When joining someone’s computer on Parsec, you can hear all audio playing in that computer, including chatting apps like Discord. This means you may hear yourself when joining a friend that is talking to you. To fix this, you can enable the 'Echo Cancelling' setting in the app.
Enabling the Echo Cancelling Setting
The person hosting can enable Echo Cancelling in Parsec's settings. Follow these steps:
- Open the Parsec app on the host computer
- Click the 'Settings' icon in the left
- Click the 'Host' tab
- Find 'Echo Cancelling' and change it to 'New' (if you don't see the option, update to Windows 10 21H1 or newer)
- Select the app you want to prevent guests from hearing (e.g. Discord) under 'Echo Selection'
- Scroll to the top of the Parsec settings and click the 'Restart' prompt
Notes about Echo Cancelling
The method for cancelling echo has a few quirks you may want to know about:
- Due to how this option works, Parsec captures audio from all audio devices on your system at once, like your headphones, speakers and virtual outputs all at the same time. This means it’ll also capture programs that re-route audio through different devices, like VB-Cable, Voicemeeter, RTX Voice, Voicemod, OBS’ audio monitoring mode and others. If those have your communication app audio or your own microphone, it'll cause voices to still be heard through Parsec
- If you're using Discord PTB or Canary (beta versions of Discord), these will not be found. If you're an advanced user, you can manually modify the exe Parsec looks for with the advanced configs
- The stream audio may stutter in some cases, due to issues with the Windows API used. If this stutter happens often, try to change your audio device's properties in Windows to use 48000hz as the sampling rate
Alternative fixes
If you're having trouble with Parsec's automatic options, change the Parsec setting to "Off", then follow either of the methods below.
Use VB-Cable
You can set up a separate program called VB-Cable on the host. The host may however notice a small increase in audio latency, mostly in rhythm game scenarios. The following steps should be done by the host:
- Download VB-Cable, unzip and run the setup as administrator. Choose the correct 32 or 64-bit version for your PC
- Press Windows + R, type mmsys.cpl and press Enter to open the sound settings
- Note down your original device which has a green checkmark (in my case it's 'Speakers'). We'll use it in the tutorial
- Click CABLE Input and click Set Default
- Go into the Recording tab
- Double-click CABLE Output. In the new window, go to the Listen tab
- Activate Listen to this device
- Set Playback through this device to your original device
- Click OK
- Modify the settings of the app you use to communicate with friends. For Discord, change 'Output device' in the Voice & Video settings to your original device
- Lastly, make sure to restart your computer right now for programs to switch to the correct audio devices
VB-Cable did not work, or something is wrong
If you or the clients are unable to hear anything at all, you should double-click the original device and Cable Input, and set both to use 24 bit, 44100 Hz on Advanced > Default Format. Do the same for Cable Output, but use 2 channel, 24 bit, 44100 Hz instead. Restart your computer if nothing's changed right away.
Otherwise, it's very likely that something was set incorrectly (carefully re-check the tutorial), or the computer wasn't restarted at the end.
Use a different device or speaker for your communication app
- A different device: Remember that people hear what is in the host PC; that's why the echo exists. If the host uses Discord (or similar apps) on their phone or another device aside from the computer that is hosting, there won't be any echo on Parsec.
- A different output: For example, if the host computer has a headphone and a monitor that outputs audio, they can use one for chatting and the other for everything else. With the chat separated from what Parsec captures, there's no echo.
To change the output used by your chatting app, go into the settings of the app you use to communicate with friends. For Discord, change 'Output device' in Voice & Video.
To change the output used by everything else, you can alter which output is the default in your operating system settings:
- Press Windows + R, type mmsys.cpl and press Enter to open the sound settings
- Select the output you want and click Set Default
- Restart your PC in case things don't start using the device you set