Help / Troubleshooting

Exclusive output connects but sounds silent, garbled or lopsided

Exclusive mode started, the transport is running and the timer is moving, but what comes out is wrong: silence, a slurred mess, or a stereo image that has fallen apart. That is nearly always your driver and the file disagreeing about format.

The short answer

Match the device's default format in Windows. In the device's Windows properties, set the default format to something the hardware genuinely runs: 24-bit at 48000 Hz for a DAC, 16-bit at 48000 Hz for a headset. Keep budget USB and gaming headsets on 48000 Hz, since that class usually runs a 48 kHz clock and a known driver fault garbles 44100 Hz. Then restart playback.
Switch to Shared for now. In Settings → Playback → Audio Output, set Output mode to Shared (Windows mixer). Shared never has this problem.

First, rule this out: exclusive output needs a Lifetime licence, and the 30-day trial includes it. On Free or Pro the setting is ignored and playback runs in Shared, so none of this applies.

Why exclusive can sound wrong when shared sounds fine

In shared mode Windows owns the format and converts everything into it. In exclusive mode Vesari Stylus asks your driver what it will accept, and has to believe the answer.

The request runs in a fixed order. Each high-quality format (32-bit float, 32-bit integer, 24-bit in a 32-bit container) is offered at your file's own rate first, then at both 44.1 kHz and 48 kHz. Which of those two leads depends on the file: rates in the 44.1 family, such as 88.2 kHz, try 44.1 kHz first because that is a clean halving, and everything else tries 48 kHz first. Only once all of them are refused do the consumer formats follow, 16-bit then packed 24-bit, always leading with 48 kHz.

If nothing is accepted, exclusive is abandoned before a note plays and the track runs in shared with a warning naming the device: see Exclusive output won't start. This article is the harder case: the driver said yes and then did not deliver.

Slow, slurred or garbled

Some drivers accept a format they cannot actually clock, then take audio at a rate nowhere near the one agreed. Music plays slow and smeared. Vesari Stylus watches for that: over roughly the first second and a half it measures how fast the device is really taking frames. A reading more than 15 percent out earns a second measurement, and two bad readings in a row end the experiment: the track moves to shared where you had reached, and that device is routed to shared from then on. You hear the fault once.

Every device caught this way so far has been a USB headset, on the separate telephony endpoint Windows lists next to the main output. If yours appears twice, try the other entry.

After a driver update, give it another chance:

Open Settings and go to the Playback tab.
Find Device compatibility overrides and press Reset overrides.
Play something. This takes effect from the next playback start.

Silence, or a dropout part way through

The app catches a buffer that never arrives, and a write the driver refuses after the endpoint has been torn out from under it by a format change, a power transition or an unplugged cable. It also catches a device that stops asking for audio, after about five seconds of nothing. In each case the track is handed to shared where it had reached and keeps playing, so you may hear a short break rather than silence.

What nothing catches is a device that accepts the format, keeps asking for audio, takes every frame at the agreed rate and renders none of it. From inside the app that stream looks healthy. Bluetooth outputs have behaved this way. If a track runs all the way through in silence with the timer moving normally, switch to Shared, confirm it plays there, and report it.

When the stereo image sounds wrong

Check the app and Windows before blaming the driver. Turn Crossfeed off in the DSP Rack, since blending the two channels is its whole job, set the graphic and parametric EQ flat, and rule out ReplayGain. Then look at Levels in the device's Windows properties: a balance slider off centre makes one side quieter in every app. The DSP Rack → Output meters show the per-channel signal the app hands to your device: if both track each other while your ears say otherwise, the imbalance is downstream of the app.

The negotiation always asks for two channels, and a retry only rewords the request. A driver could accept a wording it does not really use, but nothing so far ties that to a lopsided image.

Before you report it

Settings → Logs shows the Application Logs. Search for WASAPI to see the negotiation as it happened: every rate and format offered, whether the driver took it, and what opened.

Then use Settings → Support → Report a Bug. Say what you heard (silent, slow, garbled, one-sided), name the device, and whether Shared sounds correct on the same track.

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