Premiere ignoring system volume

[Guest]

Hey guys,

Been having this issue on a specific workstation at my work, and it's been causing issues with mastering. I already did some digging, and the closest forum post I could find is this one, but it's not quite the same thing, and was never solved.

Essentially what's happening is Premiere will jack the audio on my computer way up when playing clips or sequences. When I go to change the system volume, Premiere gets changed drastically. For example, my system will be at 30 and Premiere will be painfully loud. I'll change it to 25, and Premiere will be much quieter. Even after I change it back to 30, all audio is significantly more quiet than it was originally, meaning (I assume) that Premiere is actually following system volume now.

I'm not quite sure what triggers this override of system volume, but it seems to happen when I open a new clip or sequence, and sometimes during editing a sequence. It's a simple matter of dropping the master volume while editing until export, but there's no way to do the same thing universally when sorting through raw footage.

This issue means I can't reliably sound mix my sequences, and have already run into issues of the video not sounding how it should. It's a pain because this station is the only one with the problem, but it also has the newest version of Premiere, meaning I can't bring it to a working station. Any thoughts?

[Graeme Bull]

Do you have the option to uninstall and reinstall Premiere? It sounds like the driver that is talking to Premiere isn't working correctly. Perhaps double check the audio driver to see if it has an update too.

[Guest]

Sadly, no. I don't have permissions on this station to reinstall Premiere. I checked the audio drivers however, and those appear to be up to date.

[R Neil Haugen]

I wonder if one of our other sound wizards like Bob Howes​ could help also ...

Neil

[Guest · Accepted solution]

I'm actually going to close this thread. I did some more testing and I think it's actually the computer's fault, not Premiere. Seems to be having the same issue outside of it. Thanks, though.

[Meg The Dog]

My understanding (which may be wrong) is that when you specify the direct path to the Realtek, it routes the audio directly there bypassing the system and system volume controls.

If you click on the drop down menu for Default Output, is there a system option listed there? I am Mac based and not familiar with windows, but on my Mac it shows up as a separate option:

By choosing the system as the output from Premiere, then in the OS setting the sound output from the computer to the correct destination, I've effectively routed audio: Premiere (volume control within Premiere) > System Sound (with System Sound volume control) > Destination.

Don't know if this all applies to Windows.

MtD

[Richard M Knight]

I think the OS is bypassed only when using a ASIO driver, the default MME uses  Windows.

[sergiopol]

I had this issue and solved it by going into sound settings (right clicking on the speaker icon on the taskbar) then "advanced sound options" and moved the system audio there while Premiere was running with audio. First I clicked on the "Reset" button in the bottom. Not sure what did it but it solved it.

[williaml27669342]

I was listening through AirPods and was able to fix the issue I was having by going to my Mac settings and changing the system 'output' to my headphones. I think what went wrong was that I had overridden the Mac by changing the output device in Premiere.