Post by gdw3 on Aug 6, 2020 15:07:49 GMT -5
I've done a few live-streaming events and gigs since the quarantine. Each one I've learned something or improved my sound. My biggest revelation was using OBS if you're live-streaming on Facebook and YouTube (or other platforms). The sound quality is so much better, as FB doesn't try to compress and knock out "background noise", which causes your audio level to dip and sound really crappy. It's free, too. You gotta have a little technical savvy, but most of the settings you can leave at default. Definitely do some testing before you go live with your gig!
I did a songwriter's circle kinda thing last night over Zoom and just learned a trick that I wish I knew 5 months ago! Zoom also tries to cut out "background noise", which means basically everything but voice. So, if you're playing guitar and not singing, then Zoom compresses and tries to block the sound, and it sounds really horrible. It totally ruined a gig I did early in Spring and I was so embarrassed. I thought I was just out of luck playing over Zoom. But just last night, a guy in the songwriting thing I was invited to pointed me at what to change in the Zoom Advanced Audio settings, which made my sound so much better! I'll list the instructions for the Zoom app on PC. The iPhone/iPad app does not have all these settings, though it DOES have the "Use Original Sound" setting, which is the most important bit.
1. Open the Zoom app and click the gear icon to open your Settings
2. Go to the Audio tab, and click the "Advanced" button at the bottom right of the window
3. Click the box next to "Show in-meeting option to "Enable Original Sound" from microphone.
-- this is the one that is important. Technically, I'm going through my audio interface, but Zoom sees all audio inputs as "microphone"
-- the nice thing about this, is you can turn it off in a regular meeting, so that your background noise suppressor turns back on for regular voice meetings
4. Set the drop-down menu for "Suppress Intermittent Background Noise" to "Disable".
5. The group also told me to disable the "Suppress Persistent Background Noise", but I did a quick test afterwards, and did not find a big difference when I was playing and singing. I'm going to try leaving that one on Auto for now, because of things like air conditioning noise in my room.
That's it. Suddenly, my recorded Zoom audio sounds like it sounds in my headphones! Yay!
Next, I'm going to try something called Restream, which Greg Koch says he is using to stream to multiple platforms (like Facebook Live, YouTube Live, etc.) at once. OBS by itself can only do one platform at a time, but Restream integrates with OBS, and gives you lots of platforms that you can add or delete each session. It also looks like it consolidates chat comments, which would be nice. Hope it works!
I did a songwriter's circle kinda thing last night over Zoom and just learned a trick that I wish I knew 5 months ago! Zoom also tries to cut out "background noise", which means basically everything but voice. So, if you're playing guitar and not singing, then Zoom compresses and tries to block the sound, and it sounds really horrible. It totally ruined a gig I did early in Spring and I was so embarrassed. I thought I was just out of luck playing over Zoom. But just last night, a guy in the songwriting thing I was invited to pointed me at what to change in the Zoom Advanced Audio settings, which made my sound so much better! I'll list the instructions for the Zoom app on PC. The iPhone/iPad app does not have all these settings, though it DOES have the "Use Original Sound" setting, which is the most important bit.
1. Open the Zoom app and click the gear icon to open your Settings
2. Go to the Audio tab, and click the "Advanced" button at the bottom right of the window
3. Click the box next to "Show in-meeting option to "Enable Original Sound" from microphone.
-- this is the one that is important. Technically, I'm going through my audio interface, but Zoom sees all audio inputs as "microphone"
-- the nice thing about this, is you can turn it off in a regular meeting, so that your background noise suppressor turns back on for regular voice meetings
4. Set the drop-down menu for "Suppress Intermittent Background Noise" to "Disable".
5. The group also told me to disable the "Suppress Persistent Background Noise", but I did a quick test afterwards, and did not find a big difference when I was playing and singing. I'm going to try leaving that one on Auto for now, because of things like air conditioning noise in my room.
That's it. Suddenly, my recorded Zoom audio sounds like it sounds in my headphones! Yay!
Next, I'm going to try something called Restream, which Greg Koch says he is using to stream to multiple platforms (like Facebook Live, YouTube Live, etc.) at once. OBS by itself can only do one platform at a time, but Restream integrates with OBS, and gives you lots of platforms that you can add or delete each session. It also looks like it consolidates chat comments, which would be nice. Hope it works!
