Auto-Mute not working with VoiceMeeter

[Admiral Hipper]

Hi, so far Wallpaper Engine works great! Just needed to state that real quick! Awesome software.
But what is bugging me now, is that the auto mute function only works if audio is playing on the same audio device as Wallpaper Engine. I have my audio devices routed through VoiceMeeter Potato. So everything is on its own channel with their respective devices and drivers. Now the problem is that Wallpaper Engine does not auto mute anymore because there is no other sound on its own accessed device. Could there be an option to let Wallpaper Engine listen to all/specific audio output devices? Like in the form of the Program rules.

Thanks very much.

[Biohazard]

Thanks! Wallpaper Engine doesn't really know which device is used, it just uses a Windows feature to check the "audio level" of each process, this is allegedly the same that Microsoft uses for the green bars in the old volume mixer in Windows (if you know what I mean?). This is device independent.

If everything is being routed through VoiceMeeter Potato, did you perhaps exclude it from Wallpaper Engine's audio detection in the application rules? I assume that at least some process in Windows must still show those green bars go up, otherwise nothing would really be playing audio.

[Admiral Hipper]

Thanks for your response!
I know what you mean yea. But no green bars in the volume mixer in Windows 10 :) It's not excluded as well ^^
It's strange because auto mute works as long as I assign Wallpaper Engine manually on the audio device that plays my music. It only mutes then though when music is playing. Not when anything else plays on a different device.

[Biohazard]

Originally posted by Admiral Hipper:

But no green bars in the volume mixer

That's actually surprising, but that means we just have to way to detect per-process audio, there is only this one API to do it.

If it's using its own drivers they would have to implement better/more complete support for the APIs - unless they intentionally don't support certain APIs to reduce latency or something.

Originally posted by Admiral Hipper:

It's strange because auto mute works as long as I assign Wallpaper Engine manually on the audio device that plays my music. It only mutes then though when music is playing. Not when anything else plays on a different device.

I can only assume that the device dependency is actually created by VoiceMeeter. Like I mentioned, the API that Wallpaper Engine is using has no device specific functions at all, it is completely generic. Maybe they implemented it per device so that's why it's behaving that way.

[Admiral Hipper]

Ok I just saw now, that you can actually change the device you are viewing in the volume mixer. So there are green bars on the devices that play audio.
Difficult to explain I know. Just found out you are german as well though :P

[Biohazard]

Originally posted by Admiral Hipper:

Ok I just saw now, that you can actually change the device you are viewing in the volume mixer. So there are green bars on the devices that play audio.
Difficult to explain I know. Just found out you are german as well though :P

Then that means it must at least be available somehow but I would have to select the devices or iterate over them, since that's also necessary in the volume mixer.

I will keep it in mind but it doesn't look like it's an easy thing to solve and I may even have to get VoiceMeeter specifically for this since it's not a typical situation. Although maybe not since you can assign programs to devices in Windows 10 too, perhaps that's already enough.

[Admiral Hipper]

Ok yea seems like there is no real 'easy fix' I think as well. The only thing I could think of right now is to route everything in VoiceMeeter to one single Device what would then defeat the purpose of having VoiceMeeter anyway. That could be an option for people with fewer audio devices, but with how many I have I come to the limits of VoiceMeeter itself where I dont have a spare bus to route to.
I don't know anything about programming but I think the best option would be to have audio rules like the program rules window, where you then can specify 'Mute when Audio Device is playing sound'. But like I said that's probably too much effort for a small 'nice-to-have feature'.

[Bluu]

Apologies for necroing this now ancient thread, but that would be a great feature to add. As of now, muting only happens when the default output device chosen in Windows settings has audio playing through it. For anyone that routes specific programs through different channels in VM, i.e. Google Chrome to VAIO3, you won't get muting when Chrome plays, even if there is an application rule for Chrome.exe, until you change the windows default device to Voicemeeter VAIO3 input.

The non-easy fix I assumed was to set windows default as a new Cable Input channel that acts as a Master bus, then setting every program manually in windows settings to output to their respective VAIO input channels, but I get stuck here with the routing due to limited knowledge and possibly even limitations with VM.

I know even less about coding, but your suggestion of allowing for the selection/filtering of different audio devices sounds like our best bet.

Anyway, just wanted to leave some crumbs and say that I think this wouldn't be an entirely useless feature. I do miss using Wallpapers with sounds and creating cool slideshows with themes that utilize those sounds to help me focus when I'm working.