Quote:

... We see & talk fine but when we play, the audio breaks up completely. The camera is a new Microsoft product with built in mic. My questions are. Is it because Skype won't work well with a router? Are there good & not so good routers? My router is a Belkin "G". Your advice will be greatly appreciated...Hank




If you can hear each other at the same time, but it is a matter of distortion, investigate the sound LEVEL of the instruments into the mics. Could easily be overdriving the audio stage. When you talk, you are not creating anywhere near the Sound Pressure Levels that amplified instruments may be generating in the same space.

Another factor that likely rears its ugly head here is one of Bandwidth. The spoken voice only requires about 2 to 3 KHz of bandwidth for intelligibility and a digital service such as Skype likely limits the Bandwidth available to you to somewhere in that area. Thus they can fit quite a few more phonecalls into the same territory that one fullrange audio connect would require. These days, fullrange audio of CD quality is considered to be "20 to 20" or more orecisely, from 20Hz at the bottom end to 20 KiloHertz at the treble side. Muscial instruments will generate tones completely outside the bandwidth of a digital voice connection and that may also lead to something that can be described as audio distortion - and there ain't no cure. Can;t fit twenty pounds of you-know-what into a three-pound sack.

To find out if it is your Router ahould be dead simple, actually: Eliminate the router from the chain as a temporary experiment. May have to carry the computer somewhere to the router on that day, or perhaps just use a long network cable to attach directly to the modem, bypassing the router entirely and see what happens then. I wouldn't think that the Router could cause audio breakup, but you are still likely to incur bad SYNC problems as a digital phone line such as Skype provides does not necessarily happen in Realtime, there are plenty of places where digital delay will come into the equation, good enough for conversation but not very likely able to be used with music. You should have TWO wait state situations going on, one on your transmissions and another at the other end coming back to you. It does not work in realtime like the old analog phone systems did, which were also a tad bit out of realtime due to certain delays of wire length and amplification, microwave linking, etc. but were still a lot closer to realtime in many cases.

I doubt if Skype can be used for the purpose of jamming music in realtime due to the syncing problem.


--Mac

PGmusic FAQs, Tutorials and Updates! click here

You must be Audiominds.
www.audiominds.com