Audio Question

["T"]

It seems on a lot (okay all) of live feeds I've watched, that the audio mixing/engineering is not very good.

How well aquainted are pool live streamers with the tools that many musicians and broadcasters use such as noise gates, compression, microphone selection, mixer selection, slaving, etc?

 

[mnorwood]

Knowledge is not the issue, money is. I have learned a ton about audio and video. My bank account is not anywhere near my knowledge of what's possible. The audio on my videos is really bad, however I have all of 25 dollars tied up in my microphone.

 

[runall8]

try ear phones

try using ear phones..i plug in the little ear buds that came with my laptop..the difference is amazing..you pick up a lot of stuff you couldn't hear before...some funny things are being said..and i don't think they know you can hear them...joe

 

["T"]

try using ear phones..i plug in the little ear buds that came with my laptop..the difference is amazing..you pick up a lot of stuff you couldn't hear before...some funny things are being said..and i don't think they know you can hear them...joe

Well, the thing is that the audio quality of the stream is usually pretty decent. It seems that often the commentary mike is clipping and there is no ambient mike. I think the overall experience of watching a live stream broadcast could be greatly enhanced starting with having a compressor or limiter on the audio signal. The objective is really to make things sound more like you are there and you could hear more of the little things like you are talking about.

Ideally, I'm thinking of a dedicated ambient mike, preferably a condenser, limited and compressed to pick up the table and room noise and then slave that signal with the commentary mike so that whenever someone speaks, the ambient noise gets limited. You don't hear the ambient audio drop, you just hear the commentary nice and clean.

At least starting with limiting/compressing the mikes would be a huge improvement. Yes we're talking money, but it's in the low hundreds. Certainly more than some folks can afford but man, it would really improve the broadcast.

 

[Dagwoodz]

I'm using a condenser mic and it works well. picks up enough ambient noise from the room to give some flavor and still allows the commentator to be heard.

 

[PrimeTime]

Audio Quality

T - being a streamer I understand - the problems are multiply - better video typically means lesser audio vice versa - using a microphone can help but only so much - the players don't want to hear commentary while they are playing as you can appreciate - I personally prefer using the chat feature as appropriate

IMHO it is remarkable that we can even do this and be LIVE and IMHO the video comes before the audio

It seems on a lot (okay all) of live feeds I've watched, that the audio mixing/engineering is not very good.

How well aquainted are pool live streamers with the tools that many musicians and broadcasters use such as noise gates, compression, microphone selection, mixer selection, slaving, etc?

 

[SpiderWebComm]

There's a lot to audio. There's more to audio than to video, imo.

Depends on what mics you're using, if there is a mixing board, etc. Is your audio in mic level vs line-level. How to troubleshoot static, etc.

It's hard to get good audio without spending cash. Honestly, I'm so grateful many of these guys stream that I would never complain. The fact they do it at all makes me happy. The chat keeps me occupied.

Dave

 

[CreeDo]

One simple issue I noticed on the tar streams that they eventually fixed was in the compression. Overcompressing gets the tin can effect and kills a lot of the ambient sound and vocal texture. I'd rather assume everyone's got decent broadband and keep audio quality high. I think the default/recommended audio quality recommended by the streaming service or software is a bit too conservative.

 

["T"]

One simple issue I noticed on the tar streams that they eventually fixed was in the compression. Overcompressing gets the tin can effect and kills a lot of the ambient sound and vocal texture. I'd rather assume everyone's got decent broadband and keep audio quality high. I think the default/recommended audio quality recommended by the streaming service or software is a bit too conservative.

Well there's the compression in terms of bytes and there's compression in terms of volume.

What I was mainly referring to is the volume. Sound compression has basically three different elements, the gain, which is how much you are boosting the quieter noises, the threshold, which is the highest allowable volume of any noise, and the attack/release which is how quickly the volume is restored between the higher and lower volumes, often done in milliseconds. Too much or too little of any one thing causes different problems, but when you get it right, it really opens up a whole universe.

I agree too that the whole live stream thing is great in so many ways. I just want to be clear that I wasn't at all dissing what so many great people have started, but instead perhaps bringing to light a relatively narrow aspect of streaming that I'm not sure has been discussed that much.

Stream on Brothers!