--- title: "High Quality Streaming (with OBS Studio)" published: false ---

Creating entertaining, educational or otherwise useful content while live is a tough job, but it is a rewarding job if you make it. And I'm here to help you get started producing high quality content the moment you set foot into the world of streaming, at least in terms of Audio and Video - I can't help you if your content itself is unwatchable.

## Setting up the Basics

Everyone has to go back to the basics sometimes, some more than others, some less. It is important to sometimes take a step back and get a proper look at what you are actually doing, and if it is actually working as it should. Sometimes it doesn't, sometimes it does, and sometimes it's based on luck entirely. So let's try to strip out the "doesn't work" and "luck" part entirely, and ensure that you get high quality right from the basics.

### Good Audio on a Budget

Audio is what you and your viewers hear, or what is converted into words on screen if you happen to have a subtitling software running for disabled viewers. It is one of three critical parts of streaming, and messing it up can drive away interested viewers the moment things go out of control. As a Creator you want to sound better than the masses that don't know how to do it right, not the same.

One thing many people get wrong is that they assume that every piece of Hardware is the same, which has resulted in the annoying "48 kHz is enough!" argument that went way out of control. Not only does it not apply universally, it also requires good Hardware or Software resampling - and the former is not very common in cheap or integrated Hardware. So the next best thing that we can use is Software resampling, which will often sound better.

96 kHz Sample Rate

If your Hardware doesn't have a good resampling chip, you should set it to it's native Sample Rate. For many devices this is either 96 kHz or 192 kHz, but often 96 kHz should already sound better than 48 kHz to a trained ear. On the flip side, stacking a good hardware resampling chip with a mediocre software resampling implementation actually degrades audio quality - watch out for that when you have good audio hardware.

Finally in order to complete the basic Audio set up, all that's left is setting up OBS Studio accordingly. That means setting the Sample Rate to 48 kHz or 44.1 kHz (depending on the streaming platform), and setting the correct number of channels - which is almost always Stereo now. If you used a higher Hardware Sample Rate, you will now have OBS Studio resampling your Audio single to the correct Sample Rate with a mediocre but not awful resampling algorithm.

OBS Studio should be set to 48 kHz Stereo

### Video for Everyone