VB-Audio's Forums

I haven't found any other reports of this issue so thought I would ask here for advice or if anyone has seen this before.

I started having some issues about a month ago with Voicemeter potato (activated) and a virtual cable channel, up until then all was good (with the occasional restart of the audio engine). I have had about 5 crashes in the last month so it isn't a regular thing, the problem is the only fix is to reboot the machine. As I use this for streaming this isn't really an option.

I now have an issue where I get a loss of sound from one of the channels (normally the one I have a virtual cable running through), if I restart the VM engine all sound stops and VM crashes. I can't kill voicemeeter8.exe in the task manager either (a message like it is in use or I don't have permissions, I will note the message next time this happens). The only way to get it working again is a PC reboot (not really possible when streaming as it stops the stream)

I have updated windows, audio drivers, reinstalled VM and virtual cable but still no luck.

This only seems to happen a few hours into streaming so far and isn't repeatable from what I currently know. It doesn't always happen so it is kind of hard to reproduce.

I have now removed the virtual cable drivers to try and see if that is causing the issue but if not I might have to uninstall VM completely, which I don't want to do as it is a fantastic program.

I wondered if there are any debugging/logging version that might be available to try and help track down the issue. I think it is most likely a driver crash (probably not a VM issue itself) but without being able to get more information the only option is to stop using it and see if the problem goes away.

I'd not be that bothered if I could restart it without having to reboot the PC as a minor interruption is something I can live with for the benefits of using the program.

you may post a screenshot of voicemeeter and it's system settings dialog box to let me see your configuration first...
and precise what do you mean by "crash" :

We called a "crash" when Windows is displaying the message "application is not responding" or if the application is frozen and you can click on nothing.

Apologies for the late reply, I watched the thread for a while and then thought it wasn't going to be responded to and when the email came for the response it was in my spam folder, sorry.

After a few days I uninstalled the Virtual Cable and this seems to have fixed the issue (no crashes since).

The crash started with a part failure (it didn't take down VM) and generally was something stopping working (now I believe it was always the the virtual cable). So suddenly one input channel would stop working, The first time I thought this was my mic on a normal channel but I may have been mistaken, after the first time it happened it was always on the Virtual cable. I didn't really take much notice the first time it happened I just restarted the engine and then it crashed (device hung and killed by windows leaving the exe behind)

The device (in this case a web browser output for my Text To Speech read back of twitch chat, so a chrome webpage that played out the audio) would suddenly stop producing sound. Everything else seemed to still be working ok until I restarted the audio engine.

If I did a restart audio engine then VM window would hang for a while and eventually windows would kill it, but not the voicemeeter8.exe in task manager.

Once I did manage to restart voicemeeter but I then had 2 voicemeeter8.exe in the task manager, normally though I could only start VM when this task had gone which meant a restart of the PC (not a good option in the middle of a stream as a lot of time it pauses the users stream but doesn't un-pause it when back meaning I lost viewers as they though I wasn't coming back)

If I tried to kill the voicemeeter8.exe task I was met with an error something along the lines as it was locked (as if a driver had crashed and not released it), I tried various methods to kill it but none worked (programs, command line but none could get rid of it).

Now it seems to be stable again after removing the Virtual cable, although I've lost the functionality of the extra input so now I have to juggle discord and Text To Speach when both are active;

I can still send the screenshot if you like but now I don't have the issues I doubt it would be of any use.

ok, which Virtual Cable are you talking about ?

It was the Virtual cable from https://www.vb-audio.com/Cable/index.htm.

I uninstalled the virtual cables just after my last post and haven't had a single crash up until I tried them again with the virtual cables. Annoyingly I had forgotten about this issue and when I needed a couple of extra channels I brought the A and B virtual cables to find I'm crashing again.
Suddenly the issue is back again, so it looks like it is somehow linked to the virtual audio cables.

Same as before, the audio stops on the cable. I perform an audio reset in VM and then VM crashes. Doesn't happen all the time. After that I have the voicemeeter8.exe in the task manager and I can't kill it with no app on screen. The only way to get it working again is a reboot (not great if I'm in the middle of a stream as I lose viewer count)

Some extra debugging info (may or may not be applicable). Anything else I can try please let me know.
1) The Vitrual cable that crashed is the one that comes free (not one of the paid ones "VB-Audio Virtual Cable"), not sure if there are any differences in this.
2) If i restart VM potato nothing happens (I guess it already sees it running)
3) If i restart VM potato as administrator it starts up, cable is there but nothing coming out of it (presumable it has crashed at the driver level)
4) The cable is used to route chrome through to VM using the windows per-app audio settings to push chrome into the cable.
5) Checking in process explorer it seems the only thing left running is audiokse.dll!DllUnregisterSErvier+0x12c0
6) Running VM again as administrator gets a second version running (running normally does nothing, presumably as it still has that task running under the normal user). Once running it is fine except the crashed Cable connection doesn't work, I can remap chrome to the other connections though and it works ok.
4) My headset is connected to a mixer plugged in via USB. "Speakers(2-USB Audio CODEC)"

VM setup

Audio setup

What appears to be keep the task from being killed off. Is there any way of tracing what is keeping this from closing or a way I can kill it without rebooting the PC.