What was the problem?

About a week ago, at the beginning of a stream, there were some fairly loud, intermittent bursts of static audible to both the audience and myself. I cycled power on everything, jiggled all my cables, and generally made an unbelievable hash out of everything. As suddenly as the problem appeared, it went away.

The impression I had was that it was almost as if my streaming rig was picking up some kind of radio interference from somewhere. What with all the protests that had been going on in the Seattle area at the time, it was possible that someone was flying something around generating some kind of radio interference that my rig was picking up.

The problem was not easy to troubleshoot as the static was episodic and very unpredictable. Until yesterday when during a daytime practice session, the static was more persistent than it had ever been.

How did I figure it out?

With the rig fired up, I turned on both Loopback and the Focusrite Control apps as well as OBS so that I could see the static appear on the meters. Then I turned off the power to the Focusrite Clarett 4Pre USB, and waited. after about five minutes with no static, I turned the Clarett back on and immediately heard static.

I unplugged the cable from the microphone and waited. Static. Unplugged the cable from the Cloudlifter. Static. Unplugged the TRS cable from the Presonus Studio Channel to the Clarett… no static. Plugged it back in, static. Turned off the Studio Channel… no static.

I bypassed the Studio Channel completely by plugging in the cable from the Cloudlifter directly to the Clarett, no static.

I then hooked up the Studio Channel once again, heard the static again. I decided to connect the Studio Channel to the Clarett via XLR cable instead of the TRS cable and… static.

Great… Now what?

The original reason I got the Studio Channel was that I wanted to have compression and EQ happen before my mic signal got to OBS so that I could monitor the quality of the signal before it was sent out via OBS. And I got super lucky, purchasing it used for $70. They cost about $350 new, so… spending another $350 on a new Studio Channel right now after just dropping several grand on a new PC gaming rig would be really painful.

I connected the microphone chain to the Clarett and retired the Studio Channel to the floor behind the green screen. Then, in OBS, I enabled the Focusrite Red 3 Compressor VST Plugin that I installed ages ago but never used. I spent some time tuning the compression, and it sounded pretty darned good.

The neat thing about this VST plugin is that it automatically runs every time I run OBS. I’ve got it set to open up each time OBS runs so that I can gaze at it’s awesomeness.

And then OF COURSE I did a test!

I didn’t do a test stream but I did do a quick test recording. After a few very minor tweaks, it’s running perfectly.

What do you need “Compression” for, anyway?

An audio signal will sound crunchy and distorted in the mix if the signal suddenly spikes in volume, like when I suddenly yell when I get sniped out of the cockpit of my plane. A compressor listens to an audio signal and when it goes over a given level, it compresses the signal at a given rate to prevent the signal from getting too loud, preventing those sudden spikes of loudness from blowing out your eardrums.

Are you gonna replace the Presonus Studio Channel?

I took a listen to the full stream from last night and I gotta say, it sounds REALLY damned good without the Studio Channel in the audio chain. I think I may have been ever so slightly double pre-amping my mic. Now that that’s gone, the ever so slight hiss that I used to hear is gone, the faint small intermittent fuzzies that I used to hear are gone, and the sudden interference is gone.

I’m left with this unbelievably pure, amazing sounding signal off my ElectroVoice RE20 mic that to me sounds out of this world. I was noticing depth in the signal that I’ve never heard before.

I’m also thinking of routing things using Loopback so that I can hear the full audio signal after OBS, but I’m not sure if it’s really what I want to listen to during broadcasts. First I think there’ll be a delay, and second I’m not sure the audio quality of that post OBS mix would be anything near to what I’m hearing right now before OBS.

But I get antsy about such things so… you know how that tends to go…

What about the sponsors on the Studio Channel?

I might just try to get the darned thing fixed because replacing it is darned expensive. If that doesn’t happen, I think I might remove the cover, cut out the piece with the names on it, and put it on my desk under the monitor. I’m not totally sold on this yet but something cool will definitely happen. Stay tuned!