Discord, music and the death of the bots

[Nexos]

«The bot is dead, long live the bot!»

Now that Google decided to shut down our favorite music-streaming Discord bots (Groovy, Rhytm etc...), how are you folks managing to keep your music and ambience going on in your campaigns? Without any valid streaming alternatives, I was considering falling back to Sinusbot local streaming and pair it with something like Soundpad (https://tabletopaudio.com/soundpad.html), but I'm open to ideas.

[Xydonus]

I use teamspeak for my streaming needs. I would prefer to use Discord but it's far too fiddly. I might look into something called pipeline that apparently lets you stream via bots, but I've heard it can also be fiddly to use.

With teamspeak, I have VLC (Virtual Line Cables) setup which you can download and install easy enough. Then it's a case of setting up your sound and getting a separate instance of teamspeak up. Been using this method since forever and other than the occasional hiccup, it works fine. Can play any sound I want and my players can independently turn down the volume of the second instance if they wish.

[Dudin]

It takes more work as you will need sounds downloaded on your local computer, but I still think RPGSounds on steam is a great music/sound streamer. It has very solid sound board capabilities and can be used to make ambience tracks or just play single tracks. You host listening sections from the app and players simple need to go to a URL the app generates to listen.

[anathemort]

I use Discord audio pipe (https://github.com/QiCuiHub/discord-audio-pipe/) coupled with a virtual audio cable (https://vb-audio.com/Cable/index.htm), the combination of which allows you to connect a bot to Discord from your local computer and stream media to your voice channel. This has the added benefit of keeping the music stream as a separate client so other people can manage the volume as they like. With this setup, you can't stream directly from YT/Spotify/etc but there are other tools you can use to download those media files should you so choose.

[Nylanfs]

This post will be of interest to you. :) (https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?21761-Playing-Aids&p=182730&viewfull=1#post182730)

[Laerun]

@gwydion has provided many audio solutions over the years, and he has recently given newer audio solutions via YouTube. There are several videos less than six months old! There is also more intermediate knowledge showcases on audio solutions on YouTube online in regards to Fantasy Grounds.
One of the future features on the long-term roadmap for Unity was/is a sound solution.
Idea Informer: (Vote!) https://fgapp.idea.informer.com/proj/?ia=135356
https://www.youtube.com/c/LordGwydion/videos

[Mytherus]

Yeah i read on some discord servers people were quite upset at this change. I use audiopipe and that still works fine. I get a lot of music from YouTube but i don't stream it. I record it with audacity to an mp3 then i either upload to battlebards for my soundboard s or i play it straight through audiopipe to discord. Sound is stereo and very high quality (about as high as you can get with discord) theres no pops or hisses so it works.

[Diezel]

I use Discord audio pipe (https://github.com/QiCuiHub/discord-audio-pipe/) coupled with a virtual audio cable (https://vb-audio.com/Cable/index.htm), the combination of which allows you to connect a bot to Discord from your local computer and stream media to your voice channel. This has the added benefit of keeping the music stream as a separate client so other people can manage the volume as they like. With this setup, you can't stream directly from YT/Spotify/etc but there are other tools you can use to download those media files should you so choose.

This was extremely easy. I just keep the files local and have a playlist in VLC player for our session. Thanks, this was the last thing to figure out to replace the few functionalities I still wanted from Roll20.

[Xemit]

I just set up using Stream Deck to allow me to manually trigger sound effects, and then Voicemeeter Banana configured to do the mixing. It does take some fiddling to get it set up, but then just works.

Used it on a session last Thursday, and was a blast to add the foley sound effects and some ambient sound. Our next session is tomorrow, and it should work even better as I made some further adjustments to the Discord setting. The auto input sensitivity level is too slow responding and doesn't adjust level well when the transition from my talking to just the ambient sounds. Set it to a manual level and the effect levels adjusted to just above that point. That way some of the background noise cancellation still works right.

Only got my Stream Deck last Wednesday, and I'm enjoying using it for this, and many more things to come.

[*Neuro*]

for me, mortal, I am waiting for FGU to implement some sort of audio streaming built in.

Is it too difficult?

Will it ever happen? Come on we are in 2022, we have now the sound of dice rolling.

Would be nice to have at least some integration with Spotify, or the like without players having to download this and that and becoming complicated.

[SmokeMeowt]

I bit the bullet and realized that sound was integral to me having fun running sessions, so I went with Syrinscape Online Player and a SuperSyrin subscription ($22 every 2 months). Access to hundreds of thousands of high quality sounds, and I own 188 of them after maintaining the subscription for a little over a year. Combine this with the AudioOverseer extension and I'm setting up entire sessions scene-by-scene as well as soundboards for each individual character to use within Fantasy Grounds Unity.

[Nylanfs]

The problem is division of resources. There are already solutions to this, Smiteworks would likely have to hire (or contract a dev) for just the sounds to get it worked right, and they would still be developing tech that already exists, so why spend the resources on it.