Getting started

Five steps take you from nothing to a running event. The first four are done once. After that, starting an event is one button.

1. Create your account

Sign up with your email address. We send you a code to confirm it, and you set a password.

You are then asked three things, which you can leave for later: who you are (the name that goes on your invoices), your address (which decides your currency and whether tax applies), and the name of your first venue. See Creating an account.

2. Add your first venue

A venue is a place you run events in. If you have one hall, you have one venue. If you run events in two buildings, add both, because each one keeps its own settings and its own record of what it has used. Your first venue is created from the setup steps; its name is what your audience sees.

Under the venue’s Settings tab you choose the language usually spoken in the room (Usually spoken here) and the language the audience reads first (The audience reads). Both can be changed later, including during an event, and people in the audience can pick something different for themselves.

3. Install the desk app

The desk app runs on a Windows computer at the sound position and sends the sound to SpanVoice. Download it from your venue’s App tab, install it, then paste the venue’s streaming key into the app under Settings and press Check.

The key is shown in full on the App tab, so you can come back for it. The same key works on more than one machine; only one of them can stream at a time. There is nothing else to sign in to. See Linking the app to your venue.

If you cannot install software, a laptop, tablet or phone browser can do the same job. See Streaming from a browser.

4. Connect your sound

Choose the input once and the app remembers it. Watch the level meter while someone talks: if it moves, you are ready.

A feed from your mixer gives the best result, because it hears the microphone and not the room. If you do not have a mixer, the computer’s own microphone is enough for a small space. See Choosing your sound source.

5. Start the event

Press Start streaming. The app sends what it hears from that moment. The link and the QR code are under Links & QR, ready to put on a screen or hand around. Each person opens the link on their own phone and picks the language they want.

Press Stop streaming when the event finishes. Your venue’s record shows how long it ran, which languages were used, and how many people were reading.

Note: Nothing is set in advance. If somebody picks a language nobody expected, they get it.

Worth doing before the first real event

Run a short event with nobody in the room: watch the meter move, open the link on your own phone, and open the projector page on the room screen if you use one. Ten minutes is enough. See Test before the day.