Streaming Story

I’m gonna come out and say it right now – I’ve been streaming DJ sets before it was cool.

No, seriously – I’ve been in the DJ streaming game since 2014. I’ve seen DJ streaming platforms come and go. I’ve seen them work on Twitch, only to get muted and banned unless you’re the actual artist or have ASCAP rights, and can prove it (or you have money to throw at Amazon Daddy).

Which is why I’m glad to see Mixcloud thriving.

I’ve been around the block. I’ve built whole technical workflows to make my streams enjoyable to listen to and to watch.

I’ve had some good luck streaming there, but some technical and space issues have made it hard for me to continue as of late.

This series is going to explain the setup and work that goes into making my stream great. I do think it’s a good time to give you a look back at my setups in previous iterations to show you why it’s great that I’m building a new, dedicated studio.

2015 – The Early Years

I can go as far back as 2015 with photos of my setup. This was back in my 1 bedroom, 375sqft apartment in Mountain View, CA. This was the first setup after I moved out to CA. I decided to have a DJ streaming setup instead of furniture in the front room. I had a couch, but it was mostly a dumping ground for cables and equipment when I wasn’t using it.

Here’s a picture of the setup:

Pretty hilarious. $10 lamp from Walmart with a color changing LED bulb, tiny Behringer mixer, and just the S4 MK II and an F1 Stems/Step Sequencer module. Traktor on the main screen, chat on the left. I was using my work laptop at the time to monitor the stream to see if it was coming across well enough, since I didn’t own a laptop. I did the video with a 720p Logitech webcam.

Back then, I was streaming on a service called Chew.TV (since then it’s become vaporware). Here’s the only screenshot I have of one of those streams (I do have some of the playlists still – I might revisit those on stream one day for laughs)

That’s a screenshot from a 1 hour show I did on Mondays called “Monday Night Chill”, which to be honest, wasn’t very chill sometimes. But I digress. I had to use an “over the shoulder” camera shot because I couldn’t afford a mount to go directly over. I think it worked out well. At some point, I upgraded to having a face cam I could switch to.

The track and artist data was from before I learned how to scrape data from Traktor Pro. I used to screen capture the song data parts of the A and B decks in the software, and then I color keyed out the background. I had a few macros set up to make the text fade in and out, and another to remove the lower third banner itself.

I think I spent more time swapping up those graphics than I did picking songs half the time…

At some point in 2016-2017, the setup ended up looking like this:

2017-2019 – Sprucing things up

At some point in late 2016, early 2017, I moved to a larger place in San Jose and finally bought living room furniture that wasn’t used as storage… and I had a spot to set up somewhat of a studio. I found a few shots of what that looked like…

I got some upgrades once I moved. I got a new broadcast mixer, the Stream Deck had just come out, and had enough space to put up some overhead camera options and some really really terrible speakers.

I found what I think is the only stream pic from this studio, this appears to be from a test stream I did when I was working on the code to pull data from Traktor into my graphics program (which we’ll get into MUCH later in the series).

I don’t have too much else from this location, and I can’t find any of the streams now that Chew.tv is lost to the sands of time. I was doing a lot of playing out back then to help pay rent, but those sets were pretty canned – I’d play it at one bar one night, and a different bar the next.

2019-2022 – What I’m Leaving behind…

In 2019 I headed back to Wisconsin. Skyrocketing rents, friends leaving the Bay, and personal issues meant I needed to be around people I knew and could trust. So I packed it all up and sent it back to the Frozen Tundra of Milwaukee, a city I actually like (5 months out of the year), and started working from home full time.

The setup lived in my office for a while as a super bare bones install. I wasn’t doing much streaming, as once a month I was back in California for work. I would fit in a show every other week in most cases.

Obviously this meant I had to build a new setup. I started standalone – with the DJ setup next to my work desk.

It ended up being mostly the same, but then combined both desks into a big L desk that I use for my main computer/stream rig.

The setup above was GREAT. I really liked where the streamrig was compared to the decks and mixer.

Unfortunately, 2020 happened…

Once COVID hit, I rearranged my office and didn’t want my personal monitors in the background of my work camera. So this setup got left in the beforetimes.

All I did was swap things around – PC on the smaller half, DJ setup (or other project) on the long bit.

And here’s roughly what that looked like on stream (with secret old Twitch URL – nothing there anymore) from riiiiight before they pushed the kill switch on DJ streaming without rights.

As I wanted to do more streaming (but didn’t want my messy desks in the shot), I upgraded. Big time.

Yep, I went green screen, studio lights, the whole 9 yards. This is what I’m leaving behind.

An hour of setup after a long day at work and a thrown together dinner – or if I was free on a weekend.

40 minutes of strike down.

Hauling out that stupid heavy table with it’s temperamental back left leg.

Shoving it all back in a closet just so I can use the room normally during the day.

And uh… generally whatever this nightmare fuel background this was…

So that’s the history. Almost a decade of DJ streaming summed up in a post.

I’m happy to say that I’ve arranged a new dedicated studio space that I can set dress as much as I want and leave set up.

I begin working on the new space this weekend. The next few posts will cover the development of the space.

Please make sure to check out our Discord to follow for updates and sneak peeks.

Looking forward to streaming again soon.

Logan “DJ Cryptografik” (The artist formerly known as but still sometimes known as DJ LK)