Multiple problems with Discord Streams

There are multiple problems associated with Discord's streams and I am not sure if there has been proper feedback about them, but they are starting to get annoying, so here goes.

First of all, I am usually streaming at 720p / 60fps.

Here are my own Discord settings:

OpenH264 Video Codec ON
H.264 Hardware Acceleration ON
Noise Suppression ON
Echo Cancellation ON
Noise Reduction ON
Advanced Voice Activity ON
Automatic Gain Control ON
Quality of Service High Packet Priority ON
Audio Subsystem STANDARD
Lates technology to capture screen ON
Experimental method to capture audio ON
Diagnostic Audio Recording OFF

Discord version:

Stable 72163 (a33776f)

Host 0.0.308

Windows 10 64-Bit (10.0.19041)

PC Specs:

OS: Windows 10, Version 10.0.19041, Build 19041

GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti (Driver Version 27.21.14.5730)

CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-8600K CPU @ 3.60GHz, 3601 Mhz, 6 Core(s), 6 Logical Processor(s)

Network: 100M/100M (wired, stable)

Router: Asus RT-AC86U

RAM: 16GB

Problem 1 - When others are streaming, I can only hear their game audio properly for a couple of seconds after someone speaks in the same voice chat

It's like the game audio is somehow piggybacking attenuation / input sensitivity / priority speaker, even when those things have nothing to do with game audio. Doesn't even have to be the streamer speaking, anyone else's voice will make the stream game audio louder for a while as well.

Problem 2 - Stream quality getting worse over time

Sometimes it takes an hour, sometimes 10 seconds. Game does not seem to matter, nor any of the quality settings. We're all living in Finland and work in IT for the most part, so we can be pretty sure that this is not an issue with our internet connections or something uploading/downloading in the background.

Nothing follows logic either. Someone whose stream is bad quality for person A is not necessarily bad quality for person B, eventhough person B might have worse internet connection than person A. If person B with the worse internet connection were to stream, the quality could be better than what person A can stream. We all have pretty similar high(ish)-end gaming setups and connections, so processing power shouldn't be a problem. Restarting a stream sometimes bumps the quality up for a while. We have one player streaming Rocket League on a 4G connection and it is sometimes way better quality than someone with 200M/200M wired connection streaming a slower paced game. Sometimes streaming a whole screen is WAY better than streaming a game itself.

Problem 3 - Game audio is low in general for stream viewers

It seems like stream's game audio is really low for all viewers, if the streamer does not bump ALL of their own audio to the max. For example, for me, having the Windows master audio at 50% while having game audio at 10% is optimal. If I want to hear footsteps in siege, I bump game audio to 15%. However, if I stream like this, no one can hear any game audio from me at all until I put master audio and game audio to 100%, but this results in sounds so high for me that I cannot play.

Furthermore

Streaming to Twitch with OBS for example works for all of us with these issues. We can easily stream games at 1080p / 60fps or even at our native resolutions of 1440p / 60fps, so this is not a problem with bad internet connection or processing power.

My one working theory is that Discord users might benefit greatly, if we were able to manually setup bitrates for stream video and audio.

I am happy to provide more information, logs, tests, etc. directly to Discord developers, if needed. I really do want these problems fixed sooner or later.

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