Live streaming set-up/mic extension woes (blog)
This is a “blog” rambling post, if you’re here for FFXV pics, feel free to ignore. 😛
This is my current desktop setup. I have a 43″ 4k TV, one 27″ 1440 monitor and one 27″ 1080p monitor. Most of the time now I run all three on the main Win10 rig but occasionally plug the 1080 into my older, rarely used Win7 rig when I want to do something on it. At some point I should probably set up remote desktop so the only time a monitor has to be directly plugged into the old PC is if I wanted to play a game on it, but I digress. (yes I always sit in very dim light like in the pic)
Point being, I was wondering the other night if I wanted to (casually) try Twitch-streaming again. A combo of light gaming+”just chatting” perhaps. This thought is mostly a symptom of my recent boredom rather than anything serious, mind – maintaining a regular live-stream is a ton more “work” and setup than it may look like, and I don’t need income/am not at all interested in having a streaming career. 😛
Anyway, imo, you need three monitors to “properly” live-stream … yes yes you can do it with only one monitor if you really really want, but imo you need at least two, and three is optimum. So I have that covered even if my desk isn’t wide enough to have them in an ideal arrangement….
The main setup issue I have is the mic. I have a Blue Yeti. It’s this rather large, heavy thing. Maybe I should buy a new/lighter one. Regardless, I have yet to find a decent way to utilize such a mic in terms of placement. Having it sit directly on the desk in front of your face was not ideal for me because it gets in the way whenever you want to shift/move your keyboard or whatever. Not to mention a big mic RIGHT next to a clacky keyboard is never a hot idea (easier if you’re using a controller…). You can buy a mic holder/arm extension, but almost all of them apparently use a C-clamp concept to temp-attach them to your desk (example from Amazon). I don’t think I’d like that, since with the way I have things, there’s no good place for it where it wouldn’t block a monitor view or I’d hit it with my arms or chair all the time. Nor do any I’ve looked at have enough extension from their two “arm” sections to clamp onto the desk behind the central monitor to then reach *over* the monitor and then continue to extend even more to finally rest near/over my head. I like my monitors fairly high plus my desk is way too deep for that – it’s over 3 feet deep and most of the mic-arm/extenders seem to be about 15″-18″ for each arm section. Not enough. I’m not going to be drilling a permanent hole into my desk surface, either. And I hate wearing headsets.
There’s only one wall-mounted mic extension I’ve seen so far (well, on Amazon at least) but again I’m not sure it’s enough reach to where I’d want it, from the wall stud I’d have to mount it to. I may have to try it tho. There are floor-stands of course but those generally aren’t for placing the mic over/next to your head. I don’t care about uber quality live-stream mic sound, but it is important (to me) that you can move/change positions a bit and have it not drop in and out constantly, that you don’t feel like you have to shout all the time, and that it won’t pick up crazy/mega-loud amounts of other noises outside of your voice. Maybe I’m too picky. I get like that, making extra “work” for myself. I could just use a cheap, crackly, muted-sounding, crap mic clipped to my shirt, right…. pfft.
