My gear was all still unpacked after last night’s Community Open Mic, so a good time to play a little more with my live recording setup, either for OMs or AVOYP play & sing recordings.
For those not interested in the details, and would rather just give the video a look & listen, I’ll save you the need to scroll past a wodge of sleep-inducing, head-spinning, techno-babble. For those interested scroll on down.
I’ve picked Wasted Sunsets by Deep Purple, a ballad off the Perfect Strangers album, as the song to play in this experiment. Still needs work to be ready for an OM as the error/flub rate is not quite there yet. Not too bad (I think) on this take.
For context my approach to this is to try and achieve as close to a Home Studio recording quality as I can without the need to make use of a DAW after recording. I want to just press record, do my thing, and drop the video into my video editor to trim the start and end plus add title and credits. It is not as simple and easy as just using a phone (which I do in the other room to record practice and looper fun with the electric) but still fairly straight forward once you get the hang of it.
The setup is as follows:
Vocal: Dynamic mic → TC Helicon Play Acoustic → Focusrite 2i2 ch2 → OBS
Guitar: Built-in pup → TC Helicon Play Acoustic → Focusrite 2i2 ch1 → OBS
I use the Play Acoustic to add fx such as reverb, delay, chorus, vocal doubling to the dry input. Plus the Play Acoustic includes TC Electronics Bodyrez pedal that helps improve overall tone quality from a guitar using just a piezo pickup, resulting in a sound that is closer to the natural acoustic sound of the instrument.
In OBS I setup to have a single audio source from the 2i2 ch2 for vocal and two audio sources from the 2i2 ch1 for the guitar. When setting the guitar inputs up, I select the stereo option and create a left and right source, making the left channel in the source the 2i2 input and the right mute for the left channel guitar input and the opposite for the right channel.
Previously I added an OBS filter to add a time adjustment delay on one of the channels. In this experiment I removed that and used the latency adjustment in the OBS Advanced Audio Properties.
Thereafter I played with the time delay on one and a reduced loudness on the other in order to create a sense of width. This is making use of what is termed the Haas Effect
Something I discovered was that I needed to record to hear the final sound. I thought I ought to be able to hear it through the headphones plugged into the 2i2 but even with Direct Monitor on the 2i2 set to off and the PC set to use the 2i2 for sound output that was not the case. If someone can help me out to be able to hear the OBS output without recording that would be great.
In the end I used the Direct Monitor on the 2i2 to hear the output of the Play Acoustic. I think it is helpful to hear one’s playing in that way, rather than just hearing your guitar and voice in the room.
Still need a little tweaking as the final audio level was +1.6dB in YT which means the YT system would apply some limiting to lower the audio to be within their normative loudness level. This is to be avoided as it will negatively impact the dynamics of your recording (assuming the recording does have a measure of variation between loudest and softest moments 
)
Still not sure I have the settings just right but I think it is sounding OK.
yes, I have the same HPs with the coiled cable. Since I moved my electric out of the room I now hang the HPs up on the guitar hanger where the electric lived. I figure if I let that cable hang vertically it may prevent the hassles with the coiled cable getting all contorted.
Since I replaced the ragged covering of the ear cups with lush velvet (thankyou very much