Discord and ambient/background audio...

[celestian]

The approach of using a single instance of Discord is that you can not use push-to-talk, right? Maybe I'm missing something.

I used it last night in my OotA campaign and the players loved it. I was using the Flooded Caves SoundSet and then the Ogre Battle. They never complained about the quality of sound at all.

I think the quality probably has a lot to do with your connection to the Discord server. I saw where if you change it to your region, it should improve?

Yes, you have to use voice activation for single sound source.

I've tried multiple regional servers on my own discord server. I even connected to the FG official discord server to see if that helped. Popped into a channel as myself and my Ambient bot and it still sounded like crap to me ;(

I'm not a sound snoob just to be clear... it just has a walkie-talkie quality sound.

If someone wants to let me listen to their setup on the FG server I'd love to hear... and then see how mine compares. Just PM and we can sort out discord names.

[Answulf]

The approach of using a single instance of Discord is that you can not use push-to-talk, right?

Right. When I'm the GM I don't use push-to-talk.

[mhorgunn]

Ok... is anyone else still having problems? I wonder if if it's because I didn't donate for Voicemeeter. It sets up and runs fine ... for (except for the distorted music) for a couple of hours. Seems sensitive to link to pop ups asking for donations when trying to move it around the screen.

[celestian]

Ok... is anyone else still having problems? I wonder if if it's because I didn't donate for Voicemeeter. It sets up and runs fine ... for (except for the distorted music) for a couple of hours. Seems sensitive to link to pop ups asking for donations when trying to move it around the screen.

The pop ups for donations are because they have inconveniently placed hot spots that bring it up on the app

For my voice chat it works fine but ambient/music its not but it's specifically discord. I tried it in g+ and the sound quality was much better.

I recently joined a fellow DM on the FG discord and listened to his and it was like mine so I'm pretty sure it's not just me... tho he was happy with it for his group. I just hate that the sound is so different from what I hear locally and what the players hear. It's very dramatic.

[matsunoichi]

Music and sound effects have a much wider dynamic range than the human voice, which is the frequency range VOIP apps compress/gate for to maximize sound quality whilst maintaining portability. On one-to-one calls, under the right conditions, the compression isn't that heavy, which means there's more audio data outside human vocal frequencies that aren't lost during compression. I've done this for one-on-one roleplay sessions to fairly decent effect, but as stated, the conditions have to be good.

For a group session, though, you may want to consider a separate audio stream, like a SHOUTcast server. Since you're already using the awesome VoiceMeeter, you can set up music apps and soundboards to mix, and then output to an audio broadcast tool and have all your players connect to it via the music player of their choice (so long as it can stream music; WinAMP and MediaMonkey work well for PC, although I actually prefer using VLC for server-based music streaming, and it works on Windows, Mac, and Linux).

Broadcast software options:

• butt is simple, lightweight, and works on Windows, Mac, and Linux
• RadioDJ is rather elaborate, but is heavy on the features for queuing music, bumpers, and on-demand soundboard effects.
• Even VLC can be configured to stream audio ala the SHOUTcast/Icecast standard. There is little this awesome app can't do with multimedia.
• The aforementioned SHOUTcast and the open Icecast also work.
• There are a dearth of other available options in this category.

I love adding the extra ambiance to a game session, so kudos to you for trying this. Hope this helps!

[celestian]

Even VLC can be configured to stream audio ala the SHOUTcast/Icecast standard. There is little this awesome app can't do with multimedia.

I had no idea VLC could stream. I'm going to try it out! Thanks for the heads up.

For those of you like me that didn't know it could do this and want to know how I found this.

https://www.howtogeek.com/118075/how...ork-using-vlc/

[Nalfien]

You guys should use Discord bots to handle you music and sounds. No virtual audio cables to mess with.

[celestian]

You guys should use Discord bots to handle you music and sounds. No virtual audio cables to mess with.

The bots don't allow for finesse of sound like the roar of a dragon (without long pauses at least). I also like to play a series of ambient sounds all at once (wind + crickets + trees creaking) and none of that can be done via bots.

If all you want is fairly static background music it works great tho.

[matsunoichi]

Yep, that ought to do it.

And for anyone who may wonder why it's only streaming a specific file when following those instructions from How To Geek, you're supposed to select VoiceMeeter's output under the Capture Device tab (providing that's what you're using to mix the audio sources). Just remember to remove your microphone from the mix in VoiceMeeter, or there may be an echo. lol

[celestian]

Yep, that ought to do it.

And for anyone who may wonder why it's only streaming a specific file when following those instructions from How To Geek, you're supposed to select VoiceMeeter's output under the Capture Device tab (providing that's what you're using to mix the audio sources). Just remember to remove your microphone from the mix in VoiceMeeter, or there may be an echo. lol

Re: VLC streaming configuration

So I've been experimenting with this and unable to get audio on the stream side (player side). The stream startup using http seems to go ok. I configured to capture from device (I used cable A) and then launched another VLC to play the audio that would go to the capture device. I also had to setup a port mapping. Used port 8888 to 8888 to local IP from outside IP... setup similar for FG and other things but no joy.

I've even tried to pickup the sounds from a pc on the local network (that can talk directly to the local/private ip) and I don't hear anything. It doesn't complain about connection issues or anything... just 00:00 timer and a yellow smudge on the progress bar.

Do you have any tips?