Misssing Soundcloud workarounds.

That Soundcloud locked us Roll20 users out was quite a blow into my face and i can imagine to any GM who amassed a considerable list of songs.
But we GMs got to GM and the Show must go on! How will you work around?

I personally looked into plug dj but after reconsideration and talk with my players will opt for a TS music bot, since we use teamspeak for voice anyway.
Important to me was, that the music is not streamed directly from my PC, because my upload bandwith is not always optimal to have all three, Roll20, Teamspeak and a stream running at the same time.
What will be your solutions be?

There are no talk radio stations on the interwebz. Just google genre you need and you can almost guaranteed find one appropriate. Ambient works great for SF and folk for fantasy.

Or you could find yourself a soundboard and just play the right thing through sound mixing, which wouldn't add anything to your bandwith use.

I'll be using voicemeeter to mix the ambient music with my mic and output it as one. Setup's a little crazy, but it's worked pretty well in my tests. You'll also need the vb audio virtual cable from that same site.

I do not think i will be trying a work around at all. My thoughts are that I will use TableTop audio for now....and wait for a resolution.

Like most, I had lots of folders with custom songs set up, and 'only' using TableTop Audio is quite a downgrade(even though the guy who makes TableTop audio music does a ridiculously fantastic job) as I am used to combining numerous different sounds/music.

We need the custom audio and I would like to think the powers that be at Roll20 know this and are trying to get us there sooner rather than later. So before I rack my brains for a work around, I am gonna give Roll20 a chance to figure this out. I do think I might have a session or two affected by this, but hopefully not much more than that.

But to answer you question: a quick band aid to the problem might be to play soundcloud from your phone. The sound cloud app works great but I'm sure you  will have to do some volume tests. Not a great solution, but if it is just for a session or two....maybe it's enough?

 

[I suppose I should start with some cliche along the lines of "Hi! Long time player, first time poster" ;) ]

I've only been GMing for a few months, but right from the start I made a point of using the jukebox to help set a mood. All my players, including our old GM (who never bothered) really like the difference it makes to creating an atmos.
I'm currently working on a Halloween special game for my group that relies rather heavily on audio cues.

We do our talking through Skype. One suggestion I've seen is to use Watch2Gether to play soundcloud audio. The problem there is that everyone can see the track names and play list. I'm also not sure if it can loop a track? (Not had a chance to play with it yet). It may have to do for the time being though.

I'm sure the boffins behind the scenes are working on some kind of solution. But in the meantime any temporary workarounds we can come up with have to be worth a try!

The majority of my campaigns use custom music tracks to create ambience (and ones I purchased off drive thru rpg) as well as voice acted audio logs to deliver plot details.

So for me no amount of "additional third party music/sound effects" being added to the jukebox will be especially helpful. What I need is the ability to upload and queue as needed, my specific tracks so until R20 can set up some type of service with Google drive or allow us to upload our own audio files most work arounds (for me) aren't really viable.

Silveressa said:

The majority of my campaigns use custom music tracks to create ambience (and ones I purchased off drive thru rpg) as well as voice acted audio logs to deliver plot details.

So for me no amount of "additional third party music/sound effects" being added to the jukebox will be especially helpful. What I need is the ability to upload and queue as needed, my specific tracks so until R20 can set up some type of service with Google drive or allow us to upload our own audio files most work arounds (for me) aren't really viable.

Take a serious look at voicemeeter then, You can use your audio player of choice to broadcast sound to your players.

Voicemeeter seems to have some good potential, I'll be sure to look in to that. The next step is finding a good "sound board" style audio player that can have multiple cues on standby.

I have some reservations towards virtual audio cables out of bad experiences in the past. plus i have some actual audio hardware connected to this PC and i fear it might trick with my existing set up.

Has anyone tried using "synaptop", it looks like you can upload your own music, make playlist and listen to them in real time with friends. At the moment I'm using my soundcard mixer to stream my Itunes music through skype, but the sound is subpar in comparison to what I was used too from soundcloud, on the player end that is.

None of these solutions can replace adding a line in a macro that plays a sound. I can play music from many sources, but synchronous sound effects are immersive, the "chop" of an axe, the roar as a dragon breathes fire, we had this and now we do not. 

in terms of mood music, while it's not an ideal replacement, the added incompetech library does have some good tracks.  see that thread where some of it is broken down (Loren S. breakdown link, Doug E. and myself have some further breakdowns below it).

in terms of sound effects, short of using a music bot on a voice service we're more or less SOL until something new gets implemented.

My group and I tried Plug DJ, but it didn't work very well. I'm really hoping that Roll20 will implement some way to either stream off your computer, or be able to upload tracks to Roll20. As long as there isn't any way for players in your game to download the tracks, and you're not streaming songs with copywright, there shouldn't be any legal issues. At least, not that I can see. I'm no expert on the subject.

Well, we tried Voicemeeter through Skype in our last game, and it worked a treat. :)

Has anyone had any luck using it with Roll20's video chat? I've tried a few experiments, but I can't find a way to route the return audio from players back in to Voicemeeter and have it only audible to myself. The only option seems to be hearing them through the default playback device, which is then played back to them through Voicemeeter's virtual output, causing a feedback loop.

It's a shame, but not the end of the world if there's no solution. I guess we'll just have to use that little floating popup from Skype. You know, the one everyone always closes? :P

If your are on mac I have a solution for you, use VLC as your media player (because you can choose a different output than the system preferences)
create multi output device by going in utilities/audio midi setup/audio window click the + at the bottom left, choose multi output device, click on both your main output (headphone probably) and voicemeeter (or your virtual cable of choice). Then in vlc go to audio, choose your multi output device which will allow vlc to send audio to your headphone and voicemeeter simultaneously. In your system preferences choose your headphones as your main out that way you will hear the voice of your player and roll bips and blips, in your browser choose voicemeeter as your input and you are done.

Thanks fot the reply, but I'm afraid I'm a PC guy. ;) 

I'm pretty sure you could do that on PC too, just google something along the lines of, merging multiple outputs or multiple output device.