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⏩ If you're only going to use your internal or USB mic only (no DAW, external instruments or apps to play audio), you can skip this section and go straight to 5. How to set up OBS?.
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Very important recommendations 🚨
- Make sure your sound is loud enough and that the balance between your mic and other sounds you might play is good. It’s very important that everyone can hear your voice. Read more about this.
- We strongly recommend doing Livestreams wearing headphones to avoid feedback loop issues with your mic and speakers.
- Remember you’re legally not allowed to play other people’s music on a Live Stream without proper authorizations.
Setup on Mac
Introduction : playing audio in a Live Stream on Mac
To be able to send audio from applications (like a DAW or Spotify or Quicktime…) to your streaming software (like OBS) on Mac, you will need to install a virtual audio driver/device because Mac OS won’t let you send audio from one application to another 😕.
There’s a free option (BlackHole) and a paid option offering way more flexibility (Loopback $119). We'll be mostly covering how to set up audio for a livestream with BlackHole here but if you have the means, we strongly recommend Loopback.
1. Create a Multi-Output Device
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Download and install BlackHole 2ch.
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Open Audio MIDI Setup on your Mac in Applications/Utilities.
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Create a Multi-Output Device by clicking "+".
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Check the “Use boxes” ☑︎ to add a Master Device (which corresponds to your monitoring system, like your External Headphones for instance) and BlackHole 2ch. Also check the Drift Correction box for BlackHole and all Audio Devices that are not the Master Device.
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💡 For the sample rate, it depends on your DAW settings, if you’re used to work at 44.1khz or 48khz or higher. It’s recommended to set the same sample rate here and in your DAW and OBS (go to Settings > Audio).
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Select your Multi-Output Device in your DAW or as your System Audio output. More about this in the Audio Setups below.
Thanks to this multi-output device, you can send audio from any application to both BlackHole (for the livestream) and your monitoring device (to listen to the audio).
