My name is EposVox and today I’ll be discussing the “Elgato Sound Capture” side of Elgato
Game Capture HD software.
I will have other tutorials on Elgato’s capture cards and a plethora of other technology
topics on my channel, so be sure to subscribe if you find this video helpful, and check
the YouTube card above or description below for a playlist with my other Elgato Gaming-related
videos.
In the previous tutorial, I showed you how you can use the powerful Stream Command to
create a fantastic live stream or recording setup.
Part of that also involves mixing sound from multiple sources and Elgato offers their new
Sound Capture app to help with that.
Elgato Sound Capture is a powerful tool that gives you complete control over your audio
output and mixing for your live stream and recording sessions.
This gives you complete control over what’s heard on-stream, and how your final export
sounds, based on settings we covered in the previous video.
For example, you can use this to loop in your own music to play in the background of a live
stream.
This is common and a fun expectation of some viewers.
Using the export options you can then exclude the music from your final export for YouTube
without worrying about the music causing you pesky copyright problems.
Alternatively, you could use it to loop in team chat from voice over IP programs like
Skype, TeamSpeak, Ventrilo, or Discord.
Or you can use it to send all of your audio out to your headphones and a second PC for
dual-PC streaming and recording setups.
There’s a lot you can do with this.
To work with the Elgato Sound Capture app, make sure your Game Capture HD software is
updated and that you’re on the “Capture” tab.
Look below the “Live Commentary” section and you’ll see a section for Elgato Sound
Capture.
You’re presented with volume meters (similar to Game Audio and Live Commentary), volume
adjustment, a preview loopback toggle, and a “Capture” checkbox, along with the settings
cog.
Click on the settings gear icon and this will open up the Sound Capture app.
This may take a minute and will possibly change your speaker output configuration.
This tool gives you a few basic configurations that you might want to use - picking up team
chat, streaming music, PC gaming - and an Advanced tab to customize things just how
you want.
Clicking on the “Team Chat” tab gives you some basic options to control which mic
you want your chat buddies to hear (which can be different than your stream mic) and
which audio output - headphones, speakers, etc. - you want to hear the chat out of, along
with a volume meter.
It’s worth noting that many VOIP programs like Skype and Discord don’t automatically
change which mic and output device it uses, so you’ll want to go into those programs’
settings and make sure they match.
Elgato includes a link for setup instructions for Skype, specifically.
Clicking on the “Music” tab gives you the option to choose what output your music
plays to.
You can set this to a specific headphone or speaker that you wish to hear from, or to
an output that you don’t actually have hooked up.
This way, you don’t have to hear the music, but your viewers can.
The “PC Gaming” tab is a little more complicated.
This is used when you’re using a capture card for your PC gameplay - either on the
same PC that you’re gaming on, or on a secondary streaming and recording rig.
For a single PC setup, this will set your gameplay sound to play via HDMI to be captured
by your Elgato device, but still play it back to your speakers or headphones so you can
hear it.
For a dual-PC setup, this does the same thing, but you’d have to run the audio output to
a mixer or soundboard - or simply hook your headphones up to the streaming and capturing
rig instead of the gaming PC.
Or, you could also run Sound Capture on your gaming rig, tell it to send the gameplay sound
to your headphones and HDMI output, and the streaming PC will still get it.
However you wanna set it up.
Lastly, we have the “Advanced” tab.
This one is pretty cool.
You can make it set your PC’s default audio devices for playback and communication as
Sound Capture’s virtual device, select an audio input to send to voice chat apps or
the stream, and select whichever output device - or multiple output devices - that you want
your audio to go to.
Then you could set it up to go out via HDMI to the capture card and headphones, or anything,
really.
If you’re setting up a Sound Capture configuration, you’re going to want to triple-check two
things.
One, that your “Capture from Sound Capture” checkbox is checked in the main Elgato window.
And two, in the main software settings, you want to make sure the track exporting and
mixing options are set up how you want for your final video exports.
I covered the details of this in the previous tutorial, linked in the YouTube Card icon
and video description.
But that’s it!
With this and the Stream Command, I’d argue that the Game Capture HD software from Elgato
is potentially the most powerful streaming and recording software available for consumers.
It even beats some of the expensive, pro-level options that I’ve used.
Provided that you have an Elgato Game Capture device, of course.
I hope this video has been helpful for you.
If it has, do a barrell roll into that Like button, get subscribed for more awesome tech
videos, and check out the description below.
There, I have a link to the playlist with all of my Elgato Gaming tutorials and reviews.
Check them out!
:) I also have product links to each Elgato card, if you’re looking to buy.
Thanks for watching and I’ll see you in the next one.