How to play MIDI sounds through Zoom conferencing?

Support & discussion regarding DAWs and MIDI sequencers.

Moderators: MattKingUSA, khz

Post Reply
kevinz
Established Member
Posts: 3
Joined: Tue Mar 30, 2021 8:29 pm

How to play MIDI sounds through Zoom conferencing?

Post by kevinz »

Hello, all, newbie here, both to this forum and to music. I'm a first year music theory student at my local community college.

I'm searching for a definitive answer to the question, How to play sounds from a MIDI controller to the other participants in a Zoom videoconference? I've successfully hooked up my Korg microKEY controller to my Ubuntu 18.04.5 computer, using qjackctl 0.4.5, qsynth 0.5.0 and vmpk 0.4.0. I connect the microKEY2 to the qsynth and the VMPK. The patchbay is set up with these connections:

Output Input
PulseAudio JACK Sink and qsynth connect to system
a2j 2 connected to a2j 2
Midi Through and microKEY2 connected to a2midid

I can hear the synthesized piano and see the VMPK keys activate.So far, so good.

I'm using Zoom 5.4.9. I tried to follow the instructions at https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxaudio/com ... skype_etc/. I used paprefs to add simultaneous output on all sound cards. In this configuration, when I start Zoom and go to Settings and Audio, I cannot hear the Test Speaker sound, but can still hear my piano. When I connect to a meeting, the other participant can't hear me or the piano, and I can't hear them. I don't know what's meant by "open pavucontrol and under playback make qsynth output to the null sink. Under recording make the videochat application use the monitor of the null sink." These seem to be instruction for JACK, not pavucontrol.

I've seen references to Carla, but it doesn't seem to be in my Ubuntu repository, and doesn't seem to be created for Ubuntu 18.04.

Can anyone give me an insight to what I'm doing wrong and how to correct it? My normal troubleshooting technique of just try every possible combination until something works fails at this task; there's just too many moving parts.

Thanks so much for your advice and guidance.

-Kevin
vabi
Established Member
Posts: 11
Joined: Fri Feb 01, 2013 12:46 pm

Re: How to play MIDI sounds through Zoom conferencing?

Post by vabi »

I think you can use OBS as a virtual camera input for Zoom.
And OBS can take Jack Input and thus you can use everything that comes with it
kevinz
Established Member
Posts: 3
Joined: Tue Mar 30, 2021 8:29 pm

Re: How to play MIDI sounds through Zoom conferencing?

Post by kevinz »

@vabi, thanks so much for the reply. Sorry, I didn't see it until now. I'll try the Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) to see if I can get it to work, although I was hoping for something much more light-weight; getting OBS to work seems like a major production.

Thanks, again.

-Kevin
Musicteacher
Established Member
Posts: 194
Joined: Mon Nov 13, 2017 5:54 am
Has thanked: 8 times
Been thanked: 4 times

Re: How to play MIDI sounds through Zoom conferencing?

Post by Musicteacher »

I am not sure, but I think that the solution you linked to works with pulse only. Not with jack.

If you start jack, you can (as you did) still listen to software that uses pulse with the audio sink (you direkt pulse stuff to jack) , but not the other way round (because Zoom uses pulse / alsa).

I am not 100% sure about this, but I think that it will not work the way you want.

I do it as follows: I have good microphones and 2 sound cards. I play my music with one sound card through my speakers and use the other sound card (with headphones) for the microphones.

This way people can hear my music over the microphones. I think that is ok, as you cannot do real music collaboration via zoom anyway.

If you want something better sound-wise, try Jamulus! Jamulus works with Jack.
Post Reply