Sialk

Why Sialk · when it breaks

Why an OBS browser source has no audio

The visuals play and the meter moves, so why can nobody hear it?

The stream gets the audio; you do not, unless monitoring is on. The meter moves either way, which is what makes a setting look like a failure.

The visuals move, the meter lights up, and nobody hears it. Half the time it is one setting. The other half is the chain. And if what you actually want is the music driving the visuals, that is the direction OBS has no route for, and the one Sialk is built for.

The setting

Ticking Control audio via OBS moves the audio inside OBS. It stops coming out of your speakers by the ordinary route, because OBS is now holding it. To hear it yourself:

  1. Set a Monitoring Device in Settings → Audio.
  2. Set the source to Monitor and Output in Advanced Audio Properties.

The giveaway: unticking the option brings the sound back, which proves the page was playing all along.

your page OBS holds it the stream your speakers only with monitoring on the meter moves either way
The stream gets it; you do not, unless monitoring is switched on. The meter moves in both cases, which is what makes a setting look like a failure.

When it genuinely fails

It does, across four years and several versions, including the case where the official fix did not work:

"I cannot hear them and neither can the stream, but they show the visuals and light up on the volume mixer." - 2023

What people report working:

The direction you probably want

Getting the page's sound out is this page. Getting the room's sound in, the music driving the visuals, is the other direction, and the OBS chain has no route for it. You end up building a WebSocket bridge or bouncing to a video file first.

Sialk is built for that direction. The audio reaches your sketch through a published contract: a shader reads sialkBass, a p5 sketch reads sialk.audio.bass, and there is nothing to wire up. Keep OBS for the stream; Sialk's output is a screen.