Ambiance

[Nickademus]

Saw this on a PFS site. Just browsing its features, this looks very handy.

Ambient music (https://www.ambient-mixer.com/)

[Mask_of_winter]

Nice! Thanks for sharing.

I sometimes run games and share my shoutcast stream. I play mp3 files through winamp and the shoutcast server streams it to however clicks on the url. Once on that page they can choose to listen from that page or with their favorite media player.

[Honken]

I have considered getting a small pod cast setup with a small mixer, so i can play music and ambience while I GM over FG. This was a good site, thanks for the share.

/H

[Blacky]

I do music and ambiance over VOIP, alongside my own VOIP (using Teamspeak, I connect twice to the server, one regular connexion from my microphone and one another from my audio players).

[Trenloe]

I do music and ambiance over VOIP, alongside my own VOIP (using Teamspeak, I connect twice to the server, one regular connexion from my microphone and one another from my audio players).
This is what I do for the majority of my games. It allows me to listen to exactly what the players are hearing and allows the players to adjust the volume of the music channel themselves so that they can hear everyone talking but have the music in the backgrounds at an acceptable level. It works well...

[YAKO SOMEDAKY]

Great for climax of the campaign!

[seycyrus]

@Trenloe and @Blacky

Can either of you explain how you are accomplishing this in a bit more detail? I just got started with Teamspeak. Can you do what you guys are referring to on a private channel, or do you need to go to the FG channel?

[Blacky]

No, it can work almost anywhere. The trick is to have two Teamspeak identities pushing audio into the same channel at the same time. One identity for your voice, pulling audio from your microphone; and another identity pulling audio from your music player (or whatever).

But there is a caveat: your computer needs to have a decent audio chip, with decent driver. And since most people (including me) use very low-end audio like motherboard integrated Realtek, one would need a way to bypass this. Some add a second audio chip, with a cheap PCI audio card. Some (including me) use a software called Virtual Audio Cable (VAC) that can virtually connect anything to anything, or create a second (and third, etc.) virtual audio input and/or output.

Using VAC, I simply direct my TS ambiance identity to pull from this virtual audio output. And I use a music player (foobar in my case) to output audio to this virtual output.

I'll try to do a detailed tutorial later, but my Windows is in French so I may not have all the correct wording for the options. It sounds somewhat complex, it's not, and in finale it's probably the most elegant solution and quite effective.

[Trenloe]

Or, install the Teamspeak client on your smartphone and use your phone connected over WiFi For either voice or music/SFX on Teamspeak and use you computer for the other.

[Blacky]

Yup indeed, that could work. Still using a lot of WiFi (with its bad network quality, not all that good audio chipset, and somewhat unsure health issues) but it's an option. Although, using a tiny screen to handle your music can be problematic for some (using it for voice will just be horrible, bad quality, echoes, and so on).

If needed, I did a full tutorial using VAC (https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?20350-TUTORIAL-Using-Virtual-Audio-Cable-to-add-ambient-music-amp-noises-to-Teamspeak-gamin) (but the principle is the same for any devices).

[Trenloe]

Or, if you have a spare old laptop, use that for the music. It's what I do.

Or, use one of the many TeamSpeak plugins to play music through the same channel without the need for a second instance of the TeamSpeak client. However, I don't like this as the players can't adjust the volume of the background music/SFX separately from the volume of the GM.

[Trenloe]

(using it for voice will just be horrible, bad quality, echoes, and so on).
Just use a plugin headset/mic.

[Blacky]

Just use a plugin headset/mic.
Yup, of course.

[Yospeck]

Are you guys able to do this with a an online soundboard like the one linked in the OP? We play music over TS with a dual client all the time, just not sure how to play sounds off a webpage.

[Nickademus]

Just guessing, because it's been a while since I've done this but...

If you have a USB headset and a standard plug set of speakers (or any way to have two output devices for sound) you can go into the Windows audio settings and choose to set your web browser to output the music through your speakers and Team Speak to output through your headset. Then set Team Speak to input from the mic on your headset and manually turn the volume of your speakers to zero.

This should result in the second TS client playing the music and everyone (including you) able to adjust the volume of the music via TS. Just a theory that I'd need to play with to see if it worked. I used to do something similar with an MMO I played, sending the sound to the speakers and the voice chat to my headset. Didn't have to try to duplicate an instance of the game though. Not sure if TS will like that.

[Blacky]

It's possible with VAC, but more complex (you'll need to use repeaters to “repeat” the audio from and to you want it).

Nickademus way may works too.

Personally, I use the basic Line1 VAC feature to capture the audio I want from a webpage (using Audacity, and leaving it running 15 or 30mns if necessary) then edit it the way I want, save it as Ogg or something, and play it back using an audio player like Foobar. Got more control this way, and I'm less dependent upon a third party hosting service which can change or shutdown anytime. But that's me.