Question / Help Capturing desktop sound, while using headset

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Michael King

New Member
Wondering if anybody has found a solution for capturing desktop sound (iTunes, Spotify), and microphone, while still allowing sound to play through your headset. I've tried using Wavtap and Soundflower, and while both allow me to stream desktop sounds, and my microphone, nothing actually plays through my headset or my external speakers.

Using a USB Headset, on OSX 10.9.2
 
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mrasmus

Forum Moderator
When you switch your default sound device to WavTap, you need to make sure that audio device (that you actually want to hear things on) is at full volume. WavTap is kinda finnicky about what it outputs to.

If you've got Soundflower, run Soundflowerbed.app (it installed with it) and select your output device that you want to forward audio to, make sure that device is at full volume, then switch your default output to Soundflower (2ch) for your system (how you've done so to get it so OBS picks them up).

Hope that clears things up, here's a pic of what you want to select (obviously replace MicrosoftLifeChat with the name of your own device) in Soundflowerbed:

2014-07-16_18-07-30.png

SoundFlowerbed lets you forward all audio going into the virtual audio device back out to your preferred headset. Unfortunately, WavTap doesn't have this much control, so Soundflower is the better choice when you have more than the default output devices on your system.
 
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Michael King

New Member
Using those settings, my mic is picked up, and sound continues to come through my headset, however desktop sounds are not picked up on stream.
 
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mrasmus

Forum Moderator
And you've got Soundflower (2ch) as your default audio output device in OS X's Sound preference pane, as well as selected in OBS's audio settings as Desktop Audio?
 
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Michael King

New Member
Yeah, my settings all seem fine.

MF7APAW.png


It's the second I set Soundflower (2ch) as the output device, that my headset stops working. For viewers, everything is fine, desktop sound and my microphone is picked up fine, and streamed. It's just that no sound (music, game sounds, etc etc), come through my headset.
 
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mrasmus

Forum Moderator
Hmm... That all looks correct. The only thing I can think of is double-checking the per-device volume for your headset; if that's muted, you won't hear any sound. Select it from the list, or change it to be the default and adjust system volume to max, then change back to having Soundflower be the system default.

EDIT: Oh right, occasionally WavTap gets in Soundflower's way, so it's a good idea to uninstall that. They don't provide an uninstaller, so I wrote one to simplify things. Just open Terminal and paste the following in:

Code: 
curl -s https://gist.githubusercontent.com/mrasmus/b133ca537eff7c3ae175/raw/c850a69193969990826f89a3fb47fe2c09131a1d/gistfile1.txt | sudo bash

When you hit enter, it'll prompt you for your sudo/Administrator password; once it runs, WavTap will disappear from your menubar and shouldn't be listed in your devices anymore. That... might help. I'm not sure.
 
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badgeroni

Member
this sounds silly, I've only bought a mac a week month ago so learning myself. i also need to uninstall wav tap. how do i install it? (I've never uninstalled anything before)
 
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Lain

Forum Admin
Lain
Forum Moderator
Developer
Oh, mrasmus gave the instructions in his post. You paste that in to the terminal and it should uninstall it. It really does need a proper uninstaller though.
 
M

Michael King

New Member
badgeroni said:
this sounds silly, I've only bought a mac a week month ago so learning myself. i also need to uninstall wav tap. how do i install it? (I've never uninstalled anything before)
Click to expand...

Go into Applications > Utlities, and open terminal. Then just paste the command the mrasmus gave a few posts up.
 
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RandomHaxor

New Member
When I installed WavTap on my Mac, I had a similar problem where no sound came through my headphones. Here's how I fixed this. I opened Audio Midi Setup and created a multi-output device. Next, I checked the boxes for Built-in Output and WavTap. I then set my output device to this new output. However, you can't adjust the volume of a multi-output device as a whole, you must adjust the volume of the individual components. To easily do this, I used PTHVolume, which adds this tab to the menu bar, where you can adjust the volume of the headphones output and of WavTap.
 
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NintendosFinestNerd

Member
might I suggest downloading Line In it's free and it allows you to do what you are asking for. Set sound flower 2nd chnl to your headphones then do this with line in.

2ufyttf.jpg


Then once you have done this go into System Preferences of your Mac.
Click Sound Settings and in Ouput select Soundflower (2ch) like so

28085yd.png


What this does it takes all the desktop audio such as youtube or iTunes and it transfers it into your headphones so that you too will be able to hear it. Hope this helps.
 
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