How to share music & your voice without doing a screen sharing in MS Team & Skype?
During Covid-19 we rely a lot on conferencing software Such as Zoom app, MS Team, Skype, WebEx etc to communicate with others. My favorite conferencing software during the pandemic is MS Team & Skype.
There is a time when I need to share audio from my computer and keep showing my body & face in front of the camera in MS Team or Skype to the audience, for example, I need to teach how to do exercise to the audience live.
In that case, I need to broadcast the following things below:
- Background Music.
- My voice via a microphone, because I need to keep telling the audience how to exercise certain things correctly during the demonstration.
- Of course, the video camera.
The problem with the conventional approach to share audio that you must do so via screen sharing, and that’s indeed a big problem because during screen sharing the MS Team & Skype will show the slides/window presentation on the main screen and therefore consume a large portion of the screen and at the same time minimize my video camera to the bottom of the screen. As you might know, that’s not good for this particular need because my audience needs to see my overall body posture on the main screen because it’s simply the larger one.
So how should you go about this? there are workarounds to solve this issue. You can use either OBS or VoiceMeeter app to help you, luckily you can get those two apps for free. My favorite is OBS however, you can VoiceMeeter as well, in the following below I will explain why I prefer to use OBS.
Option 1: Using OBS
In this case, the OBS will act as a virtual device that will merge the music sound and your own voice or even video from your camera then channeling it to MS Team.
So please follow these steps:
Step 1: Configure the OBS as a virtual device for MS Team
The following article explains how to configure OBS as a virtual device for MS Team. If you use Skype, the article is indeed still applicable.
https://lucavitali.wordpress.com/2020/06/02/how-to-use-obs-studio-as-a-virtual-webcam/
You can download the OBS NDI plugin at the following link below:
https://github.com/Palakis/obs-ndi/releases/
Step 2: Configure the audio on OBS to receive audio output from the computer
Please refer to the following video on how to do so:
Step 3: You need to configure MS Team or Skype to receive audio & video input from the OBS.
On the MS Team: Select the profile picture on MS Team app > settings >on Microphone section: Select Line (NewTek NDI Audio). on Camera section: Select NewTek NDI video.
On Skype: Select (…) > settings > Audio & video > on Microphone section: Select Line (NewTek NDI Audio). on Camera section: Select NewTek NDI video.
Actually, You don’t have to add the video camera to the OBS if you only need to channeling the audio however, the reason why I like to add the video to OBS because I can customize my appearance in OBS software such as flipping or rotating the camera, create transition effects, create running text on the video screen, etc which will enhance my presentation this is why I said OBS is my favorite beside of course the ease of use.
Option 2: Using VOICEMEETER
I found that if you are a musician or sound engineer etc, maybe it’s much more ideal for you to use the VoiceMeeter app because what you only care about is the audio. With the VoiceMeeter app, you will have more control over the audio on your computer because the VoiceMeeter app will act as a virtual sound system that will merge the music sound and your own voice then you can channeling it to MS Team or Skype.
So please follow these steps:
Step 1: Please configure the VoiceMeeter app to receive input from the music and your voice. Please refer to this demo video:
The demo video above uses Windows 7 which kinda old, So if you use Windows 10 and you are probably wondering how to access the sound control panel in Windows 10 as shown in the demo video above? No worries, you can simply follow these steps below:
- Press Windows key + I to open Windows settings
- Select system > select sound > On the right side under the related settings section, please select the sound control panel.
Step 2: You need to configure MS Team or Skype to receive audio input from the VoiceMeeter.
On the MS Team app: Select profile picture on MS Team app > settings > Microphone > select VoiceMeeter Output (VB-Audio VoiceMeeter).
On Skype: Select (…) > settings > Audio & video > on Microphone section: VoiceMeeter Output (VB-Audio VoiceMeeter).
