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Double Bass Skype or Zoom for online lessons which one is better?

#21
Most of the time, you are correct. Especially with a crowd whose equipment/connections you cannot control.

There are some dedicated services like TeamViewer ( one of many ), and the pro version is NOT cheap.

Again, I know you guys are up against some tough odds, and I wish you the very best. Sincerely.
 
#22
My son and I both had lessons yesterday.
Mine bass lesson was via Skype and it went fine. My teacher and I both have MacBook Pros and the sound quality was fine enough for the material we're working on. We went into this knowing we'd have to adjust what working on to suit the online platform. I have a USB interface and decent large diaphragm condenser mic I could use but didn't feel like I need to fire those up for the lesson.

My son's violin lesson was through Zoom. The first thing the teacher asked was to go into settings and disable the automatic volume adjustment. This removes built in compression which was helpful for them.
 
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#23
SteveC said:
We just started our "eLearning" and one of our teachers while experimenting found these things help with the sound issue:


When you are in a zoom session, click on the little arrow next to the mute microphone in the lower left corner of the window. Click on Audio Settings.
Under Microphone, de-select "automatically adjust microphone volume."
Then click "Advanced"
Disable both Suppress options... the Persistent and Intermittent Noise options.

Your audio that you send will be much better. Low cello range and high violin range were both markedly improved, as was overall quality. The drops in sound were eliminated. You get more ambient, background noise, but if you're in a relatively quiet space, you'll be fine. The trick will be to have your student do this on their computer too.

I found that once you do this, those settings will be retained from session to session, so you don't need to do it every time you host a new session. You may want to go back if you do a regular voice meeting though.
Click to expand...
Thank you, I will try that setting.
 
#24
I have been mostly teaching via Face Time. Having trouble with the desktop Skype interface and getting contacts into it so I can call them. I managed to get one student in there and our call went fine, but tried another yesterday and couldn't enter his info and there was no place to start a video chat where I could simply enter his email or phone to start talking.

Yeah, I'm old. Anybody got any suggestions, or a link to a "Skype for Dummies" resource? :help:
 
#25
Maple said:
My son's violin lesson was through Zoom. The first thing the teacher asked was to go into settings and disable the automatic volume adjustment. This removes built in compression which was helpful for them.
Click to expand...

You mean the automatic input mic volume? That doesn't remove compression as far as I know. It's just the input volume of the mic. Unfortunately Zoom has no audio settings on the iPad only for desktop. Don't know why they made it different for iPad but that's lame.

Did some elaborate testing and comparison of the audio quality of Zoom, Skype and WhatsApp video with my brother today.
First let's say they were all bad for music audio on both sides of the 'line'. But I thought that Skype was the least worse of the three.
 
#26
All the current video chat systems do not offer simultaneous bi-directional audio communication. The programs switch from one person to the other. People can't speak or play at the same time and be heard at the same time in a useful way. That's what was going on in the OP story of a lesson. Don't play at the same time. One play, then the other plays. Send the students the backing tracks to play on their end.

Skype, Facetime, Facebook messenger, Google, WhatApp, Zoom... they all work.

FaceTime (Apple only) to my eye has better visual quality but stalls more often than Skype. Skype is pretty solid.
What I like about Zoom is the ability to schedule lessons, and not receive calls from others during a lesson, also the record function is easy to use, so you can record section summaries for your students and share them later once the lesson is done. Zoom has a 40 minute time limit, so not good for 1 hour lessons. Stopping and restarting is a bit lame for a paid lesson. If you like Zoom and are teaching a lot, looking into the paid version.

Plugging in with your RJ45 ethernet connection is better than using wifi from a reliability, stability and speed standpoint. But if using a tablet or phone, then wifi it is, so try being close to the router and choose the 5GHz network instead of the 2.4GHz.

Also use headphones to hear the students and not speakers! Makes a huge difference.

Here is an article that might help.
How to Teach Online Music Lessons and Earn Money
 
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#27
Chris Fitzgerald said:
I have been mostly teaching via Face Time. Having trouble with the desktop Skype interface and getting contacts into it so I can call them. I managed to get one student in there and our call went fine, but tried another yesterday and couldn't enter his info and there was no place to start a video chat where I could simply enter his email or phone to start talking.

Yeah, I'm old. Anybody got any suggestions, or a link to a "Skype for Dummies" resource? :help:
Click to expand...

Top left corner... "People, groups & messages"
Screen Shot 2020-03-26 at 8.45.04 PM.png
 
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#28
longfinger said:
All the current video chat systems do not offer simultaneous bi-directional audio communication. The programs switch from one person to the other. People can't speak or play at the same time and be heard at the same time in a useful way. That's what was going on in the OP story of a lesson. Don't play at the same time. One play, then the other plays. Send the students the backing tracks to play on their end.
Click to expand...

Exactly. That's what's going on. There is extreme ducking when you say something or play at the same time. That sucks.

I do the same with backing tracks. The student himself starts the backing track on another device and plays along. But the sound gets very very bad when he or she plays along. It's hard to hear what's going on. Even when they play the backing track without playing along the sound is bad. That's on Zoom, Skype and WhatsApp.

Let's hope these apps will address these problems in the future and improve for music. If it really works well I am willing to pay extra.
 
#29
longfinger said:
Zoom has a 40 minute time limit, so not good for 1 hour lessons. Stopping and restarting is a bit lame for a paid lesson. If you like Zoom and are teaching a lot, looking into the paid version.
Click to expand...

The time limit is only there if you have a meeting with more than two people. So for one on one lesson there is no time limit!

I just heard from a colleague that Zoom removed the 40 minute time limit for now because of Corona. You still get prompted but the lesson can continue. That's generous!
 
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#30
Les Fret said:
Exactly. That's what's going on. There is extreme ducking when you say something or play at the same time. That sucks.

I do the same with backing tracks. The student himself starts the backing track on another device and plays along. But the sound gets very very bad when he or she plays along. It's hard to hear what's going on. Even when they play the backing track without playing along the sound is bad. That's on Zoom, Skype and WhatsApp.

Let's hope these apps will address these problems in the future and improve for music. If it really works well I am willing to pay extra.
Click to expand...


Make sure you mute your mic when your student plays. Any noise you make will cause the program to switch to you.
 
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#32
CryingBass said:
My 2 cents ( you get what you pay for ):
Lesser-quality firewalls/routers will slow traffic down while it is inspecting the data packets that eventually turn into sound.
Click to expand...

This is so true. I used to use off-the-shelf routers (Netgear, D-Link, etc.). Then I configured an old PC (Core 2 Duo) with a second ethernet adapter and Linux router package (Smoothwall). I got 10 times the throughput, and it has not failed in several years of around-the-clock use. The software is free, I believe, and the hardware? Cheap.
 
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#33
dylanjohnson said:
Preserve original sound
I haven't tried this yet, but it is purported to work wonders.
Click to expand...

If all parties in a meeting have good Internet connectivity (fast Wifi service and a fast broadband connection) and all parties are able to use headphones, this is likely to produce very good results. Headphones are significant, because one of the important parts of processing the audio signal is preventing the incoming audio from echoing back to the caller. If there is no sound from the caller coming through speakers picked up by your microphone, this is more likely to work.
 
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