Performing over Zoom

thecolourbox

Hi all

Anybody been doing streams via Zoom? I've signed up to do a charity fund raise Christmas music thing and they are intending to do it live over zoom, only a few songs each person. They are quite adamant they want it live rather than pre recorded and broadcast.

I've not really used Zoom to be honest but have used others similar. Presumably I could just use my normal recording usb interface and select the as the sound input on there?

It would only be me solo with my keyboard, straight into the interface (mic and line in)

Cheers
Matt

Grangousier

Short answer is yes.

Long answer is: I've been doing a singers meet-up every monday, and have settled into using an electric into my H&K amp, then a line from that to my interface, with a mic on another channel of the same interface. The only thing is getting the balance right (the mic picks up the sound of the amp too, so the amp DI needs to be a bit quieter than you'd think), so do a few checks first (for example, record a sample song on another app to make sure the balance is OK). 

The most important thing is to set up Zoom properly for performance - it's designed to filter out anything that isn't speech which means that guitars (and, I expect) keyboards can end up sounding very strange. A quick search threw up this page - https://www.musicrepo.com/zoom-music-mode/#h-high-fidelity-music-mode-in-zoom - which is a bit cluttered, but seems to contain all the information you'd need and is fairly up to date (Zoom upgraded the audio recently, so make sure you have the latest version).

Actually, the most important thing is to make sure you are connected to the internet as solidly as possible, preferably with an ethernet cable or failing that being near the router.

thecolourbox

Brilliant thank you that's helpful, I'll have a read of that web page as well as the potential problem you mention is similar to that which I've experienced when using Teams on my mobile for work.

I'll be playing a keyboard as accompaniment because I suspect they'll be over run with guitar strumming singers so piano sounds will make a better impression, so no need to worry about spillover as you might with a guitar. I just put one earphone in for the piano in my left ear then use my right to hear my singing. It worked when I did an online festival thing in the summer, though that was on a pre recorded video so less Zoom Roulette involved.

I will probably be broadcasting from my living room where the Xmas tree will be etc so the router will be nearby and therefore Ethernet connection is no problem.

Thank you

Lestratcaster

I do guitar lessons on Zoom and its taken me a few months to figure out how to get the best possible sound, as mentioned above, its not designed for music, more for work meetings and conference calls.

I started off the old school way, USB mic and just having the live room sound picked up by that. Had to play music off another device out of a bluetooth speaker again picked up by the USB mic. For a few months it worked. You have to enable original mic sound however and disable the background/intermittent noise suppression otherwise when I played my guitar along with music it'd cut off and gate it.

Then in August I got myself a Focusrite 8i6 and hooked everything up to that, guitar signal out of my Kemper into the analogue port on the front of the interface, and the other one had an xlr mic plugged in for my speaking voice. There I could control both signals with one device. I had a more direct signal but I think I need some form of external mixer thing to mix before it hits Zoom, I'm still playing around with this.
Then for audio I just play off Spotify/YouTube etc and use the share computer audio function. Again mixing levels is tricky as originally the backing track was way too loud but I just turn the slider down in Windows 10 volume settings. It balances out better and it's worked this way for a few months now.

There's probably a few things I can do better but it works at the moment. Oh and I 2nd the advice to use ethernet or sit near the router. Shoddy or weak internet can affect the quality no matter how much fancy equipment you have.