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
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Or
Expensive set up...but I see how you save a lot of editing time
Thank you for noticing Luis! Yes the editing time being done away with helps so much!
Hi @jerrybanfield. This is very helpful post. Actually, I was going to ask you about. Specially, your video thumbnails are very catchy and clean. How do you create them? Or is it your business secret? :D
Thank you for following the posts so closely and asking about the thumbnails! I take a screenshot of the video and I use https://www.canva.com/ to do basic graphic design free!
I wanna thank you @jerrybanfield , just few days back I watched your video at facebook , it was the first time that i heard about steemit platform from you .
Thank you Jerry! Can you share with us what can we use for making video recordings like yours? Thank you again and happy steeming :)
Sure most of my equipment is listed at https://jerrybanfield.com/resources/
@jerrybanfield
You are a true Steemian. You never give up. I know you will get it done the way you want it.
Oh, I will soon be below where you live. I live in Sarasota County.
If you ever have the Steemit Meetup again. I would love to know and attend.
Thank you
Francis
You know Jerry, you don't need an audio interface and expensive microphone for voice anymore, a $200 voice recorder with usb cable will cover all of your needs.
I have an older model that records up to five direction into four different channels and the quality is impeccable. ^_^
Yeah, for beginners, you can do 95% of the quality for 10% of the cost...or less.
But I do understand why Jerry has top notch equipment.
as a music producing tutor I'm familiar with the old gap between qualities, but this gap as been closed for few years, nowadays, sound interfaces have only two function: to render music/sound and or to connect old devices to computers.
Recording the sound waves precisely isn't that much of challenge anymore, the new challenge is how to use a combination of microphones to record the sound exactly as it's heard in the 3D space.
I think we're in a time that when the new top notch devices hit the market, the next generation is already being manufactured.
I remember when I was saving to buy the same sound interface around five years ago. ^_^
Sound is always the hardest!
Hi @jerrybanfield wow indeed i am glad to learn how you were able to improvised your reasoning power and come up with a complete professional audio recording setup and solutions to mono input that was posing a challenge to you perhaps your setup is awesome @jerrybanfield since it is a comparison of highly quality devices such as Electro-Voice RE-20 Cardioid Microphone,DBX 286s Microphone Preamp Processor, Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 2nd generation USB Audio Interface, Hosa YPP-308 1/4 Inch TRSF to dual 1/4 inch TRS-Y Cable for real this is a complete setup solution to your audio problem @jerrybanfield,lastly this was such a great post to share,thank you for your post and keep on posting such great technological tutorial post.
Thanks for sharing.
Just a side note to say the microphone preamp was probably unnecessary. You could've plugged your RE-20 directly into your Scarlett and save 200$ ;)
Very nice microphone for that use case BTW . Mono FTW!
Actually since I'm new to recording voice I didn't completely understand this article, the bit about stereo. I'm using a Shure sm 58 mic and an M-Audio Fast Track c400 interface with Win 10.
He didn't mention whether he's using like Reaper for his editing? Or is it some [...] Apple software he's using for post-recording? I'm not a fan of Apple really.
I liked how this article laid out the lot of pertinent details so that interested people can really make sense out of what he's saying. A lot of writing nowadays is very short on substantive details, logic, or evidence, but long on slavish obsequiousness.
Thx and cheerio
This is great info. My daughter is looking to start her own media platform. I shall file this info away for comparison for the equipment and software I buy her.
sorry maybe i do not have the right to comment to a good post nice friend my friend likes
hey @jerrybanfield!
long time youtube subscriber here! first of all thanks for inspiring me to come on here and be more creative, i have really enjoyed my first experience this week!
Being an audiophile myself I know all too well the headaches of getting your sound right when it comes to youtube (don't even get me started on their audio compression!!)
It is super important to share these guides because I cant tell you how many countless times I have been stuck with no idea what to do.
keep up the good work :)
Thanks for the post Jerry!!!!! Can you hear me now? :D
how did you manage to write such a long post?it takes a lots of your time to write the post..but your all post are very informative us to all.Really fabulous work @jerrybanfield.great post..please reply if you read my comments..
wonderful job , its very helpful..dear
good post
thanks for the information, work with audio, and I tell you, sometimes it is a torment these conflicts of hardware, until we professionals go through it.
This is very helpful, @jerrybanfield. You have almost helped me in anything with your posts! Thanks to you! :) Will surely vote you as a witness. God bless!
Wonderful video. Been following your videos and you are an inspiration! Keep it up.
Quality is not cheap, but i really appreciate this knowledge. Thank you
Good post as always, but are their fairness on here really, just saw how your wife was plunged into silence for no reason at all that I have noticed or that I can think off, It was her very first post for crying out loud.
Do we give in to tyranny or maybe the better word are envy, I surely do not hope so.
Myself just had an issue with minnowhelper that did steal my money for no service and my tolerance against fraud is 0%, how did the resolve the support request, by downvoting it OMG!
see for yourself https://steemit.com/customerservice/@thaiprincess/re-minnowhelper-minnowhelper-technical-support-20171019t070320263z
Congratulations @jerrybanfield!
Your post was mentioned in the hit parade in the following category:
Nice solution.