Using OBS with an Audio Interface on Windows for streaming to send to Zoom

Community Open Mic Events Tech Talk - How to setup Zoom / Audio / Video
28

OK, this is how to install it. It’s a bit of a faff, I’m afraid.

If you had the original win-asio plugin installed, remove this first. This can be found at:

C:\Program Files\obs-studio\obs-plugins\64bit

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Make sure OBS isn’t running and then delete the two files “win-asio.dll” and “win-asio.pdb”. Leave the file manager window open as you will need it later.

Then check that OBS 28 starts with no error message. After starting OBS, if all looks good, close it.

Then download the 7z file from the link I posted above. You can also use this direct link:

https://github.com/foxx1337/obs-asio/releases/download/v3.1.2-bassasio/obs-asio.v312-bassasio.7z

This downloads a compressed 7z archive. You will need a decompressor program to open it. I used this: 7-Zip.

When you have extracted the archive, you should get a folder called obs-asio.v312-bassasio which contains files as shown below:

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Copy the dll files and the pdb file into the C:\Program Files\obs-studio\obs-plugins\64bit folder that you previously deleted the win-asio files from.

Then restart OBS and, hopefully, it should be working.

Cheers,

Keith

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29

Thanks Keith, I will give this a shot later.

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30

Well, I have an update. I deleted the 2 old files and copied in the 3 files from the link. The original message did go away after deleting the file and did not reappear after copying the new ones. At first I didn’t see the ASIO Input Capture option, but there is now asioinput option at the bottom of the list.
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I can select this but the UMC ASIO DRIVER option is greyed out. I tried selecting both that and the Realtek ASIO option and regardless I get the following error.

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I read the get-bassasio.txt file which stated the following.

Download bassasio v14 from https://www.un4seen.com/download.php?bassasio14
Extract the 64 bit bassasio.dll from within the archive (the path in the archive is x64\bassasio.dll) here.

I figured what the heck and tried it. There was no difference.

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31

Mmmmm ? Think I’ll avoid any version updates on OBS for sometime !!
:sunglasses:

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32

Sorry to hear that.

I had no obvious issues with my setup although I didn’t spend much time with it as I honestly don’t use OBS with MS Windows at all.

I think that’s the best advice for most people. I imagine the win-asio plugin in my first post will eventually be updated to support OBS v28. It’s probably best to wait until that’s available and confirmed to be working.

TBH I would be careful updating any application or operating system without reviewing the impact, especially if there are plugins involved.

The good news is, you can always get the previous version here: OBS Studio v27.2.4

Plus I suspect that the instructions for the bassasio plugin will be a bit much for most people.

Cheers,

Keith

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33

Mark, if you’re having OBS ASIO issues, you might want to use a DAW (eg reaper, Ableton) as well as OBS. That way the DAW does the ASIO processing.

There is a guide here: Open Mic Tech Talk - For Advanced Users : How to connect your DAW to OBS and send audio and video to Zoom - #2 by TheMadman_tobyjenner

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@Majik @jkahn Yeah, I figured that I would go back to the earlier version. Since we are going to be traveling I probably won’t spend much time on it before the next OM. I will probably keep it simple with Zoom to try and avoid another technical fail. After OM11 I will work on improving our setup.

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35

A quick update…

The lastest version now supports OBS 28. I’ve not tried it myself yet.

Cheers,

Keith

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36

Thanks for that Keith. I’ll keep the previous version as a backstop but will give the update a try later today.

:sunglasses:

37

Mmm
Fired up ok after ignoring this error and AI connected via ASIO Input Capture. Not tried recording yet, as intend to look into these first.

image

38

OK there would appear to be a compatability list with links to updates, where available. So working through that at the moment.

39

One down two to go
Although I have not used it for a while, Advanced Scene Switcher was my main concern with the failed plugin load but v28 seems to have picked up the updated version.
Direct link below if you need it.

Advanced Scene Switcher Releases 1.19.1

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Will look at the other two now but guess everyone may see different plugin rejections based on what they have loaded.
:sunglasses:

40

Update, neither obs-virtualoutput or win-asio are on the list of updated plugins.

Found some forums referencing the former catered for the use of multiple virtual cameras which is no longer supported. But as I am only using one I can confirm that the new version provides video input to Zoom via the Start Virtual Camera option as before.

I suspect win-asio is also redundant so both of these plugins can be removed from the OBS plugins folder, in order to stop the error message being generated on start up.

Both the dll and pdb files will need to be removed.

Directory on Win10 is

C:\Program Files\obs-studio\obs-plugins\64bit or 32bit as applicable.

I copied these to a Removed Plugin folder away from the OBS Studio program folder just in case but all seems to be working.

So if you get different plugins flagged as failed to load, check against the Compatibility List above and update accordingly. If they don’t exist on that list now, I would suggest Googling their individual functionality and making a decision on upgrading to v28 or staying on the latest v27.

FWIW I found a useful guide to the new v28 features here. OBS Studio V28 a couple of shortcuts and virtual cam options look interesting but I am likely to keep it vanilla !

I’ll try and record OBS to Zoom later to check all is ok - had enough of past last minute OM tech issues - and if all is ok, I’ll drop a confirmation note here.

Hope that helps.

:sunglasses:

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41

Onwards and downwards :rofl:

So first attempt to record in OBS threw up this error. Oh good I thought, the gift that keeps on giving ! What’s next !!

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Off to a couple of forums and found a fix in the OBSProject forum (natch). So all you need to do if you get this, is to change the Setting>Output>Recording setting for ENCODER from Hardware (NVENC) to Software as below. Same for |Streaming if you are using that.

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Have now successfully recorded a video in OBS, so next will be to check integration with Zoom.
Which will be later this evening but from what I can see OBS v 28 now looking stable, with ASIO inputs for audio.

:sunglasses:

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42

Well a number of hours later and after all the early errors being flagged and subsequently resolved, I managed to record OBS video in Zoom (audio via virtual cable). So all seems to be working ok.

:sunglasses:

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43

I’m not sure if this is useful for anyone, but I came across a tutorial for using Jack on Windows with OBS, that might be of use for anyone using Ableton or another DAW.

Cheers,

Keith

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I am trying to get myself organised and set up for an OM later in the year.

Having been following this thread to get OBS set up in Zoom, I have some queries on whether I am set up correctly in OBS but will raise that separately.

What I am totally confused about is virtual cables, how many you need and what they do in terms of how the audio is passed forwards and backwards. Read this thread many times and looked at a lot of videos on YouTube and still confused.

The set up I have is vocals and guitar going into separate channels in a Scarlet 2i2, and hearing what I am playing via headphones plugged into the 2i2. The 2i2 is plugged into a Windows 10 laptop running OBS version 30.

Seems you can get audio into Zoom with a single virtual cable or two, called A and B, not downloaded any yet.

Single Virtual cable
Seems straight forward to send the audio to zoom, in that both channels of the 2i2 are combined to send to zoom.
My question is how you get the sound get back for you to hear the audience. I presume that it comes back to the loudspeaker in the Laptop and not into OBS or your headphones.

Cables A and B
If you have two cables then Cable A is taking the audio to zoom and Cable B is Zoom sending the audience audio back to OBS which presumably means you can then you hear the audience in your headphones, rather than the speaker in the laptop. Am I right about this? I think this is may be the best option.

Any advice would be appreciated.
Michael

45

The idea of two Virtual cables is to facilitate recording Zoom audio within OBS. Normally VB is outbound OBS to Zoom and VA Zoom to Obs. But if you are not planning on doing that, (ie record a video of the Zoom session with OBS) you just need the one virtual cable which is freeware - donations normally asked for A & B.

As to the purpose ? If you consider both Zoom and OBS to be physical boxes in you signal chain, the virtual cables act as patch cables and therefore allow audio to pass between the two, Much like an amp that is patched into an AI.

@Majik will likely explain better than I but computer audio gets a bit complicated when passing data between different apps and creates a great deal of latency. So the VC serve to not only allow cross app communication but also reduce any lags. Layman’s explanation. :wink:

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46

The other alternative to connect applications together is Jack:

I’ve not used it on Windows, buI’ve used it for years on Linux where it’s pretty much the standard system for audio production applications.

(More recently on Linux we have Pipewire, but that’s not relevant to this conversation).

The idea with virtual audio cables (and I’m using Jack here as I’ve really only briefly flirted with other solutions) is you can treat applications as if they were stand-alone pieces of equipment, and then connect them together with virtual cables in the same way that you could link them with physical cables if they were physically separate devices.

So OBS has audio inputs which it records/streams from, and audio outputs it streams to (in some systems these are called “sinks” and “sources”).

So you can (with Jack) connect the output (or “source”) of OBS to in the input (or “sink”) of any other applications which expose themselves via Jack.

With Linux (with the help of “bridges”) this can be almost any other application which uses audio.

In Jack, real audio interfaces are represented as outputs (for audio capture) and inputs (for audio outputs to speakers or headphones). This may seem incorrect, but it actually makes sense logically, as it allows you to connect the “output” representing the audio being sent from the audio interface down the USB cable to the input of OBS.

Jack allows you to connect virtual cables in any combination as long as you connect inputs to outputs.

To get the audio back from something like Zoom with Jack, you would connect the audio output from Zoom to your local audio interface input.

A reminder: I’ve never done this on Windows, so I’m not sure how it works on that platform, or whether it works well with OBS or Zoom.

YMMV.

But this, hopefully, explains the principle.

Cheers,

Keith

(I’ll try to upload an image demonstrating this later when I’m at my laptop).

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47

Thanks to both for your input and apologies for not getting a back sooner.

Toby @TheMadman_tobyjenner
I think I follow what you are saying. As I am not envisaging recording a zoom in OBS at this time I think I will go for a single cable and give that a try. I am sure I can always upgrade to two cables in the future if I want.

Keith @Majik
Your suggestion looks very effective but at this stage perhaps a bit too much to sort out as I said above, I think I will just go for small steps at present but will file for future reference.

Wish me luck

Michael

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