Most gamers use Discord as their primary communication platform since it blends well with many other applications and offers a great experience in terms of voice quality and communication delays. And as there are a lot of server options available for Discord, you will be able to get a low latency server wherever you are. And for that reason, Discord has been an ever-growing platform and there are new members signing up for the service every day.
However, even if this service is a globally accepted platform with hundreds of millions of users, its performance can still be affected by some minor bugs and technical difficulties which are unavoidable, to say the least.
Today, we are going to tackle one such issue that affects a number of users on a daily basis. Fortunately, this issue, along with many others, can be easily resolved from your end if you just follow a few simple steps. But before that, let us try to understand the issue and why it occurs.
No Voice Output on Discord
Discord is primarily used by gamers and content creators for communication. Therefore, voice chats have been an integral part of the service and are used by almost everyone.
There are a lot of variations available for voice chat on Discord such as group calls, personal calls, video conferencing, and much more. But a lot of times, users face no voice problem on discord. And if you can’t hear anything on Discord, you won’t be able to communicate at all.
But, the problem is usually not from the service-end of the Discord application. Most of the time, the problem lies within the application interface or user-end. As you may already know, there are a lot of settings and sub-settings that can affect the I/O of your system, and the same goes for audio input and output. Therefore, a mishap in the settings can cause no audio problem from Discord.
Today, we are going to try out some common fixes for these problems and see if they work out in your case. But before you move on to the solutions, we will suggest checking out whether you have selected the “Deafen” option in Discord or not. A lot of times, you might be trying to enter a voice channel but not hearing anything because of the “Deafen feature.
To check that, just see if there’s a cancel sign showing on the little mic and headphone icon beside your profile. And if you are facing a problem in a particular server, it is also possible that the admin or moderator has “Server Deafened” you, which can only be resolved from their side. If not, you can try out the following solutions.
Check Volume Levels on Windows Volume Mixer
The first thing that you should do is head over to the “Volume Mixer” of Windows and see if the problem lies there. The Volume Mixer is basically a built-in service in Windows that lets you individually manage the audio levels of all active programs. So if the volume levels of Discord are set to low or mute in the Volume Mixer, you won’t be able to hear anything from the app.
Here’s how you can fix that:
- Right-click on the “Sound” icon from the right corner of your taskbar.
- Click on the “Open Volume Mixer” option. This will open the Volume Mixer window and also show the default output device active currently.
- Now, you will see all of the active services in your system right now with a volume slider to adjust the volume of each program separately.
- If there aren’t a lot of services in your system, you should be able to see Discord in the 2nd or 3rd position. If not, use the scroll bar at the bottom to browse all running services.
- Once you find discord, make sure that its volume slider is not set to low or mute.
- We will suggest keeping it at maximum as you can always manage the volume levels from the app itself.
Once you do that, head over to Discord and see if you can hear voices or output sounds or not.
Try Discord’s Legacy Audio System
Discord has recently updated its audio subsystem to improve the voice quality and overall performance of the service. However, a lot of users have started facing the issue of unbalanced sound output, or no output at all. It happens because of the incompatibility of the new subsystem with the user’s hardware. Fortunately, it is quite easy to fix since Discord allows you to revert back to the older subsystem.
Here’s how you can do that:
- Open the Discord application and head over to the application settings.
- Now, select the “Voice and Video” section for the list provided on the left side.
- Here, you will find a lot of options regarding the voice and video performance of the application.
- Scroll down until you find the “Audio Subsystem” option.
- Here, you will have the choice to select the “Standard” subsystem which is the new one, or the “Legacy” subsystem.
- Select the “Legacy” option from the drop-down list.
- If there’s a prompt, click on “Okay” to confirm the action.
- This will relaunch Discord on your system.
- Now, you can check the status of the audio output.
Reset Voice Settings
Discord also allows you to reset all Voice and Video settings parameters altogether which might resolve the problem in your case. Even if the settings appear correct, you should try resetting all settings and see if that fixes your issue. Most of the time, there are problems at the backend of the software that you cannot access. But, resetting will set all values to default.
To reset voice settings, go back to the “Voice and Video” settings on Discord and scroll down. At the end, you will see a red button with the “Reset Voice Settings” title. Once you click on it, Discord will ask for your confirmation to perform the action. Keep in mind that this will reset all values to default, including I/O preferences, volume levels, QoS preferences, etc. Confirm the action and then check if your problem is resolved.
Try Discord’s Web App Interface
One of the best things about Discord service is that it offers a web app alternative so that you can still use its services even if the desktop application is not working for you. A lot of users opt for the web application to avoid cluttering the hard drive with yet another application. You can try the web version too if you are facing audio issues with the desktop application.
Using the web version is nothing different than the desktop app. Just head over to the Discord website and log in with your account credentials. Once you log in, you will get an option to download Discord or open discord in your browser. Select the latter to access the web application. If the audio seems to work fine on the web application, the problem lies with either your desktop client version or your sound settings.
Select Proper Output Device in Windows
Windows also offer you the choice to select the default communication device for your system. Once you select that, it will automatically redirect the input or output from all apps to the default device. The problem usually does not occur if you have only one input and output device.
However, most of us have headphones, speakers, controllers, and even monitors that offer sound output via a headphone jack or built-in speaker. In such a case, it is possible that Windows has selected a different device as the default output device. So, if the wrong device is selected, you won’t get sound output in your headphones.
Here’s how you can fix that:
- Right-click on the little sound icon on the right side of the task bar.
- Click on the “Open Sound settings” option to head over to the sound settings page.
- Now since we want to select a default sound output device, it is better to do so from the Sound control panel. You will find a link for that on the right-hand side.
- Once you enter the Sound control panel, you will see a list of available output devices.
- Here, you can choose a default option by right-clicking on the item and selecting “Set as Default Device”
- If you are noticing some extra options that you never use, you can disable them to be completely sure.
- Also, make sure that the Default device is also set as Default Communication Device from the options.
- Click on “Apply” to save the settings and then click on “OK” to exit the control panel.
Check Audio Driver Status
Audio drivers are infamous because of audio errors and problems with audio input and output. And since the performance of all software is dependent on the audio driver, none of the programs would perform correctly if the right driver is not installed.
So, you should check the status of your audio driver and see if it’s outdated and needs an update. You can also try uninstalling the driver so that Windows will automatically reinstall the latest and compatible driver from the internet.
Select Proper I/O Devices
Apart from Windows settings, you should also check if the proper I/O devices are selected in Discord or not. If the right device is not selected in Discord, the audio coming from Discord will not be routed to the device and you will not hear any output. It usually happens after you install a new program or connect a new device which changes the preferred output option in Discord.
Here’s how you can check the I/O options in Discord:
- Open Discord and open the app settings.
- Navigate to the “Voice and Video” section as it contains all the settings related to voice input and output.
- At the top, you will see the drop-down menus for both Input and Output devices.
- Select the proper option for both settings.
This should route the audio to the correct device now.
Uninstall and Reinstall Discord
If none of the solutions mentioned above has worked out for you, your best bet is to uninstall and reinstall the app itself to reset all of its parameters. If the problem is caused by incorrect registry entries or corrupted data files, it can only be resolved by reinstalling the application. This will delete all of the existing files and cache of the application.
You can uninstall Discord from the “Apps & Features” section in Windows. As for the reinstallation, you will find the latest version of the program on the official application. We will strongly recommend getting the official version from the website and staying away from mods that can cause a lot of problems.
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Conclusion
Today, we have tried to tackle and resolve the no sound issue on Discord that is faced by many users on a daily basis. We have tried to include all of the possible solutions for the problems that can resolve it, irrespective of the reason behind the problem. So, we will suggest checking out all of the solutions mentioned on this list sequentially to find out the one that works best for you. If you are not sure about any of the steps or methods mentioned on this guide, you can reach us via the comment section below and we will try to get back to you right away.
