Three different faults that people describe in the same words. Work out which one you have first; the fixes are different.
Which one is it?
| What you hear | Go to |
|---|---|
| Regular stuttering or dropouts | Monitoring into a recorded device |
| The same sound twice, slightly apart | Two paths to the same output |
| Rising howl or ringing | A microphone hearing the speakers |
Monitoring into a device that is being recorded
The most common one, and the least obvious.
If the monitoring output uses the same device that a source is recording from, that source falls behind and the engine restarts its audio. You hear that as stuttering — which sounds like a machine that is too slow or a broken file, and is neither.
The program warns about this when it can, naming the source involved.
Fix it by switching off the source that records from that device, or by choosing a different monitoring output under Settings → Outputs → Audio output.
The classic version: desktop audio being captured while the desk monitors through the same device.
Two paths to the same output
The same sound arriving twice, usually a fraction apart.
Nearly always this: another source is riding on your playout’s audio track. Every source in the engine sits on all six tracks by default, so anything somebody added reaches the output your card is carrying.
Fix it with Reserve this track for the playout, under Settings → Outputs → Audio. That takes every other source off that track — see audio tracks.
The other version is a playout used as a source in a scene. That carries picture only, precisely to prevent this, so if you hear doubling there it is the track question again.
A microphone hearing the speakers
A rising howl is an acoustic loop, not a program fault: a microphone somewhere is hearing what the speakers are playing.
Nothing in the playout can fix that. It is a matter of which microphone is open, where the speakers point, and how loud the room is — a question for whoever runs the sound desk.
The program’s part is only this: the audio it sends out is the audio you hear at the monitoring output, so if it sounds clean at the desk, the loop is downstream.
Ruling the program out entirely
Set the playout’s master fader to zero for a moment. If the noise continues, nothing you do in this program will help it.