Streaming your game with multiplayer audio using XSplit and two sound cards

Catchy title, no?

When streaming a game, XSplit Gamecaster allows me to take the sounds from that game and mix in a single vocal input, however I have two sound cards to allow me to use a mixing desk to manipulate the levels of a Skype call against the game sounds (I posted before about the details of my audio setup on my gaming machine). The XSplit options work for me when streaming or recording single player footage with commentary, however there are problems when it comes to capturing multiplayer gaming along with the group conversations as essentially there are two vocal sources (my voice and everyone else's voice). This leaves me having to choose two of the three audio sources and ending up with either the game sounds plus friends talking to a silent me or the game sounds plus me apparently chatting to nobody.

Why XSplit and Skype?

I am sure there are better capture programs than XSplit Gamecaster (the more-featured Broadcaster, for example) but they require more work to set up and at a quick glance do not offer the required additional options to solve this particular problem. Whatever its shortcomings, Gamecaster does a fantastic job of getting streaming and recording set up with minimum fuss.

The choice of Skype for communication is because that's how my regular group communicates. Again, there are probably better options but this works for us at the moment. For this problem, it shouldn't actually matter as it is basically conversation out of a secondary sound card, which can be done with any chat program.

Also it is worth noting that this is all done on Windows 7.

My requirements

I game a lot but at the moment I record rarely, so any solution needs to both be easy to fire up (to encourage me to do it) and non-intrusive (so my normal gaming doesn't get any worse).

So:

• low impact on my normal gaming once set up
• easy to turn on when desired
• records game sounds and both parts of the Skype call
• I don't have my own voice echoed back to me through my headphones
• allow me to keep my current hardware configuration

How to do it

First, we need to get at the output of the second sound card. For Creative Cards, this will be a device called "What You Hear". The RealTek equivalent is "Stereo Mix". Hit the start button and look for "Sound". On the dialogue that appears, select the "Recording" tab. If the device isn't there, right click and enable disconnected and disabled devices. It should appear. In XSplit, select this device as Microphone Input.

At this point, if you are playing a multiplayer game with a Skype call you'll record game sounds and your friends' voices but your own voice will be missing.

Next, go back to the Recording tab on the Sound dialogue. Find your microphone, right click, properties and select the "advanced" tab. Disable exclusive mode (both boxes). Finally, go to the "listen" tab. When you install XSplit it creates a device called XSplit Stream Audio Renderer. Select it from the drop-down and check "listen to this device".

Done! Now, when you record again you'll find your voice is included in the mix.

If you look at the audio options in your system tray you'll see that you can set the levels on the XSplit Stream Audio Renderer which will let you balance your recording.

What is going on?

XSplit seems to create a software audio device (i.e. it doesn't physically exist) and record the output of that. Behind the scenes it mixes the Default Audio output and whatever is specified as the mic input into this device. All we have done here is add an additional audio stream to that device using native Windows options. I added the microphone to the XSplit device by hand and let XSplit handle adding the rest of the Skype call, but I assume it would work just as well the other way around.

Alternately

If you aren't using XSplit or you don't want to mess with one of its components you may want an alternative.

I am trying to mix three audio channels (game, mic and other vocals) when XSplit only allows me to specify two sources (default sound and mic input). In practice, XSplit lets me select any Windows audio input device as the "microphone input" and this gives me the option of creating a new (software) sound source and pre-mixing the microphone input and other vocal output. This requires additional software (such as AmaMix (free) or VAC) which is why I went with the above solution which only uses standard features of Windows.