A few people have asked about my setup for the OMs, so FWIW here it is…
Audio: Guitar & Mic → TC Helicon Play Acoustic unit → AI → OBS → Zoom
Video: Webcam → OBS - Zoom
The Play Acoustic integrates a number of TC Electronics guitar and vocal effects pedals in a single unit. This includes the Body Rez pedal which helps counter-act some of the typical quackiness of a piezo pickup of an electro-acoustic guitar, bringing it closer to a natural acoustic sound.
I use body rez, reverb, delay, and chorus on the guitar. Over time I have tinkered with settings and want to achieve a sound that is better than the dry sound but not that any of the effects are too obvious.
On the vocal side there are similar effects plus effects to add harmony or double the voice. Again I have experimented and believe I have settings that make me sound a little better without sounding overly produced. If you want to hear it being fully utilsed have a listen to some of @RonG’s recordings
The unit has three output modes and I choose to output separate signals for the guitar and vocal. Those are then plugged into my AI, which happens to be a UMC404HD but could be any. On the Play Acoustic I set the mic gain down quite low to reduce the bleed from the guitar. Even though I use a dynamic mic, it will still pick up some of the guitar if the gain is up. Gain is set on the AI to achieve reasonable signal strength without any clipping.
in each OBS scene you can choose inputs based on a variety of sources. My OM OBS scene has the webcam, one audio input for the vocal and two inputs for the guitar. The guitar inputs come from the same UMC channel, so it is effectively a duplicate. I then set this up to take advantage of the Haas Effect.
You can see the two guitar inputs in the image below and how they are panned. On the second I use an OBS Filter on the source. OBS can be setup to make use of plugins from your DAW and I make use of a standard Reaper plugin to introduce a 30ms delay on the track. There is also a 3dB boost on the second channel which helps to create a fuller sound with a stereo effect if you listen on headphones.
One of the other challenges we face is a drop in volume when comparing a recording made in OBS vs the recording made once routed to Zoom. In the first diagram you see an option for 6 tracks. These tracks effectively allow you to route the output of OBS in 6 different ways based on all the available output devices on the PC.
OBS output is setup to be the audio input for Zoom using a Virtual Cable. I have found that turning on two Tracks and routing both to the Virtual Cable results in a similar sound level in Zoom.
OBS has a virtual camera, which can be selected as the video source in Zoom.
I think that is it.
I should stress, that this is an unnecessary indulgence. It is quite acceptable to perform at an OM using a webcam for video and its builtin audio mic. You can also use the builtin devices on a phone or tablet. The OM is about participation, not about a perfect performance (even though may of the performers are exceptional) or a perfect studio quality sound.
