I still have no clue why you're routing the audio of video clips out of vMix to your external mixer and then back to vMix. Just to have it on a fader on the mixer to control the level?

I didn't want to say that it makes no sense at all. If you can handle the cons like additional delay (or negative delay for the video files) and more noise it's all fine. The question is, does it make sense in his setup?

I just wanted to share an example illustrating the use of being able to listen to, and see, the audio acutally being recorded.

A small video clip is available at:

00:05 just shows the audio graph in the editor where I cut out two clips (small segments in the first and last part of the video).
00:06 - 00:27 is a clip from the beginning of the seminar
00:29 - 00:46 is another clip from the end of the seminar

Point is that we rigged our equipment in the morning, as the venue gave very little time for us to setup in the afternoon when the event we were streaming begun. In the morning we did a test recording and listened to the recording which sounded nice.

When we came back in the afternoon we had a couple of minutes to get started, no time for a test recording (and limited staff/bandwith to proprely monitor the actual stream). In addition YouTube lagged over half a minute, which complicated things ;)

When we started the recording and the stream we could not hear any noice when listening on our external mixer. But as you can hear, there is a significant amount of noice in the stream/recording. Most likely this is because the local AV technician (not our guy) changed cables/added equipment that introdiced to noice (propably ground currents that found new paths.

My staff who operated vMix said it was hard to get a hunch of the audio level (comparing with VidBlaster) using only the level indicators of the Recorder in vMix's audio mixer. The levels he got from the local AV were far from stable. Different mikes, different levels to us. In other words our operator had to constatly adjust the level from our External mixer's Main out, using vMix's Recorder level as the only indicator of what we produced.

We will for sure figure out a good way to get around this kind of problems. And again vMix this time, and during other productions last week, gave us vastly better quality than we ever produced earlier :)

Thanks!

vMix has visual indicators and now very nice options for acoustical monitoring. So my question is like Martin what magic ingredients VidBlaster could have on top of this?

By now I have spent a few more days trying out all the nice audio features added in v13. Generally I feel confident that I can do the most important things I have imagined, which of course makes me feel happy. Still, there are a few details I would like to bring up/repeat and share some insights.


Well, if I do that I cannot on vMix's Main meter see the levels of what is going to be recorded. Nor can I monitor in the headphones. Perhaps I am missing something, but why is the Main meter showing vMix audio and not recorded audio? My workaround is to send the external mixer's output to an Audio input, which in turn is routed to Main.

Now to the delay issues. In the configuration I have mostly tested with I feed the audio in with Behringer's USB ports. Using HDMI inputs on a Magewell XI400 this gives me a video that is 120 ms behind the audio. Consequently I delay the recorded and streamed audio with 120 ms. Perfect sync in the recorded/streamed video.

EDIT: the above paragraph concerns monitoring while not recording/streaming.

But there is a slight delay when listening in headphones (using Audio output routed to the PC:s speaker out). Not sure how large this delay is, it might added in the USB interface. If the producer is in the same room as the microphones it is bearable, unless the producer speaks in a mike that is a part of the production. Then the kind of echo effect makes it impossible to listen in vMix, and the producer must fall back to listen in the external mixer. Mostly no big deal.

If we want to play video clips in vMix, then the audio from those clips must be mixed in vMix in order to keep the audio sync. As I have said earlier, we would preferr to route that audio out the the external mixer. The only way I imagine that would work would be if the Video inputs offered a "Video Delay" feature. In that case in some kind of uncompressed frame storage in RAM. I guess the same holds for DVD, Stream, and Flash inputs as well.

This topic, and audio in general, is already complicated. So perhaps it is a stupid idea to add one more thing. But I cannot refrain myself from doing it. How about a "Mute when Solo" feature? That is, a new audio setting. This would ease up things when cuing up a vide clip. Currently on must first check that the player audio is off (speaker icon), click Solo, cue up, unclick Solo, and swith the player's audio back on. Very easy to miss one step.

Thanks.

Well, I am not sure if even I understand myself ;)
But no, it does not suffice for monitoring. True, I can via Solo listen to the same USB input device as is also used for recording ("recommended audio setup"). Actually, the Behringer USB driver seems to support that I also route it's audio input to Main, thus no need for Solo here. But this way video clips are not recorded. This because I cannot feed video clip audio out to an external mixer, as that would destroy the audio sync in the clips. Therefore I use a not recommended audio setup, and feed my external mixer via an Audio input that goes to Master, and Record vMix audio.


I see. But performance wise, while recording they have to be used. What then is the problem if they are processed during preparation? Perhaps it's good to always get a sense of the audio processing's impact on the overall perfomance.

If you are using vMix Audio and you don't need video clips etc to go out to the mixer, then running the audio mixer
as an input in vMix is fine.

In this case, when Solo is not active whatever you hear in the headphones will be exactly as it is on the recording
and the Master meter will show the levels of the recording as well.

So under this setup no extra monitoring is needed? As the recording level will exactly match the Master level if you are using vMix Audio.

Summary: Anyone interested in discussing here how to get multi-channel USB IO to/from vMix? Question partly motivated by my use of the amazing Behringer XR18 and some recent forum topics on ASIO and DAW.

This forum started last summer, when I stumbled upon vMix and audio. Since then vMix has added a ton of audio features/improvements. By now I have become quite familiar, and happy, with the audio part of vMix. With a few exceptions we (at my company) always use an external mixer for all audio, send its mix to vMix via USB, and finally monitor (listening to) what vMix is recording/streaming via Headphones output to an analog Playback device. Still not optimal when playing video clips, but works OK.

We prefer USB over analog for three main reasons. Mixer output levels are typically not so good for analog PC inputs. Less cabling required for us. Our laptop PC's have no analog stereo input. Main drawback is the latency induced by the USB drivers.

Recently we built a small studio, which implied more advanced audio handling than we typically encounter at seminars/events. Now we need to manage many microphones, skype in/out, telephone in/out, talkback mik, intercom, studio monitor and in-ear monitoring.

Luckily Behringer's new X Air line of digital mixers has arrived. As well as similar products from other brands, but I decided to go with Behringer XR18. If you want to get a good grasp of it, watch the tutorials from Musician's Pro. It retails for around 600 USD, and its little sister XR12 will retail for 400 USD when it ships.

The XR18 can be set to use it's USB interface as 2in/2out or 18in/18out. Behringer's downloadable Windows USB driver works well with vMix in 2/2 mode (unless you change mode which causes vMix to hang - reboot needed).

The 18/18 mode is of course designed for DAW's. And I guess is dependant on ASIO or similar. Actually, I know virtually nothing about ASIO, so bear that in mind as we go on ;)

Recently
drmrboyc asked "Audio input using DAW?" (so far discussion says "no ASIO support in vMix")
PVP had "Problems Adding Audio Input" (fix was to install JACK for ASIO to WDMA)
thecloudmediagroup made a feature request for ASI4All


Well, guess what - I would love to be able to use the XR18 with more than two USB channels to/from vMix.

Anyone knows if I can accomplish that?
And/or, could join in and provide arguments for/against ASIO support in vMix?

Thanks,
/richard

I would also be very interested in multitrack audio input using ASIO. We recently purchased the Tascam us-1200 for multiple mic inputs to a church video production. Audio levels are tied to camera selections, and it would be incredibly convenient to have each mic show up as a separate audio input in vMix to allow simple transitions to presets in the course of a service. That allows simple tweaks instead of finding the right gain levels for each transition. The Tascam allows ASIO multitrack input, but vMix is not currently allowing it.

Perhaps running the input through Jack could explode these inputs. Anyone have any ideas on how to do that? We're using Jack in a linux development and have found it extremely stable and useful, but not sure how one would get it to explode the audio inputs.

Very good topic, this.