Audio Formats and Settings for Live Streamers
Good audio keeps viewers watching. Bad audio drives them away faster than any video issue. Whether you stream on Twitch, YouTube, or Kick, understanding your audio settings prevents problems with echo, clipping, alerts that are too loud, and VODs that sound worse than your live stream.
OBS Audio Settings
In OBS Studio, set sample rate to 48 kHz and channels to stereo. These match Twitch and YouTube's ingest expectations. For the audio encoder in OBS, use AAC at 160-192 kbps for music-heavy streams or 128 kbps for talk-only content. Twitch's recommended audio bitrate is 160 kbps AAC. The total bitrate budget for a 1080p stream at 60fps is typically 6000-8000 kbps — audio uses a small share of this. Enable the Limiter and Compressor audio filters on your microphone track in OBS. The limiter prevents peak clipping. The compressor keeps your voice at consistent volume when you move or change speaking volume.
Microphone Settings for Streaming
USB microphones work at 44.1 kHz or 48 kHz, 16-bit. Set OBS to match. If you use an audio interface with an XLR microphone, record at 48 kHz, 24-bit at the interface level, then let OBS downsample to its 48 kHz, 16-bit pipeline. Monitor your microphone levels in OBS — aim for peaks around -12 to -6 dBFS during normal speech, with the meter rarely touching -3 dBFS. This leaves headroom for unexpected loud moments. Gain staging matters here: set the gain on your interface first, then use the OBS volume slider for fine adjustment.
Alert and Sound Effect Formats
Stream alerts from Streamlabs, StreamElements, and similar platforms use WAV or MP3 files. WAV ensures instant playback with no decoding delay — important for tight timing. MP3 adds a small decoding buffer that can cause 50-100 ms of startup lag on some systems. For alerts and sound effects, use WAV at 44.1 kHz, 16-bit, stereo. Keep file sizes small — alert sounds should be under 5 seconds and under 500 KB. Normalize all your alert sounds to the same loudness level (around -14 LUFS) so no single alert blasts louder than others.
Stream Music and Copyright
Playing copyrighted music on streams causes VOD muting and DMCA strikes. Royalty-free music sources include Epidemic Sound, Artlist, and Pretzel Rocks — these provide MP3 or FLAC downloads licensed for streaming. Download in the highest available quality — FLAC or 320 kbps MP3. Store your stream music library organized by energy level or BPM. Use a separate OBS audio source for music with its own volume control, so you can duck music during conversations. Export your music playlist as MP3 or AAC for local playback through your streaming music source.
VOD Export and Clips
Twitch stores VODs in the same quality as your stream — AAC audio encoded by Twitch's servers. Downloaded VODs from Twitch are in MPEG-TS format. Convert these to MP4 or MKV with FFmpeg: ffmpeg -i vod.ts -c copy output.mp4. YouTube keeps your uploaded stream audio as-is or re-encodes to AAC. For highlight clips, export from your editing software at 192-320 kbps AAC in an MP4 container. This matches what YouTube and Twitch expect and plays everywhere. Keep your original OBS recordings in MKV format — OBS's MKV output recovers gracefully from crashes, unlike MP4.