drummerrhys Posted December 5, 2008 Share Posted December 5, 2008 Hi chaps...I am over the next couple of weeks putting together pieces of audio in my house (using pro tools) for a show I am doing up in coventry next month.The thing is the director wants a daily report and to listen to the audio I have put together...I was thinking that best way to do this would be to set up a skype link..my only issue is that I would want to play the audio I have created (e.g. straight from pro tools) and not have it go out of my speakers and back in through my mic before he hears it on the other end, as the quality is usually terrible. (by terrible I mean 'fuzzy') So does anyone know if there is a way I can route the audio directly to skype so it goes 'straight down the line' Or perhaps there is another piece of software that could do this for me? Many thanks,Rhys Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MarkPAman Posted December 5, 2008 Share Posted December 5, 2008 Can you not just attach an MP3 to an email? Obviously there's a loss of quality, but it should be OK for a daily update type of thing. Or have I misunderstood? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bh00 Posted December 5, 2008 Share Posted December 5, 2008 Most soundcards have the ability to route "stereo mix" as a recording device.This means you can setup Skype's "Microphone" to be whatever is coming out of the computer's speakers. The only issue with this, is if he talks he will hear himself come back through Skype (unless you mute his microphone for the time when you play the music).For a quick guide on how to do it in Vista, look here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bobbsy Posted December 5, 2008 Share Posted December 5, 2008 Unless the director is technically very savvy he's not going to understand that the poor quality on Skype isn't representative of the work you're doing. I'd either go with Mark's idea of emailing MP3 files or else use one of the many free file hosting sites to upload files that he can download at his leisure. Bob Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mac.calder Posted December 5, 2008 Share Posted December 5, 2008 Virtual Audio Cable - http://www.harmony-central.com/Software/Wi...udio-cable.html - This is an older version which has been released for $0 - the real version is not that expensive, and I suggest if you are going to use it frequently to upgrade to 4.09 (the thing was basically rewritten and works much better) - The creator Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
willpower Posted December 5, 2008 Share Posted December 5, 2008 If you have two sound cards (ie external & internal), I know it's possible to use one as the audio input/output for Skype, and the other as the sound card for the rest of the computer and/or the programme your using. If you plug the output from pro tools/the rest of the computer into the input of the sound card being used for skype, it'll work fine - I've done so before! (Also very useful when engineering a live gig and recording a separate mix at the same time - send it to someone via t'internet, get them to have a listen and tell you what you can improve in an isolated situation from what you can hear of the live mix!) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paulears Posted December 5, 2008 Share Posted December 5, 2008 It will work fineIf you mean audio comes out the other end, yep - I'd agree, but the quality from my own experiments is pretty poor. It should have a top limit of around 12K, but the dynamic range after all the compression is not that good, and signal to noise is variable - with the best being just about acceptable. In no case does internet audio approach even mp3 quality from my own tests. There are also frequent strange noises or even ghost sounds - delayed and low level. If I wanted somebody to judge the quality level of what I was producing, a system that has the ability to reduce quality on demand as network resources change is undesirable - you have no idea what comes out the other end. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
richardtank Posted December 5, 2008 Share Posted December 5, 2008 Don't go buying anything as it can be done free just as bh00 has stated.The quality of Skype really isn't all that good- even just for voice so I wouldn't use it as a representative demo. It really depends on how tech-savy the director is. You could go ahead and create your own radio station (depending on your bandwidth limits) using winamp and shoutcast. If the director understands about the quality in the audio being much poorer via Skype then it's fairly easy to just set your 'Sound Recording' device to "Wave", "Stereo Mix", or "What U hear" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dbuckley Posted December 5, 2008 Share Posted December 5, 2008 In the professional world this conundrum has been solved for years by using ISDN, but I'm sufficiently out of touch to not know if an IP solution using broadband is used yet. However, what I would say is that any of the voice optimised codecs are guaranteed to make your non-voice audio sound terrible. Least bad would be emailling (or providing a download point for) MP3s, which will just sound a bit flat and lacking in top. Jangly sounds, in particular, get well rogered by MP3 encoding... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mervaka Posted December 6, 2008 Share Posted December 6, 2008 streaming is totally pointless in this case. I'd say save it as a timestamped file, get some webspace, upload it, then email him a link to the file. email isn't designed for large attachments, and is generally quite frustrating for the receiver. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Adam Posted December 6, 2008 Share Posted December 6, 2008 myspace. It's totally free, dead simple to use and then you can just delete it afterwards. It also saves you putting your unfinished works into the hands of other people if you don't allow downloads. If you do, the director can have the tracks on their PC in mins. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ian H Posted December 6, 2008 Share Posted December 6, 2008 If you both have Skype... just send a file using skype chat simple and quick Ian H Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChrisBogg Posted December 6, 2008 Share Posted December 6, 2008 Apples Mobile Me is great for just dropping audio files into your public folder and then the director can download them and play them. A little more hassle but worth it for the quality issues with other ways. Chris Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sound Man Posted December 6, 2008 Share Posted December 6, 2008 I have used ADrive's online storage in the past when I need to make documents available for other people to download. You use the share option from which you can e-mail them a link directly to the file. There is 50GB of free storage available. Click here for website David Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djmatthill Posted December 7, 2008 Share Posted December 7, 2008 Its easy. Simply download http://www.nch.com.au/streaming/ broadwave and you can stream your sound samples etc directly from pro tools to the the Stage managers PC. Its very simple software that once installed will tell you what web address to give to the stage manager. He simply types the address in to his web browser and ,,, thats it!!!! You get a months Free TRIAL on the software too ... Matt Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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