"Failed to initialize any audio devices" exceptions prevents to connect game servers

Unity
1

Hi!

We’ve been receiving reports from players which can’t play / connect our game servers after a " FMOD failed to initialize any audio devices, running on emulated software output with no sound. Please check your audio drivers and/or hardware for malfunction. "

The game is launched normally “running on emulated software output with no sound” when you disable all audio devices on Windows, but there are other related FMOD exceptions which cause that players can’t connect the server.

" Forced to initialize FMOD to to the device driver’s system output rate 48000, this may impact performance and/or give inconsistent experiences compared to selected sample rate 48000

(Filename: C:\buildslave\unity\build\Modules/Audio/Public/AudioManager.cpp Line: 1469)

FMOD failed to initialize the output device.: "Error initializing output device. " (60) "

or

" FMOD failed to initialize. This may be because your sound card is configured to give applications exclusive access, thus preventing Unity from using this device. You can change this in Control Panel > Audio Devices and Sound Themes > Playback Device > Properties > Options … : "Soundcard does not support the minimum features needed for this soundsystem (16bit stereo output). " (59) "

FMOD should keep “running on emulated software output” and let the game run normally with no sound, am I right?

Many thanks!

Damian Sanchez.

2

Looking at the location of that error C:\buildslave\unity\build\Modules/Audio/Public/AudioManager.cpp and the wording of the error messages it sounds like they are coming from the built-in FMOD audio system. For reference Unity’s internal audio system is built on FMOD4, have you tried disabling built-in audio?

3

Hi Mathew,

Sorry for my late reply but we had to wait for a new public patch to check if this workaround solved the issue:

Sadly we’re keeping reports on the " [FMOD] Studio::System::initialize returned ERR_OUTPUT_INIT, defaulting to no-sound mode. " error again.
We have Unity audio disabled and we checked that the error is thrown by the FMOD integration not the FMOD Unity Audio.

From that point, every FMOD call becomes an exception and this is preventing the game to initialize.

We also found some sort of inconsistency in that error as we know in some cases it will allow the game to run, but in others won’t.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Damian.

4

Can you share log output from a development build in Unity?
Please set the FMOD log level in the settings to LOG or Warning.

What version of Unity / FMOD are you using?

Are you able to provide an example that demonstrates this error that we can debug?