Voicemeeter does not work well with Realtek card/drivers causing system audio feedback as mic input

[xcasxcursex]

Realtek ASIO

Where'd you get a realtek driver with ASIO support? I've heard of it but never seen it. Official drivers don't have it....

[smallfreak]

Where'd you get a realtek driver with ASIO support? I've heard of it but never seen it. Official drivers don't have it....

It probably depends on what product you use that has a realtek chip on board. In the Video of the TS (the very first link in the very first post) you can see a "Realtek ASIO" among the other options.

If you don't have it with your official driver pack, you may want to try an inofficial one

I picked mine here.

Tthere might be others but the ASIO in this (huge 300MB) pack does work pretty well. This pack is a big software bundle including Dolby Atmos, Headphone optimizer, Surround whatever ... that I do not need and you certainly can opt out of all these additional programs.

[xcasxcursex]

Thanks for that. Sadly I won't be able to use it since it's a modded driver. It's so stupid that we get gimped drivers just because of licensing Anyway, I've seen people talk about it but never seen a link to it, so it's nice to see.

[smallfreak]

Thanks for that. Sadly I won't be able to use it since it's a modded driver

So what are you complaining about then? Go talk to your soundcard vendor to get you a suitable "official" driver. It's not that this piece of software is "strictly confidential". This IS an official driver. It's just your vendor that is to lazy to either include or adapt the (fully working) generic driver to your bought hardware - or just didn't care.

The "RTHDASIO64.dll" is signed from Realtek with a valid certificate and so is the control panel "RTASIOCP64.dll". So it's not "modded" in any way. This is what Realtek made to work with their own hardware. Obviously Realtek signed the "Steinberg ASIO Licensing Agreement" about using their ASIO patent for Realtek chips. Otherwise this driver would not exist at all.

If you are concerned that a "modded driver installation package" might offer you additional goodies that you did not license with your hardware/software purchase, you may just don't install/use them and keep your peace of mind. If you include the ASIO driver itself in the list of those goodies you don't feel worthy to own, then there is no point about asking how to get it. Or is it?


Btw, I just browsed through the "Steinberg ASIO Licensing Agreement" (included in the ASIO SDK) and found no part that asks or even forces the driver developer to put any restriction on the distribution or use of the "driver or software implementing ASIO technology". In addition it contains:

§ 4
FEES AND ROYALTIES
This license is non-royalty bearing and the Licensee shall not be obligated to pay
to Steinberg any fees or royalties with respect to the ASIO Interface Technology.

so is no loss in profit to any party when using it "inofficially".

That really don't make me sleep bad.

[xcasxcursex]

You need to calm down. I was just curious about where the driver came from, that's all.

The 'licensing' I referred to was just all the fancy EQ's and surround stuff, which costs the vendor more to get from realtek, because realtek have to pay dolby etc.

Perhaps English is not your first language and you have misunderstood what's going on here. But being so defensive and argumentative with a person who has only ever kindly asked you for something and thanked you for sharing it, is a bit strange. Relax man. Let's get back on topic.

[newbieTrying34]

I've seen in your introduction video your driver selector lists the Realtek ASIO driver. It is a thorough recommendation to use an ASIO device for your A1 setting.

It seemed to have been a bug with well I really don't know what exactly. Picking ASIO never gave any output to my speakers/headsets and after reinstalling audio drivers the option is now gone.

So, one thing I noticed is that in windows settings, you have the realtek set to work at 192kHz, but in VM it's opening at 44k1. What happens if you try windows at 44k1, or voicemeeter at 192k?

Okay when I posted that video and screenshots my sampling rates were all over the place, now all of them are set to 24-bit, 48k everywhere - speakers, mic, all the input output VAIOs and the Voicemeeter settings sampling rate as well as my OBS audio quality for recordings. I read somewhere that having a single sample rate quality was better as it removed unnecessary resampling CPU load.

Of course trying different sampling rates for my speakers, mic, VAIOs and Voicemeeter does not help in anyway.

On a unrelated note, setting only my speakers (rest can be anything) to 24-bit, 192k sample rate skyrockets Voicemeeter CPU usage to 5-6% vs 0-1% on all other sample rates and I get consistent crackling in all audio which is weird but whatever, not using 192k, not needed anyway.

What happens if you disable exclusive access to the realtek device (forcing it to be opened as a shared device by VM, as other apps would, rather than exclusive, as VM normally does)?

I tried this today, enabled exclusive mode on everything, issue persisted. Restarted PC for good measure, still issue persisted.

Before moving onto your tape test here is a new recording I made with the issue. Contrary to my prior statement that it is impossible to record audio while using VAIOs as throughput (I likely had wrong settings first time I tried it), it is possible to record this throughput state:

PLEASE LOWER YOUR VOLUME BEFORE PLAYING EACH VIDEO, THEY ARE QUIET LOUD!
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bTztM1 ... sp=sharing

In above video switch to audio track 2 and you can see the throughput audio in the VAIO input and output, you'll notice audio is muffled, starting Voicemeeter causes the issue (VAIO as output, start audio engine) but the audio feedback volume is significantly lowered, fixing the feedback issue (speakers output, restarting audio engine) removes all feedback.

Now for the mute testing -
MicMute 01 - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BfLpin ... sp=sharing
I switched output recording to Speakers since Voicemeeter outputs would be muted. Muting all VAIOs and mic in Voicemeeter and playing my recorded tape (in my beautiful voice lmao) and outputting directly to speakers does produce movement in the mic.

MicMute 02 - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1drprYq ... sp=sharing
Output recording is back to VAIO Input. Muting mic keeps feedback. On VAIO Input strip, disabling A1 output to speakers removes feedback. Muting the strip removes feedback.

Don't know what these mean exactly at this point or if this is helpful.

How? This is not normal behaviour and there's practically no chance this driver does this or it'd be all over the internet with everyone with a realtek card talking about how it doesn't work.

Well pretty much every mobo these days has a Realtek sound card and cause of this issue I dug around and found that not only do they have a million varients of their sound cards but they also create drivers and then mobo manufacturers add feature onto those drivers. So different Realtek cards in same mobo might behave differently as will same Realtek cards in different mobos. I can't find an exact list since their website hasn't been updated since 2017 but there are a lot of variants for their cards:
https://realtek-download.com/realtek-hd ... ec-driver/ (not official, just a driver site)

Also most people will run with whatever audio drivers their mobo/sound card supports so hardly anyone uses Windows HD audio drivers hence you'll be hard pressed to find people running sound cards + windows audio drivers and having issues since the first solution would be to download the sound card drivers anyway (hope am making sense).

So if you want audio drivers for your mobo sound card you need to check the mobo manufacturer's website (ASUS, MSI, GIGABYTE etc)

You mentioned some "audio shielding" what do you mean by that? I'm starting to wonder if there's another factor involved here which has not been considered yet.

Mobo sound cards have inherent issues of electrical hum, feedback, grounding related issues etc. Without proper audio drivers some tend to get really bad, others don't, depends on a lot of stuff like quality, placement on mobo. Hence you need audio shielding. Looking through google doesn't really yield any results but I did find some posts across reddit while searching for a solution to my current problem. Audio shielding can be physical, software or both. In my case it seems to be mostly software.

[smallfreak]

Perhaps English is not your first language and you have misunderstood what's going on here

You might be right on this. I read

Where'd you get a realtek driver with ASIO support?

which is a question for a location to get one. At least in my language. It is NOT a question about

What product utilizing an Realtek Audio chip is shipped with a suitable ASIO driver and where can I get one of these?

And you extrapolated some idea like

Official drivers don't have it.

where I want to disagree. There ARE official drivers. But, surprise, just not for your very product.

• It was my fault to assume YOU have not gotten one with YOUR product and you have tried to contact your vendor to supply one, since you find it missing and it does not get shiped with an official update or so.
• It was further my fault to imply that you are willing to refit this missing piece of software from a package that was not originally meant to be used with your product.

But I see you are concerned about eventually getting more than asked for or you maybe generally lament about the culture to make things work in a way that was not meant by the seller and that it is a pitty that it seem to be necessary to jump that track to get a feature supported that you believe you rightfully deserve. I confess, I'm not certain about that interpretation. It still sounds like

I want to do something inofficial but not THAT inofficial!

Maybe there is another chance to get us out of this dilemma. Please have a look on THIS SITE. This still is not the realtek homepage (that is notoriously bad) and the link gets you to a "backup download site".

But you get a ZIP file and you can safely extract the contents and inspect it. There is no trick, no mod, no trap. The setup.exe is signed by Realtek and there even is a sub folder called "ASIO" with its own tiny setup that ONLY installs the ASIO driver and control pannel. So you don't risk installing something inappropriate. Certainly all signed by Realtek as otherwise the driver would get rejected by Windows anyway. I would consider this as "official enough" and it seems to have passed Microsoft WHQL requirements too.

It is an older version of the exact same driver as before but it may be less "modded" for your need. There might be newer packages outside, but with the right kewords you are certainly equipped to do a more thorrough research on your own.

The linked driver package was certainly not intended for your specific product - as otherwise you already would have one, so it is still some kind of "inofficial".

No warranty that it would work with your hardware, but who knows?

[newbieTrying34]

I've seen in your introduction video your driver selector lists the Realtek ASIO driver. It is a thorough recommendation to use an ASIO device for your A1 setting.

It seemed to have been a bug with well I really don't know what exactly. Picking ASIO never gave any output to my speakers/headsets and after reinstalling audio drivers the option is now gone.

So, one thing I noticed is that in windows settings, you have the realtek set to work at 192kHz, but in VM it's opening at 44k1. What happens if you try windows at 44k1, or voicemeeter at 192k?

Okay when I posted that video and screenshots my sampling rates were all over the place, now all of them are set to 24-bit, 48k everywhere - speakers, mic, all the input output VAIOs and the Voicemeeter settings sampling rate as well as my OBS audio quality for recordings. I read somewhere that having a single sample rate quality was better as it removed unnecessary resampling CPU load.

Of course trying different sampling rates for my speakers, mic, VAIOs and Voicemeeter does not help in anyway.

On a unrelated note, setting only my speakers (rest can be anything) to 24-bit, 192k sample rate skyrockets Voicemeeter CPU usage to 5-6% vs 0-1% on all other sample rates and I get consistent crackling in all audio which is weird but whatever, not using 192k, not needed anyway.

What happens if you disable exclusive access to the realtek device (forcing it to be opened as a shared device by VM, as other apps would, rather than exclusive, as VM normally does)?

I tried this today, enabled exclusive mode on everything, issue persisted. Restarted PC for good measure, still issue persisted.

Before moving onto your tape test here is a new recording I made with the issue. Contrary to my prior statement that it is impossible to record audio while using VAIOs as throughput (I likely had wrong settings first time I tried it), it is possible to record this throughput state:

PLEASE LOWER YOUR VOLUME BEFORE PLAYING EACH VIDEO, THEY ARE QUIET LOUD!
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bTztM1 ... sp=sharing

In above video switch to audio track 2 and you can see the throughput audio in the VAIO input and output, you'll notice audio is muffled, starting Voicemeeter causes the issue (VAIO as output, start audio engine) but the audio feedback volume is significantly lowered, fixing the feedback issue (speakers output, restarting audio engine) removes all feedback.

Now for the mute testing -
MicMute 01 - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BfLpin ... sp=sharing
I switched output recording to Speakers since Voicemeeter outputs would be muted. Muting all VAIOs and mic in Voicemeeter and playing my recorded tape (in my beautiful voice lmao) and outputting directly to speakers does produce movement in the mic.

MicMute 02 - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1drprYq ... sp=sharing
Output recording is back to VAIO Input. Muting mic keeps feedback. On VAIO Input strip, disabling A1 output to speakers removes feedback. Muting the strip removes feedback.

Don't know what these mean exactly at this point or if this is helpful.

How? This is not normal behaviour and there's practically no chance this driver does this or it'd be all over the internet with everyone with a realtek card talking about how it doesn't work.

Well pretty much every mobo these days has a Realtek sound card and cause of this issue I dug around and found that not only do they have a million varients of their sound cards but they also create drivers and then mobo manufacturers add feature onto those drivers. So different Realtek cards in same mobo might behave differently as will same Realtek cards in different mobos. I can't find an exact list since their website hasn't been updated since 2017 but there are a lot of variants for their cards:
https://realtek-download.com/realtek-hd ... ec-driver/ (not official, just a driver site)

Also most people will run with whatever audio drivers their mobo/sound card supports so hardly anyone uses Windows HD audio drivers hence you'll be hard pressed to find people running sound cards + windows audio drivers and having issues since the first solution would be to download the sound card drivers anyway (hope am making sense).

So if you want audio drivers for your mobo sound card you need to check the mobo manufacturer's website (ASUS, MSI, GIGABYTE etc)

You mentioned some "audio shielding" what do you mean by that? I'm starting to wonder if there's another factor involved here which has not been considered yet.

Mobo sound cards have inherent issues of electrical hum, feedback, grounding related issues etc. Without proper audio drivers some tend to get really bad, others don't, depends on a lot of stuff like quality, placement on mobo. Hence you need audio shielding. Looking through google doesn't really yield any results but I did find some posts across reddit while searching for a solution to my current problem. Audio shielding can be physical, software or both. In my case it seems to be mostly software.

[smallfreak]

In above video switch to audio track 2 and you can see the throughput audio in the VAIO input and output, you'll notice audio is muffled, starting Voicemeeter causes the issue (VAIO as output, start audio engine) but the audio feedback volume is significantly lowered, fixing the feedback issue (speakers output, restarting audio engine) removes all feedback.

OK. This kind of sound sorce is special as ist is most likely 7.1 Surround. If you directly output to the Realtek driver, you get all channels there and whatever "sound processing / headphone simulation /3D Sound / Dolby" is configured to enhance it.

If you feed it into VoiceMeeter, the default configuration is "normal mode" for each channel (the light blue text with the two rows of dots below on top of the master output channels). This picks just the left and right channel for processing and only feeds this two into the headphone. You either want to select one of the "Mix down" settings to get 8 channels into two earbuds or you configure it as "multi channel" to feed all channels through to the sound chip. Just click several times on the button to change modes.

However, VoiceMeeter output "to Realtek" means direct output to the sound chip without any further processing. Especially when using ASIO. This essentially cuts you from all sound enhancement gadgets you might have installed. This is due to the idea of ultra low latency. ASIO was primary created for music production and processing. Any audio processing would have to be done the DAW/Audio Mixing way by utilizing "effect inserts" with DAW compatible Plugins (VST plugins) WITHIN the DAW. Lacking a DAW, VoiceMeeter offers you such a "insert" channel for each input.

The "muffling" you notice might just be turning off all sound enhancements by the driver you are used to.

MicMute 01

This is to expected, as the default configuration of the VoiceMeeter integrated recorder is "Pre-Fader, Physical Inputs". Mind the red "Input" sign on the cassette. "pre-fader" is to be considered verbally. it records the signal that the device is generating BEFORE it enters the VoiceMeeter processing. Thus muting has no effect on the Mic Strip, nor is the fader of any use her. Hence "pre-fader".

This is the optimal setting for multi channel music production as you can save the raw signal from each channel before it gets garbled by any further processing step. You always can change your mind and mix them differently later on in the DAW if you keep them clean and separate.

If you want to save the final mix, go to "post-fader" or use a different software to capture the audio mix on B2 maybe.

You might want to change this behaviour to "BUS, post-fader". This way you can select whatever your mix does deliver in one of the physical or virtual busses "A1 - B3".

Right click on the cassette to get to the configuration. Check the documentation about the multiple optiuons here.

MicMute 02

I see you are feeding the true signal from the Mic (most left channel) only to Bus B1 virtual output. This is the one you configured in the other software as "Voicemeeter Vaio" (Voicemeeter Output). This way I would assume it gets fed through to the partner but not into your headphones. You do NOT hear yourself speeking in the headset. If you want to hear yourself, you would have to select output A1 (the Realtek chip) to listen on the Mic strip too. But usually this is distracting as there is some small lag involved.

If you STILL can hear yourself speaking, then the App echoes the (virtual) Mic back to the (virtual) output where it gets fed into VoiceMeeter again, together with the background sound on channel on the strip you named "System". It then is further processed as if generated by the software.

Muting the Mic does work as you can see virtual B1 drops to zero when doing so. No more Mic in the App.

You are showing the Hardware Out A1 that mutes when you mute The virtual Input channel "System". This is to expected, since this one is the only one that connects to A1 (which is mapped to the Realtek and thus headphones). And since it is mapped to B2 too, this meeter follows the same.

I assume you have some recording or other secondary signal processing on B2 and thus the software set to listen to "Voicemeeter AUX". This way you just get the sound from "System" and never the Sound of "Mic" as nothing but the system is configured to send audio to B2.

If I have to guess, you have the in-game voice configured for output "Voicemeeter In AUX" which is the middle of the virtual input strips. This one is routed to A1 so you should hear it. It does not get to B2 so you will not get this recorded. If you just use the internal recorder, it is not recorded either, as I can see there is only the first dot active in the red "input" sign of the cassette. If you want to record any of the virtual inputs too, activate the B1,B2 in the recorder dialog (right click). The signal gets down mixed to Stereo for recording, so be warned. Since these are pre-fader to, the mix balance has to be made elsewhere before the signal enters VoiceMeeter. Or switch to "post-fader".

So it now depends. If your Game has an option to echo the mic to the headphones - turn it OFF. Instead activate A1 on the Mic strip in VoiceMeeter. This greatly reduces the lag you may experience hearing yourself. If you don't want to hear you talking IN the headphones, sitll turn the Mic echo OFF in the game. You must make sure the receiving software does not loop your Mic signal back to the "speaker" as THIS is the feedback you are looking for.

If you can't you instead have to make sure the Mic Strip is never connected to A1 to avoid echo

If you get Mic signal into the headphones there is always a chance the sensible mic can pick up spilled signal from the headphones causing an acustical loopback.

To tell it easy:

• configure everything you want in the recording (externally) to output to "B2"
• to use the internal recorder either choose any of the "pre-fader inputs" (default) or use one of the output strips as recording source = "post fader".
• configure everything that yau want to hear in the headphone to go to "A1"
• Configure everything you want to send over to the Game to go to "B1"
• you MAY configure external audio sources to either of the three "virtual Input" channels if you want to mix them separetely or just all together into one if they should be treated the same anyway. Your choice.

[newbieTrying34]

In above video switch to audio track 2 and you can see the throughput audio in the VAIO input and output, you'll notice audio is muffled, starting Voicemeeter causes the issue (VAIO as output, start audio engine) but the audio feedback volume is significantly lowered, fixing the feedback issue (speakers output, restarting audio engine) removes all feedback.

OK. This kind of sound sorce is special as ist is most likely 7.1 Surround. If you directly output to the Realtek driver, you get all channels there and whatever "sound processing / headphone simulation /3D Sound / Dolby" is configured to enhance it.

If you feed it into VoiceMeeter, the default configuration is "normal mode" for each channel (the light blue text with the two rows of dots below on top of the master output channels). This picks just the left and right channel for processing and only feeds this two into the headphone. You either want to select one of the "Mix down" settings to get 8 channels into two earbuds or you configure it as "multi channel" to feed all channels through to the sound chip. Just click several times on the button to change modes.

However, VoiceMeeter output "to Realtek" means direct output to the sound chip without any further processing. Especially when using ASIO. This essentially cuts you from all sound enhancement gadgets you might have installed. This is due to the idea of ultra low latency. ASIO was primary created for music production and processing. Any audio processing would have to be done the DAW/Audio Mixing way by utilizing "effect inserts" with DAW compatible Plugins (VST plugins) WITHIN the DAW. Lacking a DAW, VoiceMeeter offers you such a "insert" channel for each input.

The "muffling" you notice might just be turning off all sound enhancements by the driver you are used to.

MicMute 01

This is to expected, as the default configuration of the VoiceMeeter integrated recorder is "Pre-Fader, Physical Inputs". Mind the red "Input" sign on the cassette. "pre-fader" is to be considered verbally. it records the signal that the device is generating BEFORE it enters the VoiceMeeter processing. Thus muting has no effect on the Mic Strip, nor is the fader of any use her. Hence "pre-fader".

This is the optimal setting for multi channel music production as you can save the raw signal from each channel before it gets garbled by any further processing step. You always can change your mind and mix them differently later on in the DAW if you keep them clean and separate.

If you want to save the final mix, go to "post-fader" or use a different software to capture the audio mix on B2 maybe.

You might want to change this behaviour to "BUS, post-fader". This way you can select whatever your mix does deliver in one of the physical or virtual busses "A1 - B3".

Right click on the cassette to get to the configuration. Check the documentation about the multiple optiuons here.

MicMute 02

I see you are feeding the true signal from the Mic (most left channel) only to Bus B1 virtual output. This is the one you configured in the other software as "Voicemeeter Vaio" (Voicemeeter Output). This way I would assume it gets fed through to the partner but not into your headphones. You do NOT hear yourself speeking in the headset. If you want to hear yourself, you would have to select output A1 (the Realtek chip) to listen on the Mic strip too. But usually this is distracting as there is some small lag involved.

If you STILL can hear yourself speaking, then the App echoes the (virtual) Mic back to the (virtual) output where it gets fed into VoiceMeeter again, together with the background sound on channel on the strip you named "System". It then is further processed as if generated by the software.

Muting the Mic does work as you can see virtual B1 drops to zero when doing so. No more Mic in the App.

You are showing the Hardware Out A1 that mutes when you mute The virtual Input channel "System". This is to expected, since this one is the only one that connects to A1 (which is mapped to the Realtek and thus headphones). And since it is mapped to B2 too, this meeter follows the same.

I assume you have some recording or other secondary signal processing on B2 and thus the software set to listen to "Voicemeeter AUX". This way you just get the sound from "System" and never the Sound of "Mic" as nothing but the system is configured to send audio to B2.

If I have to guess, you have the in-game voice configured for output "Voicemeeter In AUX" which is the middle of the virtual input strips. This one is routed to A1 so you should hear it. It does not get to B2 so you will not get this recorded. If you just use the internal recorder, it is not recorded either, as I can see there is only the first dot active in the red "input" sign of the cassette. If you want to record any of the virtual inputs too, activate the B1,B2 in the recorder dialog (right click). The signal gets down mixed to Stereo for recording, so be warned. Since these are pre-fader to, the mix balance has to be made elsewhere before the signal enters VoiceMeeter. Or switch to "post-fader".

So it now depends. If your Game has an option to echo the mic to the headphones - turn it OFF. Instead activate A1 on the Mic strip in VoiceMeeter. This greatly reduces the lag you may experience hearing yourself. If you don't want to hear you talking IN the headphones, sitll turn the Mic echo OFF in the game. You must make sure the receiving software does not loop your Mic signal back to the "speaker" as THIS is the feedback you are looking for.

If you can't you instead have to make sure the Mic Strip is never connected to A1 to avoid echo

If you get Mic signal into the headphones there is always a chance the sensible mic can pick up spilled signal from the headphones causing an acustical loopback.

To tell it easy:

• configure everything you want in the recording (externally) to output to "B2"
• to use the internal recorder either choose any of the "pre-fader inputs" (default) or use one of the output strips as recording source = "post fader".
• configure everything that yau want to hear in the headphone to go to "A1"
• Configure everything you want to send over to the Game to go to "B1"
• you MAY configure external audio sources to either of the three "virtual Input" channels if you want to mix them separetely or just all together into one if they should be treated the same anyway. Your choice.

Thank you for the detailed post and explaining Voicemeeter but... I did not need this at all. Clearly you did not bother to actually read my original question nor did you download and watch the videos I provided.

My problem is not mic input being echoed, my problem is that ALL SYSTEM OUTPUT (not just games) IS BEING FED AS MIC INPUT. The videos clearly show this. Basically in your terms, B2 is being sent to Mic input, and as mic input it is being recorded on the audio track for the mic (or B1). As in everything that B2 produced you can hear as mic input despite never turning on the mic/physically disconnecting it from PC. And this audio is muffled. The one that goes from B2 > mic > B1. My voice on the track is fine but I can hear ALL output from B2 as well muffled and thus making the recording useless. And not just recording, since all system audio is being fed to mic as input, it goes through the mic output to any friends I play with as well. Yes they can hear everything happening on my system.