Help / Troubleshooting

No other app can play sound while Vesari Stylus is open

You pressed play and the rest of your PC went quiet: no notification pings, no sound from a video in your browser, nothing from a game. Vesari Stylus is fine and so is Windows. This is what exclusive output does, and it is deliberate.

The short answer

Your Output mode is set to WASAPI Exclusive. Exclusive means what it says: while a track is running, Vesari Stylus takes sole control of your output device and hands the music to it directly, around the Windows mixer. Nothing else on your PC can play through that device while it is held. That is the trade you accept for the most direct path to your DAC, and it is not a fault.

If you would rather share the device with the rest of your system, switch back to shared:

Open Settings and go to the Playback tab.
Under Audio Output, set Output mode to Shared (Windows mixer).
That is it. If a track is playing when you switch, Vesari Stylus hands it straight over to the new mode: the same track carries on from the same position, still playing if it was playing and still paused if it was paused. Nothing needs restarting by hand. On the rare occasion the hand-off cannot land, a message tells you the mode was saved but playback could not restart on it, and pressing play picks the track back up.

The same choice lives on the Devices page, under Device Details, as the Audio Engine buttons and the WASAPI Exclusive toggle.

It lasts while music plays, not while the app is open

The device is claimed when a track starts and given back when playback ends. In practice:

Stop hands the device back straight away.
Pause keeps it for about two seconds, so tapping play again resumes instantly. Past that the app lets the device go and every other program on your machine gets its audio back. Pressing play re-takes it, normally in a fraction of a second.
A track finishing with nothing queued behind it releases the device too, as does quitting the app.

So if a browser video stayed silent for a moment after you paused and then came back to life, that was the handover working as intended.

Only one device is affected

Exclusive takes a single device: the one Windows is currently using as your default output. Anything routed somewhere else keeps playing normally. Vesari Stylus follows the Windows default output, so the device you choose in Windows sound settings is the device it takes.

That is also why Windows system sounds disappear. They go to the default output, which is the very device being held.

It works the other way round too

Only one program can hold a device exclusively, and Vesari Stylus does not fight for it:

If another app already has the device when you press play, your track plays in Shared instead and a warning names the device, with a Turn off exclusive button so it stops retrying on every track. Details in Exclusive output won't start (it falls back to Shared).
If it happens while you are resuming from a pause, the app keeps the track paused exactly where it was and tells you, rather than restarting somewhere unexpected. Close the other program and press play: the track picks up from the same spot.

Neither case is a licence lock. Vesari Stylus never withholds playback over a tier or an output mode: when Exclusive cannot be had, Shared carries the music.

Which mode should you be on?

Shared is the default and it suits most listening: Windows mixes politely and everything else on the PC keeps its sound. The trade is that the mixer sits in the path, so Windows may resample your track or apply its own enhancements, such as Loudness Equalization or Voice Clarity. Exclusive is for sitting down with an album and wanting the shortest, most predictable path to your DAC, at the cost of every other sound on the machine. Exclusive output is a Lifetime feature and the trial includes it; Shared is available to everyone.

You can move between the two whenever you like. Nothing about your library, your EQ or your other settings changes when you do, and the mode you pick is remembered between sessions.

If it does not add up

Silence from other apps while Vesari Stylus is playing in Exclusive is expected. Silence that continues after you have switched to Shared, or that persists once Vesari Stylus has stopped entirely, is not. Report it through Settings → Support → Report a Bug, and name the output device in your description.

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