Mix Minus really confusing me

This will help:
VS4000 mix minus audio routing – NewTek Knowledge Base

You need to have an offboard mixing console with a bunch of aux-outs and a way to convert 4 embedded audio channels of an SDI out of the VS4000 to XLR's. Then you'll need a way to embed 4 aux outs of your mixer and shoot those back into the VS4000 via SDI. The Aja HD10 is a great box. I've been using it for this for years.
 
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Thank you for this well thought out and detailed response. I ended up getting a QSC TouchMix 16 and it does the job well. However I'm pretty disappointed with the NewTek Talkshow in general. It's buggy... The Skype TX and Skype are buggy. Good luck adding people in real time. It requires skype or Microsoft (which has the false pretense these accounts are not necessary to use the product.) This is a sticking point for people... especially the cyber and technically advanced SME's I'm talking to... and technically it has everything it needs to do mixminus itself, and doesn't. In fact is so obtuse and backwards, you have to go to great lengths and purchase special adapters to get audio into and out of it. This is a purchase I regret. There's a product on the market that costs half the price, does not need a proprietary client to work... and handles mixminus internally. Eventually I'll be going with and scaling with that product.
 
For the record, I have had a VS4000 since they were released. It has never failed us. Most of my programs have multiple pick-ups/drop offs during the show. We recently did a 30 minute live show with a total of 12 live shots, all coming in via a single VS4000. Skype TX has also been rock solid, but to get the most out of it you need to run TX off of another computer on the network, not off the VS4000 itself. Yes, the Skype requirement can be challenging for your guests, but you can streamline it quite a bit by getting the "connect" link within the TX client, sending that to your guests, and telling them to use web.skype.com so they don't have to download anything.

What is the other product you're speaking of?
 
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I had a guest who "brought" an advisor with him (connecting from his own Skype account). Skype TX doesn't tell me when someone new is trying to get in my contacts... I have to have both Skype and Skype TX. This unexpected guest added me, and I accepted him, but after multiple reboots of Skype TX I had to tell him that it wasn't possible and I had to move on with the show. After the show, when I right clicked on his name in my contact list the option to add him was there. Not sure how that was because he was in my list and I added him.

Suffice to say, I don't appreciate the proprietaries of it all.

I will take your advice though on the web.skype.com.

The other products is called Live to Air and their website is: http://www.gnuralnet.com/purchasing-livetoair

I will get one of these, along with a Constellation 8K, next bull run. Mixing everything together should be fun but I do look forward to having 8 people connect... I just need supersource to do more boxes.

I need to move all the equipment into another room. The NewTek gets pretty loud the more people that connect to it.

But other than that one incident, it's been incredibly useful... much more so than OBS, which broke for me a lot.
 
That's a cool box - I've never heard of it before. Thanks for sharing. Looking at the workflow, the mix-minus capability baked into it seems like it would only work if the LiveToAir systems were the only things in the show. As soon as you add a tape playback or any other in-studio source, you're back to setting up mix minuses.

The Skype TX / Skype contact thing IS annoying. A good rule of thumb is to just shut the program down and restart it to catch any new contacts. Another way you can do it is to just start typing in the "search" field and new contacts will show up, even if they're not listed in the SkypeTX interface.
 
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