[GENÍS ONLINE]

Hello, when I hold a group session with four or five people, there is sometimes an unbearable echo that makes it impossible to synchronise the sound.

Why might this be happening? Everyone, including myself, is using wired headphones.

I look forward to your reply. Best regards

[David Liao]

Hi Genís,

Thanks for your message. To get rid of echo in your group sessions, ask each participant to check the following suggestions (addressed to them):

1. In FarPlay’s Devices subpanel, make sure the Headphones pull-down menu is set to your headphones (or the audio device your headphones are plugged into). If Headphones is set to “Speakers”, there will typically still be echo even with wired headphones plugged in.
2. If your headphones and microphone share a single plug (a headset), use the Microphone pull-down menu in the Devices subpanel to pick a different microphone (the built-in mic on a laptop or a USB mic, for example). In some cases, the headphones signal leaks electrically into the microphone on a single-plug headset, causing other people to hear an echo of their own voice.
3. If you use a USB mixer, turn the mixer’s loopback feature off. On some USB mixers, this is just a push of a button. On other USB mixers, the settings to change are in menus in the mixer’s software on the musician’s computer or on the mixer’s touchscreen. For example, if you use an Allen & Heath’s CQ mixer, check out this other forum thread.
4. If you use an audio mixer that doesn’t look like a mixer, use FarPlay’s Input Mixer to create an input track for each of your interface’s input channels. Silently look at the level meters in the Input Mixer while other session participants play/sing for a few seconds. Then, delete in the Input Mixer the tracks whose level meters moved when remote musicians played/sang.

If the echo happens again, have one person who hears the echo keep talking while everyone else stays silent. Have the person speaking look at the side panel at the right of FarPlay’s main window and watch the other participants’ level meters. The level meter that flickers in time with the talker’s voice belongs to the person whose setup needs to be checked using the suggestions above.

Suggestions for getting rid of echo are also available in the I hear myself in my headphones section of our Troubleshooting Guide. When using the Troubleshooting Guide, click the Change computer and Change audio buttons, as needed, to customize the suggestions for your setup.

Thank you,
David Liao

• This reply was modified 4 hours, 16 minutes ago by David Liao.
• This reply was modified 4 hours, 13 minutes ago by David Liao.
• This reply was modified 4 hours, 8 minutes ago by David Liao.