In the OM I’m thinking of playing the guitar on top of a backing track and using the microphone for vocals.
When I practice without microphone, I play the backing track in Audacity on the laptop with the pedal unit attached via USB. I set the audio input/output of the laptop to the pedal unit, which is connected via jack output to the FRFR speaker and a headphones output.
When I practice with the microphone, in addition to the above, I plug in the microphone to the external audio interface and plug the external audio interface via USB to the laptop. Then when I record voice in Audacity, I change the input to the external audio interface.
I haven’t found a way to get Zoom to accept more than one input signal.
Setup 1
I thought of using the external audio interface instead of the pedal unit integrated one, and plugging in the output of the pedal unit into the first input the external audio interface, and then the microphone in the second input. Then I could set the input/output audio of the laptop to the external audio interface, and connect the headphones to the corresponding output of the external audio interface. This would give me guitar + microphone in Zoom, but no backing track.
Setup 2
Wire everything up like I do when I practice, and use the FRFR speaker as audio output. Zoom will just record the room audio via the laptop microphone. This seems like the only viable option.
The “sound in the room” option is always the simplest. Although your laptop microphone quality is probably not great, because most Windows laptop microphones aren’t. Maybe use your phone, they often have better mics.
It’s not just Zoom that can only have one input signal - it’s Windows that can only have one ASIO device. The other options to get your setup working include:
Creating a virtual ASIO device to merge your two ASIO devices into one
Doing your setup 1 and using a DAW, and routing your audio through the DAW into Zoom (using VB Audio Cable, and probably OBS, which is how I did it on Windows).
They’re both pretty complicated setups, if you’re very technical that might be enough info for you to do the research.
I managed to mix the backing track to the guitar using a VB Audio cable from Voicemeeter. I noticed, however, that because of the multiple connections there is a very slight delay, which I find really annoying when playing the guitar. I’m going to use my phone mic to capture room audio for the OM. Thanks for the pointers. Now I understand a bit more about I/O in Windows .
I can’t remember how I’ve done it in the past, but delay wasn’t an issue if sound was routed via Reastream in Reaper. It was more of a complicated setup but it did the trick, I think it is somewhere under tech talk where Toby has written out the guide. Alternatively what JK said did the trick too with vb cable, I had no delays and by pc is far from brilliant.
No delays for me as well. Set your buffer in your audio interface to small. This should help, but your computer will use more power - check usage with task manager (CPU and memory). I have 5 years old PC, the peaks on both never crossed 25% and I set buffer to smallest - no lag at all. In my open mic recording, I could hear only one place where original tone (single note) was “swallowed”.
@Boris1565@adi_mrok
Thanks. I spent a couple of hours tweaking different things with the setup and couldn’t get rid of the delay. It could be that my audio interface isn’t very good (it’s only a cheap one).
I might invest in a mini mixer in the future. For now I’ll just stick to the easy option and use my time to practice playing the guitar instead.
Right, for anyone else’s benefit. I figured out how to do this, and with it, a way to record myself on video and audio at the same time, which means I will no longer have to mix audio and video separately as I’ve done up to now.
This is what I did.
A separate audio player (another laptop in my case, but it can be a phone or another device with a jack output) is connected via jack to the aux input of the multi fx unit.
The guitar is connected to the multi fx unit.
The headphones (for monitoring) are connected to the multi fx unit.
The L+R outputs of the multi fx unit are connected to the 2 inputs of the external audio interface (for stereo signal)
The audio interface is connected via USB to the laptop.
The laptop runs the Zoom meeting. Zoom is set up with speakers set to laptop speakers, which are muted, and microphone set up to the audio interface.
I start the backing track from the audio player and play the guitar. There’s no delay because I’m monitoring on the multi-fx unit.
I recorded the meeting on zoom and noticed that the audio of the backing track and the guitar sounds great.
That’s the best solution I’ve found, and one that I’ll use in OMs and also to record myself in the future.
My first try was without the additional audio interface, given the multi FX unit has one embedded, but I learnt that the digital output of the multi FX unit doesn’t include the signal from the aux input (for some bizarre reason), so I had to use the external audio interface to mix the backing track and the guitar.
I’d be glad if this helps anyone with a similar setup.
Might be worth @Richard_close2u or @DavidP moving this to a separate Tech Talk items, as it is more related to using a Backing Track, opposed to the “core” Zoom set up most folks will use. I feel its muddying the already cloudy waters but still warrants exposure for folks who want to explore the same route.
- but it helps for things like this.
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