No sound
People ask this as
- viewers do not hear the alerts
- no sound from alerts at all
- the voice-over is silent
- a donation was not read aloud
- sound went away after moving a slider
- donations are read aloud but chat messages are not
- the voice starts reading long after the donation came in
- the bot waits for the sound to end before it says anything
- the alerts are missing from my vod but i heard them in my headphones
- i closed the window and the sound stopped
Viewers hear nothing but the streamer hears everything
This is the single most common cause: OBS has no Application Audio Capture source pointed at strAImer. See the guide "Sound", section "Where the sound plays".
Check in order
- Is Overall at zero? Sliders apply as you drag them — there is nothing to save. See the guide "Sound", section "The volume sliders".
- Is the app actually running? It depends on what the × of the window does, set under Window close button on Settings → Interface (the guide "Interface"). With Quit strAImer, the default, closing the window quits the application, and the sound stops with it. With Hide to the tray, the app and its sound keep running after the window goes; the strAImer icon next to the clock brings the window back.
- Did the sounds folder go away? If it was moved to an external drive that is now disconnected, Settings → Sound shows the path in red with "Folder is unavailable or the drive is disconnected". The default folder is used until it comes back.
Alerts specifically
- Nothing is selected on the alert card. The most common reason — see the guide "Sound", section "Alert sounds".
- Look at the sound slot itself. The Sound slot on the Media tab of the alert card names the reason: a file that was moved, renamed or deleted; a sound linked from a website, which does not play on stream; or a sounds folder that is not available. Choose the sound again, or reconnect the drive that holds the sounds folder.
- If the alert overlay is not open in OBS, the alert never queues, so there is no sound either. An overlay that has been silent for three minutes is dropped; OBS's "Shutdown source when not visible" and hidden scenes cause exactly this.
Voice-over specifically
- A line can be skipped by the rules: empty, too long, a blocked word, a blocked viewer, below the donation threshold, or still inside the cooldown. The log names which rule dropped it.
- Check the master switch first. Voice → Voices, the How it speaks card, the Voice setting. Set to Off the app says nothing at all, whatever every other switch says — and nothing else on screen contradicts it. Neural or System both speak.
- Nothing at all is spoken on a fresh install. All five sources (donations, chat, what the bot writes in chat, channel point rewards and subscriptions) start switched off, and the voice stays silent until you turn one on and press Save. See the guide "Sound", section "Voice-over".
- It may be waiting rather than silent. Sounds and speech share one queue, so a line is held back while a scenario sound is playing and starts when that sound ends. A long sound makes that wait long. See the guide "Sound", section "One sound at a time". Alert sounds are outside the queue and are never delayed by this.
- The queue may be full. When the Queue limit on Voice → Voices is reached, chat lines are dropped first, then bot replies, and the log says
[Dropped]. Donations and subscriptions are never dropped: they are read even past the limit, so after a big wave the voice keeps reading them for a while, and a new donation waits its turn behind them.