After a lot of experimentation, the v2 of the guide I’ve previously written here is ready as I can no longer edit the first one. I considered all feedback and consolidated all into a single set of steps. Thanks a lot to @nzmetal and @adi_mrok for battle-testing the first one which allowed me to improve it.
Who is this guide for?
- If you do not want to use OBS or could not figure it out like me
- If you want to capture your microphone and guitar sound through your audio interface
- If you want to use backing tracks, plugins and effects
- If you are on Windows and Ableton Live
It should work for other operating systems and DAWs too but I haven’t tested it. If you are not using Ableton, you would need to replicate these settings on your DAW.
Requirements
- Audio interface to capture vocals and external instruments
- Speakers other than what your audio interface is outputting to listen to other people on Zoom. This can be your laptop’s or computer’s normal speakers. Make sure your microphone does not capture this sound.
Steps
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Install the Virtual Cable from this page.
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Install ASIO Drivers.
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Launch Ableton Live.
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Open ASIO settings from your Windows Task Bar (bottom right corner):
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For your Audio Interface activate both Out and In. For VB-Audio Virtual Cable only activate Out. Turn off everything else:
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Input your guitar and mic from different channels and set monitoring to In or Auto for both:
You can add as many instruments, pre-recorded audio or backing tracks as you want. Make sure to set monitoring to Auto on all of them.
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In Ableton Live, go to Options > Preferences > Audio and choose ASIO4ALL v2:
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Click Output Config and active the 3/4 channels:
Please note that 3/4 only becomes active after you activate both Outs on Asio (Step 5 above). With this setup, 1/2 becomes the USB (Audio Interface) out, and 3/4 becomes the virtual cable.
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Back to Ableton’s Session View, add a new Audio track. Set its Audio From to Master , Audio To to 3/4 , Monitor to In :
This will capture the output from the Master track (we are using the master track to hear ourselves from our audio interface) and send it to the Virtual Cable for Zoom to capture.
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Open Zoom.
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In Zoom, open Settings > Audio.
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Set your speaker to your laptop’s or computer’s normal speakers (other people’s speaking and playing) from, and set your microphone as the virtual cable. Also set the Audio Profile settings to what’s displayed in the image:
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When you join the video call, do not forget to turn on Original Sound for Musicians from the top left corner of the call window:
That’s it. You can now perform in Ableton and Zoom should be capturing the Audio.
) this will be my first thing I will look at to sort out issues.
