There are several circumstances in which you might want to stream audio from your Paca(rana) onto a network, for example, you may want to:

• Share a Paca(rana) or a small number of Paca(rana)s among a group of sound designers working in a studio or classroom
• Access your Paca(rana) remotely (for example, access your work system from your home studio)
• Present a workshop, seminar or course using teleconferencing software with sound examples from Kyma
• Collaborate on a project where one or more of the collaborators uses Kyma
• Present your music or present a talk at a festival or conference with audio from your Kyma system

Here are some example solutions using readily available software and hardware. These are by no means the only solutions; they are offered as example configurations that you can customize to fit your particular needs.

Getting audio from your Paca(rana) onto your host computer

The easiest approach to getting sound from the Paca(rana) onto a network is to first stream the audio to your host computer, and then to take advantage of the hardware and software running on your host computer in order to stream that audio out onto the Internet.

Using Dante AVIO USB adapter to get audio to your host computer

The Audinate Dante AVIO USB adapter has a USB connector on one end and an Ethernet connector on the other. By plugging one end of the AVIO adapter into the USB port on the back of your Paca(rana) and connecting the other end to a Gigabit Ethernet switch (such as this one by NetGear), you can make your Paca(rana) audio available on a local area network, where any Mac or Windows computer on the same LAN that is running the Dante Via software can have access to the audio stream.

In this photo, we’ve connected the AVIO to an Ethernet switch so the audio is accessible from any computer on the same LAN. Alternatively, you can connect the AVIO adapter directly to the Ethernet port on your host computer (or through a USB-C Ethernet adapter).

Here’s what should be connected to the Ethernet switch (using Cat-6 or Cat-5e cables):

• The AVIO
• Expansion Port B on the back of your Paca(rana)
• Your computer (or computers)
• A connection to the Internet

Using a second interface to get audio to your host computer

If you have a second audio interface, you could use that as an alternative way to get audio from your Paca(rana) to your laptop. Say, for example, that your Paca(rana) interface is a MOTU UltraLite. You could take the audio outputs from the MOTU and send them to a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 USB interface (for example), and connect the Scarlett to one of the USB ports on your laptop.

Routing and mixing audio streams on your host computer

Once you have the audio from your Pacarana on your host computer, there are a variety of solutions for routing and combining that audio with the audio streams from other sources on that computer.

For the Dante AVIO, you can use the Dante Via software to create mixes and route the stereo mix to other applications.

Ben Phenix also recommends Loopback by Rogue Amoeba to create custom routing configurations using application and device inputs, for example, if you want to combine audio from your microphone with other audio sources like Kyma.

As another alternative, Simon Smith suggests BlackHole from Existential Audio, which acts as a virtual audio driver and allows applications to pass audio to other applications.

Accessing your Kyma system remotely

Whether you are working from home during a pandemic or (in happier times) catching up on some sound design work from your hotel room while traveling, there are numerous situations in which you might want to access your studio Kyma system from afar. Whether your Kyma system is in the next room, at your work location, or in another country, you can use remote desktop software to control the computer where you have Kyma installed.

In this scenario, to distinguish between the two computers, let’s call the computer running Kyma the Kyma Computer and the computer you using to access Kyma the Remote Computer (even though both computers could be located in the same room or just down the hall from one another). There are two parts to the remote-control scenario. You want to:

• Remote-control the Kyma Computer, and
• Send the audio from the Kyma Computer to the Remote Computer

For the first task, you can use remote-desktop software. Some remote-desktop applications can also send audio from the Kyma Computer to the Remote Computer. For others, you have to use two separate applications: one for the remote-desktop control and another for sending audio.

Example 1: Jump Remote Desktop

Using the Jump Desktop, you can do both things at once: control your Kyma Computer and stream audio from your Kyma Computer to the Remote Computer. The server side of Jump is free, but you do have to license the software that is installed on each Remote Computer. The Remote Computer can be running either MacOS or Windows.

To send audio using Jump on MacOS, first install BlackHole from Existential Audio. Then, assuming you have already set up audio streaming from your Paca(rana) to your Kyma Computer using either the AVIO or a second interface:

• Open Audio MIDI Setup
• Select BlackHole 16 ch
• Choose: Use this device for sound output

 

If you are using Dante VIA:

• Drag the AVIO to connect it to BlackHole 16 ch

See this support article on the Jump website for more details on how to stream audio.

Example 2: Chrome Remote Desktop

Like the Jump Desktop, Google’s Chrome Remote Desktop also works with multiple client operating systems. The good news is that both the server and client sides of Chrome Remote Desktop are free. The bad news is that there is no way to stream audio from the Kyma Computer to the Remote Computer if either computer uses MacOS. So in order use this solution on MacOS, you have to run two applications: the Chrome Remote Desktop and a second application that can send audio from the Kyma Computer to the Remote Computer.

We combined Chrome Remote Desktop (to control the Kyma Computer) with the popular teleconferencing software Zoom (to get the audio from the Kyma Computer to the Remote Computer). In theory, you should be able to stream audio using an alternative application like Skype or Duo, but we haven’t tested that yet. For the Zoom solution, you will need a second Google account in order to invite yourself to a Zoom meeting from the first account.

First, install the Zoom and Chrome Remote Desktop applications on both the Kyma Computer and the Remote Computer. On MacOS, be sure to follow the instructions on how to set the Security & Privacy settings in the System Preferences.

In order to be able to control the Kyma Computer without someone being there to give you access, turn on remote access in the Chrome Remote Desktop application. You will be asked to set a PIN for security and you will need to use the same Google account on both computers.

Before doing anything else, make sure your copy of Zoom is set up for stereo audio:

1. Sign into the Zoom web portal
2. In Personal Settings, scroll down to the end
3. Check the box: Allow users to select stereo audio
4. Check the box: Allow users to select original sound
5. Open the Zoom application on the Kyma Computer, select the Audio Settings, and check Enable Stereo

To use Kyma remotely:

1. On the Remote Computer, log in to Chrome Remote Desktop (CRDT) and enter the PIN
2. In the options, check Fullscreen and Scale to fit
3. Kyma Computer: Run Dante Via (if that’s what you’re using for audio)
4. Kyma Computer: Start Zoom.us, create a new meeting, and join with computer audio
5. Kyma Computer: In Zoom, turn on Original sound (to defeat the automatic gain control)
6. Kyma Computer: Invite participants (your second account), click Copy URL
7. Remote Computer: Paste URL into Google Chrome, and click Open zoom.us
8. Remote Computer: Join with video & join with computer audio
9. Kyma Computer: Admit yourself to the meeting
10. Kyma Computer: Mute the Remote Computer participant & stop its video
11. Kyma Computer: Launch Kyma

If you have high quality headphones or even some reasonable quality home speakers, try listening through those rather than relying on the speakers built into your laptop computer.

Video conferencing for courses, seminars, meetings, and concerts

Example 1: Zoom teleconference

Zoom has become one of the favorite video conferencing platform during the lockdown, particularly for online courses and business meetings. How can you stream audio from your Paca(rana) into a Zoom meeting?

First, make sure your copy of Zoom is set up for stereo audio:

1. Sign into the Zoom web portal
2. In Personal Settings, scroll down to the end
3. Check the box: Allow users to select stereo audio
4. Check the box: Allow users to select original sound
5. Open the Zoom application, select the Audio Settings, and check Enable Stereo

You probably want to be able to both speak and play sound from the Paca(rana). If using the Dante AVIO:

1. Use the Dante Via software to create a mix of your computer microphone with audio from the Paca(rana) in the Stereo Application Input.
2. In Zoom > Settings > Audio, for Microphone, choose Dante Via Stereo.

Alternatively, if you’re using a second interface to get audio to your computer, you can use Loopback or BlackHole to create a stereo mix of the computer’s microphone input and audio from your USB audio interface.

Now you’re ready to start the meeting:

1. Start Zoom.us
2. Start a new meeting & join with computer audio
3. Turn on Original sound (to defeat the automatic gain control)
4. Invite participants
5. Launch Kyma

Example 2: Google Meet (née Hangouts)

Until recently, Google Meet was available only to G Suite business subscribers but during the lockdown, Google has made it free for everyone. It appears that Meet is competing with Zoom in terms of features like the Brady Bunch tiling of participant videos, but for some reason, it doesn’t (yet) seem to be possible to stream computer audio from anything other than the microphone. We got around this by creating a zombie Paca(rana) participant and invited it to the meeting.

For this test, we routed audio from the Paca(rana) MOTU to a Focusrite Saffire 2i2 USB audio interface connected to the USB input of a laptop. We used one Google account for the laptop and a different Google account for the computer running Kyma. Then:

1. On the Zombie laptop: Run Audio MIDI Setup and use the Gear drop down menu to select the USB audio card for Sound Input and Output and Alerts
2. On the Pacarana computer, start a Google Meet meeting
3. Invite the Zombie laptop
4. Invite other participants (humans)
5. The zombie appears as a phantom guest in the Meeting who, in lieu of speaking, plays audio from Kyma

In theory, you could use a single computer for this by using Loopback or BlackHole to create a mix of the microphone and the audio from Kyma (via a second interface or the Dante AVIO).

Conclusion (for now)

These are just a few suggestions to help you get started using Kyma on a network for remote work, collaboration, social distancing, and online instruction. Have you found other solutions? We’d love to hear any experiences, tips and success stories that you’d like to share.

Stay safe so we can keep making sounds and music together!