No audio when using USB capture card

[guineapig64]

Hello, everyone.

I just recently got a new gaming laptop (I never owned a gaming laptop before up until now) to use for game recordings only but I'm having trouble getting the audio to come through in OBS Studio. It'll work just fine when I use an emulator like RetroArch...but I just can't get the audio to work with my capture card. Attached is my most recent log.

I just wanna throw out there ahead of time that I'm a complete dummy with some of this stuff...so try to explain everything that is idiot-proof lol. Thank you so much in advance. :)

~ChubbyLove64

 

[AaronD]

Lots of audio trouble in that log. Some with the capture card:

16:24:30.228: [win-wasapi: 'Mic/Aux'] update settings:
16:24:30.228: device id: {0.0.1.00000000}.{d6c15136-b608-4fcc-ac6a-6001fab0f81a}
16:24:30.228: use device timing: 0
16:24:30.231: [WASAPISource::TryInitialize]:[Digital Audio Interface (USB Digital Audio)] Failed to activate client context: 88890004
16:24:30.231: WASAPI: Device '{0.0.1.00000000}.{d6c15136-b608-4fcc-ac6a-6001fab0f81a}' failed to start (source: Mic/Aux)
16:24:30.375: [Loaded global audio device]: 'Mic/Aux'
16:24:30.375: - monitoring: monitor and output
16:24:30.375: [win-wasapi: 'Audio Input Capture'] update settings:
16:24:30.375: device id: {0.0.1.00000000}.{d6c15136-b608-4fcc-ac6a-6001fab0f81a}
16:24:30.375: use device timing: 0
16:24:30.376: [WASAPISource::TryInitialize]:[Digital Audio Interface (USB Digital Audio)] Failed to activate client context: 88890004
16:24:30.376: WASAPI: Device '{0.0.1.00000000}.{d6c15136-b608-4fcc-ac6a-6001fab0f81a}' failed to start (source: Audio Input Capture)

and some with the built-in speakers:

16:26:58.834: [win-wasapi: 'Audio output'] update settings:
16:26:58.834: device id: {0.0.0.00000000}.{052d93c0-6dc9-4ba6-81ec-6642e1bf1d47}
16:26:58.834: use device timing: 1
16:26:58.836: Device 'Speakers (Realtek(R) Audio)' invalidated. Retrying (source: Audio output)
16:26:58.914: WASAPI: Device 'Speakers (Realtek(R) Audio)' [48000 Hz] initialized
16:27:05.501: [win-wasapi: 'Audio output'] update settings:
16:27:05.501: device id: default
16:27:05.501: use device timing: 1
16:27:05.503: Device 'Speakers (Realtek(R) Audio)' invalidated. Retrying (source: Audio output)
16:27:05.583: WASAPI: Device 'Speakers (Realtek(R) Audio)' [48000 Hz] initialized

Does OBS capture the speakers anyway?

It seems that it doesn't like the video part of that capture card either:

16:24:30.632: Video Capture Device: data.GetDevice failed
16:24:30.632: Video Capture Device: Video configuration failed
16:25:51.030: Video Capture Device: data.GetDevice failed
16:25:51.030: Video Capture Device: Video configuration failed
16:26:09.511: Source 'Video Capture Device' renamed to 'USB to HDMI capture card'

16:27:40.902: USB to HDMI capture card: data.GetDevice failed
16:27:40.902: USB to HDMI capture card: Video configuration failed

Standard troubleshooting:
Does another app work? Like Audacity, for example?

 

[guineapig64]

I guess my gaming computer is more messed up than I thought. O_O

I gave Audacity a try and the audio played through it just fine. I do have another computer (it's a Dell Optiplex desktop computer, if it matters at all) that is working well with both OBS Studio and my capture card. Why I can't get it all to work on my gaming laptop is beyond me. :(

Attached is the latest log from my other computer.

~ChubbyLove64

 

[AaronD]

I guess my gaming computer is more messed up than I thought. O_O

I gave Audacity a try and the audio played through it just fine. I do have another computer (it's a Dell Optiplex desktop computer, if it matters at all) that is working well with both OBS Studio and my capture card. Why I can't get it all to work on my gaming laptop is beyond me. :(

Attached is the latest log from my other computer.

~ChubbyLove64

That's better! Yeah, the original one that you posted has some issues...

Not really sure what to tell you there. If you don't have anything on it yet that's a pain to reinstall, maybe you could dive into Windows' recovery tools and play around? If you end up with Windows wiping and reinstalling itself ('cause it can do that now, no CD required), and it all works, then maybe that's worth doing? Try to fix it with less drastic things first, of course.

Maybe you have a fancy audio driver that falls on its face? So if you disable that and use Windows native stuff instead, it works?
Likewise for the other things that don't work?

If even a wipe and reinstall doesn't work, you might try dual-booting with Linux. Go into Windows' Disk Manager, shrink a partition to make some room for it, download Ubuntu Studio 22.04 LTS (released in April 2022, supported for 3 years instead of the normal 9 months, thus "Long-Term Support") and burn it to a USB drive (scroll down to that section of the download page for how to do that), shutdown and boot from that USB drive, run the installer, and tell it to use the free space that you just created.
When that's done, you'll be able to choose which system you want each time the computer starts. Windows will be unaffected except for the loss of that drive space, and you'll have a completely different system to try that has nothing whatsoever to do with Windows.

---

Lots of these at the end of the second log, but I suspect that's because you don't have anything on the HDMI side of the capture card?:

10:59:57.959: warning: Found EOI before any SOF, ignoring
10:59:57.959: fatal: No JPEG data found in image
10:59:57.959: Error decoding video

 

[guineapig64]

That's better! Yeah, the original one that you posted has some issues...

Not really sure what to tell you there. If you don't have anything on it yet that's a pain to reinstall, maybe you could dive into Windows' recovery tools and play around? If you end up with Windows wiping and reinstalling itself ('cause it can do that now, no CD required), and it all works, then maybe that's worth doing? Try to fix it with less drastic things first, of course.

Maybe you have a fancy audio driver that falls on its face? So if you disable that and use Windows native stuff instead, it works?
Likewise for the other things that don't work?

If even a wipe and reinstall doesn't work, you might try dual-booting with Linux. Go into Windows' Disk Manager, shrink a partition to make some room for it, download Ubuntu Studio 22.04 LTS (released in April 2022, supported for 3 years instead of the normal 9 months, thus "Long-Term Support") and burn it to a USB drive (scroll down to that section of the download page for how to do that), shutdown and boot from that USB drive, run the installer, and tell it to use the free space that you just created.
When that's done, you'll be able to choose which system you want each time the computer starts. Windows will be unaffected except for the loss of that drive space, and you'll have a completely different system to try that has nothing whatsoever to do with Windows.

---

Lots of these at the end of the second log, but I suspect that's because you don't have anything on the HDMI side of the capture card?:

Ah ok. I got you now. I guess I wasn't going crazy after all lol. But I thank you for trying. This was all still very helpful. :)

I have done dual-boot with Windows and Linux before so I'm familiar on how to do that. It probably wouldn't hurt to try it out. But like you said, I'll take the smaller approaches first before I do more drastic measures. It's such a shame that my gaming laptop is having all these issues with OBS Studio. It's a great software when it works. But for now, I'll be using my other computer as a backup.

And yes, I didn't have anything turned on on my capture card when I had that log made from my other computer. All I did was open OBS Studio just to get the current log.

~ChubbyLove64

 

[guineapig64]

Update: I tried out Ubuntu Studio and ran OBS Studio before installing Ubuntu Studio and it worked perfectly with my capture card. So now I have Ubuntu Studio installed along Windows 11. Thank you so much for your help! :)

~ChubbyLove64

 

[AaronD]

If you haven't already, add the official PPA like the sticky thread says over in that forum, and then the normal update process gets you the latest release of OBS. No need to install specially.

But do that *before* you get anything built up that you can't easily rebuild, because it takes you from v27 to v29. Crossing the v27/v28 boundary goes from Qt5 to Qt6, which breaks a lot of plugins, and includes some functionality in OBS itself that used to require a plugin. But that functionality works differently, so if you had something that depended on it before, you'll want to redo that too.

The big reason that I recommend upgrading, even if v27 seems to work, is for the Advanced Scene Switcher plugin. Its capabilities have exploded recently, after the Qt break, and so you'll need the later version of OBS to run it. Automate almost anything, in response to almost anything.