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[Gena Crisman]

I may be wrong here, but I did set the H2 as an output audio device as you suggested, without any luck.

Peek back a couple of pages to page 71: "Connecting the [USB] port of the H2 to a computer allows use of the H2 as a card reader or audio interface"

That whole part is the section about USB connectivity and computers. It's... well, best as I can ascertain, basically it's supposed to work. Zoom (audio recorder) at least have a pretty nice section in their manual about this functionality existing, the Olympus manual is super vague.

However, if it isn't working for you, it doesn't actually seem like you're doing anything wrong. Last thing I can suggest is checking, after connecting it to the USB and selecting Audio interface mode, and having your headphones plugged in, can you poke at the volume up/down buttons next to the headphone jack? Just in case for some reason it was set it to 0 or something? The device, when sitting around, is also supposed to let you play back recorded digital files that are stored on it.

To summarise, kinda, if your goal is local monitoring and reducing delay, compared to doing that via eg a program like goldwave, (probably) listen to this device will be snappier. If your built in sound card exposes its mic/line in as optional settings in its speaker/playback settings, these would be snappier still. Local monitoring on the h2 device is snappiest. Every option on that list should allow you some way to also listen to system sounds + call audio from Zoom (voice chat) if it is set to use appropriate audio device your headphones are attached to. I'm... not sure where on that spectrum you're currently at.

Regarding your friend I assume they've been doing the whole, 'use original audio' mode in Zoom (video chat) on their desktop? If so then it may well be their internet. Maybe he could try tethering his computer to his phone?

[Thrupenny Bit]

The 'original sound' tab is crucial for instruments in Zoom.
Our whistle player kept getting cut off after 2 notes as apparently Zoom thinks anything but voice is distracting noise and cuts it. Last night another box player was leading and using ordinary settings, and getting results like I was getting on my webcam.
Ticking 'original sound' in Zoom settings makes a huge difference.
Q

[Tone Dumb Greg]

The 'original sound' tab is crucial for instruments in Zoom.
Our whistle player kept getting cut off after 2 notes as apparently Zoom thinks anything but voice is distracting noise and cuts it. Last night another box player was leading and using ordinary settings, and getting results like I was getting on my webcam.
Ticking 'original sound' in Zoom settings makes a huge difference.
Q

Wghat Q says. I had a lot of trouble with this until I worked out why and how to stop it.
The tick box isn't where you might expect to find it, either.

[Anahata]

He has some very good studio kit, and can't understand why it won't work better with Zoom meetings.  He believes however that his upload broadband speed of 0.1MHz (variable) is ruining it.

Very likely. No amount of fancy microphones will cure the problem if the microphone wasn't the problem.
On Zoom you need 'original sound' and turn off echo suppression and interference suppression.
100k is really slow upload speed, and though in theory it's OK for compressed audio, the (variable) part of that is probably what's really killing it.
(I'm getting  11Mb upload and about 29Mb download)

[Chris Brimley]

Gena, thanks for your perseverance and excellent advice - I'm going to study that section of the manual in detail over the next couple of days, and try and work it out, because I think it's much more likely that you're right than me!

For the time being, doesn't the quote from P71 from the manual match what I've found too?  I know the USB port does just that.  The question for me is whether it allows you to record or monitor the digital signal coming in.  Arguably, you can't do much with it if it doesn't (other than load in files), so that's a hopeful sign, but I can't find other options.  I'll keep trying. 

[Chris Brimley]

Anahata, yes, we've been through all the Zoom settings with him to try things out.  It's very galling for him to have such rubbish broadband bandwidth because his company is involved with fibre optics!

[Anahata]

My plan (and I think what I was using until I tinkered with it recently) is to use 1080p/50fps from the camera.

Despite Gena's encouragement in another thread to upload to YT at 50fps, I find my own computer's graphics system can't play full screen at that speed, so I've gone back to converting to 30fps.

Update: After much experimentation I have finally manged to install Nvidia's proprietary drivers and I'm getting full screen playback on a 2k monitor with no video lag. If I'd RTFM* a bit earlier I'd have saved myself a couple of broken system/reinstall cycles too.
So it's back to plan A now - 50fps all the way!

* technical term: Read The Manual

[Thrupenny Bit]

Yep, as said 'when all else fails read the manual'!!!

[Chris Brimley]

Gena, it works, after a lot of head-scratching and wrong turns!  Thanks so much.  Probably best if we PM'ed rather than bore everyone else stiff if you want to discuss it further, but I now believe the mistake I was making wasn't to do with setting the Window input and output settings appropriately, it was that the H2 needs to be turned on, despite the fact that when you connect the USB for data transfer it tells you not to, and despite the fact that it appears to be on anyway - you get all the screen options coming up anyway, and you can actually hear something faint and distorted.  I had a hunch you were right all along!

[Thrupenny Bit]

Well done Chris, and Gena again for her input.
At least if anyone else needs to do the same for an H2 or Olympus our 'workings out' are here for others to follow.
Like all good maths solutions!
 Cheers
Q

[Chris Brimley]

Just one last thing I can't get the H2 to do - record from USB input.  You have to use the audio input.

Can you do it on an Olympus?

[Thrupenny Bit]

That was an odd experiment!
I turned on Radio 4 on the pc, plugged the USB into the Olympus after simply turning it on.
The Olympus then became an externa speaker for R4!!

I unplugged the Olympus, got it in 'recorder' mode, pressed 'record' and plugged it back in.
Yes, it recorded R4 perfectly well.
Not immediately sure why I'd want to do it, but I can.
cheers
Q

[Gena Crisman]

Gena, it works, after a lot of head-scratching and wrong turns:
it was that the H2 needs to be turned on

Well, that is quite bizarre. I'm glad that some kind of positive outcome has been achieved.

Best I can tell, the h2n won't let you record onto the device itself while in either of its USB modes. So, I'd guess you can't record onto the device itself, either what it hears or what the PC is sending to it. I imagine the h2 is in the same boat, if you have had no success.

However, you can probably just record both your computer's desktop sounds and the mic sounds all at the same time with the computer itself, rather than aiming to record onto the h2's memory card. I'd accomplish desktop recording like that that with something like OBS; https://obsproject.com/ due to my existing familiarity and I suppose that would also let me add video of whatever's going on my desktop as well, if I wanted that.

Also just like, windows 10 can pretty much do the above too, screen recording + system audio + mic, I mean. I'm not sure if you have to actually install the xbox game bar via the MS app store, or if Win + G will do something useful just on plain vanilla w10, but, there's probably something available. I mean, I personally would probably use OBS with the goal of making use of it's 'record audio to separate tracks' feature, so I can still adjust my microphone mix and that of the system sounds after the fact. But the game bar is significantly less daunting, I suppose.

[Chris Brimley]

I guessed the reason that we can't record to the device from USB is to do with music industry standards for copyright protection?  Maybe they recognise that prohibiting audio signals from being recorded would be impossible, so that's usually allowed.  I can certainly record audio signals on the PC using GoldWave, as I can on the H2. I just checked GoldWave, but at first sight it looks like it only permits audio signal input to recording too.  GoldWave will allow you to input data from a CD, as will H2 by data transfer, but not in realtime.

Is OBS similar in that respect?  Looking just at the basics, it seems only to refer to audio input devices.

But the idea of recording audio on the PC as you playback from it sounds an appealing idea.  I guess MixPad must allow this?

[Chris Brimley]

My H2 won't do the R4 experiment, TB, as far as I can tell.  Are you sure you weren't actually just recording through the Olympus mics?

[Thrupenny Bit]

Oh Chris, yes possibly it was going through the mic. Never thought of that.
If I want to record from my pc - a YouTube sound only, R4, a cd, anything coming *out of the speakers* - I turn on Audacity, record then export it as a useable sound file to a saved place.
Works a treat.
Q

[Thrupenny Bit]

Good point Chris.
Yes, I was recording via the Olympus mic.
If I turned off R4 and nothing coming out of the speakers, nothing was recorded.
Q

[Gena Crisman]

I guessed the reason that we can't record to the device from USB is to do with music industry standards for copyright protection?

Uh, lol, I mean I don't know, but, I don't think it's going to be that. I'd guess it's probably either a hardware reason or a UX reason.

Is OBS similar in that respect?  Looking just at the basics, it seems only to refer to audio input devices.

But the idea of recording audio on the PC as you playback from it sounds an appealing idea.  I guess MixPad must allow this?

In any case, there is quite a bit of software that can record from multiple audio sources at the same time in windows, and to different audio tracks. Audacity, however, does not appear to be one of them. Most software conceptualised as 'streaming' software, such as OBS, is capable of capturing both desktop audio, and, audio from 'your microphone'. Essentially, these are:

• A windows-driven Loopback recorder for your playback device (So, your youtube video or zoom call)*
  
• Recorder for your recording device (your microphone, line in, whatever device you set up)
  

Some of this software will also let you record directly to a file, rather than only 'stream' it out to Twitch/Youtube/Facebook etc. If you consider that a typical use case of the software is that it is for live streaming you eg playing a video game, these are both kind of critical aspects to that task.

Other software is available. However, 'Windows Sound' can be an area of particularly intense complexity and consternation, once you get past a certain level, and there's a good chance that software such as Mixpad, Virtual Audio Cable, Voicemeeter etc is designed to meet those advanced requirements, and things get real messy, real fast. Anything that's creating virtual sound devices, I would suggest is probably an over complication. And, unless I was particularly keen, I'd personally avoid buying anything.

(*NB If you ever want to just record windows system audio with audacity and can't find a way to do so, there's a dropdown where you can change the audio host to 'Windows WASAPI', which should include loopback recorders for your playback devices. This is handy if your audio hardware does not offer a 'Stereo Mix' or 'What U Hear', which is what we had to use in "the old days".)

[Chris Brimley]

Many thanks for your comments, Gena.  I think I understand most of them!

Unfortunately, I'm afraid I was too hasty in thinking I'd got my H2 to work in and out on USB, following problems I had yesterday.

First, the bit-rate setting - since I wasn't getting the clicks described as an indicator of wrong settings, I assumed that it was working OK on the default 44.1kHz with my Win 10 setup.  However the slight treble distortion I seemed to be getting has turned out to be related to this, and by resetting to 48kHz I've got less 'zizzy' treble through the headphones.  Good news.  I wish it defaulted to the last setting, so I don't need to keep resetting it.

Second, when I tried to replicate the 'turn on' fix I described earlier, it made no difference - both on and off seemed to work.  Which makes me think that what I had done was exactly the same as TB experienced on the Olympus - by turning on the device I had just reset it to the normal mic record function, and disabled the USB interface.

Third, my latest experiment today was just based on using USB in and out to the device, playing Spotify through the PC, not on my previous problems which I had found using Zoom Meetings.  Therefore I now suspect the whole problem was related to the Zoom Meetings software, and not the Zoom H2 at all.  It turns out that this software does not support input devices like the H2 or the Olympus, so I suspect that although the devices can both use USB in and out, Zoom Meetings doesn't support it.  In particular, it seems to have problems with setting input and output devices, which may conflict with Win 10 settings.

Which leads me onto a whole new area - does Zoom Meetings really work properly, as it should?  I have to say that my experiences of this so far are not that great, and for live online meetings, this may be a problem for all musicians.  In the various meetings I've attended, most performers have significant sound problems, tbh.  Many clearly suffer from insufficient broadband upload speed. Others seem to have lots of effects or audio corrections imposed on their sound, which makes them cut out, have unnaturally fluctuating volume or eq, or simply be too loud or too soft.  The 'Original Sound' option seems to be little understood.  But the worst thing seems to me to be that there's no way the performer can check the sound the others are hearing from them.  Normal Zoom applies all sorts of corrections to overcome this, but if you choose the Original Sound option it looks like you have to do it yourself, and most of us don't know how to do it.  The tutorials are of little help to us in this respect.  My fix is to use the H2 as an input device (effectively a pair of USB mics), but put the headphones into the PC's output socket, adjusting all the Win 10 and Zoom meeting audio in and out settings accordingly.  Unfortunately, I have to take off my headphones when playing, to avoid the latency issue.  However the others at the meeting tell me the sound is clear, undistorted and steady, so something's going right.  I just wish I could hear it for myself!

[Thrupenny Bit]

Thread resurrection:

Dear all, it's been a good few months since we all turned our brains inside out getting into the bowels of our audio recording devices in order to try and make them better microphones for a webcam.

I ended up just about managing to change several settings to enable my Olympus LS3 audio recorder to enable its' use as a microphone. I then haven't used it since as I used my camera to record.
I picked up the Olympus last evening and tried to charge it using my pc as I've always done.
Ah..... not charging ?

It took me all last night and more this morning to discover my problem.
When changing it to a microphone meant I needed to change one of the USB settings in the Olympus menu to enable it to become a microphone.
This means it doesn't recognise the Olympus as a chargeable device and when the batteries are drained, it is impossible to change the settings.
Thank goodness for charged landline telephone batteries, enabling me to get back into a dead device and restore it's settings

Moral of the story: if delving into the obscure parts of a device menu, write down the settings you've changed to enable you to restore it to it's normal use.
(  I ought to have remembered this.... sigh )

Anyway, all good here now. Just thought I'd warn anyone searching this thread and changing their recording device settings.
Cheers
Q