Sound interference

[Juliana_V]

Hi! I lead a class in English with a translator, who translates into Ukrainian Live after me (not simultaneously). Up to that moment, both of our voices are well heard by participants. At one point, we need to play a soundtrack. To do it, I share the sound on Zoom: Share screen - Advanced - Computer Audio (Mono or Stereo). At this point, the issue with the sound appears. I need to talk while the music is playing to give instructions and the translator needs to translate what I say when I finish talking. If I am sharing the sound and talking, there are no issues with the music or my voice, but when the translator starts to talk, the music is cut and deformed. The same happens if we reverse the person who shares the music: If my translator is sharing the sound and talking, there are no issues with the music or her voice, but when I start to talk, the music is cut and deformed. I can't lead the session if I try to mute myself when my translator is talking and vice versa, it disturbs the whole flow of the session. We have tried to make a third person who is muted all the time to share the sound but the same happens: my voice or my translator voice is still cutting the music. 

Is there a way to solve this issue please?

Thank you for any suggestions!

[Ray_Harwood]

Welcome to the Zoom Community, @Juliana_V. Sorry for the delay in responding to your question.

The Zoom app tries to prioritize the audio of the primary speaker, and "two people talking at the same time" often results in less than optimal audio.  Audio "mixing" is typically done outside of the Zoom app.

However, since you're talking about language interpretation, I'd suggest you look into using the language interpretation feature that is built into Zoom.  See this Zoom Support article for details and a video demonstration:

https://support.zoom.com/hc/en/article?id=zm_kb&sysparm_article=KB0064768 

Listen especially to the video at 1m19s where there is a "recommendation" to not share audio while using the Language Interpretation feature.  Note the warning is to not SHARE audio -- which means using the Share Screen feature of Zoom.  If you can play your audio through a media player on your computer, and have that audio mixed with your microphone as the input into Zoom, then listeners to the interpretation channels will hear the "original audio" at lower volume, but Zoom will mix the original audio with the interpreter's audio.

This might not be ideal for your situation, but at least gives you a couple of options to explore.

My recommendation would be to have a recording session separate from your meeting, and use the Separate Audio recording capability to get both audio tracks, then have someone "mix" them together into one track for you to play... which would have the original language plus the interpreted language all on the played audio file.