How to create a virtual audio device and stream audio input with it

30

12

Here's my concrete problem:

I am broadcasting a game via XFire and it uses the Windows audio device to capture any audio I receive. As I am broadcasting, other users who watch the video stream are communicating with me over Skype, and they hear themselves back within the video stream and it is entirely logical since I am broadcasting the audio I hear.

What I want to do is create another audio device within Windows and redirect (pipe) ONLY the audio input from that game and not the input reveived from Skype. I would then tell XFire to use that newly created "virtual" audio device to broadcast and therefore my partners won't hear themselves back.

Is it possible to create another audio device and redirect only wanted input streams to it?

Steven Rosato

Posted 2010-03-08T20:22:33.773

Reputation: 463

Answers

15

Give a try to Virtual Audio Cable. It creates virtual audio cards and let you route sound from outputs to inputs using virtual cables.

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It runs with Windows 7. It's not free but there is a trial version, so you can check if it can do what you need.

Snark

Posted 2010-03-08T20:22:33.773

Reputation: 30 147

That is exacly what I needed! Though I would like a similar application that is free. It always says "Trial" while waving the audio which is quite irritating. Do you know any free alternatives? – Steven Rosato – 2010-03-09T00:36:00.257

Not that I know of, sorry. – Snark – 2010-03-09T06:28:20.137

3

I think this is a free alternative: http://vb-audio.pagesperso-orange.fr/Cable/index.htm

– endolith – 2015-10-01T15:41:13.327

2Hi, I've been looking for a solution to this problem for a while too. I have tried VAC but think it only works as a 'what you hear' re-direct/loopback... Am I right in saying that VAC will not help with D3D apps which use the system's default audio device and DON'T have a setting to change which audio device to use? The problem is that if you're running the app/game in a windowed mode, you also get Windows sounds piped through the system-default audio device (which would need to be the VAC virtual device). Anyone know of something that lets you only isolate the sound from any D3D app/game? – Beeblebrox – 2014-01-02T11:37:39.760

16

Here is a good option to VAC as an audio device driver, not external software and is FREE without the lame "Trial" announcements.

https://www.vb-audio.com/Cable/index.htm

One single input/output device for free and 2 additional devices can be added with a donation.

Some Guy

Posted 2010-03-08T20:22:33.773

Reputation: 161

1

This was the solution I ended up using. It was simple to use, the donation fee for getting enough virtual devices for my needs was only 5 euro, and this youtube guide explains, quite thoroughly, how to use it with OBS in a practical manner. I'd recommend this to others who want to get something working in less than an hour.

– 2rs2ts – 2017-02-26T21:10:17.843

1Worked great for me on Windows 10. Just opened up the mixer settings to set the application I want to record to the virtual input and set Audacity to record to the virtual output. Nice since I can still listen to audio for other applications while the recording is happening. – Michael Mior – 2018-04-24T21:00:47.377

5

rogerdpack

Posted 2010-03-08T20:22:33.773

Reputation: 1 181

1The first link leads to what I think is the most slapstick / disorganized project I've ever seen on GitHub, which is not even open-source or has any obvious way to build it. The other link is dead, and the ffsplit homepage is dead. – Vladimir Panteleev – 2016-04-03T16:01:33.090

1@VladimirPanteleev thanks for the feedback, it is indeed open source, and I have added a section on how to build it. Seems stackexchange people have found it necessary to delete nicely helpful posts <sigh>, updated the link, also mentioned ffsplit is dead now, though they were alive a few months ago, thanks for the feedback. – rogerdpack – 2016-04-04T16:27:58.723

Based on https://github.com/rdp/virtual-audio-capture-grabber-device/blob/master/LICENSE it's not actually open-source at the moment (making the source code available is not enough). Since no license is specified, copyright laws apply by default, which means that no one can actually copy (distribute) your code.

– Vladimir Panteleev – 2016-04-04T18:03:06.297

The buildling [sic] "instructions" are still far from complete. "open the visual studio files in /source_code/acam" are not building instructions. It doesn't list the build dependencies, or what to do with the built DLL (I assume this builds a DLL?) so that the "Usage" section from README.TXT applies. "if you want to hack on the code" is also not the reason why I wanted to build from source - the alternative being a software package containing a Frankenstein-like monstrosity of Java, Ruby, C++ and I-don't-want-to-know-what-else... – Vladimir Panteleev – 2016-04-04T18:16:27.633

1@VladimirPanteleev OK updated the license a bit. And added some more building instructions. Feel free to file issues if you can't get it to build or what not. The jruby code is for a "GUI wrapper" around FFmpeg to get it to work, and are not necessary for hacking on the directshow devices themselves. Cheers! – rogerdpack – 2016-04-04T19:53:49.283

3Thank you. I really have no right to complain and it's nice that you've done this, sorry if I was overly grumpy. – Vladimir Panteleev – 2016-04-06T02:48:08.627

I don't see how this software is supposed to solve the described problem, as it doesn't seem to provide functionality to create a virtual audio device and pipe between it. – Vektorweg – 2019-01-21T06:08:26.037

You can receive from it as a dshow device and save or redirect (I use ffmpeg for instance). Good luck! :) – rogerdpack – 2019-01-21T21:19:25.663

Asked: 2010-03-08T20:22:33.773

Viewed: 215 381 times

Active: 2018-04-07T13:41:37.100