Hear Myself Through OBS Virtual Camera: Monitoring

If you want to hear myself through virtual camera OBS setups the way your viewers do, you first need to understand a detail that trips up almost every streamer: the OBS Virtual Camera only carries video. Audio travels a completely separate path. So when you enable the virtual camera in a call or a browser, you see your scene but you cannot hear your own microphone, your voice changer, or your soundboard through it. Monitoring your own processed audio is a different job entirely, and OBS has dedicated tools for it.

This guide explains how OBS audio monitoring actually works, why the virtual camera does not carry sound, how to choose a monitoring device, and how to hear your voice-changed audio confidently before you go live. By the end you will be able to verify exactly what your audience hears without guessing.

TL;DR

The OBS Virtual Camera outputs video only; audio is routed separately through a virtual audio device or an app that captures OBS output
To hear yourself inside OBS, use Advanced Audio Properties and set a source to Monitor Only or Monitor and Output
Pick your monitoring device under Settings, Audio, Advanced, and always use headphones to avoid feedback
Monitor Only keeps the signal in your headphones without sending it to viewers; Monitor and Output does both
To hear a voice changer, route its output to a virtual mic OBS captures, then monitor that source
Expect a small monitoring latency; monitor in the source app if the delay bothers you

What Does It Mean to Hear Yourself in OBS?

Hearing yourself in OBS means routing an audio source, such as your microphone or a voice changer, back into your own headphones so you can confirm what it sounds like in real time. This is called audio monitoring. It is a private confidence check that lets you verify tone, volume, and processing before or during a broadcast, and it does not automatically send that audio to your viewers.

Monitoring matters most when your voice is being processed. If you run a real-time voice changer, apply noise suppression, or add effects, the sound leaving your setup is not the sound in the room. The only way to know what your audience actually receives is to listen to the processed output, and monitoring is how you do that inside OBS.

Why the OBS Virtual Camera Does Not Carry Audio

The OBS Virtual Camera is designed to make your OBS scene appear as a webcam to other applications like Zoom, Google Meet, Discord video, or a browser. Windows and macOS treat it exactly like a physical camera device. Cameras, by definition, produce a video stream. They do not produce audio, so the virtual camera driver has nothing to attach sound to.

This is why the moment you enable the virtual camera and select it in a meeting app, your friends see your beautifully composed scene but hear nothing from OBS. Your microphone audio in that call still comes from whatever physical or virtual microphone the meeting app has selected, completely independent of OBS. The official OBS Project documentation describes the virtual camera strictly as a video output feature.

To send audio alongside the virtual camera, you need a separate route: a virtual audio device (a software microphone) that receives sound from OBS or from your voice tool, which the meeting app then selects as its input. In other words, video and audio are two parallel pipes. Understanding that split is the single most important concept for getting monitoring right.

How OBS Audio Monitoring Works

OBS handles monitoring through a feature called Advanced Audio Properties. Every audio source in your mixer, including your microphone, desktop audio, and any application capture, has an independent monitoring setting. This lets you decide, source by source, whether you hear it locally, whether viewers hear it, or both.

Audio monitoring in general is the practice of listening to a signal at some point in the chain to verify its quality. In broadcast and recording, engineers monitor so they can catch problems before they reach the audience. OBS brings that same idea to the desktop, giving each source three possible monitoring states that you assign in the properties panel.

Choosing a Monitoring Device

Before any monitoring mode does anything audible, OBS needs to know where to send monitored audio. Open Settings, then Audio, then scroll to the Advanced section and set the Monitoring Device. Choose your headphones here, never your speakers. If you pick speakers, the monitored sound plays into the room, your microphone picks it back up, and you create a feedback loop that produces echo or a rising howl.

The Three Monitoring Modes

OBS offers three monitoring modes per source. Getting these right is the difference between a clean broadcast and an echoing mess. Here is what each one does.

Monitoring Mode	You hear it in headphones	Viewers hear it in stream	Typical use
Monitor Off	No	Yes (if source is in the mix)	Default for your mic; viewers get it, you rely on the room or bone conduction
Monitor Only (mute output)	Yes	No	Private check of a voice changer, cue audio, or a track you do not want streamed
Monitor and Output	Yes	Yes	Music beds, alerts, or a processed voice you both hear and broadcast

The most common mistake is confusing Monitor Only with muting. Monitor Only does not mute the source from the stream by accident; it deliberately removes it from the output mix while playing it in your headphones. If you want viewers to hear a source and want to hear it yourself, you must use Monitor and Output.

How to Hear Yourself Through OBS: Step by Step

Follow these numbered steps to set up monitoring correctly and confirm what your audience hears.

Put on headphones. This is not optional. Monitoring through speakers while your microphone is live is the number one cause of echo and feedback.
Open OBS and go to Settings, then Audio. In the Advanced section, set the Monitoring Device to your headphones. Click Apply and OK.
Back in the main window, locate the Audio Mixer panel. Click the gear or vertical dots icon on your microphone source and choose Advanced Audio Properties. You can also right-click any source and select it there.
In the Advanced Audio Properties window, find the Audio Monitoring column for your microphone. Click the dropdown and select Monitor Only if you just want to check yourself privately, or Monitor and Output if you want the monitored audio to also reach viewers.
Speak into your microphone. You should now hear yourself in your headphones. If you do not, confirm the monitoring device is your headphones and that the source is not muted in the mixer.
Adjust the source volume with the mixer fader so the monitored level is comfortable. Watch the level meters to keep peaks out of the red, which indicates clipping.
Close Advanced Audio Properties. Your monitoring is now active and will persist across sessions until you change it.

How to Hear Your Voice-Changed Audio in OBS

Monitoring a voice changer follows the same principles but adds one routing step, because the processed voice usually lives in a separate application or a virtual microphone rather than your raw hardware mic.

Run your voice tool. VoxBooster processes your microphone locally in real time and can output the transformed voice to a virtual microphone that other apps, including OBS, can capture.
Add the processed voice as an audio source in OBS. Either add an Audio Input Capture source and select the virtual microphone the voice tool exposes, or select it directly if your setup already routes it there. Avoid also adding your raw hardware mic, or you will hear and possibly broadcast both the original and the processed voice.
Open Advanced Audio Properties for that processed source. Set its Audio Monitoring to Monitor Only if you just want to verify the effect, or Monitor and Output if this is the voice your stream should carry.
Speak and listen. You now hear the voice-changed output exactly as it will sound to viewers when the source is in the mix. This is the real confidence check: what you hear on Monitor equals what your audience receives.
If you also send audio to a meeting app through the virtual camera workflow, remember that the app selects the virtual microphone as its input, not the OBS Virtual Camera. The camera handles video; the virtual mic handles the processed voice. Keep those two selections separate in the meeting app.
Alternatively, monitor inside the voice tool itself. Many voice applications, including VoxBooster, offer a local monitor toggle so you can hear the processed voice with lower latency than routing back through OBS. When the OBS monitoring delay feels too long, this is the better option.

Latency and Echo: The Two Problems to Manage

Two technical realities can make monitoring frustrating if you do not plan for them. Both are solvable.

Latency is the delay between speaking and hearing yourself. When OBS monitors a source, the audio passes through OBS’s software buffer before reaching your headphones, so there is always a small lag. A short delay is unnoticeable, but a longer one makes you stumble over your own words, a phenomenon known as the delayed auditory feedback effect. To reduce it, lower your audio buffer size in your interface driver, use hardware with direct monitoring, or monitor in the source application instead of routing through OBS.

Echo and feedback happen when the monitored sound reaches your microphone again. The two usual causes are monitoring through speakers instead of headphones, and adding the same audio source to the mixer twice so it plays and monitors in duplicate. The fixes are simple: always use headphones, and confirm in the Audio Mixer that each source appears exactly once. If you hear a doubled or robotic version of your voice, a duplicate source is almost always the reason.

A quick sanity checklist before going live: headphones on, monitoring device set to headphones, each source listed once, voice changer source on Monitor Only for a private test, then switched to Monitor and Output or Monitor Off with the source in the mix when you are ready to broadcast.

Verifying What Viewers Actually Hear

The whole point of monitoring is confidence. Once your voice changer source is set to Monitor Only, do a private read: talk for thirty seconds, listen closely to the processed tone, check for clipping on the meters, and confirm there is no background noise the suppression missed. Because Monitor Only keeps the signal out of the output mix, you can do this even during a live stream without your audience hearing the test.

When you are satisfied, decide the final routing. If the processed voice should reach viewers, set it to Monitor and Output (so you keep hearing it) or Monitor Off with the source still in the mix (so viewers hear it while you rely on the room). If it should stay private, leave it on Monitor Only. This deliberate choice, source by source, is what separates a controlled broadcast from a hopeful one.

FAQ

Why can I hear video through OBS Virtual Camera but not audio? The OBS Virtual Camera outputs video only. It presents itself to Windows as a webcam, so it carries no audio stream. To hear yourself or send audio to another app, you route sound separately through a virtual audio device or use OBS audio monitoring inside OBS itself.

How do I hear myself in OBS? Open Advanced Audio Properties, find your microphone source, and set its Audio Monitoring column to Monitor Only or Monitor and Output. Then pick a monitoring device under Settings, Audio, Advanced. Use headphones so the monitored signal does not leak back into your mic.

What is the difference between Monitor Only and Monitor and Output? Monitor Only sends the source to your headphones for personal listening but excludes it from the stream mix. Monitor and Output plays it in your headphones and includes it in the recording or stream. Monitor Off disables monitoring entirely while the source still goes to the mix.

How do I hear my voice changer through OBS? Set your voice changer output as an audio input source in OBS, or route it to a virtual microphone that OBS captures. Enable Monitor Only on that source and select your headphones as the monitoring device. You then hear the processed voice without adding your raw mic twice.

Why do I hear an echo when monitoring in OBS? Echo usually means the same source is both monitored and playing through speakers, or the source is added twice. Use headphones instead of speakers, confirm each source appears once in the mixer, and check that only intended sources use Monitor and Output rather than Monitor Only.

Does OBS audio monitoring add latency? Yes, a small amount. Audio monitoring in OBS routes the signal through the software buffer before it reaches your headphones, so you hear a slight delay. Lowering your audio buffer, using ASIO-capable hardware, or monitoring in the source app instead reduces perceived latency.

Can viewers hear what I hear through the monitor? Not automatically. Monitoring is your private confidence check. Only sources set to Monitor and Output, or left on Monitor Off while still routed to the mix, reach viewers. Monitor Only stays local, which is why creators use it to verify a voice changer before going live.

Monitor With Confidence

Hearing yourself is not a luxury; it is the only reliable way to know what your audience receives. Once you understand that the OBS Virtual Camera handles video while audio flows through monitoring and virtual devices, the whole setup stops feeling like guesswork. Set your monitoring device to headphones, assign the right mode to each source, and use Monitor Only to test your processed voice before it goes out.

If you want a voice changer that processes locally in real time, exposes a clean virtual microphone, and includes its own low-latency monitor so you always hear exactly what your viewers hear, try VoxBooster free for three days. Read more streaming and audio guides on the blog, or compare license options on the pricing page.