** Official Recording/Streaming Tips & Tricks Exchange **

[tcfreer]

Personally - I use a Corsair 1500i headset for my commentary and for my Livestreaming.

feel free to have a listen to my video's and see the results.

i've gone for a fairly cheap set up comaprd to others but it does me fine currently

 

[Etheco]

Why is the sound side of things complicated lol

I have installed Voice Meeter and tried to set things up, I have one massive issue is you ideally need to direct all sound sources through it, So from what I require the Hardware Out to be set to my headset, and I default my sound to the Voice Meeter the issue is it doesn't seem to be able to keep the 5.1 surround sound from my headset and converts it to Stereo or that's what it seems from testing.

Any ideas or replacements (Ideally cheap/free)

 

[arc@css]

Why is the sound side of things complicated

Probably for the same reasons before I started doing game play videos: in other words - there is depth to the subject in question, & at the time it was something that I hadn't done. I'll be all right once I get going.

 

[dakaiez]

Did anyone manage to try the Matrox after i mentioned it? Just curious to see how people have found it compared to what they were/are using.

 

[uncle_rufus]

Did anyone manage to try the Matrox after i mentioned it? Just curious to see how people have found it compared to what they were/are using.

I tried several more times but it just doesn't like something about my setup... though in the process I discovered that the "UT video" codec appears to perform pretty well, so I think I may switch to UT for all modern graphics games and stick with Lagarith for 8bit/Indie/Retro graphics (where it is unbeatably fast and awesome!)

 

[arc@css]

Did anyone manage to try the Matrox after i mentioned it? Just curious to see how people have found it compared to what they were/are using.

Not yet, but I'll give it a whirl and post back today sometime.

 

[ArchAnGeL]

Did anyone manage to try the Matrox after I mentioned it? Just curious to see how people have found it compared to what they were/are using.

I've tried the Matrox and didn't like the appearance. Looked different to lagarith and high birtrate AMD gaming evolved codec. That was with Arma3

 

[arc@css]

Did anyone manage to try the Matrox after i mentioned it? Just curious to see how people have found it compared to what they were/are using.

Sorry I'm a bit late getting back to you.

Well, no joy so far for me. When I attempt to record, the fps counter colour momentarily changes to orange before returning to green again. I've set up the codec as you did, though I'm wondering what other settings you have Dxtory running?


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So, what would people recommend, a headset or microphone to get started? No set budget, as long as the price isn't ridiculous.

This, or should I aim higher? https://www.overclockers.co.uk/blue-microphones-snowball-gloss-black-sp-004-be.html

 

[dakaiez]

Sorry I'm a bit late getting back to you.

Well, no joy so far for me. When I attempt to record, the fps counter colour momentarily changes to orange before returning to green again. I've set up the codec as you did, though I'm wondering what other settings you have Dxtory running?


-----

So, what would people recommend, a headset or microphone to get started? No set budget, as long as the price isn't ridiculous.

This, or should I aim higher? https://www.overclockers.co.uk/blue-microphones-snowball-gloss-black-sp-004-be.html

That sucks, not had the same at all just instantly started working. I'll post my other settings later, playing BF4 atm.

What do you have already and what would you say is your max budget?

Microphone wise i'd say either the AT2020USB Plus or the Rode NT-USB. They are probably the best you can get USB wise if your heading down that route, isn't any upgrade room but they are pretty much top at what they do.

 

[arc@css]

That sucks, not had the same at all just instantly started working. I'll post my other settings later, playing BF4 atm.

Cheers.

What do you have already and what would you say is your max budget?

I'm currently just using some cheap and cheerful 2.0 Logitech speakers. That's it. They've been very good for the pittance I paid for them, though.

I've no real max budget, but at the same time I don't want to spend a ridiculous sum of money.

Microphone wise i'd say either the AT2020+ USB or the Rode NT-USB. They are probably the best you can get USB wise if your heading down that route, isn't any upgrade room but they are pretty much top at what they do.

Funny you mention that, I was looking at the AT2020 earlier. Someone else recommended it to me as well.

 

[dakaiez]

Funny you mention that, I was looking at the AT2020 earlier. Someone else recommended it to me as well.

I've got the AT2020 XLR version myself, was looking at the USB then decided to go for something with an upgradeable side. Very very good mic!

 

[uncle_rufus]

AT2020 is a condenser though right? So be careful if you're recording in a room which has a lot of background sounds or is just generally acoustically poor. (Though if you're only recording your own voice you can generally overcome some of this with good mic positioning and sensible gain settings)

We just picked up a pair of Shure SM57s the other week - dynamic mics which are typically used for recording instruments (though the closely related SM58 is used for vocals) and I'm really impressed with the sound quality (especially as they were only ~£70 each)

Before that we used to use a Blue Snowball... quality was fine but a very sensitive mic so had the potential to sound really bad sometimes (and needing to pick up 2 of us meant we couldn't get close enough to the mic to drop the gain settings down - we actually ended up hanging a massive fur blanket across the room behind us to try and minimise echo)

Now with the SM57s we can both have our own mic positioned really nicely and they seem to pickup virtually zero background noise (even the sound of the other person in the room talking is barely audible!)

 

[dakaiez]

AT2020 is a condenser though right? So be careful if you're recording in a room which has a lot of background sounds or is just generally acoustically poor. (Though if you're only recording your own voice you can generally overcome some of this with good mic positioning and sensible gain settings)

We just picked up a pair of Shure SM57s the other week - dynamic mics which are typically used for recording instruments (though the closely related SM58 is used for vocals) and I'm really impressed with the sound quality (especially as they were only ~£70 each)

Before that we used to use a Blue Snowball... quality was fine but a very sensitive mic so had the potential to sound really bad sometimes (and needing to pick up 2 of us meant we couldn't get close enough to the mic to drop the gain settings down - we actually ended up hanging a massive fur blanket across the room behind us to try and minimise echo)

Now with the SM57s we can both have our own mic positioned really nicely and they seem to pickup virtually zero background noise (even the sound of the other person in the room talking is barely audible!)

Yeah he's right, good mic but will pick up other things throughout the room until you mess around with the setting etc. It's the one reason i went with XLR over USB as my Audio Interface allows me to mess around with gain and if i decide to get a mixer in the end it'll still work fine.

 

[arc@css]

So, to clarify - it will pick up other noise, but that can be adjusted? Should I consider something else? I'm totally ignorant about this subject (in case you hadn't noticed).

 

[dakaiez]

So, to clarify - it will pick up other noise, but that can be adjusted? Should I consider something else? I'm totally ignorant about this subject (in case you hadn't noticed).

Do you have a room full of noise and if you do is it loud? My friend uses a AT2020USB and he is fine as do plenty of other youtubers/twitch recorders/streamers you just have to mess with it to get it running perfectly.

 

[uncle_rufus]

So, to clarify - it will pick up other noise, but that can be adjusted? Should I consider something else? I'm totally ignorant about this subject (in case you hadn't noticed).

Do you have a room full of noise and if you do is it loud? My friend uses a AT2020USB and he is fine as do plenty of other youtubers/twitch recorders/streamers you just have to mess with it to get it running perfectly.

Pretty much this - so for example if you're recording often in a house with screaming kids, noisy pets, or if like your PC area is kind of near to the kitchen and your washing machine might be running in the background occasionally... Also if the room isn't acoustically treated at all the size + shape of the room and amount of hard vs. soft furnishings will bounce the sound around and the if the mic is sensitive enough it'll pick up the rebounding sound waves as well creating the echo-chamber sounding effect!

But the settings will help - pretty much if you set the gain (on an interface if you using one - as dakaiez says - or just in Window's sound properties) to 100% it will make the mic pickup a lot more sound (including more background noise)... As you turn the gain down the effective range of the noises it will be sensitive to gets smaller and smaller (i.e. closer and closer to the mic)... So there's a sweet spot in the settings pretty much where enough background noises aren't picked up, but the signal of your voice is still full enough to be useful (and getting nice and close to the mic helps out with that as well)

 

[arc@css]

Thanks, chaps.

No, I don't have a noisy pc room.

 

[dakaiez]

Thanks, chaps.

No, I don't have a noisy pc room.

Then it should be fine, AT2020+ is around £110 if you look on ebay under intaaudio and comes with a stand. You would need a pop filter, although the stand is good it's better to get an arm as then it keeps the vibrations and noise from the desk from being recorded.

If you wanted something cheaper look at the Rode NT-USB it comes with a stand and built in pop filter worth around £20+ if you wanted a similar one for the AT2020+.

If your going AT2020+ i'd suggest the Windtech Pop Guard expensive but best you can get and really good quality and a shockmount and arm. It's better having it raised so it doesn't pick up keyboard and other sounds and the shockmount stops the vibrations from going up the arm.

If your going Rode NT-USB then i'd suggest an arm and shock mount. Here is the arm i use, very good and cheap for starting out. It's a bit of a mouthful but can be found on the Rainforest website.

"YIGO Professional Recording Adjustable Microphone Fold Mic Suspension Boom Scissor Arm"

 

[Puppetmaster]

So I want to start streaming / recording YT videos (meant to start last year but never got around to getting things setup).

I want to be able to stream to Twitch and save the recording to my HDD / SSD (hopefully without any overlays, rather than just downloading from Twitch). I also want to be able to separate game audio, Teamspeak and my own voice.

I already have DXtory purchased and VAC. My spec is in my sig. CPU isn't overclocked yet but will be doing that shortly, should get 4.5GHz (on custom water). I have 76 down / 19 mbps up for internet so that is fine.

When I was testing stuff before, I could never get OBS to work with crossfire (would always disable it as soon as i started preview / stream) even with using OBS multiplatform, but that is kind of a secondary issue and probably wont matter when AMD / Nvidia release new GPUs.

What do you think the best way of having that setup is? I could use AMD VCE in DXtory / OBS but was hoping to avoid using that if possible.

 

[dakaiez]

So I want to start streaming / recording YT videos (meant to start last year but never got around to getting things setup).

I want to be able to stream to Twitch and save the recording to my HDD / SSD (hopefully without any overlays, rather than just downloading from Twitch). I also want to be able to separate game audio, Teamspeak and my own voice.

I already have DXtory purchased and VAC. My spec is in my sig. CPU isn't overclocked yet but will be doing that shortly, should get 4.5GHz (on custom water). I have 76 down / 19 mbps up for internet so that is fine.

When I was testing stuff before, I could never get OBS to work with crossfire (would always disable it as soon as i started preview / stream) even with using OBS multiplatform, but that is kind of a secondary issue and probably wont matter when AMD / Nvidia release new GPUs.

What do you think the best way of having that setup is? I could use AMD VCE in DXtory / OBS but was hoping to avoid using that if possible.

Should be fine on crossfire/sli as i know plenty that stream with both. It's changed a little since then, OBS Studio is out now which has better support for most things. You look ready to go, software, hardware and internet wise.