How to Fix Voicemeeter Audio Crackling Issues 

anyone else watching this with the crackling sounds

note: i fixed this by setting "preferred main sample rate" to "44100" or "48000"

I increased WDM's buffer to 704 (from the default 512), and this got rid of the choppy, 'laggy' sound for me that friends have complained about, saying I'm "lagging" and "sound like a robot". Using MME didn't help in anyway. Thank you SO much for this video. :) I would had been utterly lost without it. Just hope increasing the buffer didn't cause more of a delay. I'll find out later.

You are the man!! Setting my mic to "WDM" and the computer audio to "MME" was what fixed it for me. I had them both set to "MME" before and it was causing nasty crackling in my mic. Thanks so much for this video!!

You, sir, have singlehandedly put my suffering to an end. I spent HOURS troubleshooting and all I had to do was switch from WDM to MME :/ THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS :)))

Fixing the issue sometimes is not everything, sometimes you also need to know WHY the problem occurs. thanks for making the video, now I know what to look for if this happens to me.

Interestingly, no one on RU-vid seems to talk about buffer size except for you. UNBELIEVABLE! Thank you for your video! You're saving folks back from 2019)

just changing it to MME made a HUGE diffrence, and increasing the buffer one step made it perfect. thanks!

Thank you so much, I didn't even think to check whether I was overloading audio channels or not

So, switching the main output from WDM to MME worked instantly. Thank you for pointing me in the right direction.

Thank you! Im usually way more tech savy to have a issue like this that i cant solve. But you 100% fixed my issue.

WDM is Windows Driver Model and is one of a few different sound systems to have made it's way into Windows over the years. MME is another, called Multimedia Extension and then you have KS which is Kernel streaming.

Thank you, that finally fixed my problems here i was having for over a year. Even after upgrading to complete new hardware i had that crackling. The only thing that was always the same was Voicemeter...

oh man ! beign dealing with this for a year now, while streaming on twitch had to alt+tab and restart the voicemeeter in the middle of a game to solve it, sometimes more than once in a round, but now thanks to you i understand why it happened and fixed it, THANK YOU

Thanks for hints. In my case it did not work, but when I changed the mic from WDM to MME, the problem is gone.

So i have been looking all over for a fix for this, but my problem is that I decided to not use voice meeter and when I uninstalled the program, my mic was permanently quieter than it used to be. I have gone through many help centers for Windows with no luck. I have my mic set to 100% in Windows sound settings. The weird thing is that my mic sounds normal 5 minutes after my computer boots up, but then reverts to being super quiet after that. This never happened before installing voice meeter. Any help would be so nice.

The MME helped reduce crackling on my hardware out (A2) to a Bose Bluetooth headset - was not getting crackling on recording out - but was crackling in my ear and switching from WDM Bose to MME Bose helped reduce that a lot - thanks.

Woooooooooooooow! Okay that solved a huge issue I was having... It wasn't this snap crackle pop as described though- my audio was really, really choppy- cutting in and out in a really weird fashion. This solved it! Switched to MME and all way good.

Welp I uninstalled it bcs it didn’t go away

LEGEND i had been at it for like 5 hours , finally got audio working, started streaming and crackles. Thanks so much for this vid

Watched your video with the crackling sound and was fixed as I was following your instructions.. LEGEND..

Thank you so much. I've been looking into Voicemeeter and was struggling to fix my issue, but you saved me so much time!

I had it set to WDM and increasing the buffer made it much worse. Best buffer size was 256 but that was still crackling. Setting the output to MME solved the issue and had better EQ for some reason as well. EDIT: I just fixed the crackling on WDM and the problem was the sound device's setting was 24bit 48kHz. I changed it to 24bit 44.1kHz and the crackling stopped. MME still sounds better though.

You sir are a complete star!!! Problem cured within seconds of your video .... stay safe!!

Your mic sounded way better on banana IMO without the filters. Thank you for posting! Hopefully it fixed the issue!

Great Description on the cause of this crackling. Haven't been able to figure this out for some time now.

Thank you so much! I was struggling with my microphone this helped me. I just changed the WMD to MME. Now I can record properly thank you! 🙏🏼😁

changing the buffering fixed it! Gonna see if there's a delay in video recording since I've noticed some while hearing myself but not a huge delay

Thanks for this buddy. The 2 things I have learnt is keep all hertz the same, and look into mme as opposed to wdm since it has a larger buffer size. Or even try and increase buffer size but then look out for audio sync issues!

I was starting to get worried when I started getting super crackly audio when using VoiceMeeter the next day after I installed it. I needed it in order to properly route audio from my cheap HDMI capture card for streaming. I had no idea the solution was this simple lol, thanks for making this video!

If you are having issues with your mic working properly with discord, this solution ALSO fixes that problem. Thanks for the help

First step worked, in my case it was switching from WDM -> KS. Thanks!

HOLYYY, changing from WDM to MME in my "Browser" audio channel worked instantly. Ty

perfect! increased wdm to 1000 and it works. I haven't seen if this has an impact on sync yet

Thanks for the video, my mic input cracks from often, so everyday I hear my friends complaning on discord and that's when I restart VB engine

literally uninstalled drivers, tried changing all sound settings and everything in between and nothing worked. IT WAS THIS SIMPLE. wow thanks for this!!

I apologize I did not watch your video, but only because the comments on this video are great and solved my problems within the first 15 seconds of watching this video. Commenting and liking to boost for algorithm

Video was a big help. I've been having these problems for quite some time.

Thank you! I only had two channels and still got the crackling. I was uploading to YT at the time so maybe that affected the network latency/buffer in some way as well. Either way, switching one channel from WDM to MME worked. Didn't need to touch the buffer sizes.

According to what I've researched online WDM is considered the fastest and preferred over MME. However, I've always had issues w/ WDM regardless of buffer settings so I generally stick w/ MME which on all of my setups is clean sound and at default buffer I get zero latency but I'm also running at 48K and not 44.1. The lower the # the higher the latency.

Do you have an example of the crackle? I have a kind of oscillating effect that ruins my recordings and I’m wondering if this will fix that.

Finally! Increasing my wdm buffer fixed the issue with the microphone in Discord, thank you very much, man!))

Cheers for the great video dude! Your fix did actually help me a lot!

What fixed the crackling sounds my friends would hear in Discord, was going into Sound Control Panel (the classic one), and in the Recording tab making sure Default Device and Default Communications device was on VoiceMeeter Output and VoiceMeeter Aux Output, and use those in Discord. Windows Update had tampered with my Control Panel settings somehow.

Restarting the audio engine fixed it for me, thanks heaps!

Recently started having crackling leading to mick cut out. will definitely give this a try. Thanks!

Literally put the MME buffer down one notch, and IT WORKED!! yeah!!

HOLY BALLS!!!!!! THANK YOU! I was just playing Apex and it was breaking EVERY 5 seconds! I am gonna go back in and see if this works out but at least I understand what it is now!

well sinced I used your advice everything is good, thank you mate!

Thanks! Helped A LOT!!

Thanks man, this really helped as it was happening on my laptop and didn't know what was the issue and then it happened on my desktop.

Dude thanks a lot ! I had some weird crackling echo on my A2 channel, that I used for my headphones, and I simply changed from WDM to MME, which fixed the problem.

Thank you, this helped me fix the choppy audio in banana. I can now start my stream! 1 less stream/cpu issue! I fixed it by routing across KM, MME, and WDM & changing my latency afters. DOPE!

Crackling drove me crazy, thank you so much

If your voice is till "Crackling" in TS3 go to (in ts3) to Menu>Tools>Options>Capture mode is set to „Automatically use best mode” Change to anything other than that, restart TS3, and see if it solved your issue. worked for me, idk why tho

Many thanks!! That was the fix... it´s easy but it took me forever till i found your video

You're a certified G for this one. Thank you!

oh my god thank you so much. I literally installed Banana so that I could use other sites while having Cubase 12 booted up and you don't wanna know how many times I had to angrily go across Banana just to restart it, thank you

turns out changing the buffer from 512 to 1024 was the solution. Thanks dude!

"Are you guys tired of voicemeeter or voicemeeter potato or voicemeeter banana having these weird crackling issues-" Me, ears in pain while watching with crackling issues: mmmhmmmmm 😶 edit: thank you so much for this, it worked

My crackling was super minimum so just changing to MME was enough ;) I'll test it more later on stream lol Thanks man!

Disabling exclusive mode also helps at times, but doing it on the main output device (A1) will add an insane amount of buffer, which can be clearly seen while gaming, just disable exclusive mode in anything not being used as hardware output, or the VAIO outputs

I am sending videos and overlays from OBS to Zoom. I have tried changing the monitoring device to a virtual audio cable into Banana and then out to zoom so I can hear it but the audio is not great. It sounds sonetimes like there’s a phaser (if anyone’s a guitarist) attached to it and on silent/quiet parts in music there is a hiss. Would it be better to keep the monitoring device as the speakers and run the speakers as a virtual input into banana?

I just changed one of them from KS to WDM and it worked! Try this guys

Thank you. This was helpful!

I think your bigger issue may have been that you were mixing 44,100 and 48,000 Hz audio and I suspect the larger buffer was needed for them convert properly. If you could change those to either all 44,100 Hz or 48,000 Hz then the buffer wouldn't need to be as large as there is no conversion needed.

Going to try this tonight, praying this works! thanks for the video tho!

This channel has save me many times, take your sub

What was actually happening to me was for my listening audio my main entry was set to my Steam Streaming Speakers while it was not in use and it detected it as a primary because I disconnected one of my other ports so it ended up somehow making the audio very crackly, although if others say its your mic doing that, you can also go to your Task manager -> Details -> audiodg.exe (Right Click) -> Set Priority (High) and Set Affinity (Only CPU 2). Those fixed my current problems but I'm also certain having mixed Hz can also cause issues, it's all about digging through to find what works.

Very helpful and to the point, thanks fam.

Thanks a lot that did help solve my issue.

great fix, thanks so much!

Tried many things but this fix it for me, Thank!

all i did was change my mic input from wmd to mme and its fine now thanks :D

I hope this helps! Thanks!

Yoo thank you i just changed my wdm buffer to 1024 and it did the trick! Now my cheap headset mic sounds better

Ive had this issue for idk how long.. thank you!!!!!

Thank you!! 🙏🙏 the crackling was driving me insane lol

That did resolved my issue ! thanks a lot !

Should this fix my discord audio sounding choppy to my friends if I'm using the cable for the audio?

Nice fix MAN!!! saved me!

thanks bro. It's effective. the cracking sound is already gone. :)

Perfect, fixed thankyou!

Thank you greatly!

When I play music, in the more silent parts, voicemeeter banana creates a hissing type sound. This also kicks in if I bring the volume control right down. What is causing that?

yo wtf, this was exactly what I was looking for thank

this was exactly what I needed. Just wish it didn't take you 4 minutes to get to the point

Thanks bro, this helped me = )

tbh your microphone sounds better without the effects you add to it

Oh damn, the first step fixed it, thanks.

I worked really good thank you for the advice however for some reason in nvidia shadow play in the clips i make when i talk my voice crakles but on everything else it does not crackle

Set MME one step higher and it fixed the problem! Cheers!

you deserve my love and this like

I started watching the video with the crackling sounds until the point where to fix it.... as soon as I applied that, gone! LOL... thank you heaps for the help.

I'm having an issue not with my microphone, but rather the output of sound to my headset. Ever since i started using MiniHost and VoiceMeter Banana in conjuntion with each other, When i run a game like Apex, or Fortnite Whilst also running Discord or RU-vid. My audio gets what i can only describe as Deepfried, Crackling, or Choppy. I have my Drivers updated, i am using 16-bit 48k hz audio with no enhancements. My PC is up to date, and my internal temps are perfectly fine accross the board. I'm not entirely sure if it's actually VMB or MiniHost or just an issue with my PC. Any help is appreciated, i've searched for so long trying to find a fix. The temporary fix i have for now is re-sign in or restart my PC.

Thank you very much. It worked here.

If i at source with voicemeter cables a and b i have cracking at my recorded video . Sound google sound etc not my mic. If i go settings obs and add sound work fine . Why that happen?

Another fix that I discovered thanks to this video: If both your input and output devices are running through WDM, switch one of them to MME. I have my input running through WDM and my output running through MME because for some reason my mic doesn't like running through MME.

Thank You for a quick and easy tutorial without all the fluf.

You are a life saver! Thank you :)