Things I Tried:

When I started, I used a typical live-style set up (a vocal microphone on a boom and a mic'd guitar amp) into a mixer, and sent the sound from the mixer to a lightning adapter into my iPhone (I did use an eighth-inch and lightning cable splitter so my phone would remain charged through the hours-long streams).

While that sounded great to me, it seemed to create an emotional barrier between the people watching and me. Once I "killed" the microphone set-up, engagement went up. It still sounded good but didn't have that "recording" quality that the mixer set-up had.

As I mentioned in the last video, getting people to stop in and watch is the first, most crucial step, and much of that is visual. Yes, if your sound is genuinely awful, they may not stay, but for most people and purposes, a phone would do just fine. Most social media consumers are used to pretty poor sound quality and are fairly forgiving.

An investment in lighting and a clean, colorful backdrop made a nice difference in video quality and a more pro-looking stream.

It didn't make sense for me back then to experiment with streaming from my desktop because of the spatial restrictions of my home, so when I moved to a smaller space, I desperately tried to get OBS to work with my system. After multiple failed attempts, I gave up, thinking I would need to troubleshoot it again later when I "had more time." (Maybe I'll try again now!) So, while I've spent a lot of time building out scenes, etc. for OBS, and did execute a few streams with it (with poor results due to lag, latency, and audio/video sync issues), I don't currently use it to stream my Friday shows.

Things you could try:

• streaming from your phone with no other tech
• face a window or invest in some diffuse lighting
• stream directly to your Page from your computer using onboard sound
• stream directly to your Page from your phone using sound from a mixer
• stream directly to your Page from your computer via OBS using audio from your regular recording interface (I have a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 that works just fine, but there are options for almost every use case and budget if you do a little research)

Open Broadcaster Software - https://obsproject.com/ (it's free)

Some other stuff that might be handy:

Desk-or-Table-Mounted Phone Holder and Ring Light (boom arm)

Microphone Desk-Mounted Boom Arm w/Windscreen

1/8"/Lightning Splitter Cable

Phone Mount (for Mic Stands)

Logitech C922x Pro Stream Webcam

Super-Long Lightning Cables

(I own and use/have used all of these things)