TAXI.com

I've used OBS for a couple of live streaming, and I guess it could improve Taxi's episodes, by getting the playback straight from the computer.
So though of suggesting this,

We've chewed this over some. As nice as it might be to hear music examples in stereo and without the extra room ambience, pretty much any solution is gonna require multiple lavalier mics and/or headsets and possibly an outboard mixer. All that might make sense in a dedicated space, but at least five days a week the Taxi TV studio is also Michael's office.

I suppose if you knew in advance what songs you'd be playing you could make them available and hold up a cue card with the link?? You could post 1 long song if necessary and list the time for the location of where you were if it was youtube private link, or create a taxi dummy host and post them there? Just open a second window in your browser to listen. You could balance the volume also between whomever was talking during the song,lol, or rewind and listen again...

I think most of the time, your ears are very good at compensating, however there are a few times or once i remember a critical listening show, and I thought it was a bit ridiculous the room ambiance and those steel blinds on the window, okay maybe they are vinyl blinds,lol, do vinyl blinds sound warmer? Anyway...

The dummy taxi host might be better, I'd have to listen on my other computer that has flash, because the song titles would be there and name them on the show, and not use cue cards or whatever. If a guest was given the link and password in advance for the dummy host, they could upload their songs instead of bringing a cd, or have someone in the office upload from their cd??

mojobone wrote:We've chewed this over some. As nice as it might be to hear music examples in stereo and without the extra room ambience, pretty much any solution is gonna require multiple lavalier mics and/or headsets and possibly an outboard mixer. All that might make sense in a dedicated space, but at least five days a week the Taxi TV studio is also Michael's office.

OBS has the advantage of adding multiple source of audio/video to a broadcast. So say you're doing a video capture of your screen, you could as well have another window, using your webcam, or any attached device.
For sound, I suppose internal mic would do, for the talk, and built in output would work for internal sound/ music played on air.
I guess, Soundflower would be also needed to manage all the i/o
All of these are free
It's probably not an easy set up, and could need some trial and error testing, but once set, I guess it would enhance the overall show, especially for the forward/returns episodes, or the mix critiques ones.

The problem is that we are an A&R company that does a "TV show" where the host is also the technical director, the director, the lighting director, and the producer. I downloaded OBS and Wirecast a few months ago, and they were much more difficult to work with. If I have to babysit the tech, it's really hard to be the host and interact with the chat room, interview guests, play music, watch the clock, and be charming all at the same time.

During the episodes when we've got drop out problems on our end, it's really hard to host the show and watch the bandwidth meter at the same time. Ustream will let me pre-load music, but switching back and forth between monitoring the music and my live mic was hard when I used to do it. It was like doing a non-automated mix, while having a conversation with 150 people whose messages are flying by at the same time. And trying to be smart, informed and charming while doing that.

If I wore headphones or earbuds, that could work, but then there's no way to talk over the music when needed because Ustream doesn't have the ability to mix live mics with pre-loaded audio unless I pay some crazy expensive monthly fees. I do want to solve the problem, but part of the reason TAXI TV works so well is that it's organic and real, not "produced." If we were a TV studio, that wouldn't be an issue because I'd have people to take care of all the tech issues. But, as I said, we're an A&R company, that happens to do a weekly TV show.

If anybody finds some tech that's set and forget, I'm all ears. As much as Ustream can be a pain in the butt on the viewers' end because of buffering, its simplicity on my end is what has made the show possible for the last seven years. Beat it, and I'm all in!

Michael

Michael, thank you for chiming in personally. I totally understand and get the situation, and love the 'home made' feel actually, rather than the big polished production unnatural shows. But I guess a small trick, such as OBS, will definitely enhance some of the shows where music is involved. For the interviews, the general talks, the AMA (Ask Michael Anything), the remote ones, Ustream is doing more than fine. But for critical listening, forward and returns, I suppose broadcast quality should reflect on that too.
I've put together a how to guide, in 3 major steps, on how to set up a Ustream broadcast using OBS, that you can find/download here
I'd be more than happy to help you out should you need any clarification, or help setting this up, if you want to, of course,
oh and btw, don't ever worry about the charming part