I am hosting a Zoom meeting next month with a few different speakers. The entire meeting will live in Zoom, no live stream component. I'd like to talk to the talent without the rest of the meeting hearing me. Can I do this with VB audio or loopback?
ASKED BY · Zach Solsmith · CHAUTAUQUA, NEW YORK · 26 SEP 2026 · ▶ 00:15:35
Use a dedicated comms system like Unity Client or Spacecoms (developed by Jonas Dautel) instead of trying to use audio utilities; these provide a separate back-channel pathway outside the main audio lines.
Check Zoom Test Kitchen and After Hours to test your setup. Spacecoms by Jonas Dautel has Zoom integration so talent can see you in the meeting. That's likely what you're looking for.
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15:29It looks like it's the Apollo Solo knocked out for some reason. I wonder if I have a bad connection. No worries. My apologies again. We can hear you. Zach Saul Smith in Chautauqua, New York. I am hosting a Zoom meeting next month with a few different speakers. The entire meeting will live in Zoom, no live stream component. I'd like to talk to the talent without the rest of the meeting hearing me.
15:49Can I do this with VB Audio or Loopback? Go ahead, Bill. This is one of those circumstances where you really want a comm system if you can. And there are so many options now that we never had before. Here on the show, we use one called Unity Client. It goes on your laptops or your phones or whatever you're using to do production, whatever your team has in the field.
16:11And it's an entirely separate pathway. So you're not trying to add on to audio lines that are still running. We also use space comms. Our friend Jonas Dottle and his friends have developed that. So there's a couple of these things that we use that kind of perform a back channel thing. And it is much more convenient than trying to multiplex some sort of chat thing on top of an existing audio signal.
16:39It seems to me that always gives you trouble. So I kind of like those inexpensive, simple. If you have internet connectivity and you can get your phone or anything else like that onto the internet, they work pretty well. And let's go to Tony. I would recommend that since you have a month, you're a month out, that you check out after hours. Check out after hours.
17:08And also, I would encourage you to take a look at Zoom Test Kitchen. Between those two places, you would have an opportunity to play with your actual setup. And so that's my suggestion. And I recommend a comms package to, I believe, Spacecoms, which is done by Jonas Dottel. I believe there is some kind of integration now with Zoom so it can show up in a Zoom meeting so you can talk back to people.
17:37That's probably what you're looking for. All right, Bill, what do we got next? Next coming up is Paul Wallace in Austin, Texas is back with this one. Sony and other manufacturers offer their cameras in black or white. Why white? He's got a link there. One of the questions for the ages. Oh, fashionable colors. I always find products that are white never seem to sell.
18:00As a dealer who sells many products, like Pioneer, for example, they make, sometimes they'll do special editions of their DJ controllers, and the white version just does not sell. Anyways, go ahead, Bill. Okay, I'm going to talk philosophy. I have two philosophies. Number one, if this thing is designed to go on set, black rules. if for no other reason than if you have any shiny objects in what you're shooting,
18:26anything white or bright or highly colored has a chance to reflect off of those mirror surfaces into the camera so you can see them. And sometimes you have to run around flagging things that people have brought on the sets. If you buy everything in matte black, nothing's going to reflect back to the camera and it takes away one step of something I have to think about. Now, that is in
18:48favor of always buying your equipment in a dark color. The other side of it is something I'm finding into more and more as I get older, which is that if I drop some small thing like a phone on the floor of my car, it might take me a week to find the thing. So I'm starting to order things in white and bright colors just so that it forms some sort of a distinction from the environment.
19:13The same thing with your camera bag. I can't tell you the number of times I've had an all-black connector, and I've been looking for it in a dark camera bag, and it's just frustration on top of frustration. In fact, so much that I changed the brand of bags that I was using to a bright yellow interior, so at least all those small things would be visually distinctive.
19:33So that's, you know, I'm just going to say, what am I going to do with this, and am I going to have trouble finding it? If so, I don't want it to be black. But if it's going to be on a set somewhere, whether it's small, medium, or large, I want it to be black so it doesn't risk reflecting back and causing me a little wasted time. And Courtney? Yeah, traditionally cameras have been offered in,
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