How do i record Xbox gamebar party chat on a seperate audio track using obs?

[KelBShobra]

Ive been trying to figure this out for months.

When recording with OBS Studio, im unable to record party chat outputting from xbox game bar audio on pc in a seperate audio track so i have that audio alone in one track. I just wanna record my party chat on a seperate audio track from everything else, so i can make my friends voice the same volume as mine and remove the weird scratches the mic makes when it rubs against his shirt in post during editing. But OBS cant see the XBOX Gamebar app at all, and because of this Using the "application audio capture" feature in obs doesnt work to capture the party chat.

The only way i can capture gamebar audio merges it with the game audio thats playing from my elgato or on my desktop.



I'm wondering if there is any way i could possibly fix this?


Im also curious if theres a way to use the xbox gamebar and its features without it being in an overlay? My theory is that if i could use it outside of overlay mode it might identify it like just another app thats say minimized into the tray. When In overlay mode i dont think it identifies the audio output in the same way as it would when capturing and separating the audio from a game onto another audio track.


Hope this can get figured this out somehow. Or hopefully Microsoft updates this so it works with this feature. It would be so useful to be able to do this it just. Doesnt work tho

 

[AaronD]

Does the chat audio come in separately from the normal game audio? Or are they already mixed by the time OBS gets it?

As long as they're separate, yes, you can route them differently. But once they're mixed, you can't separate them again.

If OBS gets them already mixed, all may not be lost yet. The source app might have a setting to separate them.

 

[KelBShobra]

Does the chat audio come in separately from the normal game audio? Or are they already mixed by the time OBS gets it?

As long as they're separate, yes, you can route them differently. But once they're mixed, you can't separate them again.

If OBS gets them already mixed, all may not be lost yet. The source app might have a setting to separate them.

Party chat would come from the xbox gamebar app, its not part of any game no. Its a seperate app. doesnt show up in obs in any way tho

 

[Harold]

Unless you can separate out the party chat to another audio device or a separate program process, you won't be able to separate it within obs.

 

[DaForce2000]

Only way i've managed to make it work is to route it via voicemeter banana then you can capture it in obs just fine.
But the one downside of that , which I have not managed to work out yet, is that if you make any recordings using nvidia shadowplay/share the xbox gamebar party chat won't be included as it's not part of the default audio route.. or something like that from what i've guessed.

 

[KelBShobra]

Xbox Game bar now shows up when using the Application Audio Capture (BETA) feature in the latest update of OBS, But it does not capture any audio coming from Xbox parties, I've tried a couple different things but nothing will output. would be nice if this was fixed as people have been asking for this for over 5 years from what I've seen online looking for answers.

 

[Dawnstriker54]

I believe I found some work around. So I use a HyperX Quadcast and a Turltebeach Atlas Air headset. What I did is set audio captures for the games I play. Then I switch my windows setting to send the audio feed to my headset. From there, in the xbox app I set the audio to go to my microphone (it has headphone port). From there I set the OBS to pick what ever goes to my microphone (Hyperx) then you just turn on monitor and out put and it work pretty good. Only downside so far is when I close OBS I can no longer hear party chat.

 

[Exite]

I believe I found some work around. So I use a HyperX Quadcast and a Turltebeach Atlas Air headset. What I did is set audio captures for the games I play. Then I switch my windows setting to send the audio feed to my headset. From there, in the xbox app I set the audio to go to my microphone (it has headphone port). From there I set the OBS to pick what ever goes to my microphone (Hyperx) then you just turn on monitor and out put and it work pretty good. Only downside so far is when I close OBS I can no longer hear party chat.

I did this a few months ago, and it works but causes your teammates to hear an echo in the Xbox voice chat. How ridiculous for Xbox to create a system where you can only record the audio through THEIR recording software. Please lmk if you find a fix

 

[AaronD]

How ridiculous for Xbox to create a system where you can only record the audio through THEIR recording software.

Vendor lock-in???

Xbox is owned by Micro$oft, which is becoming even more well-known now (as if they weren't already) for forcing spyware onto every muggle's computer by baking it into Windows itself. So, those who 1) know, 2) care, and 3) are allowed to, wipe that @#$% off and run Linux instead, on the same hardware.
I would not be surprised to see the same with everything else M$ owns.

 

[AaronD]

Not a direct answer to anything, but my experience on a capable analog audio rig (*) with live bands and other events, really helps with streaming rigs too.

(*) Most analog rigs that I've seen are not all that capable. If it's just the board itself, it's probably not. If it has a rack of other processing, and a way to connect each of those functions to different points on the board as needed for a given show, and reconnect it somewhere else for another show, THAT is capable!
Anyway:

Where does each signal come from?
Where does each signal need to go?
What does each "box" do in between? (physical or software)
Etc.

Apps, consoles, etc., are not sources or destinations. They're boxes in the middle. What does each of those boxes actually do, and can you avoid a function that you don't want? Sometimes you want 3 out of 5 functions, there's a setting to disable all but 1, and you really DON'T want that 1 that it absolutely insists on...so you have to bypass the whole thing because it's the only way to not have that 1, and then you explicitly recreate the 3 that you do want and plug those results back into where they need to go...

---

Technical rigs are like Erector or Lego, depending on your generation. They're not big monolithic blocks that you have to use, and thus keep you hostage. If you can't disable a function, but you *can* ignore it, it's perfectly okay to just let it run with no effect.

For example, an analog sound board that I ended up inheriting from an upgrade, has an EQ on/off switch. It doesn't actually turn the EQ off. It simply takes the wire that leads away from that function, and connects it to either the input or the output of the EQ circuitry. Either way, the EQ circuitry continues to run, with the actual signal, and produces an EQ'ed version of it. That signal is always being produced, even when the switch is set to "EQ off"; it just isn't connected to anything with that setting.
Same with the MUTE function: the entire channel strip continues to run and produce a finished signal according to all of its processing, but its outputs no longer go anywhere, and the mixer function now adds silence for that channel instead. (it must always add *something* for every channel, and silence counts as "something")

Likewise, if you can grab the raw signals and do your own processing on them, it's perfectly okay for you to ignore the original processing that you can't shut off. Just make sure it can't actually go anywhere that matters, and forget about it.

You might have to be creative in how you *get* those raw signals, but as long as you're not using things that are intentionally designed to lock you in (advertised for "convenience" or "ease of use" or whatever, or are part of such a wildly popular ecosystem that they don't actually have to care about their users), then it's almost always possible, *somehow*.

Open the "black box", see a ratsnest of wires, keep the ends straight, and see if you can move one...or forget the box, tap off of its inputs to feed *your* processing, and send its output(s) into a black hole...or whatever's necessary. If it turns out to be necessary to use a completely separate mechanism for voice chat, that the game knows nothing about, then so be it...