I know Voicemeeter has been mentioned before, but I used it today for the first time and was blown away by how useful it is with Dorico and other apps.
Scenario: I’m transcribing a guitar recording into Dorico for a client, but he asked me to screen capture the session, with narration, to help him understand how to do it.
So I had to juggle the following:
Playing the original track in Audacity
Dorico open for transcription
Camtasia for screen capture
Studio One for recording the audio, since I always want more control…
Voicemeeter handled it beautifully. Consider this a public service announcement.
I’m a big Voicemeeter fan! My “standard” teaching setup usually has all of the following audio programs open in Windows:
Dorico
Synchron Piano standalone
VEPro
Transcribe
Roon
VMPK
Bome MIDI Translator Pro
ManyCam
Zoom
often YouTube, or audio/video uploaded to the class Canvas site too
Voicemeeter handles all of it easily. I do have to run the separate software MIDI router so multiple programs can receive MIDI simultaneously. MIDI-OX is an ancient option, but is free and still works. I’ve been using Bome MIDI Translator Pro lately but there are plenty of other options around too.
I use Voicemeeter Potato regularly. With the primary audio device (A1) set to my ASIO interface, I have access to three virtual devices among which I can route audio.
The main device is my Windows default output device (for most programs, notifications, and game audio)
The AUX device is what I use for VoIP applications (Zoom, Discord)
The VAIO3 device is what I use for audio production (Dorico, Pianoteq, REAPER)
From there, I can route the audio devices to go through my headphones, wireless headset, or speakers, as desired. I can similarly route incoming audio from my wired and wireless inputs to the correct virtual devices.
This audio splitting also ensures that any screen recording or streaming software only captures the desired audio (e.g. so that Discord audio is not captured when recording video, or that Dorico audio is streamed through Zoom, etc.)
Finally, I have the buffer size set really low (64 samples) for minimal latency (1-2 ms) when using my piano. (This sometimes causes distorted audio, but that is readily fixed by temporarily changing devices.)
It does take some effort to get it set up this well, but when it works, it’s really nice.
I also use Voicemeeter Potato. A very handy tool. One thing I use it for - totally unrelated to Dorico (sorry if off topic) is to give me sidetone in my headset when using the mike for voice calls. It puzzles me how people can talk without sidetone on headsets (which all phones have), and it’s really hard to find headsets that support it. So its a great little tool. I have found it messes up WIndows audio from time to time, don’t know why, but usually reinstalling fixes issues.
Also, it works very nicely with Cantabile for use with VST effects and so on.