With our current global shelter in place I am looking to see if I can get a working skype, zoom or similar setup going with other musicians. My goal with this thread is to figure out what software and hardware setup will work well for this.
I come to picture and would ideally like to be able to have a remote session musician see my quicktime video and hear my logic session with low latency. I figure they could track remotely and send me the takes afterwards.
If qt video is too big of a challenge, then i will settle for Audi o only.
The other goal is to rehearse with a small band or maybe remote jam session..
I would love to hear if anyone has made in progress in this effort.
I believe zoom has better Audio latency than Skype. I also believe video latency will always be much greater than audio, but maybe not to the degree that it's not possible.
In terms of hardware.
I think a interface with a good mic would be required for all parties. Also everyone should be using headphones. Any thoughts?
Thanks in advance for your input and I hope that you are all safe!

Just following up on my progress. Issue number one for me was routing my session audio and interface inputs to Skype. In my case I use uad console with an apollo 8 on mac. Skype only sees input one on most interfaces so you have to figure out a routing to get all your channels to channel 1. I came across this solution that someone posted from aud tech support:

"I'm pasting the fix from UAD below and hats off to the brilliant Olivier there for coming up with it. FYI I'm using an Apollo Quad 8 on an I-Mac. Here goes.....

I can think of one possible way to get around this however, although it's a bit involved. You can exploit the fact that these applications take audio from the first driver input of the Apollo when the Apollo is selected by modifying your inputs on the Core Audio tab of Console Settings. This way you could set the first input of the Twin (i.e. the input that these apps will use) to something like an Aux bus of the Console application, and then send your mic input to the Aux bus.

The first step would be to set the first input of your Apollo to the 'AUX1 L' input via the Core Audio tab of Console Settings. (It works also with the Virtual channels)

This will make it so these applications will take audio from the Aux 1 L input - now we just need to get your input signals into the Aux channel.

To do this, turn the Aux 1 send all the way up for both the Analog 1 and Analog 2 channels in the Console application. Pan the send for each channel all the way left.


This will cause the input signals from both input channels to be sent to the left side of the Aux 1 channel, which should then be fed into your video chat app as long as the Apollo is selected as the audio device in that app. You may need to mute the Aux 1 channel in the Console to avoid a doubled signal, but muting the Aux channel will not stop the audio from getting into the other app."

Hope this helps someone. Now I am moving on to doing some latency testing.

Skype and Zoom aren't great for good quality. I am using a combo of Zoom and Audiomovers Listento, video and communication with Zoom and audio routing with Listento.

Also, check out Sessionwire. I've not used it myself but looks cool and has all the features I believe you need.

Great! Thanks will check those all out!

If you are serious about this then look into Source Connect.

I ran a three-way podcast last week with two remote guests, one on Skype and the other on Google Hangouts. All routing done internally, no external mixer (though of course I have an external interface for my mic).

I used the Loopback app from Rogue Amoeba to set up the routing. With some help from Rogue Amoeba support, I set up three separate virtual devices: one for Skype, one for Google Hangouts, and a third device as input for my DAW, which took my microphone plus the inputs from Skype and from Google Hangouts, all into separate channels. And then in my DAW I set that virtual device as my interface, and set the input of each track to the appropriate channels.

It worked flawlessly: my two remote participants received a mix-minus (so they only heard me in their headphones and not their own voices echoing back to them) and I recorded three separate tracks, one for me and one for each guest.

All of these solutions are cool in their own way. As I am thinking through this, I feel that being able to control the session from my end and have the takes show up on my system is the most important feature.

Ok so my summary of Sessionwire vs Sourcennect vs Audiomover is as follows:

Audiomovers: allows you to stream output of DAW to a web browser. I think it's perfect for having clients listen back to high quality audio while you work on a mix, or so they can sit in on a session. The advantage here is you just send then a web link to listen to the stream which can be the option of you master fader or specific channels. Very cool. Probably 40 ms latency in my testing when set to 10ms in the plug-in.

Sessionwire: Looks like audiomovers with a built in ftp app and videoconferences. Basically you connect with someone and then ftp them your mix. They work on it on their system while you listen and then they send it back. Not the most elegant solution and lacking any real documentation. Hard to find info much on this product. It is cheap and easy to install. I think $20/mo

Sourceconnect: There is a "Now" version which is free and does what audiomovers does in terms of creating a web link for listening to a session. The "Standard" version looks great. Both parties install the software and then you create a shared session interface and can route what they are doing into your session in simulated real time. After the takes are approved the high res versions are imported to your daw... I think. Hard to find full documentation. The big issue with this one is the setup and cost. It requires ilok activation and signing up for a $35/mo recurring account. Hard for me to tell a remote musician to install ilok software and sign up for a recurring account to do what might be a single session with me, even if I pay for it. Would be much better if I could pay for my account and send a free session invite. Maybe I could create two accounts and give the login code of one to the remote talent, but not sure how the ilok reg would work.

Nice summary, and I concur. The only thing, and splitting hairs here, is I believe the latency in ListenTo is 100ms or 0.1S? Whatever it is I found it be very solid every time I use it.

I also agree about SessionWire. I don't find it easy with the lack of documentation to figure out if it can work for me.

Similar story with Source connect, although I do have a current Source Live monthly subscription - although I am finding that it is not working as well as ListenTo. of course, this may be more to do with my location than anything else.

I really like the ListenTo / Zoom combo for mix approval and tuition. It would be cool to try the remote recording with the receive plug in etc.

I'm curious what are the difficulties you're having with source connect?

I'm going to try to do a song writing session with a singer this week. We plan to use listento with a receiver routed to an input on each daw. I will put a bar of midi click before each arrangement section for easy alignment. Going to compare tracking directly into my session vs sharing a Google drive folder for takes. Probably will use Skype for visual communication. Seems like this will be about the same as using session wire.

Also not sure if i trust listento audio quality to be pristine enough for usage in sessions.

I have pretty much given up on playing live with other musicians. Will try it with Skype.

It keeps failing the port test, and is glitchy when I have tried it - but that might not be a Source Connect issue. I just haven't tried to resolve it as other options have worked fine.

Why wouldn't you trust Listen To? I've found it to be very good for streaming mixes, and no one has complained about the quality after using it a lot over 2 years. I haven't tried recording sessions though.

Right router port setup issue maybe?

I trust the quality of listento for monitoring. I only wonder about recording the stream into my session. I think these streams introduce jitter and artifacts generally speaking. I trust audio ftp'd from session 100%

We tried Sessionwaire. It's clunky and terrible. It took us two hours to make it work. They have the worst explainer video and instructions I have ever suffered through. We eventually got it to work partway and the sound quality was good. But there's got to be better solutions out there. Left an icky taste in our mouths.

EDIT: We tried the new Beta version using a plugin, and it worked great! The instructions and video were very clear on how to set it up. And the company responded to issues right away. They are busy getting the beta out and redoing all the video help to make it easier to understand. We used the app for a 6 hour session and love it! We are going to keep using it now because it really fits our remote workflow.

Thanks for the tip. When looking into it, I found the helper videos for SessinoWire confusing too...

Hey -- check out my edited review in the previous post. We used Sessionwire for 6 hours since and it's working great now. You must download the Plugins version and then watch the video on how to set it up. We especially liked the automated mute on talkback -- super helpful feature.

FYI. Sessionwire has gone through a complete rebuild and is now literally the one stop app for all your remote collaborative music production, education and audio post needs. Super simple to setup, comprehensive support. www.sessionwire.com

A full year has passed and I have settled into audiomovers as my main option when I need to collaborate remotely. It allows me to simply have the remote musician install the streaming plugin and send me a link to their daw output. I just jump on the phone for communication and feedback. They track into their session and send it to me.

I just took a look at sessionwire again and it doesn't seem to offer much more than before. I think many of these options like to give the impression that you can work with someone "real time" but at the end of the day the latency is still there. Usually around 100ms. I played with some people remotely on jamkazam but it was super glitchy and didn't work for any groove based music.

If you're a pro working with another pro studio, then maybe source connect might be a good option for you. I played around with it a little and decided it was too much to ask musicians or clients to install, configure and run it.

I've only had one person who couldn't get audiomover listento working in a couple of minutes and that was because they couldn't figure out how to enable the popup in their web browser.