Low-Quality Sound Suddenly

[FluffyHDD]

So I'm not sure what changed. About a year ago, the audio was completely fine and it wasn't until a few months ago did the sound quality take a nosedive. I'm channeling my soundboard through Voicemeeter, usually playing songs so Audio Quality is sort of important. At best the Audio starts off relatively fine and it sort of... drones off? Sounds like it's through a tube? At worst it's just absurdly loud for no discernible reason; all of this even though the audio I actually hear through my headphones is fine.

Best-Case Scenario of what everyone else hears
What I hear

As a mute (Which is also why I don't have a Mic hooked up) who primarily uses soundboarding to communicate and meme, this is... pretty detrimental to say the least.

Not sure if there's a difference between selecting "Listen to device" and actually directly outputting to my headphones so I just listen to Cable Input in the Sound Devices menu. Although my testing has found no difference in audio quality so eh.



I've ensured all the cables and devices are at the same settings (Stereo 24 Bit - 44100 Hz)

So things I've tried are
[*]Reinstalls. Numerous, Numerous Reinstalls.
[*]Changing the Buffer Size to every option above 512 (Helped a little but not by much)
[*]Using MME rather than WDM (Audio quality just worsened)
[*]Using different Soundboards (Problem remained)
[*]Overclocking CPU to the very max (Slightly increased Audio Quality, although not by much and extremely impractical when gaming)

So yeah I have no idea what's going on. I've been messing with the settings for the entire duration this problem has persisted and the audio you heard in the given example is the best I can get it to sound.

I'm through my wit's end on trying to solo-fix this. Help would be greatly appreciated!

[Vincent Burel]

1- this is not recommended to use VB-CABLE as main device . Output A1 is dedicated to physical devive for monotoring and to define a stable main stream: Output A1 device is crucial: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=451

2- Win10 update might change default audio format in some recording device, so you may check this for all your recording device as ti is explained in this topic: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=442

[FluffyHDD]

1- this is not recommended to use VB-CABLE as main device . Output A1 is dedicated to physical devive for monotoring and to define a stable main stream: Output A1 device is crucial: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=451

2- Win10 update might change default audio format in some recording device, so you may check this for all your recording device as ti is explained in this topic: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=442

1 - To double check, I just went ahead and did my checks again with Output A1 being my headphones and Output A2 as VB-CABLE and the audio quality that's outputted for everyone else to hear remains as heard in example of Best-Case Scenario.
2- Yes, I have ensured all of them are of the same Audio Format since that was what I thought at first- putting them all to Stereo 24 Bit - 44100 Hz.

Edit 1: Okay so I double checked and restarted my PC a few times to ensure a "blank" slate. When I put my Headphones as WDM to A1, the audio I hear is broken and stuttering. As MME, the quality is fine but it's doubled up and sounds like two speakers are desynched if you know what I mean.

Edit 2: I looked over the thread and attempted to test A1 by using the built-in recorder in Voicemeeter Banana. Doing what I did before (Listening to VB-CABLE and using VB-CABLE as A1), the audio quality is almost perfect but it sort of cuts off randomly and cuts back in for half a second at a time. Using my headphones as A1 just repeats what I hear in Edit 1.

[Vincent Burel]

or you have a windows option disturbing our management (LISTEN option or specific device assignation).

or you have an installation problem on audio device : please check it:
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=688