SOUND ON SOUND

[forumuser937621]

Looking for the best solution to work with others remotely during these times... specifically being able to stream DAW playback in high-quality while video-chatting.

I've found:

https://audiomovers.com/wp/
https://soundwhale.com/
https://www.sessionwire.com/
https://www.landr.com/en/sessions/

The last one is free so I gave it a try. Appears to be in beta but does seem to do the job well. Haven't stress-tested it as of yet.

Any recommendations/experiences to share?

Thanks!
Lou

[Kwackman]

This might be of interest.
https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques ... work-music

[shufflebeat]

I've found Voicemeeter useful for hooking up audio interface with mic of choice, DAW for playback and Zoom and/or OBS.

I like their payment model as well.

https://vb-audio.com/Voicemeeter/index.htm

[The Elf]

Despite all these clever tools I've pretty much concluded that the simplest way to collaborate is still a file sharing system, such as Dropbox, or the like (I use a NAS to which I allocate shares to collaborators).

[Matt Houghton]

There are also some DAW-specific tools too, eg Steinberg's VST Connect Pro.

But like Elf, for simple collaborative music projects where the people on both 'ends' can make competent recordings without guidance, I find that shared files and folders are the easiest and most productive way to go. Obviously that doesn't prevent you having regular/frequent feedback sessions via phone, Zoom, email or whatever in between.

[The Elf]

There are also some DAW-specific tools too, eg Steinberg's VST Connect Pro.

I've tried a few times to get that working, but it is mind-bending. Steinberg have given it the ability to do an 'auto setup', but those settings don't fit for my purposes and trying to untangle it all is a nightmare.

I'd love to hear from anyone using it successfully, because to me it's just so complicated it's not worth the effort.

[Luke W]

It's not the sort of thing I do very often so I might be missing all sorts of handy things that the dedicated services offer, but I've also never had an issue with just sending session files back and forth via a standard file sharing platform like Dropbox etc.

[Sam Spoons]

I did a couple of collaborations with a drummer mate during the first lockdown (one is on the forum album) and we used a shared dropbox folder. As he is not good with the tech I set up a Reaper project with two tracks, a guide track and a blank drum track, so he just had to load the project, hit record and play. When he had a take he was happy with he hit save and the rest was up to me.

It took a while to get his recording and monitoring system up an running over zoom but once done it worked well.

[forumuser937621]

There are also some DAW-specific tools too, eg Steinberg's VST Connect Pro.

But like Elf, for simple collaborative music projects where the people on both 'ends' can make competent recordings without guidance, I find that shared files and folders are the easiest and most productive way to go. Obviously that doesn't prevent you having regular/frequent feedback sessions via phone, Zoom, email or whatever in between.

Agreed. I feel that there is no substitute for file sharing at this time really. That being said, I do think that with the right tool, "regular feedback sessions" as you say with the ability to stream DAW playback in HQ would save time and diminish total back-and-forth / 'WIP bouncing'... which can add-up I find.

The sessions tool from landr appears to offer that and from initial tests - it does 'sound good', but I can't be sure of the true resolution. If anyone has experience using it let me know - I will use until they paywall it for now. ;)

Thanks for everyone's input!

[The Bunk]

I did a couple of collaborations with a drummer mate during the first lockdown (one is on the forum album) and we used a shared dropbox folder. As he is not good with the tech I set up a Reaper project with two tracks, a guide track and a blank drum track, so he just had to load the project, hit record and play. When he had a take he was happy with he hit save and the rest was up to me.

Pretty much exactly what I've been doing with my remote collab colleagues. We've also used Soundcloud for transferring and / or demo-ing purposes which has also worked perfectly well, although I seem to recall someone here a while ago suggesting that Soundcloud might not be ideal?? Can't say I've noticed an issue with it.

[peddlebreaker]

Hey all.

We are not for profit CIC that primarily support children, young people and adults with additional needs, learning difficulties and mental health problems through music. During these 'lockdowns' we had to convert around 85% of our mentoring, collaboration and audio work online. As a practitioner myself the first thing I did was to read all and everything SOS put in their mag's about remote music collaboration and the articles were SO helpful!

I have found that using my phone or pad to call the participants via Zoom and then plugging in the output of that device to our mixing console, we are able to use the ListenTo plugin from Audio Movers (as recommended by SOS) to stream the output with very little latency for the person at the other end. We are then able to record the users voice through their device or microphone directly into our DAW through the preamps/console. We can also record any apps they are using such as synths.

We are able to 'share' our screen because we mount the device we are calling the user from on a handy stand pointed at the DAW machine in the studio so they are still getting a proper experience.

It's amazing because are still able to support people in releasing new musical works week after week. The quality of the recordings is not the best (unless the other person has a decent microphone, and we have done proper remote reocdings with great results thanks to SOS) but it's doable, useable and more importantly enjoyable and rewarding for the participants. It's actually been a life saver for many people, literally! Tackling this isolation is so important.

It still doesn't beat being together nodding heads and tapping feet in a sweaty control room for hours though:)

There are lots of examples of how we are doing this here - www.beatthis.org