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Lessons over FaceTime


flaxholmelis
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I am currently having my bass lessons over FaceTime. The problem we are having is that the audio to me is muted if I use the mic, ie make the slightest noise, while my tutor is speaking and vice versa. Does anyone know if this is a software or a hardware issue? I realise it's probably to reduce the chance of feedback etc, however I haven't noticed it while group chatting with my kids over Messenger.  We are going to try Messenger for our next lesson, but we both have Macs and it involves logging into Google as Safari does not support video on Messenger - not a big problem, if it works, but we were hoping to be able to play pieces together as normal.  My tutor has tried Skype (unstable) and Zoom (most stable platform but still cuts out) with other pupils. Just wondering what other people's experiences have been, as I don't particularly want to download and try each of the 100s of platforms available out there, especially if it's a hardware thing.

Cheers

Edited by flaxholmelis
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Not a stupid question at all!

Skype, Facetime, Zoom etc. are optimised for conveying speech and will actively try to suppress what they consider to be background noise (this can include bass playing!) which can result in the sound cutting in and out; there are settings in Zoom which can alleviate this but I'm not sure about the others.

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1 hour ago, Steve Woodcock said:

Not a stupid question at all!

Skype, Facetime, Zoom etc. are optimised for conveying speech and will actively try to suppress what they consider to be background noise (this can include bass playing!) which can result in the sound cutting in and out; there are settings in Zoom which can alleviate this but I'm not sure about the others.

This exactly, I have been using Zoom for all my teaching for the last couple of weeks and it has been working a treat. Much better than Skype

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1 hour ago, dudewheresmybass said:

Can’t seem to find those controls. 
where might I be able to ? 
@fretmeister

PC or Mac is the same.

 

When the meeting starts you'll see a little mic icon on the bottom left corner. Click the arrow next to it, then audio settings. That brings up a pop-up. ADVANCED will be on the bottom right on the pop-up

 

Then you can see the audio processing options. Disable the top 2. Can leave the echo cancellation at auto.

 

 

Only on PC and Mac - option not available on tablet / phone.

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The lesson over Zoom was very good  - much better than FaceTime and apparently much better than Skype, although I've never used Skype for video myself.  The picture was very clear and the sound was also good. I did disable the ambient/background noise filters and it seemed to work pretty much.  Latency is, as we thought, still a problem - we tried to play something together, but there is about 1 sec delay - so sounds great to one person, but not the other! In the end I played the relevant track on my laptop and played over it and Simon could hear both together well enough. That will have to do for now.  

I did have a quick look at NinJam that someone suggested. Probably no good for a lesson situation, but could work for getting a group of people playing together. I wonder if anyone on here has tried it, seeing as it seems we're going to have get used to isolation for a while yet.

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Have a look at   https://audiomovers.com/

It's a super-low latency plugin for your DAW, which streams audio into remote browsers.

My brother has been using it for teaching and it works as advertised.

Can be used in parallel with Skype or Zoom.

AAX, AU, VST, VST3

OS X (64 bit only)
Pro Tools 12,2019,2020
Cubase 9.5-10.5, LogicPro X, Ableton Live 9.5/10

Windows
Pro Tools 12,2019,2020
Cubase 9.5-10.5, Ableton Live 9.5/10

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