zoom meetings, webinars and my sound

I recently was invited to attend a webinar on a subject that
interested me. The sound was atrocious, in that it kept fading in and
out. Previously I tried to attend a Zoom meeting only to be told by
the site that my sound was 'not acceptable' or something like that.

I am running XP and Firefox (in that webinar I was offered a choice of
using Skype but I didn't think to try it and have zero experience with
it anyway) My sound card is a pretty ancient Realtek, I find they
don't even sell the brand any more. I run a cable from that sound card
into a musician's amplifier (tiny little thing about 4" square) that I
bought many years ago. It has 4 inputs and 1 output. I use only one
input and feed the output to headphones. I've used this for years as a
substitute for speakers. (I'm quite deaf and I never found speakers
that could satisfy me). I have BEAUCOUP volume available.

Today I put a DVD in (Better Call Saul) and played it with the VLC
Media Player. The sound came into my headphones great.

I've noticed that trying to play a video off the internet from a
website I usually get crappy sound. If I download said video sound is
still crappy. I always figured the sound was junk to start with.

Does any one have an idea why zoom meetings are such a challenge for
my system?

John B. Smith wrote:
I recently was invited to attend a webinar on a subject that
interested me. The sound was atrocious, in that it kept fading in and
out. Previously I tried to attend a Zoom meeting only to be told by
the site that my sound was 'not acceptable' or something like that.

I am running XP and Firefox (in that webinar I was offered a choice of
using Skype but I didn't think to try it and have zero experience with
it anyway) My sound card is a pretty ancient Realtek, I find they
don't even sell the brand any more. I run a cable from that sound card
into a musician's amplifier (tiny little thing about 4" square) that I
bought many years ago. It has 4 inputs and 1 output. I use only one
input and feed the output to headphones. I've used this for years as a
substitute for speakers. (I'm quite deaf and I never found speakers
that could satisfy me). I have BEAUCOUP volume available.

Today I put a DVD in (Better Call Saul) and played it with the VLC
Media Player. The sound came into my headphones great.

I've noticed that trying to play a video off the internet from a
website I usually get crappy sound. If I download said video sound is
still crappy. I always figured the sound was junk to start with.

Does any one have an idea why zoom meetings are such a challenge for
my system?

The OS generic sound setup (provided by Microsoft) can have sound
effects. If you install a proprietary driver (RealTek) that could
have proprietary effects (graphic equalizer, concert hall reverberation).
When reverb is present, the sound would be characterized as being "muddy".
I had muddy sound here once, and traced it down to reverb.

And the teleconference software can have echo suppression.

https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/art...original-sound

In neither Windows nor Linux, would I be confident of having
any ability to debug such things.

You are using headphones and a microphone, and for teleconferences,
this is what I use. I don't really want echo suppression just
because I created a feedback look in my computer room by using
my computer speakers. For me, the headphones are there to break
that loop. Then, if I need to turn off various things, there's
less of a chance of feedback.

I still hear strange hollow sounds, in my sound subsystem,
and there was some setting in Windows 7 doing that.

Exactly how a user is expected to be in control, I don't get
how we're supposed to do that. There's no patch panel graphic
showing subsystems in the computer and how they're processing
the sound. In Linux, you can't even get decent names for
stuff, and it's a giant guessing game.

As an example, Audacity for me at least, is almost impossible
to get working. Yes, it has promising names in the interface
for inputs and outputs, but they seldom work just because
I've selected them. It's always an adventure to get a burp
or fart out of the stupid thing.

You can use Audacity for test.

You could feed the output of your amplifying device to a
Line-In level input on another computer. This is to record
the signal (as it would be sent to your ears with the
headphones). For example, in a past era, I "drew" a trapezoidal
pulse in Audacity, as a test waveform, and saw this.

synthetic input ___
waveform for test, / \
drawn by hand ___/ \_______________

recorded output, as
seen on a recorder on ----- 30 msec --
a second computer, by ___
copying the signal seen / \ ___
on the speakers ___/ \_____ _ _ __/ \________

What that told me, is I needed to hunt down and
kill a reverb effect. It turns out, I couldn't!
The sound card special effect was already set to
"No Effect", yet the driver was still including reverb.

In some cases, you've shot yourself in the foot by using
a third party "in-game comms system". I don't remember the
names of them now, but when online gaming, you can talk
to other players. Now, I wouldn't really give a rats ass
about what a person uses, except these software products
have been known to run their own echo suppressor,
*which is left running when the software is not being used*.

Naturally, that's a disaster from an understanding sound perspective.

I just don't know how you'd visualize the path the sound takes,
as it passes through the various filter drivers or services
that have accumulated in the OS. Usually, there is a cut-thru
option, for an application to avoid the Windows Mixer and
take direct control. But it is unlikely to avoid the
filter driver that might be sitting in the audio stack.
You can list filter drivers, using Device Manager or
perhaps devcon (Microsoft utility). But it's still
not going to be easy.

Using Audacity, you can feed a single trapezoid or a sine
wave into the audio, then record the output to see if it
arrives with an echo, or see if it arrives with clipping
on the tops of the sine wave, or with harmonic distortion.
But as for interpretation, I don't know what you do
about any of your discoveries.

Paul

On Sat, 05 Dec 2020 20:20:12 -0500, Paul wrote:

| As an example, Audacity for me at least, is almost impossible
| to get working. Yes, it has promising names in the interface
| for inputs and outputs, but they seldom work just because
| I've selected them. It's always an adventure to get a burp
| or fart out of the stupid thing.

That's strange. I use Audacity quite a bit to edit sound files on my main Windows 10
machine and don't recall ever having any problems with it. One big project it really
excelled at was digitizing tracks from my collection of vinyl recordings.

Larc

On Sun, 06 Dec 2020 12:20:42 -0500, Larc
wrote:

That's strange. I use Audacity quite a bit to edit sound files on my main Windows 10
machine and don't recall ever having any problems with it. One big project it really
excelled at was digitizing tracks from my collection of vinyl recordings.

There's a difference, assuming an unaffected natural source recording,
apart a professionally engineered mix and fond references to for
marketing by its disciples as ReMastered. At best a neutral baseline
is defined for sampling, transposing to digital equivalent from
analogue, or re-transposed digital, however acquired for samplings
that run a available gamut up to lossless formats.

From a microphone, directly linked instruments, to "sequenced" digital
stations a keyboard for linear transposition purposes that establish
base frequencies for the sequencer to compose, (sic) orchestral at
advantage over having to engage an orchestral pit to play musical
notation, for reading purposes, a sequencer reasonably might be
expected to have to generate for a somewhat costly affair.

Frank Zappa mentions using one later along in jazz-oriented
instrumental affairs, although he does start early at the realization
his music is industrially an unfit proposition. (I once worked with a
guy who fit that state, employed by him for "session work" as a
trumpet player;- whether impromptu in a studio or live capacity, I
didn't think to ask.)

In any event, digitally streaming a resultant effect of recording,
really can be a travesty depending on the computer setup. Sound
drivers have an industrial bias, a liability for a candy-coating for
standardized 12-year-old literacy. At least with mine, ASUS's
purported hi-fi enthusiast's answer to an affordable solution;- of
course an obsequious "Sewer-Pipe" to "Grande Rock Concert" are also
included among Asus driver selections. Particularly nasty is an
independent engineering crowd, analyzing for a reference for uncolored
or desirable base DAC processing, Asus, in infinite universal
applicability, at a baseline driver inclusion, in order for their PC
cards even to work, threw off ambience and note's decay by adding
their spurious impression of acceptable reverb.

Thankfully for those same enthusiasts, who in turn wrote their own
drivers to general distribution, as well as cancellation patches to
relegate all but baseline reproduction characteristics. A nice touch
to designing a sound stage reproduction, at least conjecturally, for a
likes of $50K reference microphones for designing speakers,
sequencers, mixers, and of course, where ridiculous don't get no
better , at technological guitar- and guitar-amplifier processing
additions for YouTube's next Justin Berber meteoric rise to fame.