Streaming A/V Setup

Mic & Audio Interface

When streaming or podcasting, I use a Shure SM7B microphone.

This thing is super powerful and is the standard for podcast mics. That said, it requires an XLR interface. If you're not familiar, XLR is just a type of cable, and an XLR interface is just a little box that lets you plug an XLR mic into it, then plug the box into your computer. I use an Elgato Wave XLR.

This is a super easy XLR interface. It supports your mic connection as well as headphone connection. The dial can switch between controlling mic volume, headphone volume, as well as monitor mix! So you can (optionally) set it so you can hear how you sound in your headphones.

However, If you want quality but dont feel like dealing with XLR quite yet, the Shure MV7-K is basically the same mic, but smaller, and also with an additional USB port to just use it like any other USB mic. Kinda nice because it lets you upgrade to an XLR interface later if you want!

Camera & Video Stuff

For my stream, I use a Sony ZV-1 MK II. This camera is super easy to set up, and you can plug it directly into your computer via its USB-C port and it'll act like a webcam out of the box.

THAT SAID, the USB-C webcam feature has some pretty significant quality/framerate limitations. Instead, you can get much higher quality output by using a micro hdmi to hdmi cable with a capture card in your computer. Use the HDMI out from the camera, plug it into the capture card, plug that into your computer and BAM, your computer thinks its a webcam. I use this USB-based capture card, but there are more advanced ones as well which offer multiple ports.

I keep it plugged in via USB-C to a power outlet, as well as the HDMI cable, so it is always charged and I just turn it on and use it whenever I go live.

One more note about this camera: it is likely that if you're recording audio via a separate mic from the camera when using the capture card, you'll experience desync'd audio and video. The audio will probably be about 1 second ahead of the video. You can pretty easily configure an audio sync delay in OBS' audio mixer.