Streaming on Twitch & OBS - Audiophool Edition

Hey guys!

Just wanted to post a mini-blog / stream of consciousness on my streaming adventures. I always found it fun to watch others play games and to have others watch me as I play games as well. So after I built my Ryzen PC 2 months ago, I was finally able to start streaming. I'm going to skip over all the video parts of streaming, and instead focus on the audio side since this is SBAF after all. Recording gear is the other side of the audio rabbit hole that I've gotten myself into, and the gear that I've been buying is overkill for streaming purposes. However, it's still fun to learn about the recording process and actually experimenting with it.

So to start off, I'll just be posting my PC and audio setup for today! For reference and audio samples, check out my videos or streams at twitch.tv/thegunner100.

OBS Settings
1440p downscaled to 720p with Bicubic filtering
x264 encoder, 5600kbps video CBR, Slow preset
44.1khz/24bit, 320kbps CoreAudio AAC (basically Apple's AAC encoder, which is said to be better than the default one)

PC
Ryzen 1700 @ 3.85ghz
16gb DDR4 @ 3433mhz 16/15/15/16
GTX 980 ti

Audio output
Lynx E22 (AES) > Yggdrasil > Neco v5 > HD650

Audio input
Mics: Samson Go, AT2035, AT4033, SM7B, MKE 600
Preamps/Interfaces: UR12, Scarlett Solo, ISA One
ADC: Lynx E22

Current set up would be AT4033/SM7B > ISA One > E22 > Reaper (DAW for VSTs) > OBS

I first started out with a Samson Go mic. It's a decent budget mic for chatting on Discord and such, but wasn't quite up to my standard for live streaming. I needed to crank up the gain on it in order to get decent volume levels and as a result, it picked up a lot of external sounds as well. To hear examples of it, just check out my earliest vods of me playing NieR Automata. I think after a few streams, I started mounting the Samson Go onto my boom mic stand in order to get the mic closer to my mouth. I also bought a double mesh screen pop filter. While those two did help improve the sound, it wasn't quite enough.

Not being satisfied with the quality of the Samson Go, I started doing research on professional microphones. I found out that there were two types of microphones commonly used for streaming: Dynamic microphones and Condenser microphones. Each has their own advantages and disadvantages, which I will explain in a future post. There's also a distinction between USB microphones and XLR microphones (the industry standard). I'll get to that in a future post as well.

Dynamics generally look like this:

^Shure SM57

Condensers generally look like this:

^Audio Technica AT2035

Anyways, this first post is getting pretty lengthy already. Just wanted to say that over the upcoming weeks, I'll be trying out the various condenser mics (AT2035, AT4033, MKE 600) and dynamic mics (SM57, SM7B). I'll attempt to post my impressions and stream vods using each of these mics in the upcoming weeks and explain the various equipment associated with voice recording. I'm definitely still a noob to the recording process, so all comments and questions are welcome!

 

Sennheiser MKE 600 Impressions



In addition to the previous mics I already had, I ended up picking up a Sennheiser MKE 600 shotgun mic from ebay. In general, shotgun mics are super cardiod (see here for visual representation) condenser mics that are meant for videography and outdoor use. They have a narrow polar pattern, which allows it to reject sounds that are not directly in front of the mic. Unfortunately this causes problems indoors, especially in smaller rooms. It will tend to pick up reflections from walls that the mic is facing. Room treatment would probably go a long way towards improving sound SQ when using shotgun mics indoor for voiceover work.



If you take a look at the polar response, you can see how the mic picks up sound and how different frequencies vary. As for the frequency response, it is actually quite flat with a slight broad boost from 2khz-15khz. This microphone, like most others, have a bass cutoff switch which reduces wind noises, rumbles, and vibrations. Very useful to have for voiceovers and streaming since our voices don't go that low.

A streamer that I've watched had pretty good success with a Rode NTG 2, so I wanted to give shotgun mics a try. I gave it a shot last night and this is the result (don't mind the waifu music). I liked that I could just mount it on a desk stand and not a full mic stand. It gave me a little bit more freedom to move around while streaming, but unfortunately as with all mics, the sensitivity goes down the further you go. And as mentioned before, it is pretty sensitive to frequency response changes from going off-axis. Sound-wise, I think it sounds pretty acceptable. It's not as natural sounding as my Audio Technica cardioid condenser mics, but at least is pretty clear sounding. Unfortunately my room is pretty small and my computer monitor happens to be facing my door, so the mic picked up reflections from the wall/door as well as some of the noise from my family outside.

I think if I played around with my VST settings a bit more, I could possibly get it to sound a bit better. I don't think it will sound nearly as good as the AT4033 but it is definitely more convenient to use. If you guys have a chance to take a quick listen, please let me know what you think!