Best solution for two-way communication with core-audio apps for remote work?

[Ru_C]

Hey all, I had a 'remote session' for a well-known U.K TV advert last week.

I had the voice actor in my live room, and no less than 7 other directors/creatives/clients online at one point giving feedback/direction, signing things off etc.

I was expecting to have to bite the bullet & install source connect, but the director from the agency said they stopped using it, & preferred zoom/teams/google-meet type setup, where I would just dropbox them the original 96k/24-bit takes at the end of the session.

The crucial thing they requested was realtime (latency aside) two way-communication at all times with the actor.

I spent some time fine-tuning my setup the day before, & ended up using a simple Focusrite 2i2 2-in, 2-out interface plummed into my HD-Native 31-in/32-out rig.

The Focusrite unit was selected in Google-meet for sound in & out, & then Pro Tools sent audio to it as a pre-fader sends, & received on an Aux.

For talkback, rather than use my usual system, I put on a headset mic & input-armed a track, so this too could be sent to all involved.

Anyway, everything went very smoothy & all concerned were happy.

So, is there a better way to do this?

I did try the source-nexus plugin first, but actually ditched it after half a day of trying, as I found it unreliable.

It would lose communication, & I would have to reboot either Pro Tools or the browser (or even the Mac!) to get it all working again.

Not what you want in a high pressure situation, so ended up using a separate interface.

it's not half as elegant as the software approach, but worked well & was bulletproof.

It looks like I'll be doing more of this now, so was thinking of at least getting another small USB unit with spdif in & out, clock it my AVID I/O, & have it connected to the last 31/32 I/o pair digitally.

Anyone found a more elegant solution that ticks all the boxes above?

[Ryan Young]

Your method is pretty good. I'd suggest looking into Source-Talkback or creating something similar with BlueCat Audio Plug'n Script for your talkback mic. I have mine dim the master fader as well as unmute the talkback.

If you computer has optical in/out, it's super easy to patch those into your PT interface as optical SPDIF. Flawless 2-way communication between Zoom/Pro Tools.

[arche3]

Brilliant in fact. Thanks for this.

Sent from my SM-G986U using Tapatalk