Poor audio quality for keyboards and random reverb
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I used Farplay for the first time yesterday on a friends account on my laptop. There were 3 of us in the same room. Guitar/vox, keys/vox and an electronic drum kit. These were fed into a mixer whose balanced outputs were sent to an Arturia MiniFuse audio interface connected to a laptop. This was connected by Ethernet to the internet. The guitarist suffered with his reverb effect being too pronounced but cured it at his end. My keyboards sounded very low fidelity like. Weedy, thin and very poor. The drummer had a tom pad that when he hit it just sounded of reverb. All other pads were fine. We had previously tested all the audio on pa speakers and none of the above were present. Despite all our efforts we couldn’t solve any of the problems. At the end of the session we reverted back to the pa without changing a single thing and everything was how it should be. No reverb sounding drum pad and keyboards back to how they should’ve sounded. Any ideas on what was happening. Hope I’ve explained our set up adequately. Thanks
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Dear Paul,
Thanks for your question.
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When setting up FarPlay for the first time, we recommend visiting our QuickStart guide and following the steps in Step Zero: Choose Your Setup and Step One: Get Ready, which can be completed before connecting to anyone. These steps include reminders related to the specific suggestions below.
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Please check that off-site musicians listen through wired headphones (or if they use speakers, make sure they use directional mics pointed away from their speakers).
Explanation: If a remote musician doesn’t use headphones and doesn’t point their mics away from their speakers, sound from your keyboards, etc. will go from the remote musician’s speakers into their mics and back to you, so you’ll hear a thin, low-quality version of your keyboards and maybe a noticeable delay between the acoustic thud of a drum stick on the tom pad and the echo of the tom-pad sound effect returning from the remote musician.
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On your end, please start a FarPlay session just by yourself (no remote musician connected). Turn your MiniFuse’s Direct Monitoring off, just for testing. In the You (…) subpanel at the top of FarPlay’s main window, gradually drag the Monitor slider toward the right while playing an instrument. If you hear high-pitched feedback, stop dragging the slider and make sure your mics face away from speakers (or switch to listening through headphones).
Once your instruments are loud enough to hear, do your instruments sound clear to you? If you hear low-fidelity/garbled instrument audio and your laptop is a Windows PC, install your MiniFuse’s ASIO drivers from Arturia’s official website (click “Only install MiniFuse Control Center & drivers”). Reboot your laptop. Start another FarPlay session just by yourself. Go to Preferences > General Options. Set both the Microphone and Headphones to MiniFuse ASIO Driver. The screenshot below shows settings for a different (but similar) ASIO device.
Click ASIO Buffer Settings.
In the MiniFuse ASIO Control Panel, go to the Buffer Settings tab. Set “Preferred ASIO Buffer Size” to 64 samples and keep Safe Mode checked, just for now. Press OK in FarPlay Preferences. Is your instrument audio clear now? If so, try reducing latency by turning Safe Mode off and reducing the “Preferred ASIO Buffer Size” to 32 or 16 samples in the MiniFuse ASIO Control Panel. On some PCs, one or more of these adjustments might introduce crackling — try and see. Once you’re done trying these settings, you can mute your local Monitor in FarPlay (drag the Monitor slider in the “You (…)” subpanel all the way to the left) and turn your MiniFuse’s Direct Monitoring back on, if you like.Explanation: We recommend using the audio interface’s manufacturer-supplied ASIO drivers, not just to minimize latency, but also to avoid having audio processed by Windows Signal Enhancements, which can distort audio.
Thank you,
David Liao -
> General Options. Set both the Microphone and Headphones to MiniFuse 
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