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Noob OBS question: separate audio stream for voice chat ?
Guppy Jan 13, 2022
So a friend of mine had the briliant idea that we need to stream and comment the play off games in our BB2 Leauge.

I managed to set up everything with OBS so it can stream to twich - but there is one issue I can't figure out how to solve:

Since it will be two of us commentating we need both of our voices, but If we use discord in the browser and it outputs to "default" the audio gets picked up with game audio meaning I can't easily control gain/level, etc for just his voice.

I though I was clever by sending the output of discord to a (usb) output device that doesn't actually have anything connected to it. This lets me get the audio on a separate channel in OBS - slight issue though *I* can no longer hear it xD this ofc makes communication a tad harder

So how do people do it? Right now I'm thinking it involves using JACKS to setup a virtual devices that can be captured individually that are then combined into the real output.. but last I used JACKS it involved some hardcore text editing in both jacks and alsa files.

So I'm hoping there is an easier way to achive my goal.


Bonus questions:
- since window capturing doesn't work for me, I guess there is no way to get his webcam as a source in OBS?
- how do you install plugins in the flathub version of OBS, I wanted a virtual greenscreen addon but it seems I need to manually compile it and install it in a non standard folder?


System:
Linux Mint Cinnamon 20.3 ( ubuntu 20.4 core )
Nvidia binary drivers ( 3060 )
PluseAudio
OBS 27.1.3 ( flathub )
Samsai Jan 13, 2022
The low-tech way is just to use the VOIP app volume controls and in-game audio options to manage the balance. It works well enough that I have never needed anything beyond that.

If you want to go for the high-tech solution, I would advice looking into Pipewire instead of trying to get JACK, PulseAudio and ALSA all playing nice together. With Pipewire you should be able to relatively easily run the input from the game and Discord into OBS. I haven't done it myself, but considering how easy it was to set up a software amp for my bass and guitar and wire up the audio inputs and outputs, I imagine it wouldn't take too much messing around with Helvum/Carla.
pete910 Mar 25, 2023
Mine does have separate Game/Voice



Having said that it may be Headset dependant as I can adjust volume between game and chat on the fly with my headset.
pete910 Mar 25, 2023
Quoting: Guppysince window capturing doesn't work for me, I guess there is no way to get his webcam as a source in OBS?

Do you mean his webcam from his feed into yours ?

Webcams you add as a V4L2 source to use for your own stream.

Flat hub no Idea, cant see the pint of flathub or any of them when the distros have damn repos
/rant
beko Nov 13, 2023
Quoting: GuppySince it will be two of us commentating we need both of our voices, but If we use discord in the browser and it outputs to "default" the audio gets picked up with game audio meaning I can't easily control gain/level, etc for just his voice.

I though I was clever by sending the output of discord to a (usb) output device that doesn't actually have anything connected to it. This lets me get the audio on a separate channel in OBS - slight issue though *I* can no longer hear it xD this ofc makes communication a tad harder

Latest OBS does afaik feature inputs from games only out of the box but in case you're [still] curious I did explain my setup a while ago here: https://beko.famkos.net/2022/04/18/virtual-sinks-and-mic-with-obs-and-pipewire-on-linux-pc/

It makes use of combined or virtual sinks which allows for a more fine tuned audio routing (this is also where effects may be applied).

The same technique can be applied to your case. In fact I use the same to create a combined HDMI-BT-Headphone sink when recording with a capture card on a dedicated device or to create a virtual combined sink for attending a video conference with two connected headphones but only one MIC (zero echo).

A patchbay like `qpwgraph` or `helvum` makes it a lot easier to visualize the setup in the end.
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