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

arc@css said:
Thanks, that's clears that up in my mind. Btw, that's a nice set up you have there. :)
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No worries, had the same questions myself while deciding my setup. Thanks had a bad setup but one that worked and a few months ago decided to sell up and redo it all with new desk, pc, mic setup and so forth and really happy with it now.

I also asked around a lot on the twitch reddit and some streaming forums and they said the XLR/Interface was a better option for the extra cash as it was upgradeable in the future where as a USB mic can't be. So i could buy a new mic and use it on my interface without replacing my whole setup.

End of the day if your looking to upgrade your setup, it's better to go for something which lasts and can be upgraded in the future. If you can't afford that, then save up until you can or just go with what you can afford at the time and what you are happy with.
 
Yeah i don't have that sort of budget - the Blue Snowlball is £60 - thats pretty much my limit right now :(

I have been looking for audio software to digatally remove the rubbish - but Adobe Audience which is recommended is like £15 a month which is more then I want to spend for a peice of software
 
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Woah lots of dicussion followed! At work so only just seen it all...

Just to clarify I wasn't trying to totally demonize condensers, just a word of caution that they can take a little work to get good results from... Also agree with dakaiez about XLR + Interface - our SM-57s are also XLR and we've also got a Focusrite Scarlett interface (the 6i6 though - bigger, bigger brother to the solo, but we specifically needed 2x mic inputs and 2x separate monitor outputs - recording 2 people at once and potentially 2 PCs is tricky!)...

Don't have any pics of our setup but been meaning to take some at some point so will try and remember to post them when I do :)
 
@Arc - Sorry done

I'm currently using my Corsair Headset - while it sounds great on Teamspeak and Discord etc, on OBS it has lots of white noise which i am trying to remove. I've tried the noise gate but the input goes all the way up to the top of the bar's with no movement.

When I try to sort it out and set up on Windows, the PC seem's to hardly hear the mic or the sound from it.

I want to try to use a VAC and something like Adobe Audience to remove the background noise and boost it a little bit aswell

However Audience is £15 a month!
 
tcfreer said:
@arc - Sorry done

I'm currently using my Corsair Headset - while it sounds great on Teamspeak and Discord etc, on OBS it has lots of white noise which i am trying to remove. I've tried the noise gate but the input goes all the way up to the top of the bar's with no movement.

When I try to sort it out and set up on Windows, the PC seem's to hardly hear the mic or the sound from it.

I want to try to use a VAC and something like Adobe Audience to remove the background noise and boost it a little bit aswell

However Audience is £15 a month!
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No worries, matey. :)


Try using Audacity to remove the background interference? That's what I've just started using, and it's free. :)

From what I can gather, the snowball is meant to be a good mic. Btw, what's VAC?
 
For the audio editing at least for starters you could try Audacity, it's properly free and can do most of the things the more expensive programs can do - certainly it'll be okay for some noise removal, compression etc.

OBS is a bit odd I've found, I have to set the multiplier on the mic gain stupidly high sometimes for it to register at a decent volume when streaming... Though when you're recording for a video instead don't worry too much if the recorded signal isn't super loud - it's much better to have a smaller signal with a lot of headroom for compression + boosting than to have a very loud signal that ends up clipping all over the place etc. (which you can't really fix)... All about balance though - you need the signal of your voice to be decently above the signal of any background noise or it makes it hard to boost it without the noise becoming a problem...

Edit: For reference, our recordings using the dual SM-57s (which have a pretty large range on them) are super super quiet - if we've recorded the mics and audio from a game separately there's absolutely no way you would ever hear the raw mic audio over the raw game audio, I use Audacity to compress/eq/etc and then raise the mic signal by a pretty large amount (easy with these dynamic mics as they pick up almost no background noise whatsoever) and also use Audacity to process and then lower the game audio by also a fairly significant amount to get the final result...
 
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FYI guys Sony Movie studio 13 platinum is £25 in the steam sale. As far as I'm aware it's a custom version though, not sure how that'll impact use, it at all.

Base product is the lowest it's ever been on steam according to Steam enhanced (plugin for chrome)

Sony Movie studio 13 Platinum suite is also 50% off: http://store.steampowered.com/sub/71779/
 
Halfmad said:
FYI guys Sony Movie studio 13 platinum is £25 in the steam sale. As far as I'm aware it's a custom version though, not sure how that'll impact use, it at all.

Base product is the lowest it's ever been on steam according to Steam enhanced (plugin for chrome)

Sony Movie studio 13 Platinum suite is also 50% off: http://store.steampowered.com/sub/71779/
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Apparently doesn't support mods or the plugins or something.

I ended up going with the Studio 12 platinum from ebay for £27, isn't as new obviously but isn't as stripped down due to 13 being made to make it easier.
 
arc@css said:
Not totally sure... Shortly afterwards I did also buy a pop filter, but have yet to get the arm and anything else that others have recommended. I can't say I've noticed any benefit from that yet.
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You can just put a condenser on nearby surface (up to just beyond arms length) and it will pick you up fine. You may want to put it on something soft to damp reflections. If the mic is not very close to your mouth a pop shield is pointless. For neatness on a desk I would use a small stand. The only thing there is that if the mic is not close to your mouth you might pick up keyboard and mouse sounds.
 
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Ok so - I think I have made a huge leap forward with the audio

If you guys know my Youtube Video's - the latest YT videos have the new audio settings there

Linky - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mF_8InQTB0o

So as you can hear, the background and white noise is massively reduced, though there are still some pops etc but much reduced from the previous efforts.

What I have used

1 - VAC. A Virtual Audio cable, free software dead easy to use and no messing with needed

2 - VSTHost - this was a awesome find. Really useful and again, free

I used this guide here for how to set it up - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIv3gdF9l5M

Hopefully you'll agree that this a huge improvement for no outlay?
 
Output sounded a little too heavy on the bass for me to be honest tcfreer, whilst I felt it was much clearer, the bass was just a bit too much.

Certainly an improvement. I'm a big fan of VAC btw and voicemeeter (spelt like that), for sorting out audio recording etc.
 
Yeah I'm still fine tuning to get the audio really perfect, but compared to what it was before - its miles better I think?

I'll have a look at that voice meter though cheers :)
 
tcfreer said:
Ok so - I think I have made a huge leap forward with the audio

...

Hopefully you'll agree that this a huge improvement for no outlay?
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Sounds good to me :) and not too bassy in my opinion (sorry to disagree with the other poster above!) It probably depends a little what the listener's headphones/speakers are like though...

I love VAC as well! Such a handy program :)
 
It sounded quite good to me, tcfreer, though I did find that I needed to turn the volume up a fair bit to really hear what you were saying. :)


Safetytrousers said:
You can just put a condenser on nearby surface (up to just beyond arms length) and it will pick you up fine.
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I may try that later on, though at the moment it sits on something quite soft (thick pad of paper).

Safetytrousers said:
If the mic is not very close to your mouth a pop shield is pointless. For neatness on a desk I would use a small stand. The only thing there is that if the mic is not close to your mouth you might pick up keyboard and mouse sounds.
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I wouldn't say it's very close to my mouth, but it certainly isn't that far away; it sits directly in front of me on the surface mentioned above. Maybe the shield has made a slight difference, but this early on I can't tell. I do seem to be picking up the sound of the mouse wheel / the odd click here and there. :)




Edit: should I leave the project rate in Audacity alone, or would it be best to increase it?

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