&stereo

Sets the audio mode to stereo and changes default audio settings to improve audio quality

General Option! (&push, &room, &view, &scene)

Aliases

• &s

• &proaudio

Options

Example: &stereo=1

Value	Description
(no value given)	It behaves like 3 or 1, depending on if you are a guest or not
0	will try to down-mix your mic to mono. Does not enable any pro-audio settings
1	enables it for both push and view (if used on both links)
2	enables it just for viewing requests and not publishing requests
3	enables it for just publishing requests and not viewing requests
4	enables 5.1-multichannel audio support (Experimental and may require a Chrome flag to be set)
5	This is the default if nothing is set. It behaves like 3 or 1, depending on if you are a guest or not
6	solely just enables stereo for both in/out
8	7.1 surround sound audio &stereo=8

Details

Adding &stereo to the URL will apply audio-specific setting presets. For inbound audio streams, it can be used to increase the audio bitrate from 32-kbps to 256-kbps. For outbound streams, it will disable echo-cancellation and noise-reduction. When applied to both the outbound and inbound sides of an audio stream, it will also enable stereo audio if available.

There are a variety of different modes that apply different combination of presets. You can also override any preset with other URL parameters, such as &audiobitrate, &outboundaudiobitrate, and &aec=1.

If using a microphone, wearing headphones is strongly recommended if using this parameter, along with knowledge of correctly setting your microphone gain settings. Echo and feedback issues can occur if this option is used incorrectly.

When using this option in a group room, you can't simply just apply this URL option to the director and have it apply to all guests. You will need to add the flag to each guest and to each scene-link to enable the pro-audio stereo mode. Depending on the value you pass to the URL parameter, you will get slightly different outcomes.

More Details

&stereo and &proaudio currently do the same thing, so they are just aliases of each other. When used, they can be used to setup the audio transfer pipeline to allow for unprocessed, high-bitrate, stereo audio.

Use of this option is generally for advanced users who understand the consequences of enabling this. High-quality audio can cause audio clicking, reduced video quality, feedback issues, low volume levels, and higher background noise levels.

For stereo-channel support to work, you will want both the viewer AND the publisher of the stream to have the respective &stereo flag add to their URL.

You can customize things further using &aec, &ag, &dn, &ab and &mono. These flags will override the presets applied by the &stereo flag. Please note, depending on your browser, enabling &aec, &ag, or &dn can force disable stereo audio.

The most powerful mode is stereo=1 , which if enabled:

• Turns off audio normalization or auto-gain when publishing (&push)

• Turns off noise-cancellation when publishing

• Turns off echo-cancellation when publishing

• Enables higher audio bitrate playback, up to 256-kbps, when listening (&view)

If the parameter is used, but left without a value, it is treated as a special case (either 1 or 3). Please see follow link for more info:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vS7Up5jgXPcmg_tN52JLgXBZG3wfHB3pZDQWimzxixiuRIDbeMdmU11fgrMpdYFT6yy4Igrkc9hnReY/pubhtml

Option	alias	aec	autogain	denoise	stereo playback	stereo output	default ab in	max ab out	limited ab in	cbr
&stereo=0	off	on	on	on	off	no	32	510	510	no
&stereo=1	both	off	off	off	on	yes	256	510	510	yes
&stereo=2	in	on	on	on	on	no	256	510	510	yes
&stereo=3	out	off	off	off	off	yes	32	510	510	no
&stereo=4	multi	off	off	off	on (5.1)	yes	256	510	510	yes

Newbie mode

The default mode when &stereo is used alone is &stereo=5, which acts like either &stereo=3 or &stereo=1, depending on whether the link its applied to is a room guest or not. This option will make the most sense for most users.

Option	Context	alias	aec	autogain	denoise	stereo playback	stereo output	default ab in	max ab out	limited ab in	cbr
&stereo=5	Regular/OBS	5	off	off	off	on	yes	256	510	510	yes
&stereo=5	Director	5	off	off	off	on	yes	32	510	510	no
&stereo=5	Room Guest	5	off	off	off	off	yes	32	510	510	no

iOS Devices

Option	alias	aec	autogain	denoise	stereo playback	stereo output	default ab in	max ab out	limited ab in	cbr
iOS devices		on	on	on	off	off	32	32	32	no

Just for reference, the audio codec used by VDO.Ninja is OPUS (48khz), which can provide high-fidelity music transfer when the audio bitrate is set to 80-kbps per channel or higher. The default audio bitrate used is 32-kbps VBR, which is sufficient for most voice applications. Increasing the audio bitrate to a near-lossless 500-kbps or something may end up causing more problems than anything, but that is supported if needed.

WHIP

&stereo now works with the WHIP output, so if enabled, you'll publish stereo 2.0 with a default audio bitrate of around 80 to 100-kbps; otherwise the default is mono at around 60kbps. These defaults bitrates might be changed own the road.

&stereo=8

7.1 surround sound audio is being supported now, in a technical sense, although really only if the source is a server stream. To use, add &stereo=8 on the viewer end. (5.1 multi channel was around supported with &stereo=4 I think)

Related

&audiobitrate&outboundaudiobitrate&screensharestereo