A few GMS2 game developers have contacted us about issues with their players having no audio when running certain games (typically sold and played via Steam).
We have now identified that ASUS's Sonic Studio and a driver called Nahimic (associated with the motherboard maker MSI, but unclear if it's one of their companies who actually makes it) both create their own hidden audio device and can route processing through these extra systems. The game cannot then see the actual sound card and so falls back to using the "null device" (i.e., safely not play any audio).
If the user stops this process in Task Manager and then starts/restarts the game, this should fix audio playback.
Sonic Studio is an optional part of the driver package for the following Asus Republic Of Gamers ("ROG") devices, and now seems to be largely discontinued according to ASUS's own support forums:
- ROG G752VT (laptop)
- ROG Centurion (headphones)
- ROG Strix Wireless (headphones)
Nahimic is standalone software on Windows and macOS and fakes 7.1 audio out of standard headphones. It can seemingly be bought and installed separately, but is also part of the driver package MSI offer for headphones users.