Logic Pro X on MacBook Pro to Facebook Live stream

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cheer tunes
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Logic Pro X on MacBook Pro to Facebook Live stream

Post by cheer tunes » Tue May 05, 2020 12:41 pm

Hi, I've been going "live" on Facebook using only the mic on my iPhone X for audio, which is not great.

I have a decent home studio rig that I should be able to leverage to stream much higher quality audio to Facebook live.

My workflow is:
AKG 414c mic
Apogee Element 24 converter (connects to mac via thunderbolt adaptor)
MacBook Pro (1 year old)
Logic Pro X

Is there a simple plug in or something that will allow me to stream high quality audio from Logic Pro to Facebook live? Thanks

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Nick Sevilla
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Re: Logic Pro X on MacBook Pro to Facebook Live stream

Post by Nick Sevilla » Tue May 05, 2020 3:07 pm

There is, hopefully, this works for FB Live:

https://audiomovers.com/
Howling at the neighbors. Hoping they have more mic cables.

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alexdingley
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Re: Logic Pro X on MacBook Pro to Facebook Live stream

Post by alexdingley » Wed May 06, 2020 6:09 am

I'm sure that the paid service (Audiomovers) is elegant and robust, but depending on the needs— I can imagine that being too pricey for some folks. Is there any reason why someone wouldn't just use the Soundflower driver? I suppose the setup is slightly more involved than Audiomovers. I believe you'd have to:

• Install Soundflower (downloadable here)
• Create an Aggregate Audio device (in audio/midi setup), call it something like "WebStreamDAW"
• Choose some inputs from your regular audio I/O & some outputs from your Soundflower
• Set Logic audio prefs to use "WebStreamDAW" for audio I/O
• Set Mac System audio to be the WebStream DAW?

I haven't used Soundflower in a long while, but it was great for routing audio from the web into my DAW — don't see why it couldn't be rigged up to work the other way around. To the original poster's point — the above steps are most decidedly NOT a simple plug-in... but once it's set up once, it probably would be as simple as a quick "⌥-click" on your Mac-system-volume / choose different audio I/O.

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Re: Logic Pro X on MacBook Pro to Facebook Live stream

Post by cheer tunes » Wed May 06, 2020 9:58 am

Thanks for the insights! I talked to Apogee and they confirmed that my device (Element 24) is not compatible with iOS devices. That led me back down the original path of why not do the facebook live stream from my MacBook Pro?? Well, tested that and was able to select the Element 24 as the Input device, but guess what? The webcam on a virtually new MacBook Pro is pretty horrible compared to my iPhone 11, go figure. Going to do some more testing.

Something like an iRig might be a simple, relatively easy solution for live streaming with the iPhone.

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Re: Logic Pro X on MacBook Pro to Facebook Live stream

Post by alexdingley » Wed May 06, 2020 7:31 pm

Do you happen to own a DSLR camera? In prep for my own Facebook live stuff... I recently learned that you can totally rig up a Canon EOS dslr as a webcam via a couple of free apps... it works great & looks amazing. I realize that rigging up through Logic & extra drivers + firing up some freeware apps to rig an external camera might start to sound VERY tangled... but the end result would be: great sounding audio w/ very high-quality video.

Also, if your MacBook Pro camera isn't looking so hot, just make sure to get waaaay more light on yourself in the shot. I'm guessing that the slightly older MacBook pro's don't have the fancy back-lit optical sensors that they put in iPhones. My 2013 MacBook Pro retina webcam is fine... but my (work machine) 2016 MacBook Pro's webcam is super clear, even in lower light.

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Re: Logic Pro X on MacBook Pro to Facebook Live stream

Post by Pullmaney » Mon May 17, 2021 12:31 pm

Any MacBook Pro webcam starting with the 2016 version will do a great job for your Facebook live stream. There are certain things that bother me regarding DSLR cameras. They have a high price tag. DSLR cameras are more expensive than point and shoot cameras. Also, they require ongoing maintenance. The cost of maintenance on a DSLR is much higher than on a point and shoot. I'm pleased with the quality of the camera I use for my instagram content. I had to use https://famoid.com/buy-instagram-followers/ to upgrade the number of followers on my instagram account, and now I'm very pleased with the numbers I have.
Last edited by Pullmaney on Mon May 24, 2021 8:41 am, edited 1 time in total.

Magnetic Services
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Re: Logic Pro X on MacBook Pro to Facebook Live stream

Post by Magnetic Services » Thu May 20, 2021 1:25 pm

Like others have said, Audiomovers or Soundflower (or Voicemeeter, etc.) should do the trick.

But I'll add this - is it necessary to go through Logic? Do you rely on playback or plugins you can only do in a DAW, or could you just take the signal straight from the interface? Seems like that could streamline the process quite a bit.

Or since you're only using one mic, why not hook a USB mic up to your iPhone?

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Re: Logic Pro X on MacBook Pro to Facebook Live stream

Post by dave watkins » Thu May 20, 2021 4:01 pm

been dealing with all sorts of video streaming situations for work and personal projects for the past year, i'm no expert on the matter but figured i'd share a couple additional things you may want to look into:

Loopback is a simple app that acts similarly to soundflower but it has a more streamlined setup and gui. I've heard of people having issues with soundflower on newer macs and recent OS versions, but i can't speak to that personally. Loopback is free to try to see if it works for you, $100 for a license which is not unreasonable if you plan streaming regularly (paid for itself in one stream via tips for me) as it's reliable and easy to use. At the end of the day it's an easy way to route any internal sound source to be the "audio input" instead of your webcam audio.

EpocCam is a free app that allows you to use your iphone's camera as a webcam connected your laptop. Yeah honestly even the most expensive computers still have relatively sub par 720p built in webcams, my 2019 mac pro's cam is a joke compared to my google pixel... Just no one really realized or cared about that until the pandemic hit last year and we got stuck only being able to see each other through webcams. If you have a fairly new iphone it's camera is going to be miles better as far as the quality is concerned.

something to be concerned about though, is that there may be varying degrees of latency between your desktop audio, and your webcam if you use an external one, especially if you decide to got the route of using something like a mirrorless camera and a camlink or similar capture device for encoding, there is usually more lag for the camera (some of that is the camera processing internally before the hdmi output, and then it's compounded with more latency at your video capture device) than there is for the audio interface, or your output from logic, so using a set up like that will usually result in sync issues if you're just using the basic "go live from webcam" function on either facebook or youtube.

You'll probably want to explore using OBS or some other streaming encoder software, on the way in to FB for the most flexibility. you can set delay times for the audio so it'll sync up with your video. it's an arduous process and more complicated than i can can clearly explain here, but there are entire youtube channels dedicated to going in depth with OBS in different scenarios and I definitely recommend sifting through videos there, from people with lots more experience than I have on the matter.

personally when attempting to do live streams of my live performance setup over the past year, I had more issues getting OBS to sync audio and video from my interface and video the way i wanted, so I ended up taking the outputs from my live rig, mixing them all externally, taking a stereo mix from that directly into my Pansonic Lumix GH4 through a stereo XLR to 1/8" transformer, designed to take mic and line levels and output them at a level/impedance that's appropriate for the crappy 1/8" inputs on cameras these days. this insures that audio is always going to be in sync with the image before it gets into the computer. I then took the hdmi out of the GH4 into an Elgato cam link, which encodes the video and audio, connects to your computer via usb and your computer will view it as a plug and play webcam, so the fancy camera and complicated audio setup will be seen as a webcam directly in facebook, zoom etc.

all of this is sort of a pain, the easiest way is definitely using loopback or sound flower and your built in webcam, beyond that any gains in quality will only be met by spending more time and money, and doing lots of private test streams to make sure things are in sync.

I have also experimented using a presonus itwo interface connected directly to an ipod touch via the usb/lightening connector and this worked ok for me too for instagram live, would probably be ok on facebook too but i haven't tried that. Pretty simple way to use the decent camera in your phone and add some ok pres to replace your cameras internal mic. Obviously the user interface is pretty simple too, it just works. ios sees the device as an audio input and just automatically replaces the mic with it in whatever app you use. An appropriate irig or a roland go mixer would probably also be good options here. As long as you have speedy reliable Wifi, this is a good option as your phone is handling all the encoding and streaming duties and you can just use your macbook for logic and audio.
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