User manual

Support and feedback

VAC is developed by Eugene (Evgenii) Muzychenko, an independent software developer.

Bug fixes and updates are available on the product website.

You can also visit the page with other software products by Eugene Muzychenko.

If you encountered an unexpected behavior and/or a technical problem, firstly please make sure that you have read the documentation and understand basic principles and usage rules of the product. Looking for troubleshooting information, please see troubleshooting section and FAQ/How to... lists at first.

If the problem is not covered by this manual, please send a support request.

If you don't have enough experience reporting software problems, please read this useful essay.

Writing a message, add "Virtual Audio Cable" or "VAC" to the subject field. Messages with empty subject or only with a common word/phrase like "Hi", "Help request" or "Some questions" may be considered as a spam and automatically killed by mail filters.

Only English and Russian languages are supported in communication.

Please include following items in your request:

  • Product name (VAC), its version number and type (trial, full or free).
  • Platform type (single/multiple CPU) and CPU type.
  • Operating system (name, version, build number, language).
  • Detailed situation description:
    • What audio applications do you use (names and versions).
    • What each application is intended for (except for well-known ones).
    • How each application uses audio devices (for playback, for recording, for both).
    • What application's audio settings are used.
    • What Virtual Cable devices are used (cable numbers, recording or payback operations).
    • How these cables are configured (what VAC Control Panel shows for these cables in "Cable parameters" box).
    • How VAC driver is configured (what VAC Control Panel shows in "Driver parameters" box).
    • VAC Control Panel window image may be useful.
    • What default shared recording/playback formats are set in the system, if any.
    • What actions did you perform.
    • What exactly did you expect.
    • What was really happen.
    • Exact error message texts (or pictures).
    • Other details, if any.

For example, if you have a problem with audio connections, you should describe how you connect applications to audio devices (real and virtual), audio formats used, recording/playback modes (if any), and specify any other information that could help to understand your problem. The more meaningful information you provide, the faster and helpful response you will get.

Example of ill-formed support request:

I have installed it but it does not work. I spent many hours trying to get it working but no success. Please help ASAP!

Example of well-formed support request:

I have installed VAC (4.60, trial version) in 64-bit Windows 10 Home. If I run Audio Repeater (MME, 1.56.1, 32-bit), choosing "Line 1 (Virtual Audio Cable)" as input and "Speakers (Realtek HD)" as output (other settings have default values), there are sound interruptions after several minutes of use. I tried to increase buffering time in Audio Repeater, and the clear sound period becomes longer. But I cannot get rid of interruptions at all. Tried to alter clock correction value for Cable 1 but it does not solve the problem.

If the problem is related to installation/uninstallation, please attach a log file created by Setup application.

Identifying yourself

Please identify yourself properly. If you are a registered (paid) user, please specify your email address used for the order placement, or the order ID, or other order details. If you use a different email address and didn't specify your full name or your name is very common, it could be difficult or even impossible to find your order.

Explaining the problem

Please write problem explanation to be rich in content. Avoid meaningless messages like "I cannot install it" or "It did not work". Your message must be informative and allow to understand your problem. Please write as exact as possible: what did you want to achieve, what did you do, and what was happened. If you have received an error message and code, please include them into your report. For long messages, attach some screenshots instead.

Please avoid messages like "I run <application name>, but it doesn't work as I expect, how to fix that?". VAC is a wide-purpose tool that can be used with any audio application or their combinations, in huge amount of configurations. The author (and support staff, if any) is unable to learn about all existing audio applications (except well-known ones, like Skype or WinAMP) to understand how they work.

For better problem explanation, please describe all audio signal paths. For example, "I speak into the microphone connected to built-in audio adapter. Application <name 1> gets it from the adapter's endpoint, adds some funny effects, then plays resulting signal to Virtual Cable 1. Application <name 2> gets the signal from Virtual Cable 1 and broadcasts it over the net".

Providing files

If your problem can be described better by some data files, you can attach them to your message. For example, if you experience a strange noise in audio data, it could be useful to present a data fragment saved to a WAV/MP3 file. But don't send large (a minute or more) audio fragments. Send meaningful fragments only. In most cases, 5-10 seconds of audio is quite enough.

If possible, please avoid large (greater than 1-2 Mb) email attachments except explicitly asked.

Providing screenshots

To illustrate your problem, you can attach some screenshots to your report. If there is only a single informative window (a dialog box, an error message), take a "window screenshot" (Alt+PrintScreen keys), not full screenshot (single PrintScreen key). If there are several informative windows at the screen, arrange them to be all visible and take a full screenshot (single PrintScreen key). These keys save window or screen image to Windows Clipboard.

After taking the screenshot to the clipboard, start Windows Paint utility or a free image viewer/editor (IrfanView, XnView etc.), paste the image from clipboard, and then save to a file in PNG or GIF format, using "File - Save As" menu command. Don't resize the image and/or save to JPEG/JPG formats because text information may become unreadable.

Attach image files directly, don't wrap them with Word or PDF documents, unless you want to add a text, drawings or other useful information.

Providing videos

If your problem is hard to be explained by the text and static images, you may capture a screen video with a screen recording software like free CamStudio. Please note that video clips may be large; don't attach clip files larger to 5-10 MB to a message. Upload them to a free file hosting service and provide a link in the message.

Providing VAC driver log file

If your problem is not related to installation/uninstallation process, please attach VAC driver event log, saving it to a file in VAC Control Panel application.

Providing VAC setup log file

During installation and uninstallation, a log file is created, describing a process details. After successful installation, the log file is kept in the VAC installation directory (install.log file). If installation/uninstallation process fails, a log file is kept in the temporary directory; in such case, the installer informs you how this file is named and offers you to view its contents.

If your problem is related to installation/uninstallation process, please include log file contents into your report. You may either copy/paste file contents to the email text or attach a log file. It may help to investigate your problem.

Providing Windows SetupAPI log data

You may be asked for Windows SetupAPI log (device installation process log). In Windows 2k/XP/2k3, log file is named setupapi.log and located in Windows root folder, usually named Windows. In Vista/Server 2008/Win7, log file is named setupapi.dev.log and located in the "inf" subfolder.

By default, only most important messages are included in SetupAPI log. To provide maximum information, it is better to enable all possible messages to be written to the log. To enable them, create a .reg file with the following text:

REGEDIT4
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Setup]
"LogLevel"=dword:4800ffff
"LogMask"=dword:fffffff

Save the file then double-click it and allow the changes to be added to the registry. Changes will take effect after Windows restart.

To restore default log settings, use .reg file with the following text:

REGEDIT4
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Setup]
"LogLevel"=-
"LogMask"=-

Providing minidumps

If your system crashes, configure it to make a crash minidump. A minidump file contains some essential information about a crash, it may help to analyze your situation.

To configure system to create a minidump, open Windows Control Panel, then open System item. Select Advanced tab and click Settings button in Startup and Recovery group. In the Write Debugging Information box, choose "Small memory dump". Leave a default path (%SystemRoot%\Minidump) in the Small Dump Directory field.

Additionally, you may clear Automatically Restart checkbox to prevent automatic reboot after a crash. In such case, Windows will stay at the blue screen message.

If you had a system crash, then tried to enable minidump creation and saw it is already configured, it means you already have a minidump for this crash and can send it, not needing to wait for another crash.

After each system crash, a new minidump file is created in the Windows\Minidump folder. File names contain a date and a sequence number within a date. Locate 1..3 of last minidump files and attach them to your report. Make sure you are attaching only minidump (64 kb) files, not a big dump (several megabytes in size) files.