It was a lot of fun chatting with Wazza (Netherlands), Shakeel Ahmed (Pakistan), and RichUK (Portsmouth GB, UK) on Skype today. What amazed me was even though Ahmed was on a slow dialup line (32k), the quality of our conversation was still half way decent, and with no (or very little) audio delay. With DSL/Cable, speaking to the others, the audio quality was fanstastic & with no voice delay or echo whatsoever.

Ok, here's (I think) the best way to configure Skype with your keyboard & mic for keyboard jamming & singing LIVE via Skype. If your keyboard includes a mic input (as most arrangers which include a built in vocalizer do), simply plug your mic into your keyboard, and send your keyboard L/R output into your PCs LINE IN jacks on your PC's sound card. You'll probably need a Y cable to convert the two 1/4" (L/R) audio outputs of your keyboard to the 1/8" stereo mini jack input (LINE IN) on your computer's soundcard. Once this is hooked up, all you need to do is don a pair of headphones & plug into the audio out (headphone jack) of your soundcard. You will then be able to voice chat thru the vocal mic plugged into your keyboard, and play your keyboard, with both parties concurrently playing (and singing) & heard concurrently. It's would even be possible (I think) to record the LIVE jam performances via audio recording software (Sonar, Total Recorder, etc) though I'm not exactly sure exactly how to set this up. Any recommendations?

Ok folks, my Skype username is: scottyee

Look forward to meeting, chatting, and possibly even jamming together LIVE on Skype with fellow Synthzone members soon. Email me to set up a Skype chat session.

Scott