Solved Streaming from one Sound Card to Another?

[SoundGuy]

I'm about to buy a Windows 8.1 touchscreen laptop to control a digital mixer from the Front-of-House position. I often find it useful as a FOH engineer to use a "talkback" mic to communicate with the people on stage and to use the PFL/Solo function to figure out exactly who it is that's being annoying or wonderful so I can adjust them accordingly.

For this particular application, I'll have a USB sound card connected to the mixer's Aux input and Headphone output and made available to the laptop via VirtualHere or similar USB sharing software. So my question is:

How can I stream my TB mic to the remote sound card's line-out, and likewise the remote line-in to my headphones?
I don't need any processing, just a raw, continuous stream in both directions with preferably low latency.

 

[fireberd]

I can't answer your questions. But, Windows will only allow one sound device, in every case I've seen personally or from user comments, only one will work.

I have a recording studio and am a musician. Everything I do is done with a recording interface unit (Roland Octa-Capture) and not the PC's sound card.

I was on the Heartland (KC) Steel Guitar Club's show back in August. The sound engineer was using a new $5000 Midas digital mixer on the front. Everything on the stage was miked, with talkback.

I'll be following this interesting thread to see where it goes.

 

[SoundGuy]

I don't have the laptop yet to experiment with, but I think I might have found something:
JACK Audio Connection Kit|Using JACK on Windows

That, combined with ASIO drivers (ASIO4ALL - Universal ASIO Driver) promises to provide the same functionality on Windows as the original Jack does on Linux/Mac, which is a virtual patchbay from any set of inputs to any set of outputs, whether physical interfaces or software endpoints. So we'll see what that does.

 

[fireberd]

Be careful with ASIO4ALL, its a crap shoot. Works for some and screws up things for others. On the recording forums, its mostly "don't do it".

 

[SoundGuy]

I don't know what happened, but I did NOT put the link under the word "drivers" in my last post, or this one. I did not follow it to Update Windows Drivers to see what it was.

As for ASIO4ALL, I've done a little bit with it before, on Windows XP, and only met success. I may have been lucky though, with my small sample size. Anyway, this is not for recording, just a talkback mic and headphones that may only be needed for a minute or two total over an entire show, and then only as a matter of convenience to the sound guy. It's not the end of the world if they drop out. But just so I know what to expect, what kind of issues are there?

 

[fireberd]

ASIO4ALL emulates ASIO for a WDM device.
I tried it on my recording studio PC one time (on Vista or early Win 7 - don't remember). I had a Focusrite Saffire Pro 40 recording interface device but wanted to do some testing with my PC's internal (Realtek) sound card. The Realtek did not have ASIO and I installed ASIO4ALL and it corrupted my Saffire Pro 40 installation to the point I had to do a forced uninstall and a complete new install.

I've seen posts on recording forums from users that have tried to use it and one reported they had to do a complete reinstall. But, others used it and it was working. As I noted the general consensus is not to use it, but if you do create a System Restore and maybe even a backup system image in case things go south.

 

[SoundGuy]

Wow! I never expected it would do that, but I guess if you're messing with low-level drivers and trying to be universal, then there's always that possibility.

I've used Linux dd a few times from a LiveCD to backup the entire hard drive before installing from the same CD to dual-boot. So I think I'll do that again before ASIO. Thanks for the tip.

 

[SoundGuy]

Okay, it's not a Windows 8 solution, but I figured I'd at least close the thread:

I found a command-line utility for streaming audio called TRX that's only available as source code for Linux (trx: Realtime audio over IP), and all of my other apps work on both Windows and Linux. So I switched the laptop to Lubuntu Linux, installed some battery savers and the other apps, and compiled TRX.

For the remote end, I had a Raspberry Pi for a while and then switched to a Banana Pi because of its native battery backup*, SATA, and WiFi without fighting for bandwidth on a single USB 2.0 port and onboard hub. I started with a specialized Lubuntu image for that board, set it up as a WiFi hotspot, installed a VNC server and a better audio player for the backing tracks, set up automated recording to a dedicated hard drive, and compiled TRX again.

Tie it all together with a set of scripts on both ends that run on startup, and we have a complete, snakeless sound system with the sound guy in the audience! Core components on stage are a Behringer XR18 digital sound board and connects with both USB (18-track audio for recording) and WiFi (for control) to a Banana Pi Pro that also has a Behringer UCA202 USB sound card for streaming the Solo headphones and Talkback mic. The sound guy has the Linux laptop and of course the headset and mic.



* It has all the hardware for a battery backup except for the actual battery. There are surface-mount pads to solder the pigtail that comes with a battery holder of your choice. It takes a single-cell lithium-ion. Software is also up to you to google, though it looks like it could be done with a script that reads a status file every so often and issues the shutdown command when appropriate.