How to share screen and audio for collaboration?

Vegard Rafteseth
Vegard Rafteseth Member Posts: 3 Member
edited October 22 in Tech Talks
A woman using Battery 4 on a MacBook

Hi there!

I couldn't really find anything useful on this topic, so I'm trying my luck. I've been trying back and forth with different settings, but I'm really struggling here.

I have a friend who I would like to call, share my screen (DAW) and share my audio. But either the sound is completely gone, or the audio-quality is just horrible.

I have Komplete Audio 6 which is my main output. I'm trying to use Microsoft Teams for the sharing part. Do you guys have any tips or ideas on how to do this properly? :( How do people share and collab really?

Br

Vegard

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Comments

  • LostInFoundation
    LostInFoundation Member Posts: 4,477 Expert
    edited July 2023

    A really reliable way isn’t available.

    There are some DAWs that have plugins that allow for a “live” collaboration, like Cubase with its VST Transit, but avoiding latency it’s almost impossible.

    What can be done is working together sharing the sessions and the files created (also in real time). Studio One allows this with its Sphere Collaboration (now Studio One +), but playing together is still a no.

    Also other plugins (some of them also available on iPad/iPhone) allow to connect with someone who is far away, but as I said, latency is something you’ll have to deal with

  • Vegard Rafteseth
    Vegard Rafteseth Member Posts: 3 Member

    Thanks!

    Man.. this sounds like a huge opportunity for the right heads, to crack this code and truly come up with something you can collaborate on..

    Anyways, for my current needs, I'm not looking for something that let's my partner join in on editing in my DAW or something like that. All I really want is to have a video call with him, us talking, me sharing my screen, him hearing the audio from the DAW (with good quality), while I do all the editing. Must be something that can be done?

  • PoorFellow
    PoorFellow Moderator Posts: 4,894 mod
    edited August 2023

    Personally I would try the "Screen Sharing between Devices with TeamViewer" as first try ! It's free for private use : https://www.teamviewer.com/en/info/screen-sharing/

    If there is a problem sharing audio then check that it's enabled : How to Enable Audio in TeamViewer on Windows 10 (and More Tips) : https://www.guidingtech.com/enable-audio-teamviewer-windows-10/

    I personally have used Teamviewer in general for years and general quality of the app by now is really good (not that it ever were poor) ! I have however always used it for 'remote control' purposes and never used the "Screen Sharing between Devices with TeamViewer" as in the way suggested here so I am afraid that I can not offer any insight on the use for that particular scenario ! But Teamviewer also has a 'community' : https://community.teamviewer.com/English/

  • LostInFoundation
    LostInFoundation Member Posts: 4,477 Expert
    edited August 2023
    https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/87128#Comment_87128

    If you are not trying to “play together”, anything mentioned could work (even allowing him to edit, this is not a problem: editing something and seeing it appear just one second later shouldn’t cause you any inconvenience ). The real problem is with audio: a guy playing guitar in one place and the audio from the session coming from another guy will never be perfectly synced.

    There are many solution for accessing a computer from a distance. One that I use is Splashtop Remote, but it’s free only when using something under the same wifi. To access a computer from another place it has a monthly/annual subscription.


    Edit: I think that if the “right heads” had a way to eliminate latency in audio transmission, they would have already done it ☺️

  • JesterMgee
    JesterMgee Member Posts: 2,971 Expert

    Your issue in every situation will be latency, there is no current solution that can get around the laws of physics. You can screen share or video chat but audio and movements will be delayed even a little and trying to remote send midi is possible but again the round trip will make it unusable.

    Google we’re never able to solve it for Stadia so doubt it’s going to work for something like this.

  • Vegard Rafteseth
    Vegard Rafteseth Member Posts: 3 Member

    Actually, we managed to get something "working", although a bit troublesome.

    I used whereby.com and started a room, then shared my "Entire Screen" with enabled "Share System Audio". (This I had to do in Edge - it actually didn't work as intended in Chrome..)

    Then, my friend could join in on this room and heard what I could hear, apparently. I asked if the audio quality was as good as listening to ie SoundCloud of the same tune, but he said it was a bit worse. Anyway, I MYSELF couldn't hear my DAW..

    What I ended up doing was joining in on the meeting using Chrome (so tuning in on my own meeting), then I could - of course to my horror - hear my own voice with some 100ms++ latency. And the audio quality was subpar in the DAW. But it was livable..

    Anyways, there has to be something I could tweak around to get this working with crisp quality in the DAW for myself..

  • JesterMgee
    JesterMgee Member Posts: 2,971 Expert

    100mS is rather a huge delay when you try and play/record anything live.

    No one said it was impossible, just not going to yeild the best results with the delays and compressions needed to reduce things down. Hard when you do a ping test and have delay, nothing will solve that

  • PoorFellow
    PoorFellow Moderator Posts: 4,894 mod
    edited August 2023
    https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/87438#Comment_87438

    My suggestion to use TeamViewer were never a suggestion that were meant to get rid of any latency issues as latency issues in the situation suggested is inevitable in one way or another (sorry for not clarifying that to start with). Different apps using different technologies may have however have different latency and different delays. 'With respect to your question about the audio then it is important to understand that different apps may be using different drivers and e.g. Asio drivers appear to kill the sound in the browser or otherwise on the system (and vise versa ?). But that has all to do with the driver settings So it is the sound driver settings that you need to check and setup if you want the sound to work generally.

    Also , when you involve web-sites or apps using 'web-technologies' then 'sound' also depends on the technologies involved , for reference please take a look at the bottom post here : https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftedge/forum/all/edge-switching-from-default-sound-output-device-to/3b105f88-d3eb-4492-a69b-3c9d4fb06e3e

    Alas since a DAW is involved then that may limit your choice for what driver settings may work (depending maybe on the DAW ?) however I do not have any experience with a setup like yours so I couldn't tell what to use , only I suggest that you take a long deep look at the audio driver settings ! for all involved apps ! Else , then maybe Voicemeeter can be of help here (though that may influence latency also)(dunno). Voicemeeter : https://voicemeeter.com/ , https://vb-audio.com/Voicemeeter/index.htm

    As far as I an tell then you are using Windows but I can not tell version other than appear to be 10/11 , but I found this for you ! :

    Set Audio Output Device For Apps Individually in Windows 10

    https://winaero.com/audio-output-device-apps-individually-windows-10/

    5 Ways To Change Sound/Audio Output Device In Windows 11

    https://www.itechtics.com/change-sound-audio-output-device/?expand_article=1

  • jwstaberow
    jwstaberow Member Posts: 5 Member
    https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/15566/how-to-share-screen-and-audio-for-collaboration

    One day when consumer level networks are upgraded to Pedabytes per second, we will have our real-time no latency global rehearsal apps.

  • Sauced.It
    Sauced.It Member Posts: 1 Member

    Hello,

    Here are my recommendations for HQ Collab Tools:

    • LANDR Sessions
    • SoundTrap

    Please note that you can use Sessions as a standalone tool in Google Chrome or you can download and install a Win10+ plugin for in-DAW-streaming.

  • 6xes
    6xes Member Posts: 744 Pro

    im late to this thread... try the satellite 2.0 plugin by mixedinkey, also try sonobus... they are both crossplatform

  • LXNDR_BE
    LXNDR_BE Member Posts: 116 Advisor
    edited September 2023

    Also late to this thread.

    I only tried this once and we used Discord, it was o.k.ish, but i did not tweak the audio options very much, maybe next time I will try that.


    You also could have a look into https://jamkazam.com/

  • Antidote82
    Antidote82 Member Posts: 11 Member

    Satellite Sessions 2.0 by MixedinKey is definitely the way to go...and it's FREE! It can do exactly what you're looking for.

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