Due to an ongoing issue in our voice service backend, we officially do not support the use of audio interfaces for voice chat on macOS at this time.
Note: Audio interfaces include any USB sound device which accepts input from XLR audio devices, including microphones, guitars, keyboards, and other professional audio equipment.
What happened?
Our engineers became aware of the aforementioned issue in February 2020. We have isolated our lack of audio interface compatibility to an underlying issue with WebRTC on macOS. We rely on the open source WebRTC framework to provide voice services cross-platform, and we are working with the greater WebRTC community to get this issue fixed.
What if I’m currently using an audio interface on macOS?
Impacted users will experience inconsistent audio delivery on our desktop and browser applications. When using an audio interface, while your audio will be picked up and shared with other users, you may experience temporary choppiness or a cutting in-and-out of your audio input. Unfortunately, while this WebRTC bug is present, we cannot offer troubleshooting steps to avoid these issues at this time.
While we may offer compatibility with audio interfaces and XLR devices on macOS in the future, because this bug is not Discord-specific, we sadly can't offer an ETA for when this issue will be fixed.
If you're an audio interface user on macOS and you'd like to use voice chat on Discord, we would advise using a traditional headset or microphone rather than the use of a dedicated audio interface for the most consistent audio performance.
We support a variety of audio devices including Bluetooth wireless devices, 3.5mm AUX jack devices, and USB audio devices, and we regret being unable to fully support audio interfaces and XLR devices at the current time.