Parallax Abstraction
I've Got It
Hey everyone! So I've got a bit of an audio mind bending puzzle for you fine folks. I'm trying to come up with the best solution to accomplish this and am seeking some advice. A friend and I have recently started a new series that's sort of a co-op focused Let's Play but with our own brand of commentary. The first episode is up on my channel and if you listen to even the first 30 seconds of it, you'll hear why I am creating this thread. My voice (the main one) is echoey and my colleague's voice is a bit quiet and during periods where we aren't talking, you can hear faint bits of game audio being picked up in the background. That's because the game we are playing is on an Xbox 360 and current has to output through my home theater. But I'm getting ahead of myself. To give a little primer, here's the current setup we used for the first episode:
-Razer Carcharias headset (2.5mm connection) and Logitech H540 headset (USB connection.)
-Headsets are both plugged into my HP Folio 9470m ultrabook which is handling the recording off my Elgato Game Capture HD. The machine has an IDT integrated audio chipset.
-The Elgato software only supports recording from one audio source so I am using Virtual Audio cable to combine both mic inputs into one virtual input.
-Since the Elgato software is about 2-3 seconds behind the live action, we can't use it to hear the game audio. Presently, I have to output that through my home theater setup which even when turned down low, causes a bit of the sound to be picked up by one of the headsets.
-My Razer headset has that weird reverb effect on my voice but only when being routed through Virtual Audio Cable. When that is not involved, it sounds fine.
There are two core problems I have right now as you can hear in the video. The first is that my level and my friend's level are not at all close. And that's after running a normalizer pass on the audio track. This is likely due to the different quality mics between the two headsets but since I have to feed everything into the Elgato software through one input, I only have one mic volume control and thus, can only adjust the headsets in tandem, not independently. The second is that because we can't hear the game through the headsets, I have to output it through my home theater which causes pickup on one of the mics. Ideally, I'd like to be able to have the game play in the headsets but at the same time, they also have to be monitoring our voices so we can actually hear each other talk while the game is playing. The Elgato software actually lets you monitor all the sound passing through it but as I said, it's got a 2-3 second delay on it which doesn't work for live commentary.
Confused yet? Yeah like I said, this is a bit of a puzzle. It's incredible how much more complicated this gets when you want to do something as seemingly simple as add another headset into the mix. My ultimate question is, does anyone know of a way to actually accomplish this? To do a quick recap, I'd like to be able to adjust our mic volumes independently, play the game play through the headsets so I can mute my home theater and also potentially monitor ourselves talking into the headsets so we can hear each other.
I'm fully prepared to be told that this can't be done or not without purchasing expensive equipment. I'm not opposed to looking into something like a 2 channel USB mixer but beyond that, we can't front a lot of expense for this as we're on a limited budget and not monetising this series yet (not sure if we ever will be able to honestly.) To be honest, I could probably figure out how to eliminate the noise off my home theater but my biggest problem is combining the two mic inputs without using Virtual Audio Cable which aside from being unintuitive, just doesn't seem to work very well. Someone suggested PreSonus Studio One Free to me which looks interesting but while I can create multiple voice tracks, it doesn't seem to be able to let me select a different recording input for each one, which is what I was told it could do.
Given this confusing wall of text, does anyone potentially have solutions they could offer? This feels like one of those problems that actually has an elegant solution that I just don't see. Thank you all in advance for your help!
-Razer Carcharias headset (2.5mm connection) and Logitech H540 headset (USB connection.)
-Headsets are both plugged into my HP Folio 9470m ultrabook which is handling the recording off my Elgato Game Capture HD. The machine has an IDT integrated audio chipset.
-The Elgato software only supports recording from one audio source so I am using Virtual Audio cable to combine both mic inputs into one virtual input.
-Since the Elgato software is about 2-3 seconds behind the live action, we can't use it to hear the game audio. Presently, I have to output that through my home theater setup which even when turned down low, causes a bit of the sound to be picked up by one of the headsets.
-My Razer headset has that weird reverb effect on my voice but only when being routed through Virtual Audio Cable. When that is not involved, it sounds fine.
There are two core problems I have right now as you can hear in the video. The first is that my level and my friend's level are not at all close. And that's after running a normalizer pass on the audio track. This is likely due to the different quality mics between the two headsets but since I have to feed everything into the Elgato software through one input, I only have one mic volume control and thus, can only adjust the headsets in tandem, not independently. The second is that because we can't hear the game through the headsets, I have to output it through my home theater which causes pickup on one of the mics. Ideally, I'd like to be able to have the game play in the headsets but at the same time, they also have to be monitoring our voices so we can actually hear each other talk while the game is playing. The Elgato software actually lets you monitor all the sound passing through it but as I said, it's got a 2-3 second delay on it which doesn't work for live commentary.
Confused yet? Yeah like I said, this is a bit of a puzzle. It's incredible how much more complicated this gets when you want to do something as seemingly simple as add another headset into the mix. My ultimate question is, does anyone know of a way to actually accomplish this? To do a quick recap, I'd like to be able to adjust our mic volumes independently, play the game play through the headsets so I can mute my home theater and also potentially monitor ourselves talking into the headsets so we can hear each other.
I'm fully prepared to be told that this can't be done or not without purchasing expensive equipment. I'm not opposed to looking into something like a 2 channel USB mixer but beyond that, we can't front a lot of expense for this as we're on a limited budget and not monetising this series yet (not sure if we ever will be able to honestly.) To be honest, I could probably figure out how to eliminate the noise off my home theater but my biggest problem is combining the two mic inputs without using Virtual Audio Cable which aside from being unintuitive, just doesn't seem to work very well. Someone suggested PreSonus Studio One Free to me which looks interesting but while I can create multiple voice tracks, it doesn't seem to be able to let me select a different recording input for each one, which is what I was told it could do.
Given this confusing wall of text, does anyone potentially have solutions they could offer? This feels like one of those problems that actually has an elegant solution that I just don't see. Thank you all in advance for your help!
