Live Streaming Setup and improvements.

I must admit, as a DJ I thoroughly enjoy knowing the fact that someone out there is potentially listening somewhere. In this post I thought I would share what my live stream setup currently is and move on to any improvements I would make.

Most importantly for streaming, you have to get sound right. I'll dig a little deeper below in terms of what I'm doing for sound.

- My Setup
In regards to my DJ setup - I have 2 Pioneer PLX turntables with standard issue Pioneer carts and needles. They work great for beat mixing and work really well for digital DVS vinyl too. In regards to the mixer, I have a Traktor Kontrol Z2 which is midi mappable.

- DJ Software
Although I have a Traktor mixer, I don't choose to use the native instruments software. I don't think its come far enough in terms of design and features as much as Serato, Rekordbox and some others. I have been using rekordbox with Pioneer DVS vinyl now for a while with the help of the mapping from DJTechTools (With a few tweaks) - you can get the mapping here : https://maps.djtechtools.com/mappings/8122.

The mapping works great, but Native Instruments didn't enable cue buttons on the mixer to be mappable - really annoying, and also I cannot get any feedback on the LED buttons either, so I find myself looking at the laptop screen way more often than I should.

I will have a play with the mapping to see if I can get the LED feedback going, then post an update. I might have to use some extra MIDI software in the middle somehow. There was one I used to use with Ableton, but the name escapes me at the moment.

- Streaming Software
OBS is now my weapon of choice, Its currently installed on the same Mac that I DJ from, Im fortunate enough to have a powerful enough Mac (2015, i7, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD) that is up to the task. (But I do need to build a streaming PC / Mac just for that purpose - more on that later).

I did try streaming via Restream.io web browser - but the sound quality was way more shocking than I imagined (It seemed very heavily compressed). When I first looked at it, it looked like a viable lower CPU/GPU usage contender but maybe more testing is needed for this one. So I went straight back to OBS.

Last week I streamed straight from OBS to Mixcloud and it was faultless - Sound was amazing, and I had no drop outs at all as far as I can tell. I did record the mix and put it on YouTube, but YouTube took it down! :( - oh well!

I will next try via Restream.io to MixCloud, Twitch and YouTube. Facebook has a tendency to kick you off after a short while because of copyright infringement. So for that reason, I don't think I'll bother with Facebook anymore.

- Cameras and Lighting
As of this moment, I have 2 cameras. My Mac FaceTime camera is great quality for streaming video - it looks good under most light conditions. I haven't really dug into too much on the settings as I haven't felt the need to as of yet, the only real limitation is the location of the laptop.

My second camera is a DashCam from the car... When you plug it in to the USB port, it asks you if you want to use it as storage or a USB PC webcam - perfect! The quality isn't too great, its resolution is 640 x 480 I think - I will surely look into the settings and see if I can bump that up to at least 720p.

Most of my online streams are done in the day as I have 2 kids that in bed by the time darkness falls. My setup is right by a window so there is a lot of natural light. I don't see the need for any artificial lighting at this point, maybe when the darker nights come in, I may think about using some artificial light.

- Sound
You can route from Rekordbox via SoundFlower or similar on the Mac, however I prefer using an additional line input on my Mac. Unfortunately my Mac doesn't have a line in, so I opted for a cheap Line in USB sound card for my Mac. no drivers are required and it shows up as a 'USB Stereo line in'. This also allows me to record the mix as well (although you can do that in rekordbox natively)

I connect the Booth out from the mixer to that sound card and select that card as the source in OBS. Making sure that the laptop mic is set to off or disabled is OBS. This allows me to individually control the level out on the mixer and to keep an eye on it while mixing.

- Networking
My internet is fairly good where I live, our provider is Vodafone and the upload speed is approximately 19Mbps - more than enough for streaming at 2.5-3.5Mbps via OBS. However I learnt the hard way - don't use Wireless. When using Wireless, I experienced occasional latency and occasional drop outs. I now use a USB > 1Gbps adapter plugged straight into the back of the router. This works perfectly and everything seems much more snappier.

- Improvements
I think the setup is good for starters, but there's some improvements to be made for sure.

I would like to get together a dedicated streaming rig, or build a dedicated performance PC/Mac for rekordbox. The Rekordbox license allows you to have it installed on 2 devices, and since I use iTunes for library management, I can happily sync libraries between the two machines. Im still thinking on the best way forwards, I will report back when I have more of an idea. :)

Im thinking that getting 2 dedicated web cams would be also a great idea as well, ones that are of even better quality maybe and are small enough to not get in the way - I will also report back on this as well.

As of writing, Im happy with the sound now after my last stream, I will see how it performs this weekend on the next one - I'll be sure to write something if not!

- Over to you....
As a listener what do you like about DJ streams, and is there any improvements you can think of to make it more engaging/entertaining for you. Or to any other fellow streamers out there - what's your thoughts? I would love to hear some feedback.

See you all soon

Phil

x