Can't hear system sound while recording

[Sharur]

I'm trying out Action, and while it does a great job of recording video and both my mic audio and system audio, I myself can't hear the system audio that it's recording. I've spent all evening researching this, and as far as I can tell there are two options for addressing the problem:

1. Use Stereo Mix
2. Use Audacity's WASAPI loopback

The former has caused me no end of trouble. I found and installed Realtek audio drivers for the soundcard on my motherboard (which I guess I never installed initially), which I needed to do to even enable Stereo Mix. I played around with the settings for awhile, and basically got it working, but the sound output that I was listening to was over the wrong device (my headphones show up as two different devices, the mono communications device, and the stereo listening device, and for whatever reason the sound was coming through the mono communications device, which lowered the sound quality). When I tried fiddling with this, I couldn't get it working, and ended up having a repeating error where even trying to enable Stereo Mix causes the Windows Sound panel to crash every time I go to the recording tab. The only fix for that is to completely reinstall the audio driver, which is obnoxious to say the least. I don't know why this problem didn't emerge the first time I installed the driver and enabled Stereo Mix, but at this point it occurs as soon as I do enable it.

The second option, obviously, is no good insofar as I want to use Action as an all-in-one solution, rather than Audacity. Part of the reason I'm posting here is that I'm hoping Action implements this api, and that I just haven't been able to identify the right configuration to allow me to use it.

[Piotr]

Hello,
please provide us a MediaInfo report of your file. To do this please download (it's free) MediaInfo from here: http://mediaarea.net/en/MediaInfo. Once you have installed MediaInfo please go to your file location and right-click on it. Select MediaInfo. A new Windows with basic information should pop-up. Below you can find more information. Click the button and select "Tree" option. Advanced information will be displayed. Please export the report or simply create a screenshot of your Tree view.

[Sharur]

I could do that, but there would be no point. The output file from Action is great - clear video, two audio tracks (system and mic). The problem is that I can't hear the system sound live through my headphones while making the recording. The recording has the system audio.

[Piotr]

Try this:
- open Sound control panel

The attachment Desktop 10-3-2018 8-12-17 AM-584.jpg is no longer available

- double click on your headphones to open properties,
- go to Advanced tab and disable "Exclusive mode"

Desktop 10-3-2018 8-12-17 AM-584.jpg (81.47 KiB) Viewed 5579 times

[Sharur]

I don't have that option, but fortunately I was able to get this working anyway. I returned to using the "Hands Free" option (I had mentioned having two different devices show up in the sound panel for my headphones - one was "Stereo", the other "Hands Free") without ever needing to enable Stereo Mix (thus avoiding the Recording tab crash issue, and that worked. It does mean the quality of the sound I'm hearing is lower, but it doesn't effect the recording quality as far as I can tell, and in any case it seems to be a limitation of the headphones, not Action or perhaps even Windows. Sorry for wasting your time!