Since announcing the charity marathon for 2018, we've been hard at work sourcing additional hardware and learning just how everything will fit together. As shared by Mr. Bond, our first official event will be during the 24-hours of 4 November 2017 (a brief practice marathon, if you will), benefitting Extra Life. It's likely that we'll be streaming on the 3rd and 5th as well, but the main event during the 4th is our first time to shine with some great new hardware additions to my normal stream setup! Rather than using a single room mic (I still love you, Blue Yeti <3), I now utilize the following signal chain:

• 4x Audio-Technica BPHS1 headsets (XLR for mic, 1/4" stereo TRS for headphones)
• Behringer Ultragain Digital ADA8200 8-in/8-out microphone pre-amp
• Monoprice 3395 1.5' TOSLINK cable to bridge the ADAC in/out on the pre-amp
• 4x Monoprice 4749 1.5' XLR patch cables from the pre-amp to the compressor
• Behringer Multicom Pro-XL MDX4600 4-channel compressor/limiter
• 4x Monoprice 4749 1.5' XLR patch cables from the compressor to the mixer
• Hosa HPR-020X2 20' Pro Dual Cable 1/4-Inch TS to RCA cable to take the Zone 2 audio from my receiver from RCA to dual mono TRS in on the mixer
• Monoprice 615808 8-channel USB mixer with 4 XLR inputs and 4 mono TRS inputs

In addition to the new swanky audio hardware, my OSSC finally arrived, though I wasn't anticipating just what it would do. While I was pretty used to the Framemeister providing a 1080p60 HDMI signal out to my receiver, the OSSC does no such thing! Instead, when I first turned it on and told it to use the RGB SCART input from my SNES, the output was completely garbled, and the display couldn't hold sync. I panicked and eventually moved from the default line doubling to tripling, which worked, but sync was lost every second; up to quintupling, which had the same issue; and finally ended up with quadrupling, which seemed to do the trick. Interestingly, because of the supposed lack of framebuffer with the OSSC (as it operates on scanlines), literally all it does is do line doubling/etc, adds the audio signal from whatever input you're on, and vomits it out via HDMI. This means that for my 240p content, I was sending 1280x960 over HDMI. Fortunately, my LG OLED worked with that unusual resolution (hey, it's not a VESA widescreen format!), and the Datapath VisionRGB E2s input had no problem getting the signal to OBS. After some tinkering, I found that the video quality, compared to RGB in on the Framemeister, was far less noisy in its analog to digital conversion, and that native RGB output (compared to the Framemeister's default of YUV for whatever godforsaken reason) looked really stellar! I tested streams this week and was pleased with the results - I'll be doing further testing of NES content tonight with a game that brings back nightmares from my childhood. Tune in to watch some good old-fashioned suffering later! ;)

Tormod