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I expected to read about studio setups for live-streaming, e.g. on twitch. There are some musicians on twitch that have really awesome setups where one can disc

I expected to read about studio setups for live-streaming, e.g. on twitch. There are some musicians on twitch that have really awesome setups where one can discover so much visual detail while listening. I would have loved to read about some of those, perhaps even with a bit of advice how to build my own. Instead I got a luke-warm analogy of business attire and videoconferencing backgrounds. Mildly disappointing.

raels 5y ago
Given that the analysis seems far removed from mainstream livestreaming, I'd say very disappointing.
rjknight 5y ago
The point of the article is not "how to do it", but rather to observe that this kind of thing, previously a (relatively) niche concern, has become important to a general audience. The article even suggests that there's a business opportunity for fashion businesses to create tailored videoconferencing spaces, which is predicated on the notion that most people lack the time or inclination to set up their own bespoke setup (including lighting, cameras, audio, and so on). The takeaway is meant to be that videoconferencing has reached a point of cultural importance where it has become hard to take a public figure seriously if they have a poor setup, in much the same way that it would be hard to take a poorly-dressed person seriously. Much as people experiment with clothing as a means of signalling status and personality, one's videoconferencing setup becomes a new way of signalling these things. It's all fairly obvious, but it's still not something that I have spent much time thinking about, and a how-to guide would probably not prompt me to think about the social and cultural aspects nearly so much.
- mssundaram 5y ago
  Eloquent summary and analysis, thank you!
- brutus1213 5y ago
  I was an organizer for a major ACM conference last year, and I really struggled with my home video streaming setup. A lot of equipment was sold out last year. I followed the recommendation of some YouTubers and realized that this is not as simple as it seems. Despite realizing the importance of a live stream setup and investing in it, I'm pretty unhappy with the results. Thankfully we are out of the worst of the pandemic .. but I agree that a good home streaming setup will be important going forward. Edit: one thing I never figured out how to solve was removing glare on my glasses (either monitor glare or from key lights). Best investment was an external microphone and a few items mounted on the wall behind me (which used to be bare).
  - thinkmassive 5y ago
    For the glasses glare I found a few things that help: - Turn down display brightness - Dark mode everywhere possible - Block direct sunlight (blinds/curtains or rotate desk) - Illuminate the rest of your face to reduce the contrast from glasses If you use a terminal for most things, including notes, one thing that helps a lot is to use a semi-transparent black background and position the terminal window over the meeting display.
    - ghaff 5y ago
      >Block direct sunlight Yeah, I don't bother day to day but, if I'm recording video, I have a couple different pieces of fabric that I can use to control the light coming in the windows--which also have shades--depending upon how sunny it is outside.
  - jonpurdy 5y ago
    I wonder if using a polarizing filter over your webcam would reduce the glare from your glasses. Polarizing sunglasses very effectively reduce glare on water, as well as car windshields.
    - buro9 5y ago
      Yes this works. I use a polarising filter on a DSLR for a web cam and it makes my lenses invisible to the viewer... No reflection whatsoever.
- linsomniac 5y ago
  Over a year ago now I had commented that it's funny watching the TV networks struggle to figure out what teenagers on TikTok had dialed in: Their streaming setups. I imagined that the broadcasters, when they had to switch to remote, had video and audio engineers you could put together a kit for their stars. But for a while it seemed like so many were "You have a laptop with a camera and mic Good to go!"
  - fatboy93 5y ago
    My FIL does TV debates in India, and his setup is to skyoe/zoom/meet into their station. He's using an iPad mini to run all the apps tbh, and it works fine more or less.
- bluefirebrand 5y ago
  > in much the same way that it would be hard to take a poorly-dressed person seriously The sooner we can get over this obsession with people dressed "nicely" and instead listen to people who know what they are talking about, the better. Any monkey can wear a jacket and tie. I hate that society automatically elevates well dressed people the way it does. To me it only signals that they have money.
  - jiofih 5y ago
    You may be surprised to realize that you’re the one being superficial here in equating style with money. Dressing well does not require money - what it signals is a form of sophistication or good taste in the case of high fashion, or tidyness and well-being for casual clothing. Millions of people dress nicely from Primark/C&A alone, and even fashion students get going on tight budgets sourcing second hand items. Much like keeping your hair looking good, trimming your nose hair and so on, these signals will never be completely ignored unless social norms for personal care change significantly - and that’s not happening without a significant cultural / economic / health shift.
    - Mrnimbus112 5y ago
      Hey look another cunt who cares about the wrong things in life.
    - bluefirebrand 5y ago
      > what it signals is a form of sophistication or good taste in the case of high fashion, or tidyness and well-being for casual clothing. Caring about sophistication or good taste in fashion is a luxury that it takes money to afford. Even just the time investment it requires to be fashionable, to source nice clothes and plan outfits and all of that shit, it's absolutely the domain of people who have money. I don't think you've ever been poor. Poor enough that "second hand" doesn't mean thrift stores, it means "hand-me-downs".
      - robocat 5y ago
        You have moved the goalposts. > I don't think you've ever been poor. You shouldn’t jump to conclusions - there are many people on hn from other countries where having access to a thrift store defines you as relatively wealthy. Either way, if you look like a hobo on your livestream setup, then people are likely to judge you. I wish the world was less judgemental, but you don’t get to tell others how to be, so you have to live with how they act, and sometimes that means playing dress up. Sometimes it is a sign of respect for other people’s opinions - some people really care about how you dress and that is OK. Edit: also if you are obviously needy, then are you sure you can’t find thrift stores that will give you stuff for free? The best stores are run by volunteers who just want to help people.
- closeparen 5y ago
  A lot of serious, famous people live in grand, nice houses in older neighborhoods with hopelessly oversubscribed Comcast. The CEO of my Fortune 500 company presented at a remote all-hands at about 0.25 frames/second. Now at that level, maybe you can spend the $10 million it would take to pull fiber to your house. But we’re not taking about buying some prosumer electronics here, we’re talking years of permitting and digging up the street. For mid-tier famous people the only hope they have of getting better upload bandwidth is moving to houses that already have it. That’s a bit more dramatic than going to a clothing store.
  - periheli0n 5y ago
    I find it shocking that bad uplink in private homes is still a problem in the US. In times where a good proportion of public life happens on the web, most of shopping is done online, and media are dominated by streaming, why do people not run rampant against the lack of a decent wired uplink?
    - dubya 5y ago
      Most of the web works fine with a fast link _to_ your home, so that's what Comcast et al have optimized for. I had to upgrade during Covid to get a decent upload rate. Speedtest says I now have 238Mbps down/12Mbps up. For comparison my office has 100Mbps up and down and has never felt slow for downloads.
    - davidandgoliath 5y ago
      It isn't still a problem. Misguided wifi setups certainly are though.
      - walshemj 5y ago
        You should avoid connecting to video conferencing via wifi if at all possible
  - ghaff 5y ago
    Yeah. People with a spare room can spend thousands of dollars decking out a studio just so. But a lot of that money is pretty much wasted if they have glitchy Internet and there's not much they can do about other than renting a private office that has good Internet (which is probably an OK option for mid-tier famous people if they live near a city or other area with good network infrastructure).
adriand 5y ago
Any chance you could list some links for the Twitch streams you're referring to? I've been asked to participate in some live streaming sessions for electronic music and I'm not quite sure how not to make it boring, at least from a visual standpoint.
- 12ian34 5y ago
  I've toyed with live electronic music streaming setups using OBS Studio (as a kind of video compositor and audio router) paired with VCV rack for visual effects. I'd recommend both as solid tools with many useful surface level features and a ton of useful but optional power user configurability for when you want to go deep on something.
- schrijver 5y ago
  I’d be curious about that as well! One thing I noticed is that the blog posts I’ve seen on streaming setups with dedicated cameras tend to focus on using bits of kit to make something similar to a standard webcam setup—except with better sound, lighting etc. But you can of course experiment way more with how you place yourself in the frame (if you even want to be in the frame!) Instead of frontal, the perspective can be from the sides, the top… Which ties in to what sense of space you want to project… we’re now so accustomed to see a webcam-sized corner of a room, but you could show an entire room, or only a small detail, like a part of an instrument or something… The advantage of playing with framing is that you can do it in advance of the performance, because while live I imagine you will have to focus on the music itself!
- periheli0n 5y ago
  With pleasure! Although my main recommendations are "analog" musicians, which is of course is a misnomer since most of the tone generation chain is digital, except for some vibrating strings and vocal cords! There's ortopilot who is perhaps the best musician I have found on twitch. His studio setup is absolutely stunning, both for its audio quality and the visual appeal. Another one I've discovered recently is EmmaMcGann whose studio is also visually stunning. Definitely worth a look and listen, too! I also like SydHeresy although that stream is more focused on repairing digital music gear, with the occasional modular synth live show. Then there is TheTangerineClub. Absolutely amazing music skills with a decent studio setup. German-speaking folk might hop over to SvenDorau who has a nice studio, too. Happy watching! and don't blame me for the hours spent listening to those guys play ;)
the-dude 5y ago
At least he didn't wander off about spandex.
beardbound 5y ago
I've been watching quite a few of those kinds of setups videos on Youtube during the pandemic. I actually setup a small home studio because I've been getting back into music during lockdown (I originally studied music in undergrad before switching to engineering). It's been fascinating. The mic setups and also the lighting setups that people have put together are great. I've seen some very inexpensive ingenious setups. People spending less than a hundred dollars and some time to put together a better lighting setup than I was seeing my photography friends use 10 years ago. All that with a few shop lights and some carefully folded paper.
- periheli0n 5y ago
  Sounds great - if you have the names of some of those youtubers with a low-cost high-quality setup, that would be awesome! ;)
  - atom-morgan 5y ago
    Shameless self plug but I just helped set up this stream: https://www.instagram.com/p/CQRHhSGD_Py/ https://www.instagram.com/p/CQRHhSGD_Py/ Visual Synthesizer is what's used to get some of the visual to react to the drum set input via MIDI. Surprisingly easy to setup with a DAW like Ableton: https://www.imaginando.pt/products/vs-visual-synthesizer https://www.imaginando.pt/products/vs-visual-synthesizer I'm happy to answer any questions in the meantime until I write up a blog post about it all.

raels 5y ago

Given that the analysis seems far removed from mainstream livestreaming, I'd say very disappointing.

rjknight 5y ago

The point of the article is not "how to do it", but rather to observe that this kind of thing, previously a (relatively) niche concern, has become important to a general audience. The article even suggests that there's a business opportunity for fashion businesses to create tailored videoconferencing spaces, which is predicated on the notion that most people lack the time or inclination to set up their own bespoke setup (including lighting, cameras, audio, and so on). The takeaway is meant to be that videoconferencing has reached a point of cultural importance where it has become hard to take a public figure seriously if they have a poor setup, in much the same way that it would be hard to take a poorly-dressed person seriously. Much as people experiment with clothing as a means of signalling status and personality, one's videoconferencing setup becomes a new way of signalling these things. It's all fairly obvious, but it's still not something that I have spent much time thinking about, and a how-to guide would probably not prompt me to think about the social and cultural aspects nearly so much.

mssundaram 5y ago
Eloquent summary and analysis, thank you!
brutus1213 5y ago
I was an organizer for a major ACM conference last year, and I really struggled with my home video streaming setup. A lot of equipment was sold out last year. I followed the recommendation of some YouTubers and realized that this is not as simple as it seems. Despite realizing the importance of a live stream setup and investing in it, I'm pretty unhappy with the results. Thankfully we are out of the worst of the pandemic .. but I agree that a good home streaming setup will be important going forward. Edit: one thing I never figured out how to solve was removing glare on my glasses (either monitor glare or from key lights). Best investment was an external microphone and a few items mounted on the wall behind me (which used to be bare).
- thinkmassive 5y ago
  For the glasses glare I found a few things that help: - Turn down display brightness - Dark mode everywhere possible - Block direct sunlight (blinds/curtains or rotate desk) - Illuminate the rest of your face to reduce the contrast from glasses If you use a terminal for most things, including notes, one thing that helps a lot is to use a semi-transparent black background and position the terminal window over the meeting display.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    >Block direct sunlight Yeah, I don't bother day to day but, if I'm recording video, I have a couple different pieces of fabric that I can use to control the light coming in the windows--which also have shades--depending upon how sunny it is outside.
- jonpurdy 5y ago
  I wonder if using a polarizing filter over your webcam would reduce the glare from your glasses. Polarizing sunglasses very effectively reduce glare on water, as well as car windshields.
  - buro9 5y ago
    Yes this works. I use a polarising filter on a DSLR for a web cam and it makes my lenses invisible to the viewer... No reflection whatsoever.
linsomniac 5y ago
Over a year ago now I had commented that it's funny watching the TV networks struggle to figure out what teenagers on TikTok had dialed in: Their streaming setups. I imagined that the broadcasters, when they had to switch to remote, had video and audio engineers you could put together a kit for their stars. But for a while it seemed like so many were "You have a laptop with a camera and mic Good to go!"
- fatboy93 5y ago
  My FIL does TV debates in India, and his setup is to skyoe/zoom/meet into their station. He's using an iPad mini to run all the apps tbh, and it works fine more or less.
bluefirebrand 5y ago
> in much the same way that it would be hard to take a poorly-dressed person seriously The sooner we can get over this obsession with people dressed "nicely" and instead listen to people who know what they are talking about, the better. Any monkey can wear a jacket and tie. I hate that society automatically elevates well dressed people the way it does. To me it only signals that they have money.
- jiofih 5y ago
  You may be surprised to realize that you’re the one being superficial here in equating style with money. Dressing well does not require money - what it signals is a form of sophistication or good taste in the case of high fashion, or tidyness and well-being for casual clothing. Millions of people dress nicely from Primark/C&A alone, and even fashion students get going on tight budgets sourcing second hand items. Much like keeping your hair looking good, trimming your nose hair and so on, these signals will never be completely ignored unless social norms for personal care change significantly - and that’s not happening without a significant cultural / economic / health shift.
  - Mrnimbus112 5y ago
    Hey look another cunt who cares about the wrong things in life.
  - bluefirebrand 5y ago
    > what it signals is a form of sophistication or good taste in the case of high fashion, or tidyness and well-being for casual clothing. Caring about sophistication or good taste in fashion is a luxury that it takes money to afford. Even just the time investment it requires to be fashionable, to source nice clothes and plan outfits and all of that shit, it's absolutely the domain of people who have money. I don't think you've ever been poor. Poor enough that "second hand" doesn't mean thrift stores, it means "hand-me-downs".
    - robocat 5y ago
      You have moved the goalposts. > I don't think you've ever been poor. You shouldn’t jump to conclusions - there are many people on hn from other countries where having access to a thrift store defines you as relatively wealthy. Either way, if you look like a hobo on your livestream setup, then people are likely to judge you. I wish the world was less judgemental, but you don’t get to tell others how to be, so you have to live with how they act, and sometimes that means playing dress up. Sometimes it is a sign of respect for other people’s opinions - some people really care about how you dress and that is OK. Edit: also if you are obviously needy, then are you sure you can’t find thrift stores that will give you stuff for free? The best stores are run by volunteers who just want to help people.
closeparen 5y ago
A lot of serious, famous people live in grand, nice houses in older neighborhoods with hopelessly oversubscribed Comcast. The CEO of my Fortune 500 company presented at a remote all-hands at about 0.25 frames/second. Now at that level, maybe you can spend the $10 million it would take to pull fiber to your house. But we’re not taking about buying some prosumer electronics here, we’re talking years of permitting and digging up the street. For mid-tier famous people the only hope they have of getting better upload bandwidth is moving to houses that already have it. That’s a bit more dramatic than going to a clothing store.
- periheli0n 5y ago
  I find it shocking that bad uplink in private homes is still a problem in the US. In times where a good proportion of public life happens on the web, most of shopping is done online, and media are dominated by streaming, why do people not run rampant against the lack of a decent wired uplink?
  - dubya 5y ago
    Most of the web works fine with a fast link _to_ your home, so that's what Comcast et al have optimized for. I had to upgrade during Covid to get a decent upload rate. Speedtest says I now have 238Mbps down/12Mbps up. For comparison my office has 100Mbps up and down and has never felt slow for downloads.
  - davidandgoliath 5y ago
    It isn't still a problem. Misguided wifi setups certainly are though.
    - walshemj 5y ago
      You should avoid connecting to video conferencing via wifi if at all possible
- ghaff 5y ago
  Yeah. People with a spare room can spend thousands of dollars decking out a studio just so. But a lot of that money is pretty much wasted if they have glitchy Internet and there's not much they can do about other than renting a private office that has good Internet (which is probably an OK option for mid-tier famous people if they live near a city or other area with good network infrastructure).

adriand 5y ago

Any chance you could list some links for the Twitch streams you're referring to? I've been asked to participate in some live streaming sessions for electronic music and I'm not quite sure how not to make it boring, at least from a visual standpoint.

12ian34 5y ago
I've toyed with live electronic music streaming setups using OBS Studio (as a kind of video compositor and audio router) paired with VCV rack for visual effects. I'd recommend both as solid tools with many useful surface level features and a ton of useful but optional power user configurability for when you want to go deep on something.
schrijver 5y ago
I’d be curious about that as well! One thing I noticed is that the blog posts I’ve seen on streaming setups with dedicated cameras tend to focus on using bits of kit to make something similar to a standard webcam setup—except with better sound, lighting etc. But you can of course experiment way more with how you place yourself in the frame (if you even want to be in the frame!) Instead of frontal, the perspective can be from the sides, the top… Which ties in to what sense of space you want to project… we’re now so accustomed to see a webcam-sized corner of a room, but you could show an entire room, or only a small detail, like a part of an instrument or something… The advantage of playing with framing is that you can do it in advance of the performance, because while live I imagine you will have to focus on the music itself!
periheli0n 5y ago
With pleasure! Although my main recommendations are "analog" musicians, which is of course is a misnomer since most of the tone generation chain is digital, except for some vibrating strings and vocal cords! There's ortopilot who is perhaps the best musician I have found on twitch. His studio setup is absolutely stunning, both for its audio quality and the visual appeal. Another one I've discovered recently is EmmaMcGann whose studio is also visually stunning. Definitely worth a look and listen, too! I also like SydHeresy although that stream is more focused on repairing digital music gear, with the occasional modular synth live show. Then there is TheTangerineClub. Absolutely amazing music skills with a decent studio setup. German-speaking folk might hop over to SvenDorau who has a nice studio, too. Happy watching! and don't blame me for the hours spent listening to those guys play ;)

the-dude 5y ago

At least he didn't wander off about spandex.

beardbound 5y ago

I've been watching quite a few of those kinds of setups videos on Youtube during the pandemic. I actually setup a small home studio because I've been getting back into music during lockdown (I originally studied music in undergrad before switching to engineering). It's been fascinating. The mic setups and also the lighting setups that people have put together are great. I've seen some very inexpensive ingenious setups. People spending less than a hundred dollars and some time to put together a better lighting setup than I was seeing my photography friends use 10 years ago. All that with a few shop lights and some carefully folded paper.

periheli0n 5y ago
Sounds great - if you have the names of some of those youtubers with a low-cost high-quality setup, that would be awesome! ;)
- atom-morgan 5y ago
  Shameless self plug but I just helped set up this stream: https://www.instagram.com/p/CQRHhSGD_Py/ https://www.instagram.com/p/CQRHhSGD_Py/ Visual Synthesizer is what's used to get some of the visual to react to the drum set input via MIDI. Surprisingly easy to setup with a DAW like Ableton: https://www.imaginando.pt/products/vs-visual-synthesizer https://www.imaginando.pt/products/vs-visual-synthesizer I'm happy to answer any questions in the meantime until I write up a blog post about it all.