'Monitor Audio' Function not Working

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calamarisundae

New Member
The 'monitor' part of 'monitor and output' in OBS is doing absolutely nothing for any of my audio-producing sources. I've been trouble shooting to no avail. Uninstalling things, reinstalling things. Rebooting. I have updated my copy of OBS to the latest version, updated my audio drivers, updated windows manually (the problem started prior to updating so I thought maybe updating would help) yet the problem persists. Everything is plugged in, turned on, updated, and functional. Except audio monitoring in OBS.

My setup, in brief, is a gaming laptop linked to an older pc via an hd60 S+ elgato. The laptop runs games very well but overheats if I try to run capture software simultaneously with the gaming. The old pc does the capturing to ease the burden on the laptop. The sound is working just fine independently of OBS in the elgatos 4k utility program. I can hear with my headset/nothing is wrong with it. In OBS the bars indicating the sound frequency are functional/output is working just fine. It's just that I cannot monitor ANY of the sound for ANY of my sources.

The only change I made was I stopped using Voicemeeter Banana. I originally started using it because my usb condenser mic sounded tinny/I was having regular audio issues with it. Voicemeeter Banana worked great at first but it started making my audio choppy and full of static instead of tinny. And nothing changed, I didn't interfere with the way I had it set up initially based off of Voicemeeter Banana tutorials so I don't know why it stopped working so well. I recently got a decent enough headset+mic so I thought I would axe voicemeeter and my cheap starter mic in favor of the new higher quality headset. My hyperX cloud headset works great outside of OBS so I don't understand what's going on.

My hardware appears to be fine and all of the software *ought* to be working. YouTube tutorials haven't been helpful. I haven't been able to find any helpful forum posts so far, having used several different search engines to look for advice. Someone on Reddit had the same problem I'm having now but a year ago and without any satisfactory fixes that I am aware of. I'm at my wits end here and would appreciate any help I can get for the matter
 
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calamarisundae

New Member
I was going to send a bunch of screenshots showing my setup but I figured out the problem.

My desktop monitor was sending sound from the monitor to my headset just fine in windows sound settings. In the obs audio mixer the video capture (visible and sound not muted) was receiving sound from my laptop perfectly, and in the advanced audio properties I had monitor and output turned on. Audio from my laptop was being sent to the pc via elgato hd60s+ as it should. And the elagato 4k utility capture software running on desktop was receiving sound/I could hear it just fine with my headset from from the PC monitor and all other regular computer noises like clicking.

The problem seems to be when I changed the port that the USB headset was plugged into (or something went awry during one of the multiple Windows updates maybe?) it somehow defaulted back to voicemeeter banana as the monitoring device in the advanced settings of OBS. Even though that was one of the first things I changed when I stopped using voicemeeter banana... It defaulted back somehow or never applied the change to the settings when I originally thought I had changed it. I'm flummoxed why the setting change I made didn't stick.

Thank you for your question, it prompted me to systematically walk through every little step again. Issue resolved
 
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AaronD

Active Member
Glad that you found it! But it seems odd that OBS would change things. I've seen Windoze do that - quietly change the privacy-invasion stuff back to the profitable settings as part of an update - but never any free thing like OBS is.

But, there *is* some inconsistency in how the settings windows actually work, from one app to another. Some apply immediately, and so they only have the standard "X" to Close button. Some keep a separate copy of the settings, and wait to Apply them back to the working set until you click that button. For those, the "X" to Close is equivalent to Cancel, and OK is (usually) equivalent to Apply and then close.

Maybe you had gotten used to just closing it?
 
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