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.f...eter/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.