By “Windows monitoring” I meant “Listen to this device”, or unmuting the input on the Playback side of Windows Sound. However most built-in sound devices do not let you do that these days, and USB sound devices almost never do.
Audacity can also monitor audibly without recording if Monitoring is on and Transport > Software Playthrough is enabled. Like “Listen to this device”, Software Playthrough has latency. However Audacity monitoring is not persistent, so if you press Play in Audacity, monitoring will stop. It has been like that for years.
I can monitor audibly using “Listen to this device” while playing a track in Audacity and recording from an external mic.
What do you tell to Start Monitoring? Audacity cannot enable monitoring while playing.
Have you tried setting Audacity playback to the UCG but setting “Listen to this device” for the UCG to UCG? I don’t know why that would be necessary. I would have though UCG would automatically monitor the guitar input.
You should be able to connect active or powered speakers to the headphones port of UCG.
Gale