Would you like to see my full audio recording studio setup and get solutions to the problem of a mono microphone input when using Wirecast 8 because this is the most challenging problem I have faced with my professional quality do it yourself home video production system recently?
Complete Wirecast Professional Audio Recording Setup and Solutions to Mono Input!
What do I use to record the audio for my live videos and audiobooks?
What is the biggest problem I've struggled with in overcoming it?
I use Wirecast to record all of my live videos and all of my pre-recorded videos because this allows me to skip the rendering process. As soon as I hit record, and then hit record again, I've got a file ready to go, and as long as I can shoot it pretty well I just don't edit it and upload it. That saves me a fantastic amount of time.
Now, there's one big problem aside from the price tag, you might think.
With Wirecast, I've been having a struggle to get my audio to come into it in the correct format. I've been struggling for over a year now to consistently get the audio from the microphone to just come in and work properly.
Ideally, it's nice to record audio in mono, but for some reason, Wirecast demands that the audio come in in stereo the way I have it set up. What I will do is show you how I've got my audio set up, and then I'll show you my solution to this.
This is one of the most annoying problems I've dealt with lately with my studio, which is why I'm making this about it because this might help you after I've googled and googled for this and I found one solution, but I didn't find it in the bigger picture, so I hope this helps.
Now, what exactly do I use and where did I figure this out?
Tomas George is a music producer, a composer, a sound engineer and an educator based in Leeds, UK. He is also my friend and he helped me get this entire setup I'm about to show you, except for Wirecast. I turned him onto that.
He got me onto the audio setup here.
The audio equipment I use
I'm recording all my videos with the Electro Voice RE-20 Cardioid Microphone. I'm very happy with the sound quality on it.
The one big downside on this thing is that you really need a preamp with this because the volume comes in so low that you need to bump it up a bit before it even comes into the computer.
Now, the bright side is this DBX 286s Microphone Preamp Processor that I have.
This is outstanding because this allows me full customization over my voice. If I want to make my voice really deep for example, I can just turn the low-frequency enhancer up from three and just crank that thing up to ten, and my voice sounds deep and sexy even though I did not change anything in my talking tone.
This is what I can do with this preamp. Now, I can turn it all the way down. I won't enhance it at all and you'll hear the difference that way if you are watching the video. This is why this preamp is awesome. Now, I've set it back to where I think it sounds natural.
I've got the Electro Voice Re-20 Cardioid Microphone coming into the DBX 286s microphone preamp, and then I've got the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 2nd Generation USB Audio Interface because you can't plug the preamp straight into a Mac Pro, an iMac or a MacBook laptop.
You need to plug it into this interface first to get it in the USB audio, and this is where the issue with Wirecast has been coming in.
Scarlett 2i2 works outstanding except for one big problem. When I just plug it in, what I have out of the preamp is just one of these. I think it's a six and a half millimeter connection. I have one six and a half millimeter out of the preamp and when I plug this into the Scarlett 2i2, for some reason Wirecast thinks that's just the left side, and then it puts nothing on the right side.
I have been struggling with this ever since I ordered this setup. I finally got what sounds like a solution I'm happy with and here's the way to solve this.
You just split the audio coming out of the preamp and stick one into each side. Now, there's a specific splitter you need to order for this.
I ordered several different ones of these and only one worked. This one splits the cable into both sides perfectly: Hosa YPP-308 1/4 inch TRSF to Dual 1/4 inch TRS Y-Cable.
I got this splitter and I put in the out from the preamp. It puts it into both sides over here, so now I've got audio coming into both sides and I get nice smooth stereo audio into Wirecast.
That helps me out a lot because then I can simply talk in Wirecast and make a video. I was doing other workarounds and they messed with the sound quality. They ruined the whole user experience for me and having to record mono audio for example, which then if you have stereo audio coming into Wirecast besides the microphone, you definitely want to be able to record that and have it out.
The other workaround I had, was just to render the file and save it as mono, and that stinks. Now, I basically am just duplicating the output from my preamp over into each side of this on the Scarlett 2i2, which then has solved the problem.
I hope this has been useful for you if you've been trying to set up a studio with very good audio. I'm extremely happy with this audio after all the different audio setups I've had. The nice thing with this one is that it doesn't clip. If I just clap real loud, if I make a whole bunch of noise, it dynamically adjusts in real time, and that's the combination of the microphone and the preamp, and you need the Scarlett to actually get that into the computer.
I love this setup, it makes it easy to have high quality sounding audio. This audio has been approved for Audible on ACX through the audiobook creation exchange. I've got it through there in the required format, and that's about the highest quality audio I have to submit anywhere.
Thank you very much for reading this, which I hope has been helpful.
I love you.
You're awesome.
Thank you for reading this blog post, which was originally filmed as the video below.
If you enjoyed this video would you please leave a like on it because that's how I'll know to do more videos just like this.
If you found this post helpful on Steemit, would you please upvote it and follow me because you will then be able to see more posts like this in your home feed?
Love,
Jerry Banfield with edits by @gmichelbkk on the transcript by GoTranscript
Stay updated via email?
- Join at http://jerry.tips/steemposts to receive an email with every new post on Steem or
- Join at http://jerry.tips/emaillist1017 to get an email once a week with highlights!
Shared on:
- Facebook page with 2,244,744 likes.
- YouTube channel with 208,173 subscribers.
- Twitter to 104,788 followers.
PS: Would you please make a vote for jerrybanfield as a witness or set jerrybanfield as a proxy to handle all witness votes at https://steemit.com/~witnesses because 100% of the rewards I receive are spent advertising Steem? Thank you to the 1617 accounts voting for me as a witness, the 718M VESTS assigned from users trusting me to make all witness votes by setting me as proxy, and @followbtcnews for making these .gif images!
Or
