Have you ever wanted to play music during meetings via the Zoom app but can't? You needed one application to listen to another, but Windows doesn't have an option for that? Don't worry, in this article we show you how to install, configure and use Virtual Audio Cable step by step.
How does a virtual audio cable work?
A virtual audio cable, or VAC for its acronym in English, is a program or software that acts as if there is a cable between the audio ports on your computer. To figure this out, imagine the headphone port and the microphone port. The headphone port makes everything you play on your computer sound in the real world.
The microphone port does the opposite, listen to the real world for register it on your computer. In this sense, the headphone port is the mouth and the microphone port is the ear.
Now imagine there was a cable connecting the headphone port to the microphone port. This would cause the computer to listen to itself.
Many of us need such a feature, however make two applications on the computer listen to each other, but Windows doesn't offer this option. Therefore, a VAC is a program that meets that need.
How to install a virtual audio cable?
There are several such programs. Today we will talk about the simplest: VB-Cable. Some programs you can search for later to learn more about the subject are: VoiceMeeter and Virtual Audio Cable. The latter is one of the first to be born and the one most associated with the term VAC.
Let's say VB-Cable is the simplest for several reasons you will see below. As for its installation, just download it, extract it and double click on each file.
- To download it just search VBCable in Google (be sure to enter the official website, www.vb-audio.com) and press the corresponding Download button.
- To extract it you will have need WinRar or another decompressor that supports ZIP files. There are several files, so extract it to a folder if possible.
- To install it, run VBCABLE_Setup if you have a 32-bit system or VBCABLE_Setup_x64 if your system is 64-bit. That is why it is very important to know the differences between 32 and 64 bit processors.
How to configure the virtual audio cable?
If you followed the steps above, you may be wondering what happened? There is no program installed and I can't do anything else. This is normal, since VBCable it is not a program, but a package of driver.
If you're not familiar with the term, a driver is what allows Windows to recognize an external device, such as a car horn or printer. What the installation just did is create two new drivers on your system: one for input and one for output.
Now you need to configure your applications to use the «Device» of output as a siren and input as a microphone. There are two ways to do this, by changing the global and individual settings.
Change the global settings it's simpler, but by doing so you may not hear anything and, moreover, you don't want all the apps to interrupt each other, so it's best to change them individually:
Individual configurations
Teaching you how to configure each application goes beyond what this article can do. But you should know that the easiest and fastest thing is to learn a change the method di input e output of each application.
Almost all group video calling (Skype, Zoom, Zello) and music and video (VLC, Windows Media Player) applications allow you to change these settings whenever you want. You just have to select CABLE input as an output device e CABLE output as an input device in each application you want to communicate with the others.
How to use a virtual audio cable?
If you have already followed all the steps above, you are ready to use your VAC. To do this, simply open the app of the platform you think is best for listening to music and start playing it, your video calling or recording application should already be listening. How simple it is!
There are many things that we leave out in this article, for this reason we always invite you to know more, you never know when you might need it.
TagsTutorial PC
