This page covers hearing a playout at the control desk. One setting, and one trap that produces a symptom nobody would connect to its cause.
The setting
Settings → Outputs → Audio output, per playout: which sound device this playout plays through.
| Choice | |
|---|---|
| Off | You hear nothing at the desk. The output is unaffected. |
| Windows default device | Whatever Windows is set to. |
| A specific device | The one you want, by name. |
Two playouts may share one device — Windows mixes them. Whether you want that depends on whether you can tell the two lines apart by ear.
What you hear is what goes out
The sound comes from the same place the output does, so what you hear is exactly what the DeckLink and the stream get.
No separate monitor mix means no way for the control room to be hearing something the audience is not.
The trap: monitoring into a device that is being recorded
If the monitoring output uses the same device a source is recording from, the program warns you — and the warning is worth reading, because the symptom is misleading.
What happens: you hear stuttering — which sounds like a machine that is too slow, or a file that is broken, and is neither.
The fix is one of two things:
- Switch off the source that records from that device, or
- Choose a different monitoring output.
The classic version of this is desktop audio being captured while the desk monitors through the same device: a loop.
Practical advice
Monitor on headphones or a dedicated output, separate from anything the machine is capturing.
Check the level once, at the desk, with real material. The master fader is what you set for the output; the desk volume is Windows’ business, and mixing up the two is how a broadcast goes out silent while the control room is comfortable.
If audio stutters, come to this page first. Between this and audio tracks, the two settings on those pages cause most of the audio faults a playout machine ever has.
How far behind the sound is
Roughly 80 milliseconds, from the moment a sample is mixed to the moment it leaves the card. That is four frames at 50, and it stays there: the delay does not grow during a show.
A source that cannot keep up is restarted instead of everything waiting for it, so a capture card that stumbles gives a short break in its own sound rather than a growing delay in everybody’s.
Jumping in a video takes the sound out and brings it back over a tenth of a second, so a jump sounds like a clean cut rather than a hiccup.
What you cannot do yet
There is no way to listen to a cue before it goes on air. Monitoring at the desk is the output, not a preview — what you hear is what the hall hears. Cueing up on headphones the way a sound desk does is not in this version.