Configuring Windows 10 Loopback Audio Driver for Recording Streamed Audio

As a music producer, I'm lucky to own a Saffire Pro40 interface that has a built-in 'Loopback' audio function. However, after upgrading to Windows 10, I noticed that my usual recording setup no longer worked as expected. In this article, I'll walk you through the steps I took to configure my Windows 10 loopback audio driver for recording streamed audio from YouTube.

To start, I opened Reaper and set it back to my normal audio device after finishing a recording session. The track's meters should show what's playing on the Voicemeeter virtual output channel, which can then be recorded. Next, I set the input to Stereo VM-VAIO 1&2, but made sure not to activate input monitoring on the track or I would get a feedback loop.

I also didn't bother setting the outputs as they wouldn't affect my recording setup. Instead, I added a new track and Record Arm it. In Reaper preferences, I set the Audio system to ASIO and selected Voicemeeter Virtual ASIO as my ASIO driver.

With these settings in place, I should now hear the sound from YouTube. The sound would be routed to the VB Main Out (A) but I still wouldn't hear it yet. To fix this, I clicked on the 'A1' Hardware Output button and selected my audio device. As I played a YouTube video, I saw activity on the first two channels of the Virtual Input meter.

To further configure Voicemeeter, I clicked on the A and B buttons on the virtual input channel and set the Playback device to VoiceMeeter Input. This would route my web-browser and all other Windows apps through the virtual mixer. After trying different configurations, I was still having some issues getting everything to work as expected.

If you're experiencing similar issues with your sound card, there are a few things you can try. First, check if you can download a driver for your sound card from the manufacturer's website. If not, you may need to look into alternative solutions like Voicemeeter. Another option is to use the default Win10 audio driver and see if that resolves the issue.

In my case, I had previously used Windows 7 and was able to record streamed audio from YouTube without any issues. However, with the upgrade to Windows 10, I noticed that Reaper no longer recorded the audio as expected. After trying different configurations, I finally managed to get everything working again by following the steps outlined above.