I really like UltraMixer, it is a very powerful and flexible programme with excellent performance and a nice user interface but there is one particular extra feature that I would like to see being added and that is a Microphone Input. Will you ever implement a Microphone Input mixer channel that supports any regular and usb microphone being plugged straight into a desktop/notebook on board/external sound card or any usb port? That would be really useful and it would make UltraMixer even more flexible, especially the usb microphone option that could be easily used in conjunction with the Talk button.
I use UltraMixer as a software only setup, I have no external hardware connected. I can play my mp3 files from the hard disk and my CDs from the CD drives in my computer. If I could just plug in a normal microphone or even better a usb microphone and add it to the output signal through UltraMixer own mixer it would give me all the control I need and it would be all self contained within my computer. That would make UltraMixer very portable and very flexible and I can always connect external hardware if I need to. A lot of users would benefit from such a Microphone Input, think of Internet radio broadcasters or mobile DJs who mostly play at weddings or home users wanting to use UltraMixer for parties. There are only a couple of programmes on the market that have a Microphone Input in their software mixer but none of them play directly from CDs and that is an important feature that they are missing. UltraMixer would be the only programme on the market offering comprehensive digital files play and direct CD play with an integrated software Microphone Input channel. Also, I am not a programmer but I don’t think that it would be particularly difficult to implement such a feature, after all a usb microphone, for example, is seen by the system just as another sound card.
well, it almost unusable to use a feature like that under real world circumstances.
The main reason for the problems in software is … a software need to capture the sound from the soundcard and play it back in so called “real time”. Unfortunately, the way from the sound card to the CPU and back to the sound card is way too long in terms of real time processing.
Therefore I always suggest to use an external mixer OR the internal mixer of the sound card.
In almost all cases I have seen the internal soundcard mixer is done in hardware and reacts very fast. Plug in your microphone to the sound card and route the signal directly back to the output. That will be the best solution for this case and there is no software change needed.
Thank you for your reply and for your useful suggestion and information. Yes, routing the microphone through my soundcard internal mixer is what I normally do. What I am suggesting is to add a channel to the UltraMixer mixer so that is possible to control the microphone plugged into the sound card and routed through the sound card internal mixer directly from UltraMixer, that would be handy. Also, just out of curiosity, would the use of a usb microphone be beneficial at all in terms of real time processing given that a usb microphone acts just like a second sound card? if it is beneficial, would it be difficult to create a Microphone Input channel in UltraMixer that supports usb microphones?
I am not sure how much more work it would take, but is it possible to just control the mic with UltraMixer. I would also love to have this feature, but all I really want Ultramixer to do is unmute the mic when you use the “Talk” function, then mute it again when you turn the talk off. I use only ultramixer with no soundboards or other equiptment, so I have to use a USB mic to speak. It works pretty well (although there is about half a second of lag), but overall, it works.