First Live Stream

This summer turned out quite differently than what I originally envisioned. I was planning to take some time off from music and just laze around doing whatever but I ended up doing a couple projects which included a full live stream concert with some friends.

When we discussed which platform to use, I suggested using Twitch. I grew up with Twitch, been using it to watch streamers ever since it was released in 2011 and in these 9 years I haven't seen a classical music stream that wasn't affiliated with a promotional event. So I thought it would be pretty cool to host a chamber concert on Twitch. I asked my brother if he could help with production (he runs a production company, Bento, that has broadcasted shows with Blizzard, ESL, Rocket league, and many others) and he was down to help. This really simplified things for me since I wasn't too familiar with producing and streaming a full show.

We didn't have many options on shooting locations so we ended up just using the living room. We cleared out everything to the side and it ended up being quite the ideal space for such a project.

primary camera (front and middle) and side camera 1 (right side)

side camera 2 (left side)

We setup 3 cameras in total, 1 center and 2 on each side. I'm blanking out on the make of the camera but they're all 4k full-frame bodies. The lenses range from Zeiss to Canon L. The cameras were linked to a Blackmagic ATEM 1 M/E production studio 4k.

Streaming station, the stream was running off a Razer Blade Pro

Working out how to live stream high quality sound through Twitch was a little bit of a challenge. We needed to account for the platform compressing the audio we sent through so although it may sound good through the headset, what the viewer hears can be entirely different. The equipment used was L-R Neumann km 184, Sm-81 for low end, and Schoeps CMIT 5 for room, this was all fed into a Focusrite Red interface which ran into a Allen & Heath QU-16 pictured in the photo above. The end result was actually quite satisfying but there are a couple things that can be improved for future streams. The most important being the living room's flat surfaces which resulted in a rather flat sound on the stream. Although the walls are wood and it sounds fine in person, it is still untreated and the overall experience could really benefit from a couple properly placed acoustic diffuser panels.

Top view

It was pretty fun hosting and playing on the stream and I hope I get the opportunity to stream more in the future.