Voicemeeter and Statics, Stuttering, Crackling sound & Choppy audio

The Virtual Audio Mixer discussions and support...
Vincent Burel
Site Admin
Posts: 2008
Joined: Sun Jan 17, 2010 12:01 pm

Re: Voicemeeter and Statics, Stuttering, Crackling sound

Post by Vincent Burel »

some recommendations:

As main audio device (output A1) you are expected to select yuor best audio device wit hthe best audio driver.
in yoru case, it's surely the steinberg audio board with it ASIO driver:
see this video to learn how to use an ASIO driver correctly with Voicemeeter: https://youtu.be/35N8hkOy8h4

in Discord, the Echo Cancellation process can bring problem in some case , so i don't know if it's a good idea to keep this...
for general configuration with VOIP app, i also recommedn a video tutorial: https://youtu.be/nIpt3jF0Nds

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BOLL
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Location: Sweden
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Re: Voicemeeter and Statics, Stuttering, Crackling sound

Post by BOLL »

So a few things to report here. I tried picking my Steinberg ASIO as my A1 device, and it... had some issues installing the driver, even after a reboot. VoiceMeeter could still run it, but then crashes VoiceMeeter as soon as I also try to use one of the Steinberg inputs. It did stop the crackling doing this, but might just be because the device restarted after the driver installation attempt.

A friend experimented with switching his A1 device to Realtek ASIO, this had him actually start crackling instead. Switching back to WDM did not fix it, but selecting the same VoiceMeeter devices in Discord caused the crackling to stop. The prior fix was restarting Discord itself.

Echo cancellation in Discord was turned off for both of us for this testing.
cncpowerhour
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Jul 09, 2020 4:38 am

Re: Voicemeeter and Statics, Stuttering, Crackling sound

Post by cncpowerhour »

I've been using Voicemeeter Banana and then Voicemeeter Potato for the past few years and recently I've been noticing the crackling sound show up more and more frequently on multiple virtual audio cables and output devices. It's been driving me mad that I cannot get to the bottom of this. Let me explain the setup and then I'll explain the solutions I've tried.

Using Voicemeeter Potato, I have Virtual Audio CABLE and CABLES A-D as my input devices using the WDM driver. I use these to send software audio to different devices depending on what I need. For Outputs, I have my Focusrite USB ASIO driver (for my Scarlett 18i20) as A1, WDM - Realtek HD Audio 2nd Output as A2 (for speakers), and WDM - Realtek High Definition Audio for A3. Everything has a buffer of 512 (including the ASIO device), 48k sample rate, and the Cables all have 7168 internal latency.

In the most stressful situation, I am using all of these devices to route software audio to my speakers/headphones (A2/3) and record audio in OBS by capturing the CABLE Inputs, as well as Reaper using the input channels of the ASIO device to record microphones. In the least stressful situations, I'm playing a video in my browser or listening to Spotify and only using one of the devices. Audio crackling happens in both places, whether or not the system's been running audio through that channel for hours or it just sarted. Sometimes, restarting the audio engine does not work and I have to reboot.

I have tried the uninstall/reinstall steps from the Windows 10 Update thread:
1- Remove all USB audio device + REBOOT.
2- De-install VB-CABLE one by one + REBOOT
3- De-install Voicemeeter + REBOOT
4- Check your remaining audio devices are working ok.
5- Check there is no presence of our virtual audio driver in Windows Device Manager (in both sections: multimedia controller and audio input output).
6- Re-install VB-CABLE and Voicemeeter one by one , REBOOT after each operation, check your device list in Windows Sound Dialog box.
7- When all is re-installed, re-plug your USB audio device. check again your default playback and recording device
8- Run Voicemeeter and check systray option. Audio should work again correctly.
I have tried setting the WDM buffer to as high as it can go. I've upped the ASIO buffer (it was at 128 by default, but I manually changed it to 512). I have made sure I've uninstalled and reinstalled the latest drivers for my ASIO device and the on-board audio. I've tried switching to KS for the audio devices. I've swapped between Normal and Swift mode. I've upped the WDM buffer to 2048. I've tried swapping the non-ASIO outputs and input drivers to both MME and KS.

My computer should be able to handle almost anything. When I get this audio buffer issue, my CPU resource consumption can be anywhere between 30 and 70%. Here are my specs:

Intel Core i7-7800X @ 3.5 GHz
32 GB Ram
GTX 1080 and a GTX 680
all hard drives are 256 GB SSDs

If there are any ideas on what else I can try, I would really appreciate it.
Vincent Burel
Site Admin
Posts: 2008
Joined: Sun Jan 17, 2010 12:01 pm

Re: Voicemeeter and Statics, Stuttering, Crackling sound

Post by Vincent Burel »

you my send a screenshot of your Voicemeeter and its system settings dialog box first.
cncpowerhour
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Jul 09, 2020 4:38 am

Re: Voicemeeter and Statics, Stuttering, Crackling sound

Post by cncpowerhour »

Things have been relatively stable recently, but I haven't actually changed anything. I'm about to go through a relatively stressful production day tomorrow (stressful in the sense of the strain on my computer, but the production itself will be a lot of fun) though so we'll see if it's working. Still, my settings are attached.
Attachments
Voicemeeter Window.png
Voicemeeter Window.png (183.76 KiB) Viewed 76202 times
Voicemeeter Settings.png
Voicemeeter Settings.png (97.49 KiB) Viewed 76202 times
balloonhead
Posts: 9
Joined: Thu Oct 29, 2020 7:04 am

Re: Voicemeeter and Statics, Stuttering, Crackling sound

Post by balloonhead »

Had no update of Win 10 (still on 1909) but suddenly the crackles in every virtual output no matter what latency I choosed.

My solution was
deinstall every VB-Cable one by one with reboot,
deinstall Voicemeeter reboot,
Unplug my USB-connected Audiodevice (mixtable)
Install every VB-Cable one by one with reboot
Install Voicemeeter with reboot
replug my USB-connected Audiodevice (mixtable)

Checkin all the cables, labeled them, reassigned them in Voicemeeter (optional) and voila no crackles. The old configuration remains after reinstalling all these components so no worry about that.

It really has something to do with Windows Updates or installing other similar drivers like for FaceRig that could collide with the Input/Output-Names of the virtual cables. Updates of that drivers also count and dont mess up by installing the Virtual cables twice without deinstall before.
kamikazedan
Posts: 2
Joined: Mon Aug 31, 2020 2:59 pm

Re: Voicemeeter and Statics, Stuttering, Crackling sound

Post by kamikazedan »

Hey, I found a fix for this I think.

Made a tutorial here:
https://youtu.be/71HrZfR_Fro

Let me know if helps!
kylemccarley
Posts: 5
Joined: Sun Aug 16, 2020 12:04 am

Re: Voicemeeter and Statics, Stuttering, Crackling sound

Post by kylemccarley »

I have the "robotic" issue on all three of the Virtual I/O's on Potato, but only on the ASIO drivers. It's never an issue on the WDM drivers that most applications rely on. But if I try to use the VoiceMeeter ASIO devices, they'll be clean for a while before going robotic, and restarting the engine only fixes it about 10% of the time. Generally I'll have to switch to a different I/O entirely, which obviously isn't ideal. Any thoughts? I've tried increasing the internal sample latency on them to the maximum allowed in the control panels, but it still starts causing problems after running for a couple of hours.
Vincent Burel
Site Admin
Posts: 2008
Joined: Sun Jan 17, 2010 12:01 pm

Re: Voicemeeter and Statics, Stuttering, Crackling sound

Post by Vincent Burel »

could you post a screenshot of your voicemeeter system settings dialog box.
Gobbo
Posts: 1
Joined: Tue Feb 27, 2018 2:27 am

Re: Voicemeeter and Statics, Stuttering, Crackling sound

Post by Gobbo »

kamikazedan wrote: Wed Nov 11, 2020 2:28 pm Hey, I found a fix for this I think.

Made a tutorial here:
https://youtu.be/71HrZfR_Fro

Let me know if helps!
It fixed perfectly for me.
Thanks!
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