Unique OBS Mic Line In Audio Challenge: Mackie Onyx12 Mixer - Insights Needed

[AnalogRefund]

Hello,

I am encountering difficulties with my Mackie Onyx12 mixer and OBS. My Mackie Onyx12 operates as three separate devices in OBS: "Onyx12 1-2 (Onyx12)", "Onyx12 3-4 (Onyx12)", and "Line In (Onyx12)". The "Onyx12 1-2 (Onyx12)" and "Onyx12 3-4 (Onyx12)" correspond to channel faders on the mixer, which I use to manage Windows desktop audio and Zoom or Telegram calls/voice chats, respectively. These channels are initializing correctly in OBS.

However, the issue arises with "Line In (Onyx12)", which is the microphone line in on the mixer. When OBS tries to initialize this device and create a resampler, it encounters an error. Interestingly, when I connect a spare Focusrite Scarlet Solo Gen 2 as mic line in for OBS, it works fine, yet the Mackie Onyx12 line in still doesn't work.

Here is the error message that I receive:

[WASAPISource::TryInitialize]:[Line (Onyx12)] Failed to initialize audio client: 800700AA WASAPI: Device "{0.0.1.00000000}.{b6a6e9ca-8633-4071-9689}" failed to start (source: Mackie Line In) WASAPI: Device "Onyx12 3-4 (Onyx12)" [96000 Hz] initialized WASAPI: Device "Onyx12 1-2 (Onyx12)" [96000 Hz] initialized WASAPI: Device "Analogue 1 + 2 (Focusrite USB Audio)" [48000 Hz] initialized WASAPI: Device "Line (Onyx12)" [48000 Hz] initialized avresample_open failed: error code -22 creation of resampler failed​

I have tried various solutions including adjusting the sample rates of the different channels, updating OBS and device drivers, rebooting my system, and verifying my audio device connections, but the issue persists.

I'm currently running the latest version of OBS, and my system runs on the most recent build and updates of Windows 11.

Given that the Focusrite interface works fine, it seems like the issue might be specific to the Mackie Onyx12. I would really appreciate any guidance or suggestions to help troubleshoot this issue further.

Thank you in advance for your help.

 

[pnasman]

I am encountering a similar situation with live streaming. No problem handling input from Focusrite Scarlett 2i2, but when I attempt to connect two-channel audio mix directly from my Mackie Onyx 24 USB port, Windows recognizes the input, but OBS does not.

My conversation with Mackie tech support:

ME: Trying to configure OBS to handle USB stereo output from Onyx24. Windows recognizes signal OK. No movement on OBS meters however. Is there documentation anywhere on this?

MACKIE TECH: It seems like your computer and the mixer are working together just fine, but for whatever reason the OBS software isn't playing ball. We recommend reaching out to OBS to see if they can help support this issue with their software.

ME: OK, another question. There are buttons marked 1/2 and 3/4 on two of the channel strips. Should they be disengaged when I want to send a two-channel digital mix from the mixer to the computer?

MACKIE TECH: They can be in either position, as it does not affect what is sent to the computer.

Sorry I'm not offering any solutions. I've been searching for someone with a similar problem, and this is first mention of it I've found. Anyone out there using Mackie Onyx?

 

[AaronD]

Googling got me the product page here:

Onyx12 12-Channel Premium Analog USB Mixer - MACKIE | MACKIE

The Mackie Onyx12 is a premium compact 12-channel USB-equipped analog mixer with award-winning professional preamps and built-in customizable effects.

mackie.com

which then had the manual:

https://mackie.com/img/file_resources/Onyx_Series_OM.pdf

Using the front-panel layout on page 1 and my experience with analog audio mixers in general, the 1/2 and 3/4 buttons at the top of those two strips are very likely to feed the strips from USB, not to send them to USB. Page 17 confirms this. (and someone had some fun with control #34!)
Pages 39-42 are the ultimate "how-it-works" pages. Trace any signal through that, and you can see *exactly* what you can and can't do with it.

Everything that is visually together with a channel strip has to do with that strip, inputs at the top, outputs at the bottom. Nothing is in a random position. Use that extensively, and you'll figure out a lot of what the board can do and how you can use it creatively.

Page 9 seems to say that all input channels are sent separately to USB, along with the stereo out. Page 21 further reinforces this hint without actually saying so directly, in that you can swap the first and last stereo pairs to make some software work better on the PC. (it doesn't help OBS though: more on that later)
The diagrams on pages 39-42 appear to disagree at first glance with page 9, but a little bit of understanding of how copy-paste-modify can introduce errors, I think page 9 is correct and the diagrams could have used a slight tweak to make them clearer in that part.

---

OBS has always had problems with multitrack input devices. It sees them either as "surround sound" for low-ish channel counts (up to 8 channels or so, I think, which it assumes is 7.1 with no way to verify), or lots of copies of its own channel count (2 channels for stereo). Either way, it "tries to be helpful" by mixing down everything that it can find into its own channel count, with no way to tell it not to, and then gives you that mess to try and do something with. Don't use OBS for multitrack inputs! Not directly, anyway.

Even 2-channel inputs can be a problem, like if you have two mics for two people in the same 2-channel USB interface. The interface treats them as two separate mono's, as you want, but when OBS sees two channels coming from one device, it absolutely insists that that must be stereo! It's still possible to separate them, in that specific situation only, by using two copies of that source, setting both to mono in the Advanced Audio Properties, and pan/balancing them hard left and hard right. That works because the pan/balance is *before* the mono switch, which is NOT the standard order of processing that a professional board has, for obvious reasons.

Same problem if a driver takes the multitrack USB input and makes a bunch of virtual stereo devices out of it. That's a partial solution, but the full solution (if it must be at the driver level) would be to create a user-customized set of virtual devices with a custom channel count each, and free-form routing. Then you could create one for each separate control that you want in OBS, and connect them accordingly.

---

So yeah, OBS audio is kinda stupid from a professional point of view, but I can see how it came to be this way. It was made for the stereotypical bedroom streamer who only has the one mic (which is a single device with a single channel), and then expanded from there. Someone wanted to stream in stereo while playing a game in 7.1 surround, so that was added, still as a single device selection and nothing more as far as the user could see.

It would help immensely to just add a channel selection in addition to the device selection. So if I have, say, a digital mixer that gives me 32 channels on USB, I can select channels 31-32 as my broadcast stereo pair and ignore the rest. Or have 32 different sources that each select a different single channel of that same device. (at that point though - actually well before - I'd still strongly recommend a DAW, instead of mixing in OBS)

But that and other requests have fallen on deaf ears for quite a while now. A couple of dev's say they want to do it, but it's not a priority, and they need to figure out how anyway.

---

Another one of those requests is to keep OBS's audio Monitor from slowly drifting uselessly out of sync with no attempt to correct it, because it locks itself to the device's clock (which might be slightly different) without resampling, and simply expands the buffer ad infinitum. That screams to me that it was the result of a software engineer knowing nothing about audio, naively applying "the standard solution", and moving on. And we still have it today.

To work around that one, either don't use the Monitor, or connect it to something that has a pretty good chance of using the same clock, like a virtual device of some kind. Then send it from there to where you really want it, so that the intermediary has its *own* chance to get it right.

 

[AnalogRefund]

Hello,

I am encountering difficulties with my Mackie Onyx12 mixer and OBS. My Mackie Onyx12 operates as three separate devices in OBS: "Onyx12 1-2 (Onyx12)", "Onyx12 3-4 (Onyx12)", and "Line In (Onyx12)". The "Onyx12 1-2 (Onyx12)" and "Onyx12 3-4 (Onyx12)" correspond to channel faders on the mixer, which I use to manage Windows desktop audio and Zoom or Telegram calls/voice chats, respectively. These channels are initializing correctly in OBS.

However, the issue arises with "Line In (Onyx12)", which is the microphone line in on the mixer. When OBS tries to initialize this device and create a resampler, it encounters an error. Interestingly, when I connect a spare Focusrite Scarlet Solo Gen 2 as mic line in for OBS, it works fine, yet the Mackie Onyx12 line in still doesn't work.

Here is the error message that I receive:

[WASAPISource::TryInitialize]:[Line (Onyx12)] Failed to initialize audio client: 800700AA WASAPI: Device "{0.0.1.00000000}.{b6a6e9ca-8633-4071-9689}" failed to start (source: Mackie Line In) WASAPI: Device "Onyx12 3-4 (Onyx12)" [96000 Hz] initialized WASAPI: Device "Onyx12 1-2 (Onyx12)" [96000 Hz] initialized WASAPI: Device "Analogue 1 + 2 (Focusrite USB Audio)" [48000 Hz] initialized WASAPI: Device "Line (Onyx12)" [48000 Hz] initialized avresample_open failed: error code -22 creation of resampler failed​

I have tried various solutions including adjusting the sample rates of the different channels, updating OBS and device drivers, rebooting my system, and verifying my audio device connections, but the issue persists.

I'm currently running the latest version of OBS, and my system runs on the most recent build and updates of Windows 11.

Given that the Focusrite interface works fine, it seems like the issue might be specific to the Mackie Onyx12. I would really appreciate any guidance or suggestions to help troubleshoot this issue further.

Thank you in advance for your help.

Here is a summary of my support experience with Mackie. It was a nearly 20 email exchange. Here are the concise findings of this exchange:


Issue: The customer was experiencing difficulties initializing the "Line In" on the Mackie Onyx12 mixer in OBS, using WASAPI.
Support Agent: "It looks like you're trying to use the WASAPI wrapper. Could you try running the device in its ideal ASIO mode?"

• The agent inferred a potential incompatibility with WASAPI and suggested switching to ASIO, which typically provides a more reliable and low-latency connection. However, OBS does not natively support ASIO due to licensing issues, which necessitates the installation of a third-party plugin.

Issue: The customer encountered issues with sending the main mix across all channels, even after installing an OBS-ASIO plugin and switching to ASIO.
Support Agent: "Here is how this mixer's USB sends work: By default, all channels are sent post-gain pre-DSP/pre-fader... With the USB send toggle engaged, the main mix is instead sent via USB sends 1-2...if you want true multitracking, disengage this button."

• The agent suggested disengaging the "main mix USB channel toggle" for true multitracking. However, disengaging the "main mix USB channel toggle" causes the mixer's physical controls (e.g., mute buttons) to become non-functional, transforming the mixer into a "fancy passthrough". This requires the user to control these functions digitally via OBS, which can be less convenient and counter-intuitive in a professional setting.

Conclusion: When using the Mackie Onyx12 mixer with OBS, you have to switch from WASAPI to ASIO, requiring a plugin. This change requires deactivating the 'main mix USB channel toggle' for multi-track control. This setting, however, impacts the mixer's basic function - mixing. With this setting, the 'USB send' becomes pre-fader, meaning the mixer's mute buttons and faders no longer affect the USB output, essentially turning the mixer into a pass-through. Therefore, in OBS, you have to rely on digital controls for sound management, which is far from ideal in live production scenarios. This situation underlines the necessity for OBS to support ASIO natively, and for Mackie to increase their OBS compatibility, particularly as they launch their new DLZ creator line.

 

[AaronD]

• The agent suggested disengaging the "main mix USB channel toggle" for true multitracking. However, disengaging the "main mix USB channel toggle" causes the mixer's physical controls (e.g., mute buttons) to become non-functional, transforming the mixer into a "fancy passthrough". This requires the user to control these functions digitally via OBS, which can be less convenient and counter-intuitive in a professional setting.

Yes. That's what multitracking does. It's a dead-raw record of what each source actually did without any processing whatsoever. Not even mute: that's intentional and on purpose. You're supposed to use the multitrack function to mix later, or on something else.

This concept (with a slight variation in execution) is also used for large stage shows, where one large console is responsible for the audience and that's all it does, and another large console with its own dedicated operator is responsible for the performers' monitors. Those two consoles are completely independent of each other, except for receiving the same raw signals from the same mics.

Conclusion: When using the Mackie Onyx12 mixer with OBS, you have to switch from WASAPI to ASIO, requiring a plugin. This change requires deactivating the 'main mix USB channel toggle' for multi-track control. This setting, however, impacts the mixer's basic function - mixing. With this setting, the 'USB send' becomes pre-fader, meaning the mixer's mute buttons and faders no longer affect the USB output, essentially turning the mixer into a pass-through.

Not quite. It's always multitrack, and the button only swaps the first and last stereo pairs. The default is multitrack on the first N channels plus the stereo main mix at the end, WHICH IS **EXACTLY** THE PROFESSIONAL STANDARD channel order. The button exists as a concession to apps that only look at the first 2 channels as a stereo pair, so that you can feed those apps with the stereo main mix.

However, OBS doesn't do that. OBS sees a many-channel device, assumes surround-sound, and mixes-down the first 8 channels or so into a steaming pile of garbage that can't be corrected. That's ENTIRELY an OBS problem, and THAT'S what needs to be fixed...without wrecking others who do want surround.

Add a channel selection, in addition to the device selection. Push for that in OBS.

Therefore, in OBS, you have to rely on digital controls for sound management, which is far from ideal in live production scenarios. This situation underlines the necessity for OBS to support ASIO natively, and for Mackie to increase their OBS compatibility, particularly as they launch their new DLZ creator line.

OBS not supporting ASIO natively is probably a licensing issue. Lots of things work that way in the Free-and-Open-Source world.

Also, Mackie (or anyone else) should not wreck the *actual* professional workflow (see all-caps above), to cater to one free app. OBS itself just needs to stop being stupid with audio.