Hi there!  Hoping for a good solution here.  I did try searching around (here and elsewhere), but most results seemed to relate to attempting to use an instrument interface.

Anyway... Windows 11 and using a USB sound bar.  When launching Rocksmith, I get the error "no audio output device detected" and there is no output.  I am guessing maybe it doesn't like USB devices?  Hoping for a workaround rather than having to buy a pair of speakers and re-enable my motherboard audio card. 

I already confirmed that the device is set to 16/48k (DVD).  I tried playing with exclusive mode settings.  And I tried running Rocksmith in various options for compatibility mode.

Of course sound works in everything else, so I know the sound device works.  Is there a trick to making Rocksmith play nice with my USB sound bar?

Thanks!

Probably not going to work with your soundbar. Even if it did, it would probably introduce a fair bit of lag to your experience. Remember this game is very old at this point, so compatibility is going to be an issue with any modern audio devices. If you are serious about playing with Rocksmith,  get an interface and some monitor speakers or headphones to pair with it. Lots of people put time and effort into making this type of setup work fairly flawlessly. Not the answer you wanted, I'm sure, but that's by far your best option. Alternately, you could try Rocksmith+ which might actually support your current setup.

My personal experience is that Rocksmith: 

- always worked for me with wired (analog jack) speakers/headphones 

- worked for me a few minutes (an hour if lucky) with USB speakers/headphones, then sound goes completely  distorted, although it may come back just by switching to another app and back

- never worked for me with bluetooth speakers/headphones

After a little back and forth on Discord, I remembered that my Spark 40 combo amp is capable of acting as an interface.  Here is the update I posted to Discord today:

Just wanted to come back and give an update.... Installed the ASIO driver for my Spark 40 Amp, connected it to my PC... Rocksmith detected it, but the sound was HORRIBLE (some kind of crazy choppy/messy sound).

So I installed RS_ASIO, specified the Positive Grid driver that it found and tried again... This fixed the sound!!!

It now sounded great, but somehow this killed RS picking up the Real Tone Cable.

So I listed the same driver in the RS_ASIO file under input as well (instead of just output) and then jacked into the Spark 40 with a regular cable instead of the Real Tone Cable. That worked! But there was something wrong with the input sound... it wasn't clean (or cleanly tone'd by RS).

I realized the Spark 40 was applying one of it's preset tone rigs overtop of everything. So I had to fire up the Spark 40 app and create a preset that was actually clean (as in, nothing. No gates, no pedals, etc). Once that was done...

FINALLY... everything seems to work perfectly. I saw someone on the RS_ASIO recommended (for the Spark 40) setting the latency buffer to 2, but for me it was better on the default 4.

Anyway... thanks again to all. I wanted to leave this detailed update in case anyone else needs and finds it.