Live streaming - my setup and experiences

Over the past three months nearly a dozen people have asked me about my live streaming setup. So I am going to talk to you about my journey and hope it helps yours. 

Live streaming is a minefield. It’s all we have at the moment. And it’s dependent on technology. To help with live streaming I did this little online course in it. The course was useful but it was clever too because it kind of sold an unachievable dream. Ireland hasn’t got a culture of tipping musicians. Nor has the UK. Monetizing a live stream is really difficult without making it an exclusive ticketed link. So don't worry about this unless you are Jim in Lanzorote playing "Grace" for Margaret in Youghal or something to that effect! My experience is from doing live streams to find more people who are interested in my Original music. and some Cover songs 

So what could i do? Well firstly I asked around for help. The first person to help me was Uilleann piper Darragh O Heiligh. Darragh gave me a loan of a Zoom H6 portable recorder and interface. There are a few things this allows. It can be used as an external mike on a smartphone. It also has a built in compressor or limiter depending on what you need. All of my best live streams with Breifne were with an SM57, Rode NT1 and the stereo mikes on the Zoom H6, ALL of these location streams were on 4G (I use Wifi at home). 

Tips for streaming with 4G or 5G: 

1. Remove data usage from all background apps
2. Set your phone to “do not disturb”
3. Make your phone silent
4. Buy a good quality temperature and brightness changeable LED light because this allows Facebook's video streaming to keep a consistent bitrate during the stream because the light isn’t changing as you move or strum your guitar. (This cost me 140 euro for 2 lights and was the best investment I made alongside the Zoom H6)
5. Test the area you want to stream in 4G with a stream on your personal profile with the visibility settings to “ONLY ME” so your friends don’t see it. 
6. If you don’t own a Zoom H6 like i do now, then find out where the microphone is placed on your phone. Position yourself in a position that doesn’t cause the Mike to distort or have too much voice instead of guitar or too much room interference. 
7. If you want to be really savvy find out where your local 4G towers are and pick a location close to them. For me in Drogheda alot of those towers are on the top of buildings near West Street so most of my outdoor live streams were within 1km of those towers. 
   
   Note: If you are a serious musician and use Facebook Ads then set up all your live streams as an event so you can target luke warm listeners with an Ad in the few months following the stream. 
   
   

Tips for OBS / Desktop streaming 

1. I know this software well enough to know I don't know enough! In the end it turned out that my i5 processor couldn’t handle the software in 720p video when I hit the live button. I own a 2012 Macbook Pro with 16GB of RAM. 
2. Hard wire your connection: It’s not always possible or practical to buy a load of Cat 6 cable to stretch a cable from your wifi box to where you are streaming. Your connection will dramatically improve when you do this but for me my Macbook Pro could not handle OBS with professional standard audio and video. A hard wired connection is essential in any case. 
3. Capture card: This is a good investment to take some load off the PC and use a much higher quality camera as you wish. I haven’t invested in this because I was in the hole for 500 euro already with improving what I had and all I was really missing was some reverb and eq which is counteracted well with well placed microphones in a decent sounding room. 
4. DO NOT WASTE TIME AND ENERGY OPTIMISING YOUR SETTINGS. I’ve lost 100s of hours doing this over the past year. If your computer can’t handle OBS you will see it in the Activity monitor or simply your Fan will kick in once you hit the “Go Live” button. Outside of that don't get into the OBS plug-ins for effects. You are better off using your recording software and an app like Soundflower or Looper to get the audio into OBS without any issues. 
   
   Note: If anyone reading knows how to avoid Youtube ducking/compressing any audio signal it gets from recording software please get in touch! 
   
   

More professional options
I’ve seen government funded venues and arts centres, a few savvy graduate bands and well backed label acts pre-recording live streams professionally and then interacting with fans as they play them live. Some have even managed to do it with a 2 minute delay which is amazing and I would love to take part in something like that. The kind of equipment you need for this are: 

• A blackmagic atem pro 
  
  This will allow for switchable cameras and a basic stereo feed from a run of the mill mixing desk that is used in live venues. So you get the treated audio sound and 2 to 3 cameras that can be switched in the unit during filming.
• DSMR cameras 
  
  These are professional standard cameras that can be compressed down to 720p with the Blackmagic but still remain a high quality image. It’s got to do with the lenses and how the data is transferred I believe? The live stream would look poor if you mixed a webcam, a built in cam and a gopro or something. Go hard or go home is the phrase that comes to mind once you invest in one of these because its a pro standard tool.  
• High powered media friendly laptop 
  
  Desired specs would be Quad core processor, 16gb of RAM, a pro retina screen, good graphics and sound card and USB-C ports for an extra monitor, HDMI, Audio and a Cat 6 cable.  

I hope this helps anyone reading. I would be happy to answer your questions if you want to subscribe and send me an email. Thank you! 

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