How to set up OBS for a music stream: audio, player capture and overlays

Basic audio settings

1. Settings → Audio → Sample Rate: 48 kHz. It’s the standard for video and streaming; if the rates of your devices and OBS don’t match, you can get clicks and drift.
2. Channels: Stereo.
3. Settings → Output → Audio Bitrate. By default OBS uses 160 kbps AAC. For a music stream it makes sense to raise it to 256–320 if your platform accepts that bitrate — check its streaming recommendations.
4. Make sure the system output device is also at 48 kHz (on Windows — the playback device properties, “Advanced” tab).

Player capture: one source, no double audio

There are two main ways to get music into OBS:

• “Audio Output Capture” (desktop audio) — everything playing on the system: the player, notifications, Discord. Simple, but everything goes on air.
• “Application Audio Capture” (Windows 10 2004 and later, OBS 28 and later) — only the chosen program. For a player in a browser it’s handy to open it in a separate browser or profile: the capture may pick up the whole browser’s audio, not a single tab.

On Stream-Q the player is built into the dashboard, and for capture in OBS you can open it in a separate window with the “Open in a separate window” button — the audio carries over without a pause. The player normalizes track loudness to −14 LUFS based on the analysis and puts a limiter at −1 dBFS after the gain, so you don’t have to move the fader between a quiet demo and a loud master. What LUFS is and why −14 is explained in the article “LUFS, PLR and LRA explained”.

A microphone that doesn’t drown in the music

Filters on the microphone source (right-click → “Filters”), in this order:

1. Noise Suppression — RNNoise mode removes fan and street noise.
2. Noise Gate — optional, if the microphone picks up the keyboard between phrases.
3. Compressor — evens out the voice: a ratio of about 3:1–4:1, with the threshold set so normal speech gets 3–6 dB of compression.
4. Limiter — a threshold of about −3…−1 dB, so loud laughter doesn’t overload.

Ducking lowers the music when you speak. In OBS it’s done with a “Compressor” filter on the music source: in the “Sidechain/Ducking Source” field choose the microphone. When you talk, the music drops by a few decibels; when you stop, it comes back. On a track review stream that’s handy while discussing, but it’s better to turn ducking off while a track plays so viewers hear the whole track.

Overlays: browser sources

Almost all modern overlays are web pages added as a “Browser” source. The basic rules:

• Set the source size to what the overlay service recommends, rather than stretching it with the mouse — otherwise the text gets blurry.
• The canvas (Settings → Video → Base Resolution) is usually 1920×1080.
• “Refresh browser when scene becomes active” — turn it on for overlays that should start from a clean slate.
• “Shutdown source when not visible” saves resources, but the overlay will reconnect every time it’s shown.
• If an overlay freezes, right-click the source → “Refresh”.

On Stream-Q, the dashboard’s “Overlays” section lists the recommended size for each overlay and has a live preview. There’s the queue, “now playing”, a track card with BPM, key and sections, the score and judges panel, chat voting, the stream top, karaoke, a loudness meter, chat and studio scenes. And the scene editor lets you lay out the widgets on a 1920×1080 canvas and add one “Browser” source for the whole scene to OBS.

Recording and audio tracks

Recordings of music streams live longer than the streams themselves: clips are cut from them, and artists open the moment of their track by timestamp. A few settings make working with them easier.

• “Advanced” output mode lets you record up to six audio tracks. Put the voice and the music on separate tracks (in “Advanced Audio Properties” you tick the tracks for each source): you’ll be able to fix the balance when editing.
• A separate track for the Twitch VOD. For Twitch, the output settings have an option for a separate audio track for the VOD. It’s used to keep music you don’t have rights to out of the archive while it still plays live. For reviewing tracks that artists sent themselves this usually isn’t needed, but it can help with background music.
• Recording format — MKV or fragmented MP4: if OBS crashes, the recording won’t be ruined entirely.

For artists to find their track in the recording, on Stream-Q you just add the link to the stream recording in the dashboard: every artist’s report gets a button that opens the recording exactly at their track.

Performance: keeping OBS from lagging

• Fewer browser sources mean fewer browser processes. One canvas scene is better than five separate overlays.
• Limit the overlay frame rate: 15–24 FPS is enough for text widgets. In Stream-Q overlays that’s the “FPS” setting, and “Light mode” turns off the heaviest effects.
• Hardware acceleration for browser sources is in Settings → Advanced → Sources. If you see artifacts, try turning it off.
• Watch the OBS status bar: frames dropped due to encoding are a sign of insufficient resources; due to the network — of connection problems.

A check before going live

1. Make a 2–3 minute test recording: voice, a track, voice over the track.
2. Listen to the recording on regular headphones and on a phone: does the voice drown, is there echo?
3. Check that the overlays are connected. During a stream the Stream-Q dashboard shows which overlays are actually online: a green dot means connected.
4. To check how they look without going live, Stream-Q overlays have a demo=1 parameter in the link.