Why are my mic audio levels lower in OBS than my audio interface software?
I have a Shure SM57 mic that is plugged into a Focusrite Scarlett Solo 4th gen with XLR. I installed the Focusrite Control software which I believe displays the audio levels as reported by the hardware itself.
When using this mic as an audio source in OBS and comparing the two meters, the levels in the Focusrite software are consistently 6 dB lower in OBS than they are in the Focusrite software. If I crank the gain on the Scarlett and make the mic clip to 0 dB, OBS shows it as -6 dB.
Things I have already checked
There are no filters being applied on the OBS side.
Input volume in windows sound settings is at 100
Things I have noticed but don't fully understand:
Currently the mic is set to mono in OBS. If I change it to stereo, the dB levels match up with Focusrite, but then I can only hear the audio out of my right ear when monitoring.
In windows sound settings it is set to 2 channels. If I change this to 1, I can't get the mic to work.
Because of those observations I'm sure it has something to do with mono vs stereo, I'm just not sure what's going on exactly. Any thoughts?