When transitioning sound devices, World of Warcraft is almost always wrong about the settings and devices.
For example, if I switch to a headset, and then change the default device in Windows, WoW is still using the old device. The method to fix it is by changing the “Output Device” several times until it takes. Even if I change the Output Device to the literal device that I’m using, there’s no audio. You have to toggle back and forth 3 or 4 times until it decides to find a device.
Secondly, once you change devices the settings of Master Volume and everything under it all reset, meaning you have to rebalance them to your liking again.
Really annoying for a streaming setup when you want to quickly change a headset or setup… and then you have to mess around with your devices and mix for several moments every single time. Also resets the toggles for Loop Music, Error Speech (which I haven’t used in 19 YEARS!), etc.
Please just have it work the way it did before Dragonflight. Thanks.
Are you disabling the sound device and then reactivating it to use it with your game? I ask because I do not experience the same behavior when switching devices.
Not that I’m aware of. I have 2 devices set in Windows, everything other device that could produce sound disabled from being selected - a Logitech headset, Logitech speakers. In WoW, if I have the sound setting set to System Default, and I change the System Default in Windows as needed, the sound remains outputting to whatever device it was prior regardless of the change. At first I thought, “Ok, it doesn’t change dynamically.” But then, I noticed that even when I did change it, it’d still be wrong. Changing from System Default to the headset per se, wouldn’t produce sound on the headset. I’d need to change it to System Default and back a few times for it to work. System Default is the only output selection that produces sound, you just have to un-select and reselect multiple times until the game decides to “catch” whatever Windows has set for it.
And in the midst of changing devices, the levels and toggles are all reset each time as well.
I don’t recall WoW ever being able to dynamically update from the system default, but you said it was working before? I thought I recalled a post where Blizz staff said it’s a limitation of Windows not letting apps pick up a new default device. Uhh… it’ll take me a while to find the post.
After reading through posts from the last six years about this issue, all of those players reported that the default didn’t automatically update in WoW.