If you manage to figure it out Serhat that would be quite handy for me actually! As at the moment I struggle with Reaper->OBS->Zoom, for some reason during my last performance audio quality was awful! However I am still yet to test @jkahn advice about changing power mode on my laptop, which btw JK while plugged in turns out I was on battery saving mode all the time! Very bizarre, wonder if that will solve my issue?
Open Mic Sound Setup Guide - How to Set Up DAW To Work With Zoom On Windows Without OBS And For Free
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@adi_mrok I almost got it to work! For some reason, Zoom is not picking up midi tracks from Ableton but it is picking up everything else while I can monitor myself from the speakers. I’ll have to look at midi later.
I’ll update the guidelines later when I’m confident with everything but for now, here is how:
On Asio, choose both the USB out (for monitoring) and the virtual cable (to send to zoom) as outputs:
Go to Ableton Audio settings. It will now show additional output options, choose 3/4 as well:
With this setup, 1/2 becomes the USB (Audio Interface) out, and 3/4 becomes the virtual cable.
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 track will take the sound from the master track and will send a copy of it to Virtual Cable, which Zoom will be listening to.
I tried adding a backing track as an audio file, added some VST effects to the guitar, and Zoom records all of it while I am able to listen to myself and the backing track through the speakers.
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Oh hey, good thread here.
Some time ago I spent quite a while trying to figure out how to route sound to two outputs in Ableton (i.e. a virtual ASIO device AND real ASIO device) and I don’t think you can. Unless you use something like voicemeeter like @nzmetal mentioned. I got voicemeeter working with amp sims (Amplitube, with a rocksmith cable) before getting my Focusrite and honestly I just hated it, it’s quite complicated and felt brittle. I was trying to avoid OBS and voicemeeter felt worse.
So no monitoring with this setup. To me, monitoring with effectively zero latency is essential. I use a bit of reverb on my voice because my singing sucks. Except last OM, where I configured an automatic double tracker instead of reverb.
I think Serhat’s method here works fine for connecting acoustic & mic through to Zoom via Ableton or another DAW. But… why not connect the Focusrite up to Zoom directly in that case? I guess if you want to use a DAW and set your levels / etc there, or apply reverb and don’t need to hear it.
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Adrian, battery saving mode would TOTALLY tank your audio quality! If that was on, don’t bother with the detailed tweaks I sent you - just try it without battery saver on.
BTW - last OM, In Bloom - backing track was in Ableton, minor effects set in there, via OBS. Audio quality seemed OK? So with the right setup you can definitely do backing tracks without lag and with decent quality.
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That will do it !! But in a live meeting you may get an echo if you can hear the actual Zoom audio. That screwed me up a few times even using AI ->DAW->OBS->Zoom. So bad in fact I just could not play. I got round that by declaring the PC speakers for Zoom audio out and monitored the DAW output via headphone connected to the AI.
Switching around “speaker” sources during the show was a complere pita, hence I gave up trying to use Reaper.
As for Voicemeeter/Banana eek, horrible latency when I tried that to cut out OBS.
If its more about using the DAW to check levels and not to apply FX, folks are maybe better off going this route.
https://community.justinguitar.com/t/getting-the-right-loudness-levels-and-mix/119812
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True. It would be prudent to use headphones rather than speakers.
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Yes I hope this solves the issue, if not I will revert back to your other suggestions.
@Rossco01 I’m interested in the idea of using a mixer. My cheap-chinese-focusrite-knockoff AI is fine for recording voice & acoustic from a single mic, but throw an electric guitar in the mix and it doesn’t want to know, so I foresee an upgrade in the near future; my question is, can you record electric guitar by plugging your amp into the mixer (using the line out/phones jack on the amp ) without anything blowing up? I’d find that really helpful as I can’t be doing with faffing around with VST plugins!
Yes no chance of blowing anything up. You
Might need an adapter if the mixer only has a 1/4 input but that is all. Obviously if you are taking the feed from the headphone Jack it’ll be using a cab sim in the amp but if you’re happy with the sound that’s fine. On a mixer you control the “strength” of the input using a gain control for each channel.
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I added the additional steps to enable monitoring and wrote a consolidated, v2 version of this guide here: Open Mic Ableton Live Guide v2: How to send audio to Zoom from Ableton Live without OBS
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