Audio Garbled When Sharing Audio from Microphone/OBS/VB Audio cable

[Jared53]

I found a resolution to the issue mentioned in the subject and I wanted to share a more complete version with the community.  Here is a step-by-step on what you can try.

Issue:

Audio is garbled/suppressed when pushing it through from OBS, a Virtual Cable, or some other source to the microphone to share audio with others without sharing your screen.

Symptoms:

• Garbled Audio
• Audio fades in and out.
• Audio sounds clear until about 2 seconds later until it is suppressed

Resolution:

There are multiple solutions depending on your specific issue.  I've listed a few, and the first was the one that resolved it for me.

Do Not Test w/ a Mobile Device (iOS/Android)

I personally tried all of the solutions below just to figure out that the issue was that I was pushing the audio through a PC correctly, but I was listening from a secondary device that was iOS.  The secondary device had to be a laptop or PC.  Unfortunately, iOS after certain updates, enforced noise suppression although "noise isolation" was turned off on my phone.  So what I'm trying to say is that it was working the entire time, but seemed like it was not, since I was listening through a mobile device.

1. Do not listen using a secondary mobile device.  Test with a laptop or PC instead.
2. Enable Original Sound for Musicians (required).  Look further down on how to do this.
   • If Original Sound is showing "off" at the top, just simply click on the words one time to turn it on.

Disable Audio Enhancements (Windows 11)

1. Navigate to Control Panel > Sound
2. Find your specific device > Click on Properties
3. Navigate to the Enhancements tab
4. Check "Disable all enhancements"
5. Click "Apply"

Enable Original Sound

Enabling Original Sound for Musicians is REQUIRED to remove the suppression.  Many claim this did not work for them, but most likely they're listening from a mobile device instead of a PC.

1. From Zoom click on the up arrow next to Audio
2. Select "Audio Settings"
3. Navigate to where it says "Audio profile"
4. Tick "Original sound for musicians"
5. Additionally, tick "High-fidelity music mode" and "Stereo audio"
6. Make sure Original Sound shows "On" at the top of Zoom.  If it does not then simply click on the words one time to turn it on.

Turn off "allow applications to take control"

1. Navigate back to your sound device settings:
   1. Navigate to Control Panel > Sound
   2. Find your specific device > Click on Properties
2. Click on the "Advanced" tab
3. Untick the box under Exclusive Mode that says "Allow applications to take exclusive control of this device".
4. Click Apply
   
   (You may want to also turn off Spatial Sound while you're in this area.)

If you're still having issues, make sure no other third-party apps are taking control of the audio.  I hope this helps a little bit.  If you're still having issues, please let me know.  Maybe we can work on it together to identify the cause.

[storyhub]

As an audio and broadcast engineer I can tell you that computer audio can be very complicated. However, I run numerous meetings where I play music through OBS to the Zoom mic input and have no issues with any IOS devices listening. So I would guess that word clocking may be set wrong or the connection from OBS to Zoom is not correct. I would recommend using NDI to connect OBS to Zoom. This requires the OBS NDI plugin and using NDI webcam with the proper audio settings in OBS and NDI. Since I have locked on original sound for musicians in Zoom in the registry I never have to worry about turning it on.