I have a radio background so maybe I am not thinking about this clearly, but how do I use an external mixer to bring in audio elements such as music, telephone callers, and my microphone - without creating an audio loop problem. I understand the mix minus concept, but since the remote guests/hosts in Vmix Call need to hear all of the elements EXCEPT their own audio, but the master audio out in Vmix needs to have ALL of the elements, I am not sure how to do this. I'm hoping that someone has already figured out the proper routing and can guide me. Thanks.

Thanks for the reply. I have scoured these sources and nothing discusses the level of detail, and the specific issues that I am trying to resolve.

Hi Walt,

I use an external mixer regularly with vMix, and I can't find a lot either about external mixers even though there is a lot about Audio inputs and the VMx mixer. What mixer are you using? That has a big bearing or how you set it up. I regularly use a Behringer XR16 or an Allen & Heath SQ7. You mention routing so I presume you are on a digital mixer. You must set up multiple busses on the mixer, and probably in the vMix mixer as well. If you are taking the call audio in through your mixer, then you need to setup a buss for the return audio which does not include the caller. I set up the audio for an OBS system last year for someone else who had telephone callers and vMIx call is definitely a lot easier to set up. We endup up using 4 busses. One for the studio. One for recording. One for the stream output, and one as return audio for the caller. Doing this on the mixer allowed us to set different levels on each channel in each bus. As far as I can see vMix only allows you to turn individual channels on or off in each bus, and once they are on they all have the same level. In the phone return audio bus, the callers audio channel was taken out but left in the other channels. Similar thing for the studio buss but it was the presenter's channel that was taken out. The record and stream busses had all the output channels, but at levels appropriate to each. I think we also had the producer's channel in the Studio bus and the Phone return bus. The studio bus was sent to IEM'S worn by the presenter so that it didn't overflow unto the studio mic.

If you are using vMix Call then a lot of these complexities are handled automatically, but you would have the logistics issues of getting people to swap a phone for a browser, and vMix Call is really designed for guests to connect, rather than the viewing audience to phone in with questions and/or comments. vMix handles that situation very well with the Social Media features, but that is text, not audio.

Hope this helps,
Darryl.