Question / Help Desktop, no sound when OBS is opened, other issues

[Homeless_0ne]

So I Downloaded OBS yesterday and used the wizard for the optimal setup. didn't change anything except to avoid the mike picking up anything not from the monitor. several issues immediately cropped up. When trying to use Game Capture to stream some Minecraft, all that shows is a black screen (have to open OBS as admin to fix). whats more, although OBS is showing that it picks up sound just fine, i cannot hear anything coming out of my speakers. no matter what capture I'm using, no matter what scene I'm on, the second I open up the application, there is no sound. A side note that might be related, YouTube videos will refuse to play when the app is open unless I open as administrator as well, no sound regardless of course. I've checked that my playback devices have my speakers as default both before and after i open OBS. Volume mixer is setup so there should be a decent amount of volume/noise coming out for all my applications. i made a thread on r/twitch here and they suggested that i come to here to see if the devs or someone else on here could give me advice. any help is appreciated!

I read a thread that said to post a log when making one of these help request posts so even though the problem persisted whether i was streaming or not, here: https://gist.github.com/2c0b2a2407b2198782ae45b9638c5cfe

 

[Harold]

That log doesn't show you attempting to capture minecraft.

 

[Fenrir]

Having to run OBS as administrator is not a bug, and it's more or less expected in many situations. If you can't capture a game with Game Capture, that's one of our first recommendations. Just run OBS as Administrator.

As for sound muting when OBS is open, there is nothing in OBS itself that can directly control your system audio devices like that. However, check your Windows Sound Control Panel under the Communication tab, and verify the setting there is set to "Do nothing." This function is called "ducking" and Windows will automatically lower your system volume when it detects an application is using the microphone on your PC.

If that doesn't work, please grab a new log from OBS and we'll go from there.

 

[Homeless_0ne]

Having to run OBS as administrator is not a bug, and it's more or less expected in many situations. If you can't capture a game with Game Capture, that's one of our first recommendations. Just run OBS as Administrator.

As for sound muting when OBS is open, there is nothing in OBS itself that can directly control your system audio devices like that. However, check your Windows Sound Control Panel under the Communication tab, and verify the setting there is set to "Do nothing." This function is called "ducking" and Windows will automatically lower your system volume when it detects an application is using the microphone on your PC.

If that doesn't work, please grab a new log from OBS and we'll go from there.

according to Windows Sound Control Panel under communication tab, the setting has already been set to "'Do Nothing". here is another log file of me streaming while playing minecraft: https://gist.github.com/cf344de611b3e74eea7cd39e2e725ceb

 

[Homeless_0ne]

That log doesn't show you attempting to capture minecraft.

Apologies, since the problem persisted whether i was attempting to capture minecraft or not i didnt believe it was relevant. Here is a log where I'm playing minecraft and streaming it, hope it was what you're looking for: https://gist.github.com/cf344de611b3e74eea7cd39e2e725ceb

 

[Fenrir]

10:17:58.156: WASAPI: Device 'Speakers (SRS-X55 Stereo)' initialized
10:17:58.783: WASAPI: Device 'Microphone (SRS-X55 Hands-Free)' initialized

And herein lies the mystery solution!

You're not going to like this, but that looks like a bluetooth device, if I'm not mistaken? Many low-end bluetooth headsets can't have both the microphone and speaker active at the same time. This is unfortunately a limitation of the device, and not of OBS itself. Since OBS opens the microphone for recording and keeps the device active (unless you deactivate it in Settings -> Audio), it's not surprising that the speaker becomes muted.

 

[Homeless_0ne]

10:17:58.156: WASAPI: Device 'Speakers (SRS-X55 Stereo)' initialized
10:17:58.783: WASAPI: Device 'Microphone (SRS-X55 Hands-Free)' initialized

And herein lies the mystery solution!

You're not going to like this, but that looks like a bluetooth device, if I'm not mistaken? Many low-end bluetooth headsets can't have both the microphone and speaker active at the same time. This is unfortunately a limitation of the device, and not of OBS itself. Since OBS opens the microphone for recording and keeps the device active (unless you deactivate it in Settings -> Audio), it's not surprising that the speaker becomes muted.

oooh! a solution in sight! yes it is indeed a bluetooth device. honestly again i was surprised it had a mic in the first place, as i have no intention of using that one specifically, ill see if i can disable it. should i go through OBS or the computer itself? thanks a ton by the way

Edit: UOOOH it WOrked! thanks an absolute ton!

 

[Fenrir]

Excellent! Glad I was able to help point you in the right direction. :)

 

[non_nothing]

I just would like to thank you guys this post fixed my issue too which was I had a low-end bluetooth headset. It appears that when obs tries to access both mic and sound at same time, everything gets muted. I solved this issue by disabling the mic on windows sound settings and disabling the mic on obs on settings > audio

 

[orkoapprentice]

"This is unfortunately a limitation of the device, and not of OBS itself "
Hate to burst your bubble, but this is ABSOLUTELY a limitation of OBS. No other broadcasting software causes this issue, be it Bebo, XSplit, or even NVIDIA. OBS mutes all sound coming out of my computer, and having to fiddle with every setting imaginable because of it is PRECISELY a limitation of OBS.

 

[Harold]

Bluetooth headsets typically have 2 modes, stereo audio (A2DP), and headset (HFP - Hands Free Profile). These two profiles have separate audio devices on the computer side.

When you have OBS set to activate a Bluetooth headset's microphone, that causes the headset to automatically switch to HFP mode, as A2DP is a lower priority. The reason your audio mutes is because it's still being sent to the A2DP device instead of the HFP device.

This is a limitation of the device, not of obs like you seem to think.

 

[orkoapprentice]

So let me get this straight...I use three other broadcasting software, and this problem doesn't occur. I use OBS, and this issue is persistent. But the problem doesn't stem from OBS itself. Right.

 

[koala]

If you switch on your Bluetooth headset, it makes itself the default desktop device (Speakers), the default recording communications device (mic) and the default output communications device (headphone).
Your set provides 2 output devices (Speakers via A2DP, Headphone via HFP) and 1 input device (mic via HFP).
If some app opens the default output device (Speakers), for example a game, the headset wakes up, activates its A2DP channel, and plays back the game audio through that channel.
If some other app opens the default communications device (mic and headphone or headphone alone), the headset wakes up and deactivates its A2DP channel and activates its HFP channel. The result of this is that everything that currently outputs to the Speakers becomes silent, because the device deactivated its handling. Instead, it has activated its HFP handling.

Now, if you don't want the default speakers device going mute, you have to prevent the switch from A2DP to HFP. To accomplish this, you have to prevent any app from activating the default communications device.
With OBS, you do this by going into Settings->Audio and disable all devices that refer to the Communications devices and leave only the desktop device activated.
You probably don't have this configuration step with other broadcasting software, because these didn't activate the Communications device right away at startup or don't use a mic at all unless explicitly configured.
If you want to activate the mic on demand at OBS scene switch, disable both HFP devices in Settings->Audio and add the bluetooth mic as "Audio Input Capture" source to a source and deactivate it in the GUI unless you really need it.

 

[MCBYT]

So let me get this straight...I use three other broadcasting software, and this problem doesn't occur. I use OBS, and this issue is persistent. But the problem doesn't stem from OBS itself. Right.

Change your microphone input to a dedicated microphone. OBS seems to, by default, choose the one related to the Bluetooth. It's not an issue, just a default settings that works for most.

 

[joekee512]

"This is unfortunately a limitation of the device, and not of OBS itself "
Hate to burst your bubble, but this is ABSOLUTELY a limitation of OBS. No other broadcasting software causes this issue, be it Bebo, XSplit, or even NVIDIA. OBS mutes all sound coming out of my computer, and having to fiddle with every setting imaginable because of it is PRECISELY a limitation of OBS.

So let me get this straight...I use three other broadcasting software, and this problem doesn't occur. I use OBS, and this issue is persistent. But the problem doesn't stem from OBS itself. Right.

Love this person, lol. That is troubleshooting 101. If you have many other sources to test from and the problem only persists in one location, then it is where it only persists that you will find the problem. Then you have developers/IT that will deny it because they do not want to fix it.

I must have low end bluetooth technology, really OBS??? I have a JBL speaker w/build it mic ($200), a Philips 32mm driver with noise cancellation headset ($150), and it OBS kills the sound when I open the software. Close the software and the sound restores. Open OBS and the sound is gone. This only happens with OBS. Guy/Gals, what does this tell you???

Please, stop deny the problem, look into it, and get it fixed. I have invested hours upon hours setting up, configuring, tweeking, researching to make my OBS experience provided to my fans the best it can be. I do not want to to have to move to another software program to fix this problem.

 

[joekee512]

Change your microphone input to a dedicated microphone. OBS seems to, by default, choose the one related to the Bluetooth. It's not an issue, just a default settings that works for most.

Why not OBS fix the problem? Is the user going out to buy another piece of hardware the solution? I prefer using a headset because it will have the the surrounding sounds are best cancelled by the mic so my viewers do not have to hear my noisy house. I have a mic on my streamcam, system, and on my headset. The mic on my headset gives the best true to life sound of my voice and I cannot hear the loud sound that are constant in my house. The other mics pic up all the noise, even with hardware direct noise filter and sound card direct noise filtering.

 

[Fenrir]

I understand that you're frustrated, but there is nothing we can do. The solution to prevent this from happening in OBS is to change the microphone option from Default to something that is NOT the bluetooth microphone, or disabling it if you are not trying to use it. OBS has nothing that can exert control over your desktop audio devices, it only captures them. The drivers and the operating system are then responsible for switching modes, sending audio to OBS, etc.

This is also not just an issue with OBS, any application that tries to open both the microphone and speaker devices for a single bluetooth device will trigger this as well. It's easily replicated, and there's nothing we can do about it. The difference is that by default, OBS is set to capture both of your default output and input device (which could be the bluetooth device), where other streaming programs may not be.

If we could fix this, we would. We have no motivations for denying this is an issue and not fixing this, there is just legitimately nothing we can do.

 

[Narcogen]

As others mentioned, it's actually entirely within user control. I happen to prefer to leave all audio devices disabled in Settings > Audio and to add only the audio sources I want to each individual scene. In this case, my understanding is that this issue would not occur, because it makes OBS behave like the other systems-- enabling only the desired audio devices instead of trying to start up whatever is in that list in settings > audio.

 

[JediWill10]

I am having the same issue. I am wearing nearly $200 headphones, definitely not low end. I don't have an external mic and don't wish to, please fix this so I can use my headphones easily without having to disable my mic.

 

[BrokeWeeaboo]

I somehow managed to fix it. By disabling the mic on your headset, you should be able to hear sound through your headset now. Of course, you won't be able to use your headset microphone, but that's a completely different matter entirely. To do it, rick click on your sounds symbol (it should be in the bottom right hand corner. It looks like a speaker), click Sounds, go to recording, and look for your headset mic. It should have a headset symbol next to it. Disable it, and it should work.
I don't know how the hell you're supposed to get BOTH to work. Just cry in a corner and hate on Bluetooth and OBS or whatever and hope that you can get a refund.