Gear and chain for streaming vocals, guitar and backing track over Zoom

Gear & Tools Talk đź’» Hardware, Software & Recording
1

I am looking for advice on how to chain my existing gear, or augment it with things I might be missing… so that I can (1) stream my vocals, guitar and backing track over a zoom meeting (2) Keep the gear chain as consistent as possible with how I learn and practice on my own (3) retain the ability to monitor myself through headphones, and speak or sing through my microphone.

Context: I played at yesterday’s first timers Open Mic with a “minimal” setup - acoustic guitar and vocals over an iPhone. Several other performers played and sang songs over a backing track and I want to give that a go at a future JG open mic or a lesson with a teacher. I’m not planning to do this at a bar, etc.

I’ve read through several forum topics that deal with parts of the tool chain eg which DAW, which AI etc. but couldn’t piece together my answer.

My gear:
Amps: (1) Line 6 Catalyst 60 amp with line in, line out and XLR out (2) Blues Junior - no line in, line out, has to be miked to the AI

AI: FocusRite Scarlett 2i2

DAW: LogicPro.

Microphone: AT2020 (probably need a second mic, more on that below)

Computer: MacBook Air (recent model)

When I practice playing over a backing track and record the session, I drop the backing track into Logic, and connect my guitar to either (1) the Catalyst and XLR out to the Scarlett or (2) the Blues Jr + microphone + XLR to the Scarlett.

My guess is that streaming this to a zoom open mic will need a chain that looks something like:

Vocals —> Mic1 —> 2i2 —> Logic
Guitar → Line 6 → 2i2 → Logic
(or Guitar —> Blues Jr —> Mic2 —> 2i2 —> Logic)
Logic has the backing track
Headphones go to the 2i2 for monitoring

If that’s accurate, how would I get Logic to combine 3 tracks (backing, guitar, vocals) and send the result to two places (1) headphones for monitoring (2) zoom live stream “input”.

Is there a better way to chain things and achieve the same result?

2

I would avoid mic’ing the Blues Jr for this, unless you can put it in another room or meaningfully isolate it in some way: if you use it in the same room as a vocal mic, you are probably going to get almost as much of the amp through the vocal mic as through the guitar mic.

I would go for the Catalyst, using the line out into a Audio Interface (AI).

That seems about right, and is what I would do.

You possibly only actually want the backing track going to the 2i2 for monitoring. Monitoring the guitar and vocals via the 2i2 direct monitoring will give you nearly zero latency.

Note that this tends to be the default behaviour of most DAWs: mute the stuff that’s being recorded, play back stuff that was previously recorded, so you can play along.

I don’t know Logic or, to be honest, Macs, and the way I would do this on my Linux setup probably isn’t going to be that useful to you, if I described it.

Hopefully someone who knows Macs will be along to help.

Cheers,

Keith

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I use a Mac and Waveform for DAW. My audio interface is USB out of a Helix. I have only done this a couple times, so not super familiar with all the problems.
I’m debating if I am helping or hurting with my comments and if I should hit send.

Are you using Logic to do more than just play your backing track? If you are using effects, then it complicates things because of latency in Logic.

When I use a backing track out of Waveform, the recorded guitar will come in with enough delay to be a problem. A tiny amount is the Helix. The problem is the DAW latency needed to collect the audio and process it back out to wherever is playing it back.

I would be trying to get the audio at the scarlett to sound right (it should without any fiddling) and using that is the source for the video capture.

if you don’t use effects:
The Mac has a built in mixer that allow you to mix together multiple inputs and/or outputs. I don’t know how the Scarlett output comes into the computer. You may need to mix the Scarlett USB channels into a single channel and that would be the source for the video capture. I suspect this is true, but just don’t know.

if you do use effects:
this complicates stuff. Are you applying effects on the captured audio out of only one Scarlett channel? If yes, you’d need to mix it back together with the delay intruduced by the effects (if any is significant). You’d need to mix back in all three channels you’ll care about - guitar, backing track (via Scarlett), and vocals. These I believe should be time synchronized. You’d want to turn off the mixing of the original backing track to avoid getting two of them, one from Logic (original), and one from Scarlett (via USB with latency getting it back into Logic).

You don’t need to hear the audio with the latency yourself, so you won’t have that distraction. You will need to find the adjustment to synchronize the video and audio timing.

I hope I didn’t make a mess of your thought processes here. I find dealing with playback and capture of the same stream more trouble than it is worth and just play back using a different piece of hardware if I want the backing track mixed together with my playing. Doing that means mixing the analog audio somewhere before the scarlett (you have 2 input version) or finding a way to capture from two different USB devices (something I have not figured out).

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I’m not using it for any effects.

5

That’s very helpful thanks!

6

The other option you might want to consider is OBS Studio, particularly if you aren’t recording. It includes some mixing capabilities, so you could use it to mix the vocal and guitar.

If you aren’t recording, you could play the backing track using a simple music player as an input to OBS, or it might be possible to play the backing track within OBS itself. However, the issue here is going to be monitoring, as you need to send the backing track to the audio interface, and I’m not sure how you do this with OBS (it may be possible to output the music player to the 2i2 and, simultaneously, capture it on OBS, but I don’t know if that’s possible on a Mac.

If you are recording, it may be possible to connect the DAW and OBS (again, I don’t know how you do this with a Mac). In the past a tool called Soundflower was often used for this, but I know others have used Jack Connection Kit and QJackctl.

EDIT: It looks like Soundflower is dead, but the link goes to Loopback which looks to do a similar thing.

Note that OBS is quite a complex beastie, and some people struggle with it, especially with audio on Windows, but that’s not going to affect you. If you go this route, it will require a far bit of time to experiment with different approaches. Note that, for a Zoom call, you can practice by setting up a private Zoom call for just yourself, and set Zoom to record it.

Cheers,

Keith

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Hi Ashu,

I don’t have a Mac, but I’ve been looking on a lot of PC guides to do that for the latest open mic. So I wanted to help you as a fellow 1st timer open-mic friend and watched a few Mac tutorial on Youtube to see if one had had a similar logic to what I did on PC. I did not test it but it seems to make a lot of sense. The bonus is that it seems simpler than Windows since it does not use OBS to send audio to Zoom.

  • In Logic, Track 1 : Backing Track, Track 2: Vocal Mic plugged into Focusrite, Track 3: Amp XLR plugged into Focusrite
  • Adjusts the levels with the mixer in Logic so that you can hear everything
  1. Install an audio router driver called Blackhole or Soundflower to route audio to Zoom BlackHole: Route Audio Between Apps
  2. Configure Logic DAW to output audio to multiple output device with the option “Multi-output device”.
  3. Now this time, in the Mac audio midi setup menu, create a new multi-output device which will have 2 outputs : 1) your speaker/headphone which are connected to Focusrite & 2) Blackhole.
  4. In Zoom, configure your microphone to use “Blackhole” and your speaker to use your focusrite.
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Wow thanks Mathieu, I will try that when I can and post back here. :+1:

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OBS can do this stuff.

I do it on a PC with Reaper currently. Reaper handles audio inputs and any mixing/effects if I want any.

Reaper outputs go to OBS using the ReaStream plugin. Though OBS can handle inputs directly from the Focusrite 2i2 (it gets messy with an interface that has more inputs).

I have a trigger set that when I record with OBS, it starts my backing track (which I start/stop with an AirTurn foot pedal). Because there’s a difference in latency between the direct play of the backing track and the audio from my Scarlett (via Reaper), I had to spend a lot of time fiddling to offset for it. But it’s doable. There are a bunch of easy toggles in OBS to determine what gets recorded and what gets monitored (in this screenshot, everything set to “Monitor Off” is essentially disabled, but they’re also muted elsewhere).

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Now, I only use OBS to record myself. I haven’t yet joined one of the Zoom jams. So my audio chain ends here.

I do also add video into OBS. I use an old phone with the app CAMO, and CAMO can be set as a video input in OBS. I use this instead of a webcam for a few reasons. First off it’s a field-of-view thing. I don’t like the overly-wide angle of most webcams. Using the phone, I get a narrower FOV as well as the ability to zoom and also easier control over positioning the camera. Second is overall quality. The phone captures MUCH better video quality than my external webcam attached to my PC (which is itself MUCH better quality than the webcam built into most laptops).

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10

Ashu,

I have also done similar things to what @Mustela is describing with OBS. It has caoabilities to route the different Tracks you see to different output destinations, setting up different combinations to handle many different use cases.

The only caution is that my most recent recollection is that we’d struggled to get the audio from OBS into Zoom and in sync with the video. Now it has been a good few months since I performed at an OM but if my memory serves me correctly, during soundcheck I had to take OBS out of the audio path and just picked up my AI as audio input in Zoom.

On a Windows PC (Mac may be more capable based on what @sequences shared) you need to use a virtual cable to connect OBS to Zoom. You can do worse than start with this if you want to explore use of OBS: Using OBS with an Audio Interface on Windows for streaming to send to Zoom

@TheMadman_tobyjenner Toby, your use of OBS and Zoom may be more recent than mine. What is the current state?

@Beatup6String Ashu, maybe drop some DMs to some of the people who played over a BT and see how they did it.

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11

Ashu–
I’m not recommending this, it’s just what I used (with somewhat disastrous results when I turned the volume down…).
I’m also not sure I did this correctly (enough caveats for you?) – but it is a no-cost option if you want to use Garage Band and your Scarlett Solo to play along to a backing track and send it to Zoom (or any other piece of software).

On a MacBook Air, M2, running Sequoia 15.6

  1. I downloaded BlackHole to enable multiple outputs
    it’s a piece of shareware Download - Blackhole
  2. Installed it
  3. Followed directions to set up in “Audio Midi Device” for BlackHold “Multi-Output Device”
  4. image
    image415Ă—147 20.9 KB
  5. Create a Multi Output Device
    image
    image608Ă—249 25.8 KB
  6. From Garageband, set input/output devices in settings
    image
    image574Ă—199 18.2 KB
  7. from Zoom settings, set Microphone to be Scarlet Solo.

I did notice a slight echo, so I either did something incorrectly, or that is just an artifact of this setup.

At any rate–this is a no cost way to get passable results.

AND, congrats on your open mic performance!

Even with the last minute scramble where you and the Madman Toby got your output working — while away from home — on someone else’s computer — you were calm and collected and gave us all an admirable performance!

Cheers,
Bruce

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12

David

I started replying to this today but dropped the draft, as things still a little unstable.
Given how my routes into Zoom have morphed and changed since we started, I have some input for sure. When the dust is dropping a little slower I’ll and my 0.02 Euros.
Appreciate the tag.

Like Arnie, I’ll be back.

And as Antonio Banderas said in Desperado “I was looking for simple way into Zoom but you had to do it the hard way”.

KISS to follow, may need kit. Who needs New Gear Day anyone :zany_face:

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I am not surprised about the struggle to sync OBS audio and video for zoom. It can do it, but the only way I figured out how to deal with it involved quite literally HOURS of trial-and-error video recordings. I don’t know if sending everything into Zoom would add another source of latency and if how I dealt with the latency I experienced would work the same. But it was enough of a pain that it took more than one fussing session to finally get it where I was satisfied. And until I got to that point, I was dealing with backing tracks very differently.

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