We often play games on Steam using remote play. Our media PC is reasonably specced, but if it’s streamed off my m
ain PC, there’s a central location for game installs & my PC is at the end of the day, the better machine. We use both an Xbox 360 controller & an Xbox one controller when we’re sat on the sofa.
Last week we fired up Bug Fables on Steam, we’re attempting to complete it before the new Paper Mario is launched & BOOM, only it was a silent boom as there was no sound from our TV. I check the usual suspects, as someone usually sitting on the TV remote, or media PC controller results in the PC or amplifier being muted, but checking reveals neither the Windows 10 audio in the taskbar or the amp are affected.
Steam logs show no errors & the audio still plays on the host PC if that output is selected. I search the internet & see a few people have had issues when the audio bitrate wasn’t set to 16bit 48000Hz. I give that a go & it didn’t help. I disabled the Windows firewall on both the host & client to see if that was the issue. It wasn’t.
Because there were no errors I was convinced something, somewhere was muted. I double, triple & quadrouple checked all audio controls. Nothing was muted.
Then I came across a post mentioning there’s a mute option in the Xbox game bar for Windows 10 & I hadn’t checked that. OK. I’ve sorted this, that’s bound to be the issue. I launch Bug Fables, hit the Xbox button on the controller & there it is, the Audio option (Top picture).
Nope, nothing muted. I was sure that would have been the issue.
More fiddling & pressing the change view & Menu buttons simultaneously on the Xbox one pad bought up ANOTHER menu (Bottom picture). There was the mutinous (mute-inus) option. One click later & the sound was restored.