Audio Streams from PC to Mac but Not the Other Way Around

Description

I’ve been trying to troubleshoot this problem on and off for a few weeks to no avail. I run two computers alongside one another, an iMac and a PC. I spend most of my time on the mac, but have been playing more games on the PC that I’d prefer to have no audio latency for. I’ve always been able to stream audio from the PC to the Mac without any issue (Mac as player, PC as server) - it’s one button press and I’m good to go. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to reliably get the Mac audio to stream over to the PC (PC as player, Mac as server). I have loopback, I’ve tried using BlackHole, I’ve tried a variety of combinations in AudioMidi on the mac, and nothing seems to work for me. I use SoundSource on Mac and EarTrumpet on windows to manage individual audio levels - I don’t think this is relevant, and I’ve tried disabling/shutting off both to ensure there’s no conflict. More frustrating is that on the rare occasion the mac DOES pipe her audio over to the PC, replicating the exact settings doesn’t guarantee it’ll work again.
AudioRelay has been fantastic, but the solution to whatever my problem is here continues to elude me.

When I’ve tried Loopback as a means of piping the audio, it’s all my applications as sources + Pass-thru - going to the Output Channel, with BlackHole as a Monitor in hopes of getting it to work. I have ensured nobody has “Mute when capturing” checked off as well. The audio’s there in the system, it’s playing, but AudioRelay just won’t send it.

Going into Mac’s AudioMidi setup, right clicking BlackHole, and selecting “use this device as sound output” has also not yielded any results

Do I somehow have to make a second server that travels the other way? Is that a thing? Any help is greatly appreciated.

The Audio Devices available to stream from the Mac - Big Dumps is my iPad, ignore her, she’s not apart of this.


audio

Devices

2020 iMac Sonoma 14.5
Windows 11 HP PC version 23H2

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