How To Play Audio Through Mic On Discord

There are occasions when sharing something on Discord requires not only the voiceover through the mic but program audio too. If you’re sharing a game over Discord, you can do this in two ways, use VAC, Virtual Audio Cable, or use Screen Share. Either will play audio through mic on Discord alongside what’s going on onscreen.

It is an admittedly niche requirement but having seen this used to great effect in a game presentation on Discord only last week, I thought our dear readers might like to try it too.

Use VAC to play audio through mic on Discord

VAC, Virtual Audio Cable, is an excellent piece of software that has been around forever. It’s a software bridge that allows different programs to share audio between them where they normally wouldn’t be able to. The program is free but can take a little setting up. You can use it with Discord to achieve the goals we have set here, to play audio through the mic like in a presentation.

Setting up VAC takes a minute and you will need to follow the process very carefully to get it working. Other than that, it’s a breeze to use.

1. Download and install VAC onto your computer.
2. Select the speaker from the Windows notification bar, right click and select Playback Devices.
3. Select the new VAC entry in the list and set as default.
4. Select the Recording tab in the Sound window.
5. Right click the VAC entry and select Properties.
6. Select Listen and check the box next to ‘Listen to this device’.
7. Select OK to set the configuration.
8. Open Discord and join your channel.
9. Open the game or program you’re planning to share.
10. Test to make sure your audience can hear both your voice and the audio from that game or program.

In theory, this setup should work perfectly. VAC is a very reliable program that has been used for years and works with Windows 10 and most audio setups. If yours doesn’t work, go back and double check the settings, especially the ‘Listen to this device’ checkbox.

Use Screen Share to play audio through mic on Discord

If your motherboard has onboard sound and you use that, you could play audio through mic on Discord using the built-in Screen Share option in Discord. There is a little configuration involved as everything is within Discord and you don’t need third party software like VAC to make it work either.

This works best on the desktop app version of Discord but can work in the browser or on the phone too.

1. Select your settings using the gear icon by your username in Discord.
2. Select Voice & Video from App Settings.
3. Scroll to Video Settings and select your webcam from the list.
4. Test the video to make sure it works.
5. Go back to the main screen in Discord.
6. Select the person you want to share your screen with.
7. Select the phone icon next to their name.
8. Select the monitor icon underneath your name in the calling window to bring up the Screen Share window.
9. Make sure Sound is toggled on in the Application Window tab of the Screen Share window.
10. Select the screen icon in the center of the Your Entire Screen tab to share your screen.

You should be sharing your entire screen within the Discord Screen Share window. There is a full screen toggle within the window. If you want to reduce it from full screen, just hit Escape and it will reduce in size. It will reduce for everyone on the ‘call’ too.

If you just want to play program or game audio and not your voice, you can follow all the steps above and select mute using the microphone icon within the Screen Share window. This will stop audio through the microphone.

If audio quality isn’t what you had hoped for, you can go back to Voice & Video in your Discord settings. In there you will find a bunch of audio settings you can tweak to improve audio quality, remove echo and adjust the attenuation.

The Screen Share app within Discord is pretty good at what it does. During the call I attended, the call quality was good and a 45 minute presentation was reliable, didn’t buffer, crash or suffer any distortion. While some of that was down to the connection, a lot of it was down to the quality of the application within Discord.

That’s two ways to play audio through mic on Discord. Got any others to suggest? Know a better way to do it? Tell us about it below if you do!