Syrinscape ProTip #21 - Syrinscape and direct audio stream using fantasy grounds

Pro Tips
#1

More on my ongoing saga with trying to find the best sound for my players while playing d&d over fantasy grounds.

After piggybacking on some folks using fantasy grounds who are much smarter than I am, I think I discovered a way to stream my desktop sounds (including syrinscape, sounds from my desktop and/or VLC or WMP, etc…) directly to an audio stream (output to a direct port ie. http://myipaddress:4040 or whatever port you want to use) such that the players can directly catch the stream by using VLC or Winamp or another media player that supports the http streaming standard. The quality seems better than using voice channels like discord, teamspeak, etc… and it seems pretty snappy (not a lot of lag).

I’ve still got to test this as I ran into an issue last night where I was able to get it all working, but my voice was getting transmitted as well and I don’t want that as the players and I will speak over discord. I just want all of my other desktop sounds going to a direct audio stream. After some tweaking with voicemeeter banana settings, VLC and OBS (brain damage!) I think I have it set so that the stream (twitch) will hear my voice fine but the players will only hear my voice in discord and not duplicated through the audio stream.

If I test it tonight and it works well I’ll put together a youtube video and post it for anyone who is interested. My fingers are crossed! :smile:

2 Likes
#2

Good luck! I look forward to hearing how it goes :smile:

#3

Successful test! Just connected with a friend and after a minor tweak in voicemeeter, it all sounded awesome! Very little delay and the stereo sound (fading across speakers in my headset and my friend’s) was tremendous!

Once I test in a live stream tomorrow night if it still works as well I will be creating a series of videos or one long one to walk through how I set it up.

Fingers crossed! Super cool. I’m fired up!

#4

Ok… So, I tried this all last night and the feedback from my players was the sound was great. Better for them than when we have used discord or teamspeak. It is more complicated to set up on the front in, particularly if you are streaming, but once you have it set up it is great. Sound is really clear and we had no issues at all with the quality.

The only issue at all was that we determined it is better for us all to use VLC. Two of the players started using Windows Media Player to pick up my audio stream and the delay was serious! 3-4 seconds. With VLC loaded up there was not a noticeable delay (only very slight). This will definitely now be my “go to” setup! Really like the quality.

I’ll try to post a video when I have time. If you like how discord/teamspeak sounds I wouldn’t necessarily recommend changing (the old saying if it isn’t broke…), I’m just crazy in that I’m always trying to tweak and improve things!

I’ll let you all know if/when I post a video on the setup.

#5

Hey, all. So, I created a video and posted to youtube to show you how to do this. I’m using it for Fantasy Grounds and streaming syrinscape and my desktop audio directly to an audio stream instead of sending syrinscape and my desktop sounds through discord. I love that now my players hear syrinscape in its full stereo glory. Previously, discord played it in mono. They now hear sounds move left to right in their headset, etc… Awesome!

Please note this video assumes you have voicemeeter banana and have set it up according to Rob Twohy’s video series to pipe sounds through discord. I show you in my video how to modify the settings and still be able to stream on twitch (or wherever) using OBS studio. So, a pretty specific video!

Here is a link to my video:

Here is a link to rob’s first of four sound videos in case you haven’t set up sounds at all yet and want to check it out. Definitely look at rob’s before mine if you haven’t already:

Enjoy!

#6

Thank you so much. Very helpful. Quality is so much higher than I was getting over Discord. I was going to wait for the Master/Minion system to use Syrinscape in my virtual table top games but at this quality I feel good streaming it now. Really makes my day, thanks again.

#7

Awesome! So glad it was helpful. And, I need to give a shout out to matsunoichi on the fantasy grounds forum as he was the one who figured this out. I just had to figure out the twitch/OBS stuff for my setup. Also, thanks to Rob2e who put together the four part series on using syrinscape with discord.

Great community of helpful folks!

#8

Great tutorial. I have one question; is it necessary to download and use OBS if you’re not recording or broadcasting your game (as you see a lot of people does and upload it on YouTube). The link you share with your players through VLC, isn’t it the only thing needed?

#9

Yep. If you aren’t streaming, you don’t need OBS. If you haven’t already, I would encourage you to check out the video I posted to youtube on using cleanfeed to stream sounds. I like it even better than VLC!

1 Like
#10

Hey Gwydion, do you know if this setup would work if I’m using Hamachi instead of port forwarding? I tried to port forward but it stumped me and my game was coming up so I tried out Hamachi and it worked seamlessly.

We’re communicating with the new Steam chat but we could change that to another program if need be.

Anyways, if you don’t know, no worries! I’ll give it try later tonight as I’m at work right now but I just thought I’d reach out to see if it was possible.

Thanks!

#11

Hey eldopa. Yes. There is no reason streaming sound to your players using VLC shouldn’t work for you even with Hamachi.

Separately, I highly encourage you to try cleanfeed to send sounds to your players. Less latency and clear sound. Just need to make sure all players can use chrome as their browser. You can read about this option in this thread:

Good luck and keep me posted on how it all works!

#12