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My wife is music director of a small church that uses Zoom. Every Sunday Zoom malfunctions, including stranding some in the waiting room and, most annoyingly, making them unable to un-mute. If you’ve used Zoom you know what I mean.
She uses computer sound for the recordings of the virtual chamber orchestra I direct; that works well. Then she has a ‘Zoom choir’ that does songs one line per person. Finally she uses Acapella to prepare the choir anthem.
But Zoom has ruined parts of almost every service!
What might be better? GoToMeeting? Skype? Google Meet (new)?
Ideas most welcome. This is getting undignified. Thanks.
BIAB 2026 Win Audiophile. Software: Fender Studio One 8, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Fender Quantom HD8 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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Haven't tried Google Meet yet, but it will likely bloom fast given the horsepower
I've been relying on Teams lately, which also has a lot of horsepower behind it <grin>
I do not work here, but the benefits are still awesome
Make your sound your own!
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Thanks, Bob. Teams - is that Microsoft?
BIAB 2026 Win Audiophile. Software: Fender Studio One 8, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Fender Quantom HD8 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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I've been looking at reviews for Streamyard for our Church services.
BIAB 2026:RB 2026, Latest builds: Dell Optiplex 7040 Desktop; Windows-10-64 bit, Intel Core i7-6700 3.4GHz CPU and 16 GB Ram Memory.
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That's new to me. Thanks!
This forum is so great.
BIAB 2026 Win Audiophile. Software: Fender Studio One 8, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Fender Quantom HD8 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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Just don’t use it. Particularly for a church service. We tried live streaming at our church for two weeks then decided we might as well use pre recorded videos where we had control of quality. Online congregants appreciated the lack of streaming bugs. We also stripped down the worship team.
One has to ask what tangible value there is to attempt such a complex thing live With dependencies on bandwidth one ha no control over without a dedicated tech staff and streaming server. Upload to YouTube instead.
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Yes, Teams is Microsoft Teams. They have a subscription service (pay by the month) but I also think they have a free version. We use it (as well as Zoom and Skype) and have not experienced any issues. Hope this helps.
BIAB & RB2026 Win.(Audiophile), Windows 10 Pro & Windows 11, Cakewalk Bandlab, Izotope Prod.Bundle, Roland RD-1000, Synthogy Ivory, Session Keys Grand S & Electric R, Kontakt, Focusrite 18i20, KetronSD2, NS40M, Pioneer Active Monitors.
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Matt,
I was teaching classes of Years 11 and 12 for 5 weeks using MS Teams when we were in lockdown. I didn't have a problem with it. It allowed good two-way communication between me and my students.
Teams also allwed me to record the sessions so that people could watch the video again if they missed out on anything.
Regards,
Noel
MY SONGS...Audiophile BIAB 2026
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We record our services. Only had 1 opps.
...Deb
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We have decided that having interaction is important, and do not wish to prerecord the service. If it helps, we have between 40 - 60 average attendees. Half oF them are either physically unable to go to the church, or currently in other places including three continents. So, we intend to continue using some interactive platform even after we can return to the physical church.
BIAB 2026 Win Audiophile. Software: Fender Studio One 8, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Fender Quantom HD8 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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Try MS Teams
Hopefully it will deliver better results.
Of course you know and I know that there are many separate influencing factors: bandwidth, system load, resource availability, network speed, and more, so we can't necessarily find a common denominator to blame when the results are less than successful.
(Actually, how advanced we all are. Alan Turin could only have dreamed...and he lived within the lifetime of many of us)
BIAB & RB2026 Win.(Audiophile), Windows 10 Pro & Windows 11, Cakewalk Bandlab, Izotope Prod.Bundle, Roland RD-1000, Synthogy Ivory, Session Keys Grand S & Electric R, Kontakt, Focusrite 18i20, KetronSD2, NS40M, Pioneer Active Monitors.
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we use zoom for our church services but music has been poor quality - maybe our choir master wasn't uploading it right - i think we was micing up a keyboard.
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Bob, that’s right: live keyboard sound using a microphone is dreadful in Zoom. Something to do with their algorithm being tuned to favor spoken words, I’ve read.
But there are some things you can do. First, go to Settings, Audio, Advanced and disable the first two options.
Second, this is one area where we do prerecord the sound. You make an audio file, bring up a Shared Screen, and check the checkbox about using computer sound (something like that; it should be in the lower left of the share screen page). Then load your audio in iTunes or whatever player. It should sound great going out over Zoom.
BIAB 2026 Win Audiophile. Software: Fender Studio One 8, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Fender Quantom HD8 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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thanks matt - worth a try although i think we'll probably need the congregation to mute their mics as shared responses are very ragged when everyone chooses their own timing. during a live service at least some common ground is established! singing will probably be worse.
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Singing is indeed worse. We mute all but a few choir members and the pastor for the hymns. The 'live' hymns are then sung one line at a time by one person at a time. That works.
If you try the shared screen/computer audio, you will find that the quality is good enough even if people have their mics on (though we turn them off to avoid horrible latency). Try it.
BIAB 2026 Win Audiophile. Software: Fender Studio One 8, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Fender Quantom HD8 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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Singing is indeed worse. We mute all but a few choir members and the pastor for the hymns. The 'live' hymns are then sung one line at a time by one person at a time. That works
Hi Matt So, if I understand correctly, the backing is pre-recorded and then each person take turns in singing the line? And there is no latency between the backing and the singing?
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Hi Joanne. Yes, a prerecorded piano or organ. Yes, each person sings one phrase as planned. No, there is some latency but it’s acceptable. Or another way to say it is that this is the only way we can sing live that is acceptable.
BIAB 2026 Win Audiophile. Software: Fender Studio One 8, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Fender Quantom HD8 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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I've had good experiences as a user, I was not the organizer, with GoToMeeting and Cisco Webex.
The Cisco Webex probably has an advantage over Skype and Zoom and similar systems. It is not as widespread in private homes and so there are not as many users at the same time in the same area online...
GoToMeeting also targets mostly the professional market.
Last edited by GHinCH; 06/24/20 05:11 AM.
Desktop; i7-2600k, 8 GB mem., Win 10 Pro, BIAB 2017; RB 2017 - latest build
Laptop: i5-2410M, 4 GB mem, Win 10 Pro, BIAB 2017; RB 2017 - latest build
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Thank you. I need to check both out.
BIAB 2026 Win Audiophile. Software: Fender Studio One 8, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Fender Quantom HD8 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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I've had good experiences as a user, I was not the organizer, with GoToMeeting and Cisco Webex. FYI only... Most businesses here in the U.S. were using Webex before the whole COVID thing. Then Zoom kind of swooped in and bumped off Webex in a lot of places. The company I work for still uses both but leans toward Zoom.
 Steve BIAB/RB 2022, Pro Tools 2020, Korg N5, JBL LSR 4328 Powered Monitors, AKG/Shure Mics.
PC: Win11 PRO, 4 TB M2 SSD, 2 TB HD, 128 GB Memory
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