---
title: 'Separate Game Audio, Discord, Music in OBS! (A Voicemeeter Tutorial For Beginners)'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=XD9sWOjITYU'
video_id: 'XD9sWOjITYU'
date: 2026-06-16
duration_sec: 0
---

# Separate Game Audio, Discord, Music in OBS! (A Voicemeeter Tutorial For Beginners)

> Source: [Separate Game Audio, Discord, Music in OBS! (A Voicemeeter Tutorial For Beginners)](https://youtube.com/watch?v=XD9sWOjITYU)

## Summary

This tutorial explains how to use Voicemeeter Banana, a free virtual audio mixer, to separate and control audio sources (game, Discord, music) for streaming with OBS. The video breaks down the concept of routing audio through virtual inputs and outputs, making it easy for beginners to understand and set up.

### Key Points

- **Introduction to Voicemeeter** [0:00] — Voicemeeter is a free digital mixer for streaming that separates audio like game, Discord, or Spotify. It looks complex but is intuitive once understood.
- **Default OBS Audio Setup Problem** [1:30] — Default OBS setup has two sources: mic and desktop audio (all programs combined). This prevents individual control over what stream hears.
- **Voicemeeter as a Routing Box** [2:23] — Voicemeeter acts like a box with inputs (hardware like mic, virtual like programs) and outputs (speakers, OBS). Buttons control routing of inputs to outputs.
- **Installation and Variants** [4:01] — Three variants: Voicemeeter, Banana (recommended, free), and Potato (paid, more I/O). Also install VB-Cable. Windows only.
- **Setting Up Voicemeeter Banana Interface** [4:43] — Ignore audio processing controls and tape recorder. Set 'Auto restart audio engine' and 'Run at startup' in menu. Left columns are inputs, right are outputs.
- **Setting Hardware Output** [5:46] — Click A1 and select WDM version of your speakers/headphones. A2 is for a second output device. This allows hearing audio through Voicemeeter.
- **Routing Windows Audio to Voicemeeter** [6:15] — In Windows Sound settings, set 'Voicemeeter Input' as the default playback device. This routes all system audio to the first virtual input in Voicemeeter.
- **Separating Discord Audio** [8:08] — In Discord settings, change output device to 'Voicemeeter Aux Input' (second virtual input). Use A1/A2 buttons to route to speakers/headphones. Stream hears via OBS audio capture of Aux input.
- **Adding a Third Audio Channel (Music) with VB-Cable** [10:03] — In Voicemeeter, select 'Cable Output' on Hardware Input 1. In PC sound settings, change the music app (Chrome/Spotify) output to 'Cable Input'. Add OBS audio capture for 'Cable Input'.
- **Expanding to More Channels** [12:36] — Purchase VB-Cable A and B to turn hardware inputs 2 and 3 into additional virtual inputs for more programs.

### Conclusion

Voicemeeter Banana gives you complete, independent control over individual audio sources in OBS, allowing you to route and mute audio per program without affecting others. It's the best free solution for streamers who want to manage game, Discord, and music audio separately.

## Transcript

how many of you guys were told about a
program called voice meter
and you look up a tutorial and the first
thing you see
is this thing you're like what the hell
does any of this mean man who am i a
scientist
i get it it looks complicated and scary
but trust me once you get the hang of it
it's actually really intuitive to use
and probably the best free audio
software
that you're ever going to come across
for streaming you've never heard about
voicemeeter before it's basically like a
free digital mixer
that you can use to separate audio like
your game audio
discord or spotify let's say for example
you're playing a game and you're
listening to music in your headphones
but you don't want your stream to hear
that music because i don't know maybe
you're listening to michelle branch or
something and you're really embarrassed
about it
you can mute the music just for your
stream but still have the game audio
go out to all your viewers you can also
use voice meter to process your mic's
audio so it sounds really good for your
stream
however i don't recommend that because
frankly i think there are better
solutions for processing your audio
which i've already done in another video
so we won't be covering any of the audio
processing in this video
but we will break down voicemeeter so
that it's very easy to understand
and show you how you can use it to have
complete control of your audio
for your stream
[Music]
what's up guys it's nutty so let's put
aside actually installing voicemeeter
because
it's really important that you have a
really clear picture about what
voicemeeter actually does
so that you understand how to actually
use it
for controlling your stream's audio
let's start with how most people's audio
is set up
you basically have obs sending a single
audio track
to twitch which is eventually what your
viewers hear your typical obs setup will
have
two main audio sources your microphone
is pretty self-explanatory it's
basically
the thing that you make noises with your
mouth into and then you have this thing
called desktop audio and the way you can
think of this is basically if you hear
this
in your headphones or your speakers this
is exactly what's going to be captured
by
desktop audio in most cases this is
going to be the audio from all your
programs so from all the games that
you're playing
discord spotify or anything you listen
to music out of
all of those programs get combined down
into a single audio source
which as you can tell is a problem
because you as the streamer
want to control what your viewers hear
and what you hear
individually so we're going to scrap
this whole setup and replace it with
something else
imagine a big box and this box has a
bunch of inputs
and a bunch of outputs you can think of
your inputs as
things that you can plug into this box
and those could be physical things like
a microphone
or they can be programs on your computer
like spotify or discord those physical
things are what's known as hardware
input devices
and those programs are what's known as
virtual input devices
and this box happens to have three
hardware inputs
and two virtual inputs now the outputs
on this box
are things that hear audio so again
these could be physical things like
speakers or headphones that sound
actually comes out of or
these could be programs that listen to
audio such as
obs now this box has a bunch of buttons
on them which can control
which inputs go to which outputs for
example
i can plug in my game audio into one of
these virtual inputs
then use this box and tell it to output
the audio
to my headphones and to obs but if i'm
listening to music
i can plug in spotify into another
virtual input
and then tell the box to only output
that audio to my headphones
and not output to obs so basically
the box that allows us to do all this
stuff
this is what voice meter is all it is is
software that you can
plug audio devices into and then route
it
to other devices that will receive that
audio so does that give you guys a
clearer picture of what voice meter does
just say yes gavin okay because i never
want to do diagrams like that ever again
in my entire life
so let's actually get into installing
voicemeeter so i've left a link in
description box down below for where you
can actually find the install
you'll notice that there's three
different variants of voicemeeter
there's voicemeeter regular voicemeeter
banana and voicemeeter potato and
they're basically all the same the main
difference is that they just have a
different number of inputs and outputs
we're gonna go with voicemeeter banana
because voicemeeter potato has the most
inputs and outputs but it also costs
money you're also gonna wanna install
vb cable virtual audio device i haven't
told you what this is for yet but this
is going to make sense in a little bit
by the way i should have mentioned at
the start of this video that this video
is for windows only
so if you're using a mac you just got
prank son
after you've installed everything it's
gonna make you restart your computer so
when it restarts just open up
voicemeeter banana this is what it's
gonna look like when you open it for the
first time
now like i said i know it looks scary
and complicated so let me simplify this
for you remember how i said earlier that
we're not going to be
processing our mic at all in this video
well that means we can just ignore
all of these controls because all these
controls are for
controlling how your audio sounds so
we're not even going to touch any of
these we're also not going to be doing
any recording in voice meter so
this tape recorder thing in the corner
which
by the way it's 20 20 man we don't use
tape recorders anymore so just get that
out of here
also just a little pre-setup go into the
menu and make sure
auto restart audio engine is checked and
run
in system menu at startup this will just
make sure that voicemeeter starts
every time you restart windows so now
we're just left with a bunch of columns
which are
our inputs and our outputs the five
columns on the left are the three
hardware inputs and the two virtual
inputs from the diagram i showed you
earlier
and the five on the right are the three
hardware outputs and two virtual outputs
we're gonna set up our hardware output
first so we can actually hear something
so just click on a1 and then a drop down
will appear and just select whatever
your headphones or your speakers are
you're gonna see each audio device
listed multiple times but
with the prefix wdm or ks or mme
they're basically all the same audio
devices they just use different drivers
we're gonna choose the wdm version of
our speakers if you want to set up a
second device
like headphones you can set that in the
a2 column exactly the same way
next we need to tell windows to pass
audio into voicemeeter because right now
audio is still getting passed directly
to your speakers or directly to your
headphones to do that
go into your control panel and then
search for change system
sounds and then this window should pop
up in the playback tab you'll see a list
of devices and one of the devices is
gonna have a green
check mark in it which is probably gonna
be your speakers or your headphones
this is the device that windows is
routing all of your audio into and we
don't want that
we want our audio to be routed through
voice meter if you scroll to the bottom
of that list
you're gonna see two devices that say
voice meter input
and voice meter aux input the naming is
really confusing this but basically
voice meter input corresponds to that
first virtual input
in voice meter and aux input corresponds
to the
second virtual input in voice meter
we're going to choose voice meter input
and select
set default and if you've done it right
you can start playing any audio it could
be of youtube video it could be music
your favorite hentai i don't care
whatever you want you should see the
meter for the first virtual input
moving up and down and you should also
hear the audio
coming out of whatever device you set as
your a1
hardware output now if you have two
hardware devices set up like i have the
first being your speakers the second
being your headphones
you'll notice that the audio is only
coming out of your speakers
and not your headphones and the reason
for that is because if you look at the
first virtual input you'll see these
buttons that say a1
a2 a3 b1 b2 you'll see that we've only
selected
a1 so these buttons tell you where to
route the audio
okay so far this setup
not very useful all of our audio is
still being sent
to this one virtual input so all of our
audio discord music
it's still going through this one
channel so now we're gonna start to
separate our audio out
we'll start easy we're gonna pull out
discord's audio
from the rest of our audio because right
now discord is still pointing at the
same
virtual input device that all of our
audio is pointing to
so all we're going to do is we're going
to go into our discord settings
go to voice and video and then change
our
output device to voicemeeter aux input
remember that the aux input corresponds
to the second
virtual input in voicemeeter so now if
you do a mic
check in discord and start talking to
your mic you should see the second meter
in voice meter move up and down then you
can use the a and the b
buttons to choose which audio devices
you want your discord audio to come out
of so in my case i want my discord audio
to come out of
both my speakers and my headphones so
i'm gonna choose a1
and a2 so now your discord audio is
completely decoupled from the rest of
your audio
but you're still going to hear your
teammates you know like calling you
names because you're a terrible teammate
in apex and then you're going to be like
crying because they're all bullying you
and stuff but nobody in your stream
is going to be able to hear that because
they can't hear the discord audio now
that may be how you want it set up
not the crying part but you might want
it set up so that you can hear your
discord and your stream can't
but chances are you probably do want
your stream to hear the discord audio
so how do we do that you're going to go
into obs go into your sources
right click and add an audio capture
device and you're going to set the
device to your voicemeeter aux
input so this is basically going to
capture all the audio that's being fed
into that second virtual input device
then just make sure that you've added
this
audio output capture source into every
single scene that you want your discord
audio to be heard
so this is a good setup so every time
you just want to mute your discord audio
so that your stream can't hear it
you just mute that audio source in obs
and that'll just mute just your discord
but leave the rest of your audio
completely untouched but let's say we
wanted to add another layer of
complexity to this
and we wanted to add music to our stream
and let's say our music
is coming in through youtube in a chrome
browser and we want all that audio
to come in yet another audio source in
obs this is a bit complicated because
you'll notice in voicemeeter
we don't have any more virtual inputs
anymore so
what are we going to do we're just going
to pull a virtual input out of thin air
uh yeah kind of remember how we
installed vb
cable basically what vb cable does is it
allows us to turn one of our hardware
inputs
into another virtual input remember that
these hardware inputs can only be used
for things like a physical microphone
but by installing vb cable we can plug
another program like youtube into one of
the hardware inputs
to do that we're going to select input
on our hardware input 1
and then we're going to scroll down to
where it says cable output
then we just have to tell youtube to
point all of its audio
to that vb cable output because right
now all of youtube's audio is still
going through the default windows
audio device which is that virtual input
device that we set
earlier how do we tell youtube where to
output its audio
if you go into your pc settings go into
sound settings and at the bottom it
should say
app volume and device preferences you
can see a list of all the programs
playing audio on your pc and you can
change the output
device for each program so if you're
playing your music off
spotify or chrome or whatever
people play music off nowadays you just
need to change the output for that
program
to cable input if you've done it
correctly the first hardware input
in voice meter should now be moving up
and down when you're playing music
or any audio from that program again you
can use the a and the b buttons again to
decide
which devices that audio comes out of so
again i'm going to set
a1 and a2 on because i want to hear the
music
in my headphones and in my speakers then
an obs we can do exactly like we did for
discord we just add another audio output
capture device
select cable input as our device and
then now we have a third channel that we
can route audio to
by now you should have three audio
devices in obs
plus your microphone which you can all
independently control
without affecting each other which will
allow you to mute your discord in your
stream but still hear it in your
headphones
or even allow you to mute your music in
your headphones
and still come out in your stream you
just have complete control over your
audio now but let's just say you wanted
to go even crazier and add even
more programs as separate channels at
obs because you know
you're greedy and three just isn't
enough for you you can download up to
two more of those vb cables they're
called vb cable a
and vb cable b by the way all the naming
for all of these different channels
really sucks for voice meter it's really
confusing anyway vb cable a
and b are pretty much exactly the same
thing as vb cable
it's just you get two more of them but
you do have to pay for them but they do
function exactly the same as vb cable so
if you want to turn your
other two hardware inputs into virtual
inputs
well then you can pay to download vb
cable a and b but that's gonna do it for
this voice meter tutorial guys i know
this video was not
funny okay i could i could only fit like
five jokes into that video which is like
way less than the number of jokes that i
usually fit into videos i even wore like
an elmo shirt today so i can like make
you guys
laugh and i didn't even you didn't even
see it for the whole video
but if you'd like to laugh at my crappy
jokes come watch me on twitch.tv
nutty i actually changed my name this
week so
nutella forever he's dead now we're
twitch.tv
nutty also if you want more help for
setting up your stream we're setting up
voice meter because you couldn't figure
it out
through my crappy video make sure to
join the discord link in description box
down below other than that this video is
done
class dismissed i'll see you next time
[Music]