OBS and ASIO, great news for Windows users

Gear & Tools Talk đź’» Hardware, Software & Recording
1

TL;DR
OBS (Open Broadcast Studio), the streaming software used by many of us, especially for online Open Mic events, used to be incompatible with the low-latency ASIO audio drivers for Windows because of its license terms. Steinberg, the creator of ASIO, have now mad its license compatible with OBS and have become a sponsor of the project, so ASIO support should be coming to OBS very soon.

Background

The native sound system on Windows is designed for general desktop audio use: listening to music from Winamp, watching Youtube on a web browser, hearing sound from a game, etc. But it is, historically, unsuitable for “pro-audio” use, because of lack of support for low-latency or bit-perfect audio.

So, when Steinberg started developing audio software for Windows in the late 1990s, they created an alternative audio driver: ASIO (Audio Stream Input/Output) that provided much lower-level access to the audio hardware (your audio interface) which enabled low-latency, bit-perfect audio.

Note that one of the side effects of this is that ASIO can only access one audio device at a time, so you cannot, for example, use your external audio interface and your built-in laptop speakers at the same time. This is the same for every Operating System (Mac OS, Linux, etc.) as it’s literally impossible to guarantee low-latency, bit-perfect audio with multiple, unsynchronised audio interfaces.

There are ways to use multiple audio devices with ASIO and on other OSs, but they result in increased latency and changes to the digital audio data.

ASIO was closed-source, commercially licensed.

OBS (Open Broadcast Software) is a popular Open Source application used by millions of streamers on Twitch, Youtube, etc. which allows you to create audio and video streams including overlays, effects, different camera angles, etc. and stream them in real-time. It’s the go-to application used by people participating in the JG Open Mics.

OBS Studio is Open Source GPLv2 Licensed, and this is fundamentally incompatible with closed-source licences like the ASIO one.

Hence OBS was never (officially) able to use ASIO drivers which presented a lot of challenges to Windows users of OBS (some of which have been discussed in this community):

ASIO has been available on Windows OBS via some independently developed plugins, but these have often been a bit hit-or-miss, and often stopped working when OBS gotr upgraded.

The Good News

As of October 15th 2025, Steinberg has Open Sourced ASIO. This means it is now compatible with the OBS license, and can be built in. The same is true for other Open Source applications like MuseScore and Audacity.

Not only that, but Steinberg have become a Platinum Sponsor of the OBS Project. From the Steinberg Press Release:

Steinberg extends its ASIO licensing model to include both proprietary and open-source options, opening the way for a technical sponsorship of a new partner OBS

Steinberg’s decision to provide GPLv3 licensing for its ASIO technology now allows proprietary and open-source license options to be offered side by side. This dual licensing approach combines the reach and trust of open source with the sustainability and reliability of a commercial model

By extending the licensing to include open source, Steinberg has been able to establish a partnership with OBS as a technical sponsor.

Having supported music and audio creators for many years, Steinberg now also aims to bring its expertise to the world of live streaming alongside OBS

So, great news for Windows users of OBS.

Cheers,

Keith

8 Likes
2

Thanks for sharing this Keith.
It seems like great news for many here.

I tried to use OBS in my very first Vintage Club livestream. At that time we hosted live in Zoom and did not stream live to youtube.

OBS was a disaster for me in that situation. I thought it may be due to not being connected via an ethernet cable. But I was unsure.
I have never used it in a live setting since.

Two things are on my horizon.
I will surely need a new computer soon. I’m on Win 10 and my laptop is getting old. It will be Win 11 no doubt.
I may ask an engineer to install an ethernet cable directly into my office so I am not relying on a wifi connection.
I wonder if that would make OBS an option for me.
:slight_smile:

3

An interesting development Keith and one I will explore when I get back into things. The last few OMs I played I stopped using OBS and Virtual Cables into Zoom, especially if I was driving backing tracks into OBS from Reaper. OBS recorded videos were in sync but Zoom recordings had considerable lag. My work around was to declare my AI as the Zoom mic/input which was counter intuitive at the time but worked.

But good news indeed ! Thanks for sharing. :+1:

1 Like
4

That could easily be it.

Using wifi for streaming really is a recipe for problems, however good you think your wifi is.

Cheers,

Keith

5

I think we discussed this before and IMO that’s not an ASIO issue. ASIO only impacts physical hardware, not virtual cables.

In that case, I suspect it’s an issue with Zoom settings:

Cheers,

Keith

1 Like
6

Thanks for the info Keith, it’s good news and one to keep an eye on if it’s going simplify things.

1 Like
7

+1 on this. I discovered very quickly that hard wired made a huge difference for streaming.

1 Like
8

Thank you Majik for this detailed information! Didn’t try OBS yet, but I’ll probably use it for some future open mic. Also I am happy to read that big firms do good and reasonable things at times :slight_smile:

Thanks for reminding me that I wanted to use a LAN cable for today’s open mic! I had forgotten about it, but now I remember I had strange glitches sometimes.

We put those power LAN adapters into two rooms here and for us, they work really well. Reviews are quite mixed, though, it doesn’t seem to work in every house/electrical setup well. But it’s a quick alternative to having someone installing a cable and glady you can try out and send stuff back nowadays if it doesn’t work for you.

And I don’t want to talk you out of buying a new laptop, but sometimes, they work much better again if you put in an SSD in case you still use a harddrive and possibly more RAM. But well, I don’t know your laptop nor what your typical use-case is. Many of the newer ones have quite a bit better battery life if this is important for you, for example.

2 Likes
9

@domi7
Thanks.

I have a wifi booster that is okay. I would prefer a cable connection.
I have SSD.
I always use mains power as the battery is no longer functional.
I worry that Win 10 will soon be redundant.

1 Like
10

4 posts were split to a new topic: Windows 10 to 11

11

Thanks Keith.

I am returning to JG OM this evening and seem to be having some fresh problems with OBS and my AI (UMC 404).

It has been a while but my recollection was that using the UMC ASIO driver (as I am, and it appears fine) I could select whihc input channel on the AI was the used for a specific source in OBS.

Today that doesn’t seem to work at all.

Luckily it still seems to record OK.

And even better, seems like audio and video are all fine in Zoom when using the virtual audio cable and OBS virtual camera to send all to Zoom.

Crossing fingers and toes it is still fine tonight when it really matters.

15

I’m just going to leave this here…

Cheers,

Keith

2 Likes
16

Yeah, I couldn’t be happier to have changed my old laptop for a newer one. All my problems related to Reaper/OBS/Audio/Video in general are all gone. Ethernet cable with both computers though, so they were not related to wifi.

In the mean time though, there seems to be a way to get an extra year of Win 10 security update for your old laptop. Windows 10 extended security updates (ESU).

1 Like
17

@Richard_close2u Ok, every point understood! :slight_smile:
I was thinking about Majik and the above too, remembering him talking about Linux before. I can second the choice and have also Linux running here too (besides Windows), but I also understand if you’ like to stay with Windows.

Yes, power LAN was the one where you use your power line to transfer the data, just plug one end in a wall adapter close to the router/modem and the other into one close to your computer and here, we have a reliable connection this way. Of course, a proper LAN cable is best.

2 Likes
18

This is great news. I wonder if it will change the latency offset I spent a ton of time getting right in OBS when OBS gets native ASIO support? I’ve been using one of the third party options and haven’t had any trouble with it otherwise.

I do use OBS extensively on a second PC that’s dedicated to streaming a live feed of my owl roost box to youtube. I only stream when the owl is in residence, which tends to be from Nov-Feb or so.

Yeah, I’m on a computer that’s running Win 10 and won’t support Win 11 because of the hardware security thing. It’s a perfectly good computer and it can even run fairly new AAA video games. I’m not going to scrap it just so I can get Win 11. I have Win 11 on my work laptop and I’m not pleased with certain aspects of it. I won’t be going out of my way to acquire it on a personal machine. I’ve signed up for the extended support, but my long-term plan is go to go Linux.

I ran Linux as a dual boot OS awhile ago to see how I liked it. It worked well enough but at the time I NEEDED Windows for a couple things and Linux wasn’t serving any purpose other than satisfying curiosity. That tide appears to be turning and it may just be time to go back to it. For those of you currently using it, which distro do you prefer? The one I tried out back when was Ubuntu. Twas quite a lot of years ago, to the point that I don’t even remember how long ago it was.

19

I’m currently using Kubuntu (a variant of Ubuntu) 22.04 but I do tend to chop and change every few years.

One of my older laptops, which I still use a lot, has KDE Neon, and I have previously used Mandrake/Mandriva, Fedora, AV Linux, Linux Mint Alma Linux, Rocky Linux, Kali, Knoppix, and others.

For music use, either AV Linux or Ubuntu Studio have been tweaked with that in mind, but you can use applications like Ardour, Reaper, Bitwig, and others on just about any distro.

I’m wondering if this sort of discussion should be separated into a new thread @moderators ?

Cheers,

Keith

1 Like
20

This may help somebody . . .

With a mind less stressed by the need to get things OK for the Open Mic, I let that go and returned this morning.

Wish I’d just checked quickly with my AI Assistant :rofl:

Long story short, I update the OBS-ASIO driver which is the option used to select the source. Then on selecting my UMC ASIO device driver in the source settings I could again select the channels.

1 Like