Once Again, Something That Should Be Basic is a Giant Pain

[the_gneech]

Hoookay, so apparently there's no easy way to feed sounds playing on your computer into a Skype call. Or if there is, I can't find it.

I've found ads for plug-ins c. 2007, but the websites they point to are either long-dead, or the plug-in is "A full professional enterprise suite! Only a bazillion bucks."

Dude. I want to hit a play button and stream a sound effect at the people I'm Skypin' with. It's all data. It should know how to do this right out of the box.

That's the thing that drives me most nuts about the internet generally. It's all data. It should all be able to talk to each other as part of its basic existence.

Harumph.

-The Gneech

Comments

[confusedoo.livejournal.com]

I can make it happen one way or another. I picked up a little mixer on eBay. And what you're looking for is a soundboard app. If you were on a MAC I could recommend audio hijack pro, but there isn't a good substitute for Windows.

[the-gneech.livejournal.com]

I can add it in post easily enough; the main reason I want it to go through the call is to give reaction queues.

-TG

[goodluckfox.livejournal.com]

Uh, just get a splitter for the microphone, and plug your headset into the speaker jack and one of the two mike jacks. Get a laptop and run its speaker out and into the mike jack. That way you're not feeding your own audio back in constantly, and you can feed sounds from the lappie into the skype call.

[jamesb]

Try fitting 2 sound cards ... one for normal audio and one for Skype, and then hard connecting the output of standard audio card to the input of the Skype dedicated card. You'll need to do some experimentation with mixing to get the levels right, but it should work.

I've used a similar hard wired approach to create a "black box" that would allow the joining of 2 independent Skype conferences.

[katayamma.livejournal.com]

If you're using Vista or 7, you can't do it with 2 different applications. The DMCA Audio controls prevent more than one media device from accessing the sound streams at the same time.

If you can duel-boot to XP, that OS will allow as many apps as you want access the same audio input/out streams at the same time.

Sorry.

[delphinios.livejournal.com]

How does that work? I can record to two applications at the same time, and firefox and winamp can both play music at the same time. I just tested this. Also, playing music via winamp and recording audio at the same time works, too. Could you elaborate?

[katayamma.livejournal.com]

While multiple programs can stream audio to the speakers, they can't access the audio stream of another program.

If you look at the old XP audio control panel for record, you'll see that you used to be able to record from the audio output stream. That functionality is no longer in Vista/7 due to DMCA compliance in order to prevent people from pirating music.

Worked well, no? All that music pirating has pretty much gone away, wouldn't you say? :P

[mouser.livejournal.com]

They've always made this difficult. I suspect they're trying to keep you from broadcasting (i.e. pirating) things.

Otherwise you could broadcast movies across Skype.

[torakiyoshi.livejournal.com]

CanisRufus and I used to do this all the time. On a windows based machine, open your audio settings. Mute the microphone/line in. This will remove feedback, and you can have the mic directly in front of the speakers. Input from the mic will still go to skype without problem, but it will not be played out of your audio speakers. Therefore, anything played by your speakers can be heard through skype.

There is a disadvantage to this, though. Just as though you called a radio personality and forgot to turn your radio down while in the call, the people with whom you are talking will hear an echo of themselves on their end. The easiest way to get both would be to use a switch box, so that you can go from headphones to speaker and back when you play the sounds while in call.

-=TK

[tehrasha.livejournal.com]

I did this with linux using JACK. With it, you can route any applications audio output to any other apps input. I was playing DJ, streaming MP3's to a reflector, while skypeing. I could select where my mic feed went, or pipe the mp3 over to the skype feed. Even take 'live requests' by piping the skype feed into the mp3 streamer.

I think that 'VAC' (virtual audio cable) for windows can do something similar, but its not free.

It might be cheaper to have two computers (one playing mp3s, one skyping) and run all of your audio through a cheap mixer panel.