Audio setup for dual pc streaming

[MadMossy]

So I am trying to get my head around Voicemeeter and audio setup, and my noodle is totally frazzled.

I have a dual PC setup, gaming pc has microphone, and I'm using OBS with NDI to stream my desktop to my 2nd PC.
I have voicemeeter potato installed along with virtual cable (3 hardware cable outputs)

My intention is to stream the audio for for the microphone and desktop with the NDI stream, and then with separate audio streams for discord and music through either NDI or VBAN.

The problem is I just can't figure out why it's not working. I can get all the audio working fine on my gaming PC, but no matter what I do I cannot get audio output on my secondary PC, it either doesn't work at all or it plays but then doesn't play at all during a stream or recording.

Does anyone know of a comprehensive for audio dummies guide on how to go about this. I need to use NDI has do not have a capture card, although if alternatives to NDI are available and on par or better I'd be happy to try.

 

[Lethagized]

I will say that, if you're going to be messing with audio settings, dont go changing settings in windows and the application. Do one or the other (windows or application) because they tend to conflict with each other. Ive had my fair share of audio problems with windows computers (worked fine the day before and refuses to work the next boot up). Sorry i cant be of more help, hope you get it sorted.

 

[MadMossy]

I managed to get it working eventually using voicemeeter to setup the sources, then using NDI within OBS to send the audio over the network where I can control each audio channel within OBS on my streaming system.

My only issue now is that voicemeeter still suffers from the robotic audio glitch every now and again even though I have done everything recommended like increasing audiodg cpu priority/cpu affinity.

 

[Rroff]

I ended up using an external mixer and USB audio capture into OBS - it also avoids some of the issues of if a audio device has enhancements such as virtual 5.1.

EDIT: Though syncing it with the video can be a little bit of messing about, have to dial in the buffers, etc. to match.

 

[hornetstinger]

I have two pcs both connected to a avr. Plenty of inputs so allows that plus several other sources all wired up. Coaxial, optical, hdmi etc

 

[Donnie Fisher]

Just trying to understand your setup. So you wanted to have game pc ( vid + game sound ), add a mic audio to that, bundle it up into a stream to send to the second pc. Is that when you want to add discord and music ? on the 2nd PC?

Or were you wanting to generate game, mic, discord and music all on the game PC ? but send them in seperate streams to the 2nd pc ?

 

[MadMossy]

Yeah the second one, figured it out using voice meter potato so I have 5 audio streams over obs ndi.

I am looking at getting a elgato wave xlr with wave link though as voice meter keeps giving me issues.

 

[Donnie Fisher]

I can understand that aspect. I’ve found that windows audio, whenever it has to route somewhere else can end up becoming latent and glitched. I think it’s a fundamental design of the protocols and software layers it has to go through in the OS when moving between programs that ends up adding delays. This is where audio interfaces win out significantly as they are able to bypass a lot of the middle layers and take more direct routes with the data.

This was definitely the case with my Roland keyboard. If I tried using the audio/midi from it in windows using the keyboard‘s usb cable as source, there was a marked delay to the audio./midi. If took the analogue line outs and actual midi from the keyboard and plugged them into my Focusrite Scarlett interface and then usb from interface into windows, the delay disappeared on both audio and midi.


Does your setup need to have the music and discord on the game pc ? Cant help but think that making the second pc do that work would let the game pc concentrate on the game, and the second pc be able to dedicate more resource to the other audio sources and not be hampered by the workload of the game. A game will nearly always spike a machine to the point of bottleneck in some way … and when it does, that bottle neck will affect other processes … such as a background process of converting a music apps output into an ndi stream.

 

[MadMossy]

moved the music to the streaming machine now through the use of media requests, so viewers can request music and it defaults to my playlist otherwise.

Discord will remain on the gaming machine though as that is what my mic is connected to, although I may consider moving it to the streaming machine just in case the gaming system crashes so I can still talk on the stream. I never knew audio setup could be so damn complicated.