#streaming setup

Microphone: https://amzn.to/4trEqWM

Originally we had planned on keeping all the computers in the office (not the room in the picture here) and dividing the studio (the room in this picture) into halves. The half now taken up by the giant desk on the left would be where I’d set up my studio, the area where the other 2 desks are would be a workbench for crafting type stuff, and the drafting table would be where it is. But between the plague causing us to switch jobs and work from home and everything else that’s happened... well... plans change. We couldn’t both work from home in the office, so my spouse had to get a desk and set it up in the studio. And the little corner desk my spouse had gotten for the office way far too small for all of the paperwork that their new job entailed. So we had to get the giant desk.

Since we’d like to get back into the habit of streaming, we decided that we needed to once again change the plans we had for our studio. But with less income, that meant no more buying furniture. We need to work with what we have. So the giant desk that takes up half the room will stay, and will become the graphics powerhouse of the studio, with my spouse’s new computer in the middle, a big monitor on the left, and the graphics tablet monitor on the right. Unfortunately the USB C port is on the left side of the computer and the right side of the graphics tablet... which means we need a longer USB C to USB C cable if we want to use all three monitors. (We can use an HDMI cable instead, but then we wouldn’t be able to use the other big monitor.)

I moved the smaller corner desk from the office into the space between my studio and my spouse’s, and got rid of the little wooden table that was kind of in my way on the right side of my studio. Now we have an entire wall of nothing but desk. The drafting table is still just out of camera view on the right, so my spouse still has a space for traditional drawing.

You can also see in this picture that I was able to finally rig up a top down view of my studio, the camcorder is attached to a little microphone handle instead of a stand. The little handle came with a different mic, the one that I’ve currently got hooked up to my desktop computer in the office. I’m using a boom mic stand that I had packed away that was a birthday present to me like fifteen years ago. (I’m glad it’s finally getting decent use, I used to have it set up next to my old Windows XP desktop computer that had an M-Audio 10/10 soundcard that had XLR inputs so I could actually record a microphone directly into the computer. But that desktop died about 9 years ago, and I haven’t used that stand since then. I don’t even think they have drivers for the 10/10 for modern versions of Windows anymore.) Ironically, the microphone that came with the boom mic stand is in a little tripod that came with a DIFFERENT mic that crapped out on me and I’m not using anymore, it’s somewhere on that desk studio setup. I don’t know if it’s in camera view, it’s not currently plugged into the mixer, but it’s there if I want to record any vocals. However, that setup means that the camera is also about six feet away from where the computer will be... which means we need a longer USB A to Micro USB cable if I want to stream.

... and after moving all that furniture, getting sweaty and gross, and stressing out my bad knees... I didn’t wanna go to Best Buy to get cables. So we ordered them online, and maybe once we’ve gotten them, we’ll be able to get back to streaming again.

Also, since my spouse got a new, better computer, I’m going to see if their old computer is powerful enough to do basic streaming with just my sound and video setup. It’s (I think) about 9 years old, just like my laptop... but mine was bottom of the line at the time of purchase, and this one was midrange. They have the same amount of RAM and hard drive space, but my spouse’s old computer has about 3 or 4 times the processing power of my dinky little old laptop. So maybe it can handle it. We’ll find out once I get that new cable. If not, well, we’ll see what I can do. Now that we’re past the first few weeks of classes, my job is slowing down a bit, so I’ll have a little more free time and energy. I’d really like to spend some time working on more fun, creative stuff. I suppose I could just say screw it and move my desktop into that room, that’s definitely powerful enough to stream. And if I don’t feel like doing music, I can work on 3d modeling/sculpting instead. Or, hell, I could even go back to doing game streaming when we’re not streaming art or music.

I would love to also get a better chair. Unfortunately, all of the comfortable chairs we have right now are too wide to work with that setup, unless I can figure out a way to move my keyboards to the right side of my studio instead of the left. Which honestly, I could probably do if I just got some longer cables. I went cheap and just got 3 and 4 foot audio and MIDI cables when I first set up the studio, since I was jammed in the corner there. So maybe my last investment in the studio will be to buy a couple of longer audio and MIDI cables just for those two synths.