VB-Audio's Forums

When a VAIO input is set as the default system output, individual applications are shown above the fader. However, when these applications are no longer running, or after a change from one VAIO input to another, a phantom entry still exists which survives a Voicemeeter restart and even PC reboot.
In the above image, originally VAIO3 was the default. As this was changed to Aux and then 1, The relevant active Spotify entry was created but the old ones were not deleted. The multiple Zoom entries are from previous instances of Zoom on previous boots so have survived a PC reboot. How can these be removed? I have tried "Reset settings (ReInitialisation)" to no avail. Quitting Spotify removes all 3 entries but not the widget entry.

no, there is no phantom source, there is some application opening all audio devices (Discord does the same for example).

What you see here (list of audio application connected) is given by windows volume mixer.
you can even check by yourself their presence in each Windows Volume mixer.

the only thing you can do is to restart audio engine (in Voicemeeter menu) to refresh this listing. But if it appears again, it means it is connected to Windows Volume Mixer anyway.

Ah, checking again I see that Zoom starts 3 instances of an audio connection, but when you switch the output only one appears on the new source. The 3 originally made me think that each one was from a previous start-up.

Diving deeper and it seems that certain (badly behaved) apps open a separate audio connection for each open window of the app and even the taskbar instance even though they may never be used, and then don't clean up properly when quit. (Zoom has 2 windows plus the taskbar)

It can be a real pain, but clearly outwith the control of Vociemeeter.