OT: new frontier in VO sessions (for me, anyway)

[Dave Labrecque]

Thought I'd tell you about an interesting session I did this week...

As some of you may recall, I have an ISDN line, which gives me two dial tone (POTS) lines when I'm not doing an ISDN session (thanks to an ISDN modem I bought through ebay for $1.98). The cool part is that I save the cost of analogue voice and fax lines that I would otherwise be paying on top of the ISDN. The not so cool part is that when there's the occasional need for a combo ISDN/phone patch VO session, I'm outta luck.

A job came along where I would be casting and recording eleven or twelve voice talent for a TV spot. Some would be local talent coming into my studio to record. Some would be out-of-town talent using ISDN. The wrinkle was that the client, in San Antonio, wanted to direct all sessions.

ISDN for talent and phone patch with client at the same time? Oh-oh. I can't do that. Or can I?

Someone mentioned Skype. Of course!

It was really cool. I'd never used Skype before through my console (just on my laptop), but I figured it should work. After fumbling trying to get Skype to use an audio device of my Digiface I/O (wouldn't work), I gave up and did something I hadn't ever done before -- I ran an aux out from my console to my DAW's Sound Blaster input. (I have the SB card in there for media-player-type auditioning and odd sample-rate stuff, not to mention playing 44.1 audio in SAW's SF view during 48 KHz MT sessions. Never thought I'd be sending a signal into it, though. But I digress...)

The session went really well. Client in San Antonio on Skype, talent in L.A. on ISDN, me on both. And we all could hear each other fine. I recorded everyone to separate tracks in SAW for fun (as well as for slating takes).

In fact -- I was surprised at how good Skype sounds. It's much better in terms of frequency response and "presence" than telephone. There are some odd Internet/data compression things going on, but it was pretty darn cool. It sounded so good that the client wanted to do it again for my local talent who was coming in later that afternoon. Skype was preferred over a direct phone patch. The Skype sonic detail was closer to ISDN than telephone for sure. And that's really important when a director wants to be able to hear any degree of nuance in the talent's delivery.

Fun times. Anyone else done this kind of thing?

[Himhui]

It looks interesting, thanks for sharing!!

[lofi studios]

i once managed to keep a band sober all morning, and on another occasion convinced a drummer that he was primarilly there for time keeping.:)

you really do like to push this thing dont you:D:D

nice work sir

Iain

[Angie]

Interesting, Dave.
I just got a Magic Jack (http://www.magicjack.com) a few weeks ago. And really love it. It is easy, unbelievably cheap and works real well. The only difference I've noticed between it and a land line is a very brief glitch once in a while. But it has been much better than talking on a cellphone.

I know little about other VoIP services and devices required, but I can't see why routing this thing into a DAW wouldn't work. I'll have to try it.

[DominicPerry]

Dave,

I haven't used Skype for music work, but I use it for international voice and video and you are right, it sounds very good indeed. My only complaint is that the 'file sending', which should be really handy, often gets relayed, which means it's bouncing off other Skype users, which means it tends to be very slow. But for voice, yes, pretty darn good, even transatlantically.

Dominic

[MMP]

I haven't used Skype for a live session, but did use it for work once.

I had to tag 40 spots for State Farm with the names of local agents, and was unsure of the pronunciation of their names, so I bought a local Skype phone number for a month and had all the agents leave a message saying their names. I put all the messages into Saw, and used them as a reference during the session. As Dave said, the quality is much better than landlines.

Other than that, my 20 year old son has been quite the world traveller and we often use Skype to keep in touch. Last winter he was in Africa and it was quite reassuring to have him check in on web camera from Kampala.

Regards,

MM

[Dave Labrecque]

Interesting, Dave.
I just got a Magic Jack (http://www.magicjack.com) a few weeks ago. And really love it. It is easy, unbelievably cheap and works real well. The only difference I've noticed between it and a land line is a very brief glitch once in a while. But it has been much better than talking on a cellphone.

I know little about other VoIP services and devices required, but I can't see why routing this thing into a DAW wouldn't work. I'll have to try it.

Looks cool, Angie. How's it sound?

[Dave Labrecque]

I haven't used Skype for a live session, but did use it for work once.

I had to tag 40 spots for State Farm with the names of local agents, and was unsure of the pronunciation of their names, so I bought a local Skype phone number for a month and had all the agents leave a message saying their names. I put all the messages into Saw, and used them as a reference during the session. As Dave said, the quality is much better than landlines.

Other than that, my 20 year old son has been quite the world traveller and we often use Skype to keep in touch. Last winter he was in Africa and it was quite reassuring to have him check in on web camera from Kampala.

Regards,

MM

I love hearing these innovative ideas guys like you and Scott come up with, leveraging existing and new technologies to streamline your process. :)

[Dave Labrecque]

Good info Dave. Worth checking out indeed.

VOIP is another low cost alternative I plan on looking into at some point, but I think that technology ultimately uses a telephone handset...but not exactly sure.

Mark

I wonder how the fidelity is with VoIP. Maybe it's the handset that's limiting the quality, for example?

[Angie]

Looks cool, Angie. How's it sound?

I've only used it with a cheap cordless phone, but it is pretty good. You can use a headset and mic through the soundcard also. I haven't given that a try yet.

To answers Mark's question about having I/O through a VoIP device, I don't know about other's but the Magic Jack doesn't require a special adapter to use a regular phone, so I don't see why a hybrid box couldn't be used. I have one around here somewhere. If I can find it, I'll give it a try.

[Angie]

Not sure what kind of hybrid box you are referring to. All of the VOIP adapters I've seen have standard phone jacks, and no other audio outs.

A telephone hybrid. Used a lot in broadcasting. Sounds like you should be able to do it with any VoIP.

The Magic Jack is awesome. I did have to get a new phone number, but they are promising current number portability (for a nominal charge) in the near future.

I always have my computer on, but I don't think voice mail would work any different when it is off. I'm going to have to test it though.


EDIT: I took a look at the Vonage plan, and their adapter connects directly to your DSL or cable modem, so you don't need no stinking computer, IIUC.

Right, but you're paying $25 a month for that. I don't mind having to have something connected to my computer for $20 *a year*. Plus I can take the device with me and use it on someone else's computer or a laptop when I travel. :D

[Dave Labrecque]

Not sure what kind of hybrid box you are referring to. All of the VOIP adapters I've seen have standard phone jacks, and no other audio outs.

But the Magic Jack seems awesome. Did you get a new phone number? Can you have an existing phone number transferred?

To receive calls, I guess your computer would have to be ON, since it's a USB. When it's not on, how well does the voice mail work....or does it?

Several people I know are migrating in this direction, and only keeping a very basic phone line at home for emergencies, VOIP, and a cell for mobility....and saving a lot of bucks. I'm guessing we pay at least $150 for all of our various phones now, with various long distance plans.

Mark

Mark,

I think she means phone hybrid like a Gentner or Telos -- the kind we use for phone patch sessions or that radio stations use to put callers on the air. You plug your phone line into it and it isoltates the callee (as best as it can) to bring into a mixer, and it takes whatever signal you want and sends it down the line as the caller. Typically, you'd send a mix minus callee down the line. You probably know all this. That's what she means, I think.

http://www.telos-systems.com/one/default.htm

http://starin.info/Product%20Info/ClearOne/Archive/SPH10%20v1.2.pdf

[Dave Labrecque]

I'm missing something here. What would magic jack have to do with voice mail? Wouldn't you have to set up something proprietary with the company, or on your own computer for voice mail? Any existing voice mail services are completely unrelated to magic jack, no?

[bcorkery]

Dave,

I had a guy from Germany on Skype directing about 3 days worth of character voices for a video game. I pulled the analog out of the back of the DA7 and plugged it into the line in of my laptop. From the laptop, I pulled the signal into one of the DA7's open channels and routed it to the head-phone amp and monitor. Every body was in the loop and it saved the client the cost of an airline ticket & hotel room or 3 days of international calls.

Also, when doing testimonials for a marketing presentation, I often have to record calls through the Gentner. If the director is not going to be here in studio, I use the Zephyr’s phone option to call the director and route the signals back and forth from the Gentner to the Zephyr and it works great. The only problem is you can’t receive POTS calls on the classic Zephyr, I think you can on the Xtreme though.

I had a friend who tried Vonage for his business and it was disastrous. He switched it back within 2 days. It might have been an isolated event, but I just don’t think the VOIP infrastructure is ready for prime-time yet. Think how often your computer connection goes down as opposed to your POTS lines. Hmmm.

I would suggest not putting all your eggs into the VOIP basket at this point.

[DominicPerry]

I can be dull and tell you some things you don't want to know about VoIP.
Unlike ISDN, you don't get guaranteed bandwidth or latency. So you have the same problem as you have with Skype, you can never be sure that the noise you make now will be given 64Kb/s and arrive 8ms later. If the trunk is congested, you will get lower quality and longer (and more irritatingly, variable) delay. Most transatlantic calls are carried VoIP now, have you noticed how the delay is less than it was years ago? It's because the signal is digitised and sent over fibre at light speed instead of being modulated and sent down cables.
I don't know any of the specifics about VoIP in the US, but in the UK, it's a maturing market still with lots of problems, at least in the commercial (Business-2-Business) sector.

Dominic

[DominicPerry]

I was just checking out the official Skype website. Skype to Skype calls are free, but Skype to standard phone calls are very cheap. Anywhere in the mainland USA to mainland USA is under 3 cents per minute. So even if you used 1000 minutes per month, that would be less than $30.

Hmmm. This is getting interesting. I wonder why these new phone services haven't caught on yet? I've heard nothing but good reports, other than the emergency services are harder to trace, like 911....they can't tell where you are.

mark

Skype has had at least one major outage in the last 6 months which resulted in loss of service for several days. Far from convenient.
In the UK, you can get a mobile (cell) phone which also connects as a handset (wireless too maybe?) to your Skype when you are at home. Cool idea. Sadly it's on the most disastrous mobile network called '3'.

Dominic



Dominic

[Angie]

Do you know if Magic Jack can do faxes?


The people at Magic Jack say it is unreliable and don't recommend it. But I have heard of customers using a fax on it with no problem. I have not tested it as I went with a an efax service for other reasons. What I have tested is my credit card terminal and unfortunately it does not work. Most likely the device can't keep up with the speed of the speed dialing on such devices. :(

[Angie]

I'm missing something here. What would magic jack have to do with voice mail? Wouldn't you have to set up something proprietary with the company, or on your own computer for voice mail? Any existing voice mail services are completely unrelated to magic jack, no?

No, voicemail, 911 service, call forwarding and, I think, three way calling is all included.

[Dave Labrecque]

Dave,

I had a guy from Germany on Skype directing about 3 days worth of character voices for a video game. I pulled the analog out of the back of the DA7 and plugged it into the line in of my laptop. From the laptop, I pulled the signal into one of the DA7's open channels and routed it to the head-phone amp and monitor. Every body was in the loop and it saved the client the cost of an airline ticket & hotel room or 3 days of international calls.

Also, when doing testimonials for a marketing presentation, I often have to record calls through the Gentner. If the director is not going to be here in studio, I use the Zephyr’s phone option to call the director and route the signals back and forth from the Gentner to the Zephyr and it works great. The only problem is you can’t receive POTS calls on the classic Zephyr, I think you can on the Xtreme though.

I had a friend who tried Vonage for his business and it was disastrous. He switched it back within 2 days. It might have been an isolated event, but I just don’t think the VOIP infrastructure is ready for prime-time yet. Think how often your computer connection goes down as opposed to your POTS lines. Hmmm.

I would suggest not putting all your eggs into the VOIP basket at this point.

Cool, Bill. I keep forgetting to try using the Zephyr as a simple phone hybrid. I could actually do ISDN on one channel and POTS on the other, but I guess I'd lose some quality on the ISDN side. I, of course, can't do what you're doing with two phone patches (one Gentner, one Zephyr) since I don't have any analogue POTS lines. Wait... I bet I could do a phone call on each ISDN channel. Hmmm...

I have a Zephyr Express (portable codec with monitor mixer built in). I know it recieves POTS calls cuz every once in a while I forget and leave my ISDN line switched over to the Zephyr (not the modem for phone/fax), and I hear a bleep sound and the little voice of a caller coming from the box, saying, "Hello? Hello? Is anyone there? Hello?" :)

Cool idea using your laptop as your Skype device. Didn't think of that.

[bassthumper]

I have been using Vonage for a number of years and I will not go back to Ma Bell. I have had great success with it not to mention a much cheaper bill. Many of the quality issues I have had the past have been attributed to poor quality analog handset. As for the digital conversion no delay to speak of. Cool thing is it doesn't require much to create an audio patch if you are using it in the production world.

[Cary B. Cornett]

I have been using Packet8 VOIP for close to 4 years now as my ONLY home phone. It does not have the "bulletproof" reliability of POTS, but I accept the occasional inconvenience for the significant cost savings I get. Customer service response has been consistently good, even to free replacement of my DTA unit when the old one failed.

The main weakness of VOIP is its absolute dependence on your broadband internet connection. If something else in your home network is really taxing your internet connection, VOIP service can be compromised until the "mondo download" is over. If your ISP goes down, you have no phone.

ISP performance problems that you might not notice when web browsing with your computer can trash your VOIP connection. I learned this the hard way. I also learned that there are some simple tests you can perform with your own computer to verify if it is an ISP problem, and sometimes you can even tell your ISP WHERE to look for the problem (again, learned through experience). In a way, I find that capability to be somewhat empowering, and there is NO equivalent for it with POTS.

If power goes down, your ISP may have backup power for as much as a few hours, but you better have backup power on at least your cable modem, router and DTA (not to mention any phone that needs AC power).

The DTA makes your phones look like another computer to the network, and makes your VOIP connection look like a POTS line to your phones. No computer has to be running for this, and the power used by the DTA is a tiny fraction of what even a laptop computer uses.

You can connect any professional "phone patch" or hybrid interface to your DTA just like any phone, and neither unit should notice anything unusual.

If absolutely bulletproof reliability is essential, stay with POTS. If the occasional problem classes as an inconvenience rather than a disaster, VOIP is generally just fine.

[Cary B. Cornett]

Has this "taxing" happened in your case, or is it in theory?

I was under the impression that with a network router, all devices connected to that router can access the internet at full bandwidth....as lightly discussed in another thread. I haven't tested this theory as there is usually only one "mondo" download happening at once here...and then only rarely. But during that mondo download, the other computers around here don't seem to be slow on the 'net at all.


There is a finite amount of bandwidth available, and it IS possible to max it out. I don't quite know how he does it, but one of my boys has on occasion loaded up the connection so heavily that I had to just wait until he was done before making any calls, as the phone service got REALLY flaky. That said, this is not something that happens often at my house, but once in a great while... :eek:

The router allows all computers on the network to SHARE the total bandwidth, but the only time one unit is GUARANTEED to have the maximum is when no one else is online. The great majority of time, though, the process is completely transparent, with everyone getting the "speed they need".

[DominicPerry]

Properly configured VoIP should reserve bandwidth for the voice call and squeeze any and all data downloads at your access point whenever you make a call. Of course, there is potential contention at various other points in the network so unless you have end-to-end 'quality-of-service' (QoS) you cannot guarantee the bandwidth, and of course, in the UK at least, the internet carriers are the same as the voice carriers, so they have no incentive to give you cheaper calls, at least not at the same guaranteed call quality. But as the most likely place for bandwidth contention is at your access point, a correctly setup router and/or the network connection on your computer should be able to reserve bandwidth for VoIP calls.

Dominic

[Cary B. Cornett]

Properly configured VoIP should reserve bandwidth for the voice call and squeeze any and all data downloads at your access point whenever you make a call. ... as the most likely place for bandwidth contention is at your access point, a correctly setup router and/or the network connection on your computer should be able to reserve bandwidth for VoIP calls.

Dominic Guess I should clarify. I am not using Skype or any other VOIP service that has to pass through your computer. This means my computer configuration has no effect on available BW. My router sees the DTA for my phone as just another computer on the network, and "treats all customers alike". The only way that you can reserve BW for the phone is if you have a DTA that goes BETWEEN the router and the cable modem, providing a "pass through" for the router. My DTA isn't connected that way, so it can't carve out its own space, as it were.

What makes this interesting is that, since my connection is supposed to be 4 megabit, and the DTA only requires 64k bit to work, serious bottlenecks should not be expected. Indeed, even here they are rare... but they can and they do happen. Of course, when my ISP screws up my phone either gets flaky or fails entirely.

[sstillwell]

Guess I should clarify. I am not using Skype or any other VOIP service that has to pass through your computer. This means my computer configuration has no effect on available BW. My router sees the DTA for my phone as just another computer on the network, and "treats all customers alike". The only way that you can reserve BW for the phone is if you have a DTA that goes BETWEEN the router and the cable modem, providing a "pass through" for the router. My DTA isn't connected that way, so it can't carve out its own space, as it were.

What makes this interesting is that, since my connection is supposed to be 4 megabit, and the DTA only requires 64k bit to work, serious bottlenecks should not be expected. Indeed, even here they are rare... but they can and they do happen. Of course, when my ISP screws up my phone either gets flaky or fails entirely.

But your phone should be setting the TOS bits in the packet. If your switch and router recognize Type (or Class) Of Service, then it should prioritize traffic to give VOIP priority. I use an Altigen IP710 here at my home office to tie back into the corporate office's phone system...works fine even when I'm hammering the network.

Scott

[Cary B. Cornett]

But your phone should be setting the TOS bits in the packet. You just walked me past the edge of the cliff of my ignorance. I do not know what TOS bits are. :(
If your switch and router recognize Type (or Class) Of Service, then it should prioritize traffic to give VOIP priority. I use an older Linksys BEFSR41 router/switch, and have no idea whether it has this capability. Of course, I suppose I could move my recently upgraded DTA upstream of the router (new one can do this, as old one could not), but I haven't wanted to do that.

[Ian Alexander]

You just walked me past the edge of the cliff of my ignorance. I do not know what TOS bits are. :( I use an older Linksys BEFSR41 router/switch, and have no idea whether it has this capability. Of course, I suppose I could move my recently upgraded DTA upstream of the router (new one can do this, as old one could not), but I haven't wanted to do that.
I think TOS is defined in the next sentence, Type Of Service.:)