Recording Long Distance Microphones

[Harrison Myers]

I would like to import the feed of my friend's microphone from long distance, and record ourselves on Cakewalk. One channel would be me with my microphone, and the other channel would be them with their microphone plugged into a computer - as would mine, and we would both be on Wi-Fi.

Does Cakewalk have this capability?

[John Vere]

This has nothing to do with Cakewalk. What your asking is more to do with the capture of live streaming audio by your sound card. The problem is this audio is from the output of the system and you need an input. Cakewalk can record inputs but not output unless it is looped back somehow 

My Motu M4 has loop back so I could do this but it’s rare an on board sound card would have this option 

The other issue is the latency will be unusable even if you got it to work. 
Your playback will take about 20 ms to get to your friends house and then their voice will take another 20 ms to return not to mention the real bad fidelity. 
Best to just use a cloud storage to share the project on line. Cakewalk is free so you can have identical set ups 

Edited April 8, 2021 by John Vere

[Harrison Myers]

2 hours ago, John Vere said:

This has nothing to do with Cakewalk. What your asking is more to do with the capture of live streaming audio by your sound card. The problem is this audio is from the output of the system and you need an input. Cakewalk can record inputs but not output unless it is looped back somehow 

My Motu M4 has loop back so I could do this but it’s rare an on board sound card would have this option 

The other issue is the latency will be unusable even if you got it to work. 
Your playback will take about 20 ms to get to your friends house and then their voice will take another 20 ms to return not to mention the real bad fidelity. 
Best to just use a cloud storage to share the project on line. Cakewalk is free so you can have identical set ups 

This would not be an input and an output.

This would be 2 inputs, one from my microphone plugged into my computer, then the 2nd input would come from the remote location.

[John Vere]

Pray tell how are you planning on transmitting his signal to your computers sound cards input jack? 

[Promidi]

5 hours ago, John Vere said:

Pray tell how are you planning on transmitting his signal to your computers sound cards input jack? 

He could configure the remote’s audio feed to go to a 2nd sound card.  Then use a hardware mixer to route that card’s signal to the input of the sound card that Cakewalk uses. 

[John Vere]

25 minutes ago, Promidi said:

He could configure the remote’s audio feed to go to a 2nd sound card.  Then use a hardware mixer to route that card’s signal to the input of the sound card that Cakewalk uses. 

Yes there's lots of ways to do that,  I'm just assuming the OP has diddly squat for audio gear,  but as I said... the latency would make all this pointless. Much better to just share the project like everyone else does. I think it can be done but it would involve very low latency audio devices and A/D - D/A 

[Harrison Myers]

18 hours ago, John Vere said:

Yes there's lots of ways to do that,  I'm just assuming the OP has diddly squat for audio gear,  but as I said... the latency would make all this pointless. Much better to just share the project like everyone else does. I think it can be done but it would involve very low latency audio devices and A/D - D/A 

What if I use one input from my computer to receive a zoom call of the two of us? they will have a microphone hooked up to their computer for better sound quality.

[Promidi]

For this to work properly and to be the most in sync, both of you will need the foliating:

A good quality USB audio interface.
High-speed internet with good upload and download speed.
A wired connection to the respective router (Wifi is not going to cut it)
Some kind of cabled internet (No Satellite, no radio dish or anything like that)

I do not use Zoom, so I am not sure that would be quick enough.

Even then you won't be able to eliminate all latency

[John Vere]

Ok if you both have USB mikes you could try that. Try WASAPI mode to show your inputs   But you need to realize how much latency there will be on his mike and adjust that track. You won’t be able to sing at the same time either 

Edited April 9, 2021 by John Vere

[Harrison Myers]

Thank you, everybody. I will look into all of this.