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I have a mixing board (Zoom L-12) I use for live streaming on Twitch that suits almost every need I have, except it uses ASIO which isn't compatible with OBS, and all the workarounds I've looked at and tried to get the digital audio from my mixer into OBS via ASIO have been clunky and not entirely functional. My current solution is taking the two XLR master outputs from my mixer, and via an adapter cable, sending that signal into the Line In port on my Alienware 15 R3, but this doesn't produce quite the level of sound quality I want. I'm going to be getting a thunderbolt enclosure to expand my capabilities soon, so I'm looking for either a USB or PCI Express sound card that can accept the analog output from my mixer and is also easily accessible in OBS, and that has a quality ADC that will improve on the built in one in my laptop

There's an ASIO plugin for OBS: https://github.com/pkviet/obs-asio (maybe you already tried it?) There are binaries in the releases section.

If you want hardware, then the Focusrite Scarlett Solo is right up there in affordable/good.

morphine wrote:

There's an ASIO plugin for OBS: https://github.com/pkviet/obs-asio (maybe you already tried it?) There are binaries in the releases section.

If you want hardware, then the Focusrite Scarlett Solo is right up there in affordable/good.

I've already tried that, on two different occasions. I got it working on one occasion, but the problem is that the ASIO device is selected as an input on a scene, not a global audio source, so I would have to add it as a source in every scene, and whenever I would fade transition between scenes, there would be severe artifacts in the audio during the transition

I need at least six XLR inputs and at least one stereo line channel on my hardware. I looked at the Focusrite products, but wasn't sure if I'd be able to set it up as a global stereo audio source in OBS, and plug my XLR outputs on my Zoom into the XLR inputs on the Focusrite (it would essentially be a fancy XLR to USB converter, which would be nice) so I've been hesitant

I'm not strictly following here, as I don't see why there's a need for an interface with many inputs . You already have your Zoom mixer, so you already have your mix done, and all you require is to get it into OBS via a quality line-level input, right? Or did I misunderstand the issue?

morphine wrote:

I'm not strictly following here, as I don't see why there's a need for an interface with many inputs . You already have your Zoom mixer, so you already have your mix done, and all you require is to get it into OBS via a quality line-level input, right? Or did I misunderstand the issue?

That's precisely it, a stereo line level (or a software workaround to get digital audio from the Zoom, but I'm less optimistic about that now). I only mentioned my inputs to say that I wouldn't be able to use something like the Solo as my primary or only interface, in case I'd misinterpreted your suggestion of the Focusrite

My idea was just getting the Focusrite (actually the 2i2, not the Solo) to hook up to your laptop. Pull master outs from Zoom into it at the front, then bring up the Scarlett's 1/2 stereo pair as your OBS input. The only thing I'm assuming here, which I think the Scarlett drivers do, is pulling both inputs as a single stereo pair. That's almost always a given with audio interfaces, but you never know.

Another thing that's odd is that in theory your Zoom interface should also let you pull one of its stereo pairs into OBS.

morphine wrote:

My idea was just getting the Focusrite (actually the 2i2, not the Solo) to hook up to your laptop. Pull master outs from Zoom into it at the front, then bring up the Scarlett's 1/2 stereo pair as your OBS input. The only thing I'm assuming here, which I think the Scarlett drivers do, is pulling both inputs as a single stereo pair. That's almost always a given with audio interfaces, but you never know.

It doesn't sum up each mono input into a single stereo bus? When I looked at that device and others like it, my assumption was that each input was a mono input that would just be doubled into stereo, but you're saying it can configure input 1 as the left channel and input 2 as the right?

morphine wrote:

Another thing that's odd is that in theory your Zoom interface should also let you pull one of its stereo pairs into OBS.

Can it? As far as I could tell it would only let me do channels 1 and 2, I didn't find any sort of configuration option to give me channels 13 and 14 (being the master output channels) but I'm not the greatest when it comes to software so if this is the case that would be incredible

Remind me to look into the Zoom user manual tomorrow

So I took a look at the manual, but it's inconclusive. The quick way to check is to make sure you have the latest firmware and drivers, then see if in Windows, in the sound settings, under Input devices, you have a list that reads something like "Input 1/2", "Input 3/4", and so on and so forth. In theory, you will, and then if I had to guess, 1/2 or 13/14 will be the master mix. Also check if it's not under "disabled devices" for some reason.

morphine wrote:

So I took a look at the manual, but it's inconclusive. The quick way to check is to make sure you have the latest firmware and drivers, then see if in Windows, in the sound settings, under Input devices, you have a list that reads something like "Input 1/2", "Input 3/4", and so on and so forth. In theory, you will, and then if I had to guess, 1/2 or 13/14 will be the master mix. Also check if it's not under "disabled devices" for some reason.

I had thought that's what I should be seeing, but all I see is "Line 2-Zoom". I'll double check firmware and drivers when I get home tonight, but as far as I'm aware they're both up to date. Also didn't think to check disabled devices, I'll look into that too. Fingers crossed

Another thing to check is the driver control panel, there's always one. There may be non-obvious options about how you want the input channels to be treated by the host OS. As an example, IIRC, in MOTU gear, you can actually get surround sound by checking a box.

In my specific case with my Audient, I get stereo pairs in the host OS (outside of an ASIO context) for both inputs and outputs.

morphine wrote:

Another thing to check is the driver control panel, there's always one. There may be non-obvious options about how you want the input channels to be treated by the host OS. As an example, IIRC, in MOTU gear, you can actually get surround sound by checking a box.

In my specific case with my Audient, I get stereo pairs in the host OS (outside of an ASIO context) for both inputs and outputs.

Well, I fixed it, but unfortunately not through Windows sound settings. The driver control panel for the Zoom mixer exposes two options (sample rate and buffer size) and only buffer size can be changed lol

I went back to the ASIO4ALL and OBS-ASIO route I'd tried originally, re-installed the drivers for the Zoom, enabled pull mode via ASIO4ALL (not sure if that's still checked but I was pressing buttons at this point and it helped). Then after looking everything over and making sure I was getting the sound from the master output via USB, I disabled duplication of sources in the transitions menu in OBS. It occurred to me a few days ago that that might have been the original source of my problems the first time I tried this. I just had to set my ASIO input as a source in every scene, but then I was also able to enable audio monitoring via my laptops headphone port, and I'm getting quality, digital, next-to-zero latency audio.

Even though this thread itself didn't quite fix my issues it made me revisit the issue with new ideas, and I definitely appreciate the time and effort thank you

That's good to hear, but there's one thing I'm not understanding: why is ASIO4ALL in this equation at all? The Zoom has its own ASIO drivers.