VLC Video Source - viewers hear double audio echo, or I don't hear audio

[AfterglowAmpharos]

Hi! I use VLC Video Source to play music in streams. Specifically, it pulls from a playlist directory. This has worked fine for several streams but recently my viewers have complained that they can hear the music playing twice simultaneously. I tested it with recordings, and sure enough, two instances of the songs overlapped, one delayed.

See, when I play any song, this happens.

VLC Video Source is playing audio, and that audio comes through my main desktop audio, which goes to headphones or speakers. That's why you can see the top bar going green, and also why I as the streamer can hear it. But unfortunately, that also means my viewers hear both at once.

Removing Desktop Audio to Headphones isn't an option because that's the way my viewers hear games, alerts, and anything else happening on my PC.

I can remove VLC's music showing up in Desktop Audio to Headphones by switching VLC Video Source to Monitor Off, but then I as the streamer can't hear it, and that's A) not good and B) not how most streamers operate, they can usually hear the music too.

How can I get VLC Video Source to play in my headphones without it playing double for the audience? To put it another way, how can I listen in on VLC Video Source without it lighting up Desktop Audio green in the audio mixer?

I considered the clunky solution of switching VLC Video Source to Monitor Only (mute output), but that moves the music audio onto the Desktop Audio in the Audio Mixer, instead of having it in its own dedicated source. That doesn't seem ideal, so there's probably something simple I'm overlooking, since I'm probably not the first person to use this source to play music/video that I also want to hear.

Obligatory log file https://obsproject.com/logs/s1NEpV2zWzUTgYE5
And yes, I know I'm not on the newest OBS, I had to roll back to fix other issues I was having.

 

[koala]

You did analyze all this very thoroughly and correctly. In the end, you're capturing your VLC media twice: once directly via the VLC media source. And a second time by activating monitoring, so the media audio is played back on the monitoring device (set in Settings->Audio->Advanced->Monitoring device), and you set this to a device you're also recording (your desktop audio).

You need to cut one of these two paths. Either by muting the VLC media source, so it's played back via the monitoring device only, or by deactivating monitoring, so it's played back by the VLC media source directly.

If you must use monitoring and must use the VLC media source and must use desktop audio capture all your PC sounds except the monitoring audio, you can use a virtual audio device such as vb-audio. Or you can identify every distinct audio source on your PC and explicitly capture this with some OBS source and not capture desktop audio.

How to do it with the virtual audio device:
The idea is this. You tap the desktop audio before the VLC media audio is added by monitoring.
To achieve this, install the virtual audio device and set it as Windows default audio device. Configure everything to use this device instead of your headset.
Your Windows is now silent. To still hear something, open the classic Windows sound settings configuration ("More settings" at the bottom of Windows 10 Settings->Sound). Go to the recording tab, properties of the virtual audio device, "Listen" tab, activate "Listen to this device" and set your headphone to the playback device.
Now go to OBS and configure the monitoring device as your headphones, and the desktop audio device to the virtual device. This way you capture the virtual audio device (that doesn't contain the monitoring sounds) by OBS, and your headphones get everything.

The other solution is to identify every distinct audio source on your PC and explicitly capture these sources individually instead of capturing just desktop audio. For this, you can use the Application Audio Capture (Beta) source in OBS. However, it's not possible to capture the internal Windows sounds, but that's usually not an issue, because one will not want all the Windows pings and bells on a stream.

 

[AfterglowAmpharos]

This virtual audio device solution is complicated and I'm not understanding the process. I get the impression that it would make my everyday listening experiences (on days I'm not streaming) rather complicated too.

The distinct audio source solution won't work for two reasons: Application Audio Capture Beta is not in the list of sources I can add, and it would be unrealistic to add every single game app I'm ever going to play as its individual source, given how many new games I open for the first time in any given month.

I think the only solution I'm left with is the clunky one. Hopefully that won't cause any problems in the long run? What do you think?

I considered the clunky solution of switching VLC Video Source to Monitor Only (mute output), but that moves the music audio onto the Desktop Audio in the Audio Mixer, instead of having it in its own dedicated source.