combination of obs settings imaginable, to no avail. One of the first things i tried was completely disabling the microphone in both obs and system itself because my first thought was that maybe the mic is being picked up somehow even though it was muted. No effect. I'm completely out of ideas now and extremely frustrated by this.
Did anyone experience something like that before? How to make the recorded audio sound the same as the source without being completely massacred?
I'm posting the log (the only one i have now because i have just reinstalled obs again for like 5th time) and the screenshots of the settings. If you look at the screenshots you'll notice that i of course tried to switch endless times between "default" and the Realtek audio codec under both Global audio devices and also Monitoring device, of course to no avail at all.
I'd be very grateful for any advice!

 

[AaronD]

Don't use Default. Always use the specific device. Default can and will change on you, sometime in the future, without warning or indication except that "it suddenly doesn't work". Because "Default" now points to a different device. That's on purpose, because it's the best chance of a new installation using what you already have hooked up at the moment, but it's a liability for almost everything else. Don't use Default.

The reason that it didn't make a difference this time, is because Default just happens to point to the same device that you chose otherwise.

You also have the Monitor and the Desktop source set to the same device. That's a loop, or echo, if you send anything to the Monitor. (Advanced Audio Properties, which you don't show) Depending on how fast your audio system is, that loop could have a long enough delay to be a discrete echo, or it could be short enough to be reverb. Reverb at low frequencies (bass), is mud, and it takes a longer delay to turn it into a discrete echo.

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That said, is your streaming-service example *only* an example, for easy testing? Or is it your primary goal here, to steal someone else's copyrighted material?

 

[DuleSavic]

I'll start from the bottom. :D
I wouldn't say i'm stealing any copyrighted material, what i'm trying to record is a show from my homeland that's only being broadcasted through this one local site and they will eventually remove it from there to make space for new episodes so i'm simply trying to archive it. So i don't have any evil intentions.
As per testing, i get the same muffled sound no matter what other site i test, youtube included.

So under advanced audio properties, i have this included in the screenshot below. I remember i used to experiment with these settings too, also to no avail so it would be awesome if maybe you could guide me step by step how to get rid of that loop? There is no echo at all, only this dull kind of sound, "muddy" as you described it.

And thanks for the tip about the "default" thing! But yes, also when i used the realtek codec everywhere instead of default, it didn't in any way change the bad sound in the recorded video...

 

[AaronD]

You have the Monitor Off for everything, so that breaks the loop. Just keep in mind that whatever you do send to the Monitor will also show up in the Desktop source, as long as they're looking at the same device. So if you get an echo in the future, that could be why.

Generally, you want to completely get rid of everything that you're not using. No sense in keeping stuff around that can only hurt. Disable, remove, etc. But you'll probably still have the problem.

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Another possibility, again because of how late the Desktop and other output captures are in the chain, is that it picks up whatever speaker correction or "environmental candy" you might have.

Windows is not designed for media production. It's designed to sell, both to business people and to consumers, neither of which have a clue about hardly anything. But they do buy candy! And they want their conference calls to "just work" without having to turn their air conditioners off.

So there's a lot of processing *in Windows* that is on by default, and the controls to turn it off are buried to prevent the more nosy people from stumbling onto them and then blaming Microsoft for "breaking their computer". You need to be more nosy than that, find all of it, and turn it off. Anything that is not "a straight dumb wire" needs to go away.