Zoom Karaoke Setup for Windows
Zoom is a great conferencing tool, but it generally doesn’t work so well for karaoke because the singer’s voice is sent to the audience separately from the music, and those two sounds can very easily get out of sync from one another. The best way to prevent this is to stop sending the two out separately by mixing them together first! This means setting up the singer’s microphone so that it plays right back into the singer’s own ears, then muting their separate microphone signal in Zoom. When singers play their own music and share their sound through Zoom with this setup, the mix of singer and music will remain in sync.
Note that singers will hear themselves singing with this approach, which could feel a bit awkward at first, but it’s actually a lot like how singing feels when you’re on a stage with good monitors. Also note that video could still get out of sync for some audience members, depending on internet speeds. So it’s best to sing songs you know well enough to cue off of the music alone. The bouncing ball could betray you, and it must not be trusted!
Here are steps to set this up on your Windows machine.
1. Type “sound settings” into the Windows search box in your bottom left corner and open Sound Settings.
2. On the right under Related Settings, open Sound Control Panel.
3. On the Recording tab, select the microphone you’ll be using for singing and click Properties.
4. On the Listen tab, check the “Listen to this device” box, then click Apply and OK. To turn this back off later, you can just come back here and uncheck the same box.
5. Once you’ve got the box in step 4 checked, everything you say/sing into your microphone will play into your own speakers. Then you can:
a. Queue up your desired karaoke track on your computer.
b. In Zoom, share your screen and your sound (note the checkbox for sharing sound in the bottom-left corner of that sharing screen).
c. Mute your Zoom microphone, and everyone should still be able to hear you via your shared screen and sound. Note that viewers may lose your sound if they click away from your screen.
d. Play your song and sing! Then once you’ve finished and stopped sharing, just remember to come back off of mute in Zoom.
We do not have steps for non-Windows operating systems at this time, but the same basic approach should work as long as you can find a way to listen to your own mic.
If you need help with these steps, you can ping a con Director in the Play On Con Discord using “@Director” in your message.