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Webcam, Lights, and Audio for Remote Work, Podcasting, Videos, and Streaming

mattstauffer.com

71–80 of 131 posts

Re: Webcam, Lights, and Audio for Remote Work, Podcasting, Videos, and Streaming

#71
post #10

You can spend $700+ on his high end audio recommendations but 90% of home office style recording environments (even with acoustic panels) are going to have a noticeable amount of background hiss (computer fans, etc.) get picked up and his set up doesn't account for that. If you goto the OP's Youtube channel and listen to his recordings, for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lh0sTxLs9VA , there is a HUGE amount…

I use the Shure SM7B + DBX 286s combo and it's _sublime_.

Re: Webcam, Lights, and Audio for Remote Work, Podcasting, Videos, and Streaming

#72
A few things:

- Sony makes great cameras but the lenses are expensive. You can get an old Panasonic GH3 and a camlink and the lenses will be cheaper, while the image quality won't (for this sort of use) be affected much at all.

- You don't need a freakin' SM7B for this stuff. I do audio engineering as one of my too-many side gigs and the most expensive microphone I own is the Synco D2, an interesting little MKH416 knockoff shotgun microphone. It was $225. It's above my head right now, I was on a call an hour ago. It's out of frame and it sounds great. While the PR40 (which personally I prefer to a SM7B) or the SM7B are great mics for what they are, the delta between them and much cheaper competitors is not that significant.

- You don't really need hardware to tune your audio stack, aside possibly from a preamp if you bought the wrong microphone (in this case, defined as "the SM7B"). Use your computer. It's fast enough, it can save multiple presets, and it will get out of your way.

- Software matters. I use vMix for everything: live streaming and recording. This is where I recommend spending money. vMix has a reasonably featured (for the purpose--videography and audio to go with it) audio system, able to use ASIO with Windows and to use VSTs. It can support half a dozen cameras (my road kit uses 4, my home setup uses 6) and as many voices as your interface can, while supporting multi-record for archival footage/alternate takes and a nice tablet-control interface that's topped only by Logic Remote in this space (and if you're only doing audio, Logic Pro on a Mac is a no-brainer).

Re: Webcam, Lights, and Audio for Remote Work, Podcasting, Videos, and Streaming

#73

One thing he didn't differentiate on was the microphone and its appearance in video casting. While there are many good choices, the Shure SM7B is the quintessential desk or studio microphone for recording vocals. However, it is a bulky monster and will take up a _lot_ of real estate in a video frame. If you're audio-only, that's not an issue, your vocals will sound awesome. For video, I really think an off-camera mic…

I love me a good boom mic (as mentioned in my own post I have a Synco D2, which is a shockingly good Sennheiser MKH416 knockoff, sitting above my head right now) but they do have disadvantages. If you have a mechanical keyboard, it's really hard to position one 1) out of frame, and 2) so the pickup area isn't gonna be going rattle-rattle-rattle.

There's no great middle ground. I'd rather have it than a SM7B, though, that's for sure.

Re: Webcam, Lights, and Audio for Remote Work, Podcasting, Videos, and Streaming

#74
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A noise gate does not remove hiss or static, it simply reduces the volume of the signal when it gets below a certain level. As a professional audio engineer in a past life, I can say the SM7B + Triton Fethead is a great recommendation. The SM7B has very good off-axis rejection characteristics and will pick up _much_ less room noise than most alternatives.

> A noise gate does not remove hiss or static, it simply reduces the volume of the signal when it gets below a certain level. But the end result is with a configured noise gate the audio coming out will not appear to have as much hiss or room noise. Check out the Youtube video I linked of his. It's super noticeable. With Sony MDR-V6 headphones, I hear a huge amount of hiss in his audio. To the point where it's distra…

What you're hearing in that video is a space heater running in my office — I don't put a ton of effort into making everything perfect for ad hoc live streams.

A proper screencast is probably the better thing to judge:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ff_n_QClipQ

I'm sure you'll find something to nitpick over but I think it's pretty good for a programming tutorial recorded in my home office.

Re: Webcam, Lights, and Audio for Remote Work, Podcasting, Videos, and Streaming

#75
I've been doing remote work and videos for a while. I sort of took my built-in camera for granted even though I've had better tools available.

Recently, started using the base logitech webcam and have gotten several mentions about how much better the video is from people on the other side of the calls. That sort of drove it home for me.

Don't know why it took me so long for it to "hit" - gonna probably pick up a couple things in this post - thanks.

Re: Webcam, Lights, and Audio for Remote Work, Podcasting, Videos, and Streaming

#76
One small point I'd like to make regarding USB mics (and USB headsets): the #1 rule of digital audio is to only have a single sample clock for the entire system (the sample clock is the thing that defines when a voltage value gets converted to/generated from a digital sample).

Although I understand the plug-n-play appeal of these devices, they uniformly violate this rule because they cannot share whatever sample clock is being used for the other "direction" (i.e. the USB mic has its own clock, which is independent from the one used for playback).

Using these sorts of devices implicitly requires the audio software stack to do resampling to keep both input and output in sync with each other. For podcasting the change in quality that this causes is probably not an issue, but users should at least be aware this is happening under the hood.

You're much better off getting a cheap USB audio interface, an XLR mic and doing both recording and playback via the same device (with a single sample clock).

Re: Webcam, Lights, and Audio for Remote Work, Podcasting, Videos, and Streaming

#77

One thing he didn't differentiate on was the microphone and its appearance in video casting. While there are many good choices, the Shure SM7B is the quintessential desk or studio microphone for recording vocals. However, it is a bulky monster and will take up a _lot_ of real estate in a video frame. If you're audio-only, that's not an issue, your vocals will sound awesome. For video, I really think an off-camera mic…

Surprisingly the monoprice 600700 pencil condenser with a hypercardiod capsule works really well for this, and it’s way cheaper than mid range shotguns.

Re: Webcam, Lights, and Audio for Remote Work, Podcasting, Videos, and Streaming

#78
post #10

You can spend $700+ on his high end audio recommendations but 90% of home office style recording environments (even with acoustic panels) are going to have a noticeable amount of background hiss (computer fans, etc.) get picked up and his set up doesn't account for that. If you goto the OP's Youtube channel and listen to his recordings, for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lh0sTxLs9VA , there is a HUGE amount…

If you don’t have a really good quality preamp in your interface, the fethead makes making up the gain really well that the sm7b needs. Sooo much gain.

Re: Webcam, Lights, and Audio for Remote Work, Podcasting, Videos, and Streaming

#79
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a switch on the Yet that gives you 4 different pickup patterns. https://www.bluedesigns.com/products/yeti/ - cardioid - stereo - omni - bi

I use my Blue Yeti on cardioid mode without headphones and the noise picked up is relatively minimal. My apartment is pretty quiet to begin with, but cardioid limits some of the noise and also seems to prevent feedback. (which is taken care of to some degree by the software, but I never have issues when cardioid is on)

Do you remember what the factory default was? I expect most people who aren't au fait with pickup patterns will either leave it on the factory default or put it in stereo (which looks very similar to omni).
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