Please help - hoping to sing in SL but needing some help with set up

[Lola Nova]

Hello, 

I am hoping someone out there can help me.  I am wanting to sing in SL.  I have a basic Behringer X502 usb mixer with microphone.  I have BUTT encoder installed and set up with my stream correctly.  I have Karafun karaoke player installed on my pc but am unsure as to whether I can use the software to stream inworld?  Can anyone offer anything better or words of wisdom?

 

Thanking you in advance

Lola :)

 

[Tamara Artis]

I see there are still no replies and I have no clue what a singer needs but, if I were you, I would search for concerts and singers in-world and see if I can ask one of them or maybe someone who works for them. 

[Cindy Evanier]

As Tamara said, ask at the clubs in world for advice

I recommend asking my good friends Laya Sugarplumb or Vicki Eriksen at Cafe Musique.  They are both lovely ladies who may be able to point you in the right direction

[Da5id Weatherwax]

I see nobody has given any specific replies so, since I perform live in RL and SL I'll take a stab at it.

You've got streaming sorted, so let's not go there. Let's just look at your audio setup. What you have is an audio source on the computer (karafun) a mic plugged into the XLR input of your mixer and you want to mix those two sources together  and send the result out on the stream. You need to be able to monitor exactly what is getting sent to the stream - this is essential because as a vocalist you will be modulating your vocal dynamics and it's therefore on you to balance it with the mood and volume shifts in the backing track. You MUST be able to hear what you're broadcasting, and you must hear it monitoring the mix at your end, not trying to listen to your own stream (Don't even think about trying to listen to your stream in real time - the lag will kill you since the stream will buffer up to 30 seconds of audio before retransmitting it)

 

You have a couple depending on the capabilities of your hardware. I'm not familiar with your specific mixer so I'll try and cover all the bases.

1: Doing the mix on the computer. Karafun does not include its own mixing functionality, relying on windows own "mixer" - In this case you are basically using your X502 as nothing more than a microphone preamp with some basic EQ. You will set up BUTT to take its input from the windows mixed output. You will monitor your performance over your speakers or headphones plugged directly into the computer. When performing you MUST mute all other apps on the computer, especially SL or you'll feed back any audio they generate into your stream. Windows audio passthrough, the pathway that gets your vocals onto the stream, often has a few milliseconds of lag to it, so this can negatively impact your performance. That makes this very much the "worst option" for a clean and properly synced stream.

2: Do the mix on the mixer. This is a much better option and the one I have to use because I play my own instruments as an accompaniment much more than I ever sing karaoke. For this to work with a computer backing track, ideally the USB connection must be fully bidirectional and you must be able to handle the computers output as an input channel on the mixer simultaneously with independently routing a mixed signal back to the computer. Setup karafun to output to the USB device, not the computer speakers. Monitor your performance with headphones plugged into the mixer and balance your mic levels with the playback levels there. Output your main mix to the computer via USB and setup BUTT to input from it, not from windows audio mix. In this case what you are effectively doing is exactly what you'd do to perform live in RL, except instead of your mixer feeding a set of external speakers, you're sending the output into the stream.

2b: If the USB connection isn't bidirectional. You'll need to use a separate computer input or output (in addition to the USB device) and a separate channel on the mixer. Plug your computers line out into an input channel on the mixer, make karafun output to that device. otherwise as above. Alternatively plug your mixers main output into your computer's line in, have BUTT broadcast from that, otherwise as above.

 

Download something like streamripper, fire up your stream and sing a couple of tracks while recording what is being rebroadcast from the streaming URL. When you play it back does it sound like what you heard on your monitors while singing? If it does it's working and provided the land music URL is pointing to your stream, folks in SL will hear you properly. If you're out of sync or you're hearing other computer sounds on the stream, something's misconnected or misconfigured.