Sharing computers with multi-channel sound or voice chat

[Bidmaron]

Black, Trenloe, or anyone who uses multi-channel sound or voice chat:

Do any of you face the situation where more than one player must share a computer?

You need to be able to use more than one pair of headphones in this situation to keep sound from feeding back through the mics. I suppose the players could share a microphone easily enough, however.

It seems like there are several choices:
1. Use a headphone splitter for the sound to the player(s).
2. Use a software tool or sound card driver so you can make the jack on the back of the computer and on the front two different inputs.
3. Use multiple USB headphones? (does that work?)

Has anyone ever split to more than two headphones?
What if you want to use headset mics? Can you use a splitter as a mixer?

[damned]

what about a usb and a bluetooth headset?
havent tried - just a thought...

[damned]

what about a usb and a bluetooth headset?
havent tried - just a thought...

Doh! Just saw you had listed the option of 2 USB headsets which would be the same thing.
One other thing you might have to do is launch 2 instances of teamspeak and pair each instance with a specific headset.

[Trenloe]

I'd recommend trying one mic that both people use. In one of my games 2 players usually sit across the table from each other and they usually have to keep muting/un-muting to make sure we don't get pickup from both mics.

But, you would need to have 2 headsets (as you state above). If you have 2 wired headsets (3.5mm jacks) see about using a splitter for the audio out. It might be worth getting a single desktop microphone for both to use. You could then experiment with using either push-to-talk or fine tuning voice activation.

[saithan]

I myself use voice meter with their vb-cable. on their site they have video instructions for seting up more than one mic.
https://vb-audio.pagesperso-orange.fr/Voicemeeter/index.htm

[Bidmaron]

Soon one of my players will be adding a second on his computer, hence my question.

[Trenloe]

Soon one of my players will be adding a second on his computer, hence my question.
A second ???

[Bidmaron]

Excuse me - he will be adding a second player at his computer.

[Trenloe]

I don't think there's an ideal setup. You'll probably need some form of push-to-talk or muting of the mic/s so only one person is heard and everyone else doesn't hear the noise when the players swap the keyboard and mouse. You might get some mileage with a headset with a mute switch. The 2 players will have to be quite diligent in their use of mute etc.

Also, you'll probably want to designate one player as the primary who will do a lot of the "everyone make perception checks" for both of the PCs, you don't want to be swapping the keyboard/mouse all the time.

[Bidmaron]

As cheap as computers are these days, the best thing is just to use a computer for each person, but the player(s) believe it will help the social experience if they are sharing a workstation.

[Trenloe]

As cheap as computers are these days, the best thing is just to use a computer for each person, but the player(s) believe it will help the social experience if they are sharing a workstation.
They're not a couple by any chance?

[Dakadin]

I used a conference mic for a situation where 2 people were remote while the core group of 5 were all at the same location. The 5 that were local all had headphones and we just left the mic on. It kept the remote people included in the general banter that they were missing when everyone had their own mics.

[Bidmaron]

Dakadin: What kind of splitter did you use to drive 5 headphones (or were they on separate computers)?

Trenloe: I could see a couple saying that, but, no, its my brother (long time player) and his son.

[Dakadin]

That was with 5 separate computers but I have done 2 people on one computer using a headphone splitting adapter that I bought for a few dollars.

[Bidmaron]

Thanks, Dakadin.

[Blacky]

The easiest way is probably an USB Headset (with microphone of course). Player A use the regular (USB or not) headset, player B use the new USB headset.

Why USB? Apart from it being simpler to set up, it include its own “audio chipset”. Meaning you can on the computer say this instance of that software use audio chipset A for player A, and this other instance uses audio chipset B for player B.

But check each and every last software you intend to use. In theory, any software that handle audio should have an option to choose which hardware to output the audio, and most software should handle multiple instances.

Since I'm guessing player B won't spend his life on someone else's computer, buying a headset won't be lost, he will need it with his future computer.

Nevermind, that way you'll get problems with push to talk (or any kind of voice input detection). So I concur, headsets for both players but one table microphone is probably the best.

Or, use another computer like device, like a Smartphone to handle VOIP for the second player.

[Bidmaron]

Thanks, Blacky. I was hoping you'd weigh in.