A guide to live stream musical performances from home

This guide is intended for people wanting to live stream a musical performance from home. It provides informations for most kind of setups, from purely acoustic performances to more complex cases implying a DAW, an external sound card with connected instruments and mics.

It focuses mainly on audio configuration as it might be the most tricky part depending on your setup, although it also includes walkthroughs for all the steps from installing a streaming software to actually start streaming.

Prerequisites

• Knowing what you want to play and the involved equipment
• Basic knowledge about your DAW (how to access its settings, add a plugin, manage tracks inputs and outputs)
• A computer running Windows or macOS[^1]
• A bit of free time to read this guide carefully

We will use OBS Studio as our streaming software but you are not required to know how to use it.

How to use this guide?

Simply follow the parts in the correct order! All parts can always be reached through the navigation side bar on the left.

Start by part 1. Which audio setup do I use? that will help you to figure out which instructions you should follow to configure your audio.

Before actually configuring your audio you should first follow a super fast introduction to OBS (part 2), then configure the video in OBS part 3.

Then come the main point of this guide: the audio configuration (part 4)

You will then have to configure OBS to make it stream to your favorite platform (part 5)

Why I wrote this guide?

It began during the COVID-19 lockdown. During this period we saw many initiatives (online festivals, groups, personal projects) aiming to live stream artists and musicians performing from their home. I got somehow involved in some of these projects and saw the lack of information regarding the audio configuration, which can differ A LOT depending on the musical project itself. So I tried to find a solution for most cases and sorting everything properly allowing people to find which case fit their needs and how to do it.

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[^1]Sorry dear Linux user, I have no specific instructions for you, but you might still find this guide useful! Solution logics are the same but you will have to find compatible alternative softwares by yourself. Have a look at Jack Audio or Pulse Audio