OBS Fails to initialize audio client, resulting in failures to capture audio on that device

Issue Description

We (Insights Capture) have a user who is flat out unable to record audio from their main headset, no matter what they do. Digging into their logs (which I’ve uploaded below) shows the following lines:

[WASAPISource::TryInitialize]:[Headphones (STRIX SOUND CARD)] Failed to initialize audio client: 88890008

Now this log stems from obs-studio/blob/master/plugins/win-wasapi/win-wasapi.cppwin-wasapi.cpp#L694 which is a result of WASAPISource::InitClient failing out with the error code 88890008, which is the AUDCLNT_E_UNSUPPORTED_FORMAT error.

Now since this is an error originating from OBS / the usage of it, I figured the issue wasn’t Insights Capture related since we use the Overwolf API to merely pick a device to record on; however my experience with debugging windows audio capture is very limited, so I’m not 100% on that it’s an issue within the usage of OBS and not in IC’s usage of the recording APIs OW provides.

Now from that error code, I thought that maybe the user had exclusive mode enabled on that device or had a different sample rate than what we were set to capture, but changing either setting to all available options had no effect.

However, the audio device initialization works perfectly on OBS Studio version 27.2.4.
According to the OW changelog, we’re using version 27.2.3 of OBS, and the only changes made to anything audio wise between the two patches is the disabling of RTWQ because it’s been silently failing apparently, but I don’t think that’s related to this issue- So I’m not sure why things are working in OBS Studio using what seems to be the same settings.

Now an obvious fix for the user would be to swap headsets if things are borked, but I just wanted to check in and see if anybody else had encountered this issue, or if this was a known issue already!

Reproduction

No known reproduction method at this time D:

Logs

w_missing_audio_capture.zip (416.9 KB)

Hi!
Is it possible to ask that user for their OBS studio logs? These should help us compare the two, to see what might be going wrong when they’re recording with overwolf.

Here ya go: https://obsproject.com/logs/B1QtsTJHnGUkUTlF

If you need all files from the log directory, we can ask for those as well!

Thank you! We’ll look into it and see what we can find.
In the meantime, if it’s fine by the user, could you ask them to try and record a game with Game Capture to see if the audio gets captured?

Checked with the user, unfortunately the issue still persists ):

I see. In that case, would it be possible to get the logs from when they used game capture?

OverwolfLogs_2022-06-06_21-24-23.zip (160.4 KB)
Here they are ( :

1 Like

Hi!
We’re still looking into things, but, just to be sure -
Does the user potentially have “any sound software installed, including (but not limited to): msi nahimic, alienware sound center, asus sonic rader/sonic suite or ai suite”.
Or, more broadly, anything based on “nahimic”?

They are running “Asus Strix Sonic Studio” but unfortunately I’m not familiar with it enough to know whether it’s based off of “nahimic” ):

Interesting.
Just to be sure, does the issue persist when they try to turn it off?

Hi There. I’m the user with the issue.

I’m unable to disable software as it will cause my sound card to stop responding

Hi there!
If that’s the case, then that’s probably not what’s interfering, so that should be fine.
Just to be sure though, do you have a way to test and see if you can capture audio using another headset?

Tried 2 headsets and it doesn’t work

In that case, would it be possible for you to add Dana from our support on discord (Dana#8798), so she can try to see what might be causing it?

Added

Post-resolution summary (for anyone stumbling upon this in the future):
It was in fact “Asus Strix Sonic Studio”. That program is in fact based on nahimic, which currently clashes with overwolf’s recording features. It was safe to turn it off (at least in this case, always good to check just to be sure), and that fixed the issue.