How to Stop Discord from Picking Up In-Game Sound?

If Discord is picking up both your game audio and your voice, it can mess up your gameplay and chatting with friends. When this happens, your friends or teammates will hear both your voice and the game sounds. This usually happens when system sounds are sent out at the same time, and the input and output audio devices are not correctly separated.

Although there can be various causes for this issue, mainly Discord picks up the in-game and system sound due to Stereo Mix being enabled. This is because the Stereo Mix combines output and input audio, resulting in Discord picking up every sound that your computer plays.

Other causes can include incorrect microphone settings, faulty audio drivers, or high microphone sensitivity, which can cause the mic to pick up sound from the headset.

With these causes in mind, let’s have a look at the solutions to this issue.

Quick Fix

If you’re using the Realtek Audio Console, make sure to enable Acoustic Echo Cancellation to prevent your microphone from picking up audio from the speaker.

1. Disable Stereo Mix

As mentioned earlier, Stereo Mix combines all audio output from your system. When this is enabled, Discord can treat it like a microphone, transmitting all system audio along with the voice. By disabling this feature, you stop the merging of the input and output devices, allowing Discord to pick up only your microphone.

1. To do so, right-click the Sound icon and select Sound Settings.
   
2. Scroll down to the bottom and click More Sound Settings.
3. Go to Recordings, and right-click the Stereo Mix.
   
4. Select Disable.
   
5. Once done, check whether Discord is still picking up the in-game audio.

2. Reconfigure Output/Input Devices in Discord

If the incorrect audio device is selected, for example, if you choose Stereo Mix instead of your microphone as an input device, Discord will pick up both your in-game and microphone audio simultaneously. This will result in your teammates hearing both you and your in-game sounds.

Therefore, make sure to select the correct input/output devices. Another thing you can do is to enable Noise Suppression and set it to Krisp. This will prevent your headphones from leaking the game audio.

1. Open Discord and go to Settings.
   
2. Select Voice & Video from the left.
3. Ensure that your microphone is selected in the input device and your headset is selected in the output device.
   
4. Once done, scroll down to the bottom, enable Noise Suppression, and set it to Krisp.
   

3. Check and Adjust Microphone Sensitivity

Adjusting the microphone sensitivity can help reduce background noise, particularly sounds from your headset, from being picked up. If the microphone sensitivity is too low, it can disturb your communication with teammates and affect their game. So make sure the microphone sensitivity is neither set too high nor too low.

1. Open Discord and navigate to Settings.
2. Go to Voice & Video from the left.
   
3. Turn off the option Automatically determine input sensitivity and make sure the slider is in the center.

4. Give Exclusive Control to the Microphone

There is a possibility that Discord does not have exclusive control over your microphone, perhaps because it is taking multiple input sources. To fix this, you need to give exclusive control of your microphone to Discord to avoid this issue.

1. Right-click the sound icon from the bottom right and select Sound Settings.
   
2. Scroll down to the bottom and click More Sound Settings.
   
3. Go to Recordings, right-click the Microphone device, and select Properties.
4. Then, go to Advanced and tick Allow applications to take exclusive control of this device.
5. Once done, click Apply and click OK.
   
6. Now verify whether this resolved the issue.

5. Update or Reinstall Audio Drivers

If you have outdated drivers or if audio drivers have been corrupted by a third-party program, you need to either update or reinstall the driver. This will replace the old driver and resolve the corruption that might be causing the issue. To do so, follow these steps:

1. Press the Win + R keys simultaneously to open the Run Program.
2. Type devmgmt.msc in the Run Window and hit Enter to open the Device Manager.
   
3. In the Audio Inputs and Outputs, right-click the Microphone device and select Uninstall.
4. Click Uninstall again to confirm.
   
5. Restart your computer to reinstall the driver.

If none of the solutions resolve the issue, you may have hardware issues such as a faulty port, resulting in this problem. In this case, you can buy a cheap USB sound card from Amazon or a computer shop to resolve the issue.