franckflo
February 4th, 2017, 04:58
Hi, this is really nothing new, this method has been used by the French online RPG community JdR-Virtuel for a few years (which mostly uses Fantasy Ground and Teamspeak 3 by the way). The following Youtube link explains how a GM can use Virtual Audio Cable (cheap shareware) or VA-VB (free plugin) in Windows to reroute sounds played on his PC (music, sound effects, etc) through a separate identity in Teamspeak 3. The initial setup takes about 30 minutes, then it's very easy to reuse it in further gaming sessions.
Advantages:
-- everything goes through Teamspeak
-- Separate bookmarks can include the connection info for the GM's voice and sound effect, which makes it easier to reuse without having to reconfigure everything at every session
-- Since the GM's voice and sound effects are on two separate (users), it's easy for players to control their volumes independently.
-- The method can be extended to other Audio conferencing tools (Mumble, Ventrilo, Discord, Skype), but it's a lot easier to configure with Teamspeak 3.
-- Sounds from separate sources are easily mixed together into the Sound effect channel (for example: I use Winamp for my music, Atmosphere Maker for my individual sound effects, and RPG atmosphere or Atmosphere Deluxe for my atmospheres).
Disadvantages:
-- since the GM connects twice into Teamspeak, the bandwidth usage is double, so the GM needs to have a good upload bandwidth (especially in TS channels using Opus codecs).
-- This method is only for Windows, although similar tools can be found in Linux and OSX.
Link to the turorial (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8I1jGvRosAs&list=PL2C_dUg4XrbsZAFl5N_LD_5rRAOomSQXq&ab_channel=booga1969)
Advantages:
-- everything goes through Teamspeak
-- Separate bookmarks can include the connection info for the GM's voice and sound effect, which makes it easier to reuse without having to reconfigure everything at every session
-- Since the GM's voice and sound effects are on two separate (users), it's easy for players to control their volumes independently.
-- The method can be extended to other Audio conferencing tools (Mumble, Ventrilo, Discord, Skype), but it's a lot easier to configure with Teamspeak 3.
-- Sounds from separate sources are easily mixed together into the Sound effect channel (for example: I use Winamp for my music, Atmosphere Maker for my individual sound effects, and RPG atmosphere or Atmosphere Deluxe for my atmospheres).
Disadvantages:
-- since the GM connects twice into Teamspeak, the bandwidth usage is double, so the GM needs to have a good upload bandwidth (especially in TS channels using Opus codecs).
-- This method is only for Windows, although similar tools can be found in Linux and OSX.
Link to the turorial (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8I1jGvRosAs&list=PL2C_dUg4XrbsZAFl5N_LD_5rRAOomSQXq&ab_channel=booga1969)