Help streaming live performance via reason

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Choy
Posts: 1
Joined: 31 Mar 2020

31 Mar 2020

Hi Everyone,

I am a basic Reason user. I write songs, and basic song composition on Reason 10. I'd like to do live streaming performances singing into reason over the tracks i've built. I was initially going to add FX to my live vocals thru reason, however, it seems that i have to use OBS to stream and it won't pick up my xlr mic at all. I've tried VoiceMeeter potato and Banana. They only pick up my webcam mic ( which sounds terrible). I use a Lexicon I-onix u22 interface. It is hooked up to my computer. My xlr is also hooked up to my Lexicon interface. That's how i normally record vocals. Why wouldn't Voicemeter and OBS pick up my xlr mic, when they pick up my Reason Track on my computer. Does anyone have any expertise in this area?

Thanks!

Bjørn Felle
Posts: 172
Joined: 15 Sep 2019

31 Mar 2020

i have been live streaming with Reason and OBS. if youre on a Mac i can help you set it up
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Sustayne
Posts: 9
Joined: 15 Jul 2015
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24 Jul 2020

Bjørn Felle wrote:
31 Mar 2020
i have been live streaming with Reason and OBS. if youre on a Mac i can help you set it up

Hey man, any chance you could help me with this please? I’m struggling to send the output of my saffire 40 to OBS.

Bjørn Felle
Posts: 172
Joined: 15 Sep 2019

24 Jul 2020

Sustayne wrote:
24 Jul 2020
Bjørn Felle wrote:
31 Mar 2020
i have been live streaming with Reason and OBS. if youre on a Mac i can help you set it up

Hey man, any chance you could help me with this please? I’m struggling to send the output of my saffire 40 to OBS.
Sure thing. I'll outline the steps I use, and that should get you started. Let me know if you need more specific guidance on any particular points and I'll gladly elaborate.

1. Install Blackhole
Blackhole is a virtual audio interface for Mac OS. Go to the Blackhole home page to download it:
https://existential.audio/blackhole/

Once you have downloaded Blackhole, just install it like any other piece of software. You might need to reboot the Mac after installing, I can't remember now. Better to do it just in case.

2. Set up an aggregate audio device
Go to Applications/Utilities and open Audio MIDI Setup. Click the + in the bottom right corner and choose Create Aggregate Device. Add your real audio interface's input and output, and also the Blackhole device, and give the aggregate device a memorable name (I called mine "Streaming"). In the screenshot, the two USB Audio Codec sub-devices are the input and output of my audio interface.
Screenshot 2020-07-24 at 19.03.28.png
Screenshot 2020-07-24 at 19.03.28.png (444.64 KiB) Viewed 2418 times
3. Reason audio interface settings
Open Reason and set its audio interface to the new aggregate device. Then click on "Channels..." next to Active Output Channels and make sure you have the first two pairs of outputs enabled (i.e. both output 1/2 and output 3/4).
Screenshot 2020-07-24 at 19.07.08.png
Screenshot 2020-07-24 at 19.07.08.png (159.67 KiB) Viewed 2418 times
4. Reason project settings
Now look at the back of the Audio I/O device at the top of the Reason rack. Create a new Spider audio merger/splitter at the top of the rack. Disconnect the cables from audio output channels 1 and 2 and connect them to the input of the spider splitter. Connect one pair of outputs from the spider to outputs 1 and 2, and the next pair to outputs 3 and 4. What this basically does is splits the output from the master section, sends one to the real audio interface (so you can hear it) and the other to Blackhole.
Screenshot 2020-07-24 at 19.07.29.png
Screenshot 2020-07-24 at 19.07.29.png (412.07 KiB) Viewed 2418 times
5. Set up OBS
In your OBS scenes, add an audio input capture and set its device to Blackhole. You should now be getting audio coming from Reason to your audio interface so you can hear it, and also see the level indicator in OBS reflecting the audio input it is receiving also from Reason.

Final notes
Unfortunately you have to repeat step 4 for every Reason project you want to stream. It's not too arduous though, I did my whole album and a few covers in just a few minutes. You can leave Reason set to the streaming output all the time even when you're not streaming, but be aware that aggregate devices add a bit of latency (not much, but maybe enough to affect recording). So it's better to change it back to output directly to your interface when you're not streaming. Changing back to the streaming aggregate device sometimes causes outputs 3/4 to get disabled so just check them each time like you did in step 3. Other than these minor caveats, this has been working really well for me for streaming. If you use different scenes for each track like I do (e.g. to play the music video in the background of my green screen) then you can install MIDI Pipe and use Reason's external MIDI device to send MIDI notes to MIDI Pipe, trigger an AppleScript which sends keystrokes to OBS, and then programme scene changes in OBS in response to those key strokes. If you need to be able to do that, let me know and I will post a more thorough guide on this too.
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Sustayne
Posts: 9
Joined: 15 Jul 2015
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24 Jul 2020

Thank you so much mate, and especially for putting this guide together. I’m going to give this method a go :D

Bjørn Felle
Posts: 172
Joined: 15 Sep 2019

24 Jul 2020

Sustayne wrote:
24 Jul 2020
Thank you so much mate, and especially for putting this guide together. I’m going to give this method a go :D
You're welcome dude. Let me know how you get on and post a link to your stream :D
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Bjørn Felle
Posts: 172
Joined: 15 Sep 2019

24 Jul 2020

Just checking out your soundcloud, man you're really hitting that Bristol trip hop sound :cool:
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Bjørn Felle
Posts: 172
Joined: 15 Sep 2019

24 Jul 2020

Oh wait, that's one you shared. Your stuff is quite different xD Great work though dude
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Sustayne
Posts: 9
Joined: 15 Jul 2015
Contact:

24 Jul 2020

Bjørn Felle wrote:
24 Jul 2020
Oh wait, that's one you shared. Your stuff is quite different xD Great work though dude
Cool, I will do, home soon so I’ll give it go!
Haha! Yeah that’s my friend who makes really decent lofi hiphop and chilled stuff. I’m more on the industrial side of things hehe.
My SC sucks anyway, need to repopulate it with the new productions..

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Billy+
Posts: 4157
Joined: 09 Dec 2016

25 Jul 2020

I had not see a setup using existential audio so this a very interesting.

Is there a reason for using it over the iShowU audio capture software,

https://support.shinywhitebox.com/hc/en ... d-earlier-

Also I am curious what OS and OBS versions are being used, I'm still running El Capitan so I'm stuck on an older version of OBS.

Bjørn Felle
Posts: 172
Joined: 15 Sep 2019

25 Jul 2020

Billy wrote:
25 Jul 2020
I had not see a setup using existential audio so this a very interesting.

Is there a reason for using it over the iShowU audio capture software,

https://support.shinywhitebox.com/hc/en ... d-earlier-

Also I am curious what OS and OBS versions are being used, I'm still running El Capitan so I'm stuck on an older version of OBS.
I can’t see any particular reason to use Blackhole rather than iShowU. iShowU grew out of Soundflower which was no longer being maintained and was not compatible with Catalina as there is no 64-bit build and Apple changed a lot of things in the audio API in Catalina which rendered Soundflower unusable. As long as iShowU has been updated to work with Catalina it should do the job just as competently. It’s possible latency will vary between different virtual audio interfaces, but with latency of only a few ms it doesn’t really make any perceptible difference. I’m running on Catalina and whatever version of OBS Studio is most recent.
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Billy+
Posts: 4157
Joined: 09 Dec 2016

26 Jul 2020

So just in case anyone is interested in streaming on El Capitan using OBS you should use OBS version 24.0.2 and do not update OBS if you get any update message as it will break.

You can find the correct version here

https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studi ... tag/24.0.2


For desktop audio capture you can use either option
iShowU Audio Capture is available here

https://support.shinywhitebox.com/hc/en ... io-Capture

You will need to create a multi out as explained above.

If you're interested in running Touch Portal you will also need web sockets plugin install, reading through the info your going to need this version

https://github.com/Palakis/obs-websocke ... /tag/4.7.0

Touch Portal is here for desktop package
https://www.touch-portal.com

And you will need the mobile app installed checkout your App Store..

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Billy+
Posts: 4157
Joined: 09 Dec 2016

04 Nov 2020

Just an extra note to any one interested.

My Mac still has an audio in socket
IMG_2235.JPG
IMG_2235.JPG (77.24 KiB) Viewed 1587 times
And my audio interface has 4 outs, I'm using the first two with speakers and rather than use more software I've got a lead to bring a mic & the control room out of Reason into OBS.



Hope this is of use to others.

Now onto the next issue

Can anyone recommend some gate settings, usually my headphones is enough for me not to hear the background noises in my workflow but adding a mic has brought some of it back in :lol:

Yes I'm talking about the family running around the house and passed the door, I was hoping that I could use the gate but I'm just not finding good settings

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