 special live show. I've hardly done any live shows at this time of day before. I've timed this one especially, hopefully to be useful to those of you who live in the USA. It's kind of a USA special about some Black Friday deals to do with gear, studio gear specifically. So I hope I got the time right. It's pretty hard sometimes. I'm hoping that it's around about 6pm in San Francisco, maybe about 9pm New York, something like that. It's actually 10am in the morning here in Perth in Western Australia. If you've never heard of it, google it. A little old part of West of Australia. I say little. It's what, four times the size of Texas apparently they say, with one tenth of the population. There's hardly anyone here. But I'm here and it's actually Wednesday here so I can tell you the future is looking awesome. It's crazy time of year for deals and things. It's really great to be able to pick up some things that perhaps normally you wouldn't be able to afford. That's a really good time of year to be picking up both software and hardware. Quick hello to some of the people in the chat here. Nice to see you here. This is what it's all about and it's getting little bits of comments and feedback from you guys that is going to help me through the show. Because normally I have a guest on my shows don't I? So you know it's a little bit unusual. If you are in the chat right now and you're watching live, do hit that like button for me. Now I'm going to be going through because this is, I'll just say hi to some people. G'day Harley there from New York. It's one part of America I haven't been to strangely. I have been to San Francisco a number of times. I've been to Georgia, South Carolina a little bit the few times. I haven't been to New York. I would like to go to New York. Obviously that would be awesome. So as I was saying, I'm focusing on this show on deals for you guys who are based in the US and we're going to be looking at Sweetwater because that's the site that I'm most familiar with. If you are from another country, welcome anyway. We've got someone from Uruguay here. It's the right time zone for Uruguay of course. Uruguay, soccer. That's why I always think of Uruguay. But yeah, so the idea here is I'll be going through a few things at Sweetwater where I think, I'm sorry I'm going to interrupt myself here. It's funny you should say that the BAF, Perth, ACDC, we do have ties with ACDC in Perth. And there's actually some statues around, some ACD statues around the town of Fremantle. So yes, there's a little bit of ACD heritage here. Yes, I'm going to be going through some Sweetwater deals. We're going to be looking at some microphones, some audio interfaces, headphones, what else we're going to do? Some keyboards. So mostly studio orientated stuff. Now, I just want to start from, this is not being sponsored or anything by Sweetwater. I happen to have gone for Sweetwater because I just think it's a little bit more focused than if I was going through Amazon or something like that. If you have seen some great deals at Sweetwater which I'm not spotting, then do let me know in the chat as we go along. And also let me know in the chat if there's particular gear or software that you're looking out for in this silly season. Now, here's the focus for me. I've gone through what they've got available in their Black Friday sales and I'm going to be focusing on things which I have personally used or I personally own. So there may be some good stuff on there. Yes, you're right, BAF, Bond Scott. In fact, there's a statue of Bond Scott in Fremantle. There may be some other stuff which is available with their deals for Black Friday, which is really good stuff. And there may be other stuff which isn't in their Black Friday deals, which is really good stuff and really well priced. But I'm focusing on things that I can confidently hand on heart tell you that it's worth buying. Now, there's going to be a range of things. Some of the stuff is pretty expensive, which means that it's just going to be a little bit less expensive now. So it's a good time perhaps to take a look at it. And there's some stuff which is good for beginners and cheaper stuff as well. I've tried to make it as balanced as I could, although I have to say in the category of microphones when we get there, there's, in my opinion, not many great deals for the lower end of microphones. But anyway, we'll get into that as we go along. I think we're just going to dive straight in. I'm just going to have a sip on my cup of tea here. Yes, I'm drinking tea. It's Morning Tetley. Do you have tea in the USA? I don't know. Am I right in saying that people in the USA not big tea drinkers? I could be wrong there. I get the feeling you guys all drink coffee. Have I made a generalization that I'm going to get in trouble for? Anyway, give me a moment. Mm, tea. Very sugary tea, I have to say. Whatever it needs to get me going. So let's just bring up sweet water here. Let's just change things around a bit, I think. Oh, here we go. So I'm just going to dive straight in and get going. Yeah, that's right, Don. Agree. Coffee is more popular, I think so. I used to drink a lot of coffee. Another story. You're not here for that. Let's get straight into the deals. I'm going to start off with, I'm going to start off with an audio interface. And there's an interesting reason why I've pulled this one out. And this is going to be no surprise to you that this is here for those of you who are aware of this market at all. So the first thing I'm going to pull up is the Focus Right Scarlet. Why have I pulled this up? I mean, you know, it's oh, sorry, that's me. There we go. It's apparently the most popular audio interface on the planet, they say. I've got no data to suggest that. But actually, that's not true with people I talk with, I guess, you know, it's definitely very, very popular. Is it the best? That's a completely different discussion. That's up to opinion. There are certainly audio interfaces which have more features. But I think if you're starting out, and then you've got all of these different audio interfaces to look at, this is one of the really, really good choices. Now, the price that is at the moment, $169 there, is $40 off the recommended price, okay? So it's not bad, I guess. I mean, I'm not sure how much cheaper that is than normal. Because I don't always keep an eye on these prices all the time. But there's something about it which I think does give a lot of value. But quickly, let's just have a look at it. I always think it's worth going a two input audio interface if you can. There's single ones. Maybe if you're just a singer and you're not going to do anything else, you could go an interface which only has one input. But I think the best value for money is this. The only real special feature on this is this air feature that they have, which is there to emulate one of their famous preamps. And it just sort of gives it quite a lot of top end. And I think the sort of good thing about this is it's just straightforward and easy. So if you're just starting out and you just want to be able to record at good quality, and know that you're going to get good quality, good build quality as well, straightforward use, then it's a good option. Going through their sort of photos here, it's just plug in via USB here. So you just plug in USB C they have on this, and it goes straight into your computer. Only two outputs on the back, nothing else. That's all we've got just out to your monitors there. Okay, and we've seen the front already. So a good solid interface at that price, a little bit cheaper than recommended price, which is awesome. But I think and this is the kicker for this. Why would you want to buy this at the moment? You know, it's been around a while. I've reviewed it. I think every YouTube review has had a look at and that's this bit up here, the free hip maker expansion bundle and normally with these kind of bundles, if I'm honest with you, they can look better than they are. Because sometimes they're just throwing in plug-ins which are normally free anyway, or there's such light versions of it that, you know, you always end up not being that useful. But when I was looking at this early, I thought, hang on a second, this is really special that you get this bundle. I know they say $1300 worth of value. And that's not always the case that it's really like that. But when we scroll down, I will now, and I was looking at the list, and I hope I haven't got this wrong. Look, if I have got this wrong, then sweetwater need to be much clearer. Because looking amongst the plug-ins that you get here, Antares, Autotune, Relab, I don't know about that. The Softube, Marshall, Silverju, that could be really useful to those. But then look at these two, I'm going to highlight. Addictive Keys. Now, it doesn't say it's a demo version or a light version or anything like that. Addictive Keys is a really awesome piece of software from XLA. And then the one below it, excellent audio, addictive drums. I just did a video yesterday about deals on plug-in boutique at the moment and I was recommending this as the number one plug-in that you can get. Now, this is probably the basic version which doesn't come with any extra drum kits or anything. You just get the basic drum kit. But honestly, those two alone, the Addictive Keys and Addictive Drums, are almost worth the ticket price of this audio interface. There's some brainwork ones in there as well, which are very, very good. The focus right, red plug-in suite, which has been around sort of forever, but is a good solid plug-in suite. So, that's what I'll say to you. If you're needing to get a new interface, maybe you need to replace an old one or your new to recording and you're looking for an interface. Not only, I mean the interface is solid and it's straightforward. It's not exciting, if I'm honest with you. It just does its job very, very well. But the software which comes with it, fantastic. So, that's my first one there. Now, it's Hawking of sort of interface and getting going. Let's have a look at this one here. I just saw this one here. This bundle here is definitely worth looking at. $239, so $60 off the normal recommended price. Now, I will be upfront. This particular audio interface, I haven't personally used, but I've used a lot of press-honest gear. So, I'm pretty, the brand's a good solid brand. So, what are you getting in there? So, I'm just scrolling down hoping to see some more pictures, but they haven't got them there. Okay, sweet water. Let's go through them. So, the audio interface itself, two input audio interface. Again, you've got a condenser microphone there and you've got some headphones. So, the basic things you just need to get you kick-started with a studio. So, you know, good solid stuff there. In terms of the audio interface, as I say, I like the fact that they just have straightforward knobs here again. You can switch over when it's an instrument. You've got 48 volts of phantom power. If you don't know what that is, that's the power you need to power condenser microphone. So, that's all on there. I mean, that's on all interfaces these days, to be honest with you. I'm just scrolling through quickly because I was going through to the back of this. Sorry, I'm skipping through. Okay, so, the back of the interface, maybe what's interesting to you, if you're just starting out and you want an interface, because this has got MIDI connections on it, okay? So, if you happen to have an old MIDI keyboard which only has, hasn't got USB or anything, it's just got MIDI outputs, there's less and less audio interfaces these days with MIDI on the back. So, this is definitely worth considering if you're looking, because there's a few of these packages around you, beginner's packages, you know, where you're looking at sort of getting an audio interface, headphones and microphone. And a lot of them won't have those MIDI connectors. So, if you need a MIDI connection, if you're going to connect up with your old keyboard there, then definitely go for that. So, that's a good little stutter bundle. I think that's definitely worth looking at. Now, I'm going to go to the next one which I think is really interesting. I know lots of people you love this. It's only a few months ago that I actually reviewed this myself. I still have it in my collection of gear. It gets used occasionally for different things. That's the iOstation 24. So, if you don't know what this is, we're going to do this shuffle around of screens again here. Sorry about that. So, this is an audio interface. A two-channel audio interface. I think it goes, I'm not quite sure of the sample rate and things like that. I think it's a 96, if I can... Let's have a look here. Oh, it actually goes up to 192 kHz somewhere. Sorry. So, nice high quality audio. I was really pleased when I tried it out. But of course, what it is as well it's got a control surface on it as well. So, you can do things on here like, you know, you can see here that it's got transport control buttons. You've got a motorised fader here which we'll talk about. But a number of really, you know, handy, handy buttons to have at your fingertips if you like that idea of having sort of, you know, not using your computer keyboard and mouse all the time, but using some hardware buttons. Which can be really, really nice. Especially, I'm going to focus here on the fader. I know that you can just grab a fader with your mouse, push it up and down. There's something about a physical fader which is just, I don't know, nicer, more natural when you're doing automated parts in your mixing. I like that. So anyway, I think awesome value for money there. Normally, look at that. Look at the savings on this one. This is what we're here for. The recommended price is $419. I'm going to say this upfront. Sorry, personas. I think that's a little overpriced as the regular price. But at $269, well, fantastic price. It's really worth it. So if you can stretch to that, then definitely, I would definitely say it's worth it. Moving on. Moving on. I just want to say hi to some people in the chat here. Nice to see you in here, Ron. I'm not sure what he was referring to when he was saying it's amazing for the price. Maybe the ID 14, Mark 2. Yes, that's, you're right, Ron. If you're talking about the ID 14, Mark 2, I've still got that just under out of you at the moment. I use it very, very regularly around the studio. It's great that unfortunately it wasn't on special. I did look to see if it was on special on Sweet Road at the moment, but it wasn't on special unfortunately. But it's worth paying for it. The preamps on that is just really, really, really, really good. So now moving on from there, we're going to make a huge jump now, okay? Some of you are going to go, oh no, when we do this with this jump, because I'm going to go to the other end of the spectrum in audio interfaces, okay? I'm going to jump up quite a few hundred dollars, maybe a thousand dollars. And I haven't talked about this much on the channel, but we're going to talk about this a little bit. So what I'm going to recommend to you next is this. Universal Audio Apollo Twin Duo, the Heritage Edition. So the Heritage Editions of Universal Audio Stuff basically means that you get a whole bunch of plugins with it. I'll talk about that in a moment. But I just want to talk briefly about the interfaces, because if you're using interfaces which cost just a few hundred dollars or maybe a couple hundred dollars, you may wonder what all the fuss is about things like Universal Audio. Why would you spend all of this money on an audio interface? Look, some of you can't afford it, that's it, that's fine. You can still make music, fantastic music with much, much cheaper products than this. But if you ever can afford something like this and it's in your budget, then I'll tell you this, I don't want to say I'm marketing, this is just what I think. The experience of recording with this is completely and utterly different. I mean, not only the quality is great, you know, the quality is great on cheaper things like we were just discussing there, the Audient ID 14 Mark II, the quality of the preamps is great on that. But the experience of using this as a whole ecosystem, this Universal Audio Stuff is completely different. We'll talk about the savings at the moment, but I just want to tell you why I'm saying that, what you think, what's all the fuss about? And it really comes down to this. This is really, let's just go back through the photos, what you see here is a bunch of plugins, right? But these are not plugins which are just going to sit in your door that come with it. These are plugins which work on the interface itself. They're not using any processing power on your computer, so they're sitting on the interface itself. Universal Audio have a massive range of them. They're very, very high quality, they're awesome quality, and it means two things. It means that you can use as you're tracking, so you can put them the sound of those plugins in your headphones as you're singing or playing or what have you, without putting any strain on your computer, without any latency. That's the important thing. You're not going to be dealing with latency at all. That will help your performance. It does, I'm afraid. It just does to have those things going on. So that's the first thing. Now you can bake that in. You can record exactly what you could hear in your headphones. You can bake that in, but you don't have to. You can then adjust those effects. So you can record the dry signal and then adjust those effects afterwards as well. You can use them like plugins in your door, except they actually live on the interface and the processing is happening there, and they're great. They're very, very good quality plugins. There's a good reason for why some of them are good quality plugins we'll talk about anyway. Let's just look at the sort of price at the moment. So what they're saying on here is this is normally $1,499 and it's now $1,199. So there's a de-saving there. That's good saving. I don't know what the percentage is there. If we've got any mathematicians in there, let me know. Or does it say, it doesn't say. But the really great thing is what you get up here, the extra plugins. Because with the heritage packs, let's just scroll down here. Sorry, I'm not used to doing this live. With the heritage things, you normally get a whole bunch of plugins as well, you know, with them anyway. That's one of the things about the heritage stuff. So we're looking at, for example, the UA-1176 there and the Teletronix LA-2. These are not just good, but these are originally, sorry, by the way, thanks Ron for working out that that's a 20% saving for me. These are based on hardware which was, you know, made by universal audio anyway. So you would hope that they're modding them a little bit better perhaps than some of the people. I use some of the preamps that you get with it. I always use them on the way in nowadays and definitely some of the compressors. And the pure plate reverb that you get is just a joy to track vocals through. Really good stuff on that. So not only are you getting the usual sort of catalogue, I thought it was 10 you get with it. I could be wrong. But the normal things that you get with the heritage packs are in there. But if we go back to the top of the page again, this is what's good about this deal. They're saying $945 worth of value. Yes, yes. And I've spotted a couple things that you're getting in there as some additional plugins with it. Antara's AutoTune real-time access. I wouldn't use that personally, but hey, if you like this sort of thing, great. The Moog Mini Moog instrument and this one. I'm just highlighting this one. I actually bought this one recently. Well, I mean, I've already got an interface, but I got this. It's just so wonderful. One of this Offender 55 tweed deluxe amp. It's just so, so, so, so good. And for me, if you like me, I'm not a big heavy metal player or anything like that. I like slightly over driven slash pretty clean amps. You know, this type of thing is right up my alley. And yeah, really, really well. So the additional plugins you're getting here, the 20% off, thank you Ron. I just think it's a fantastic, fantastic deal. Now, this particular one, the Twin X Duo is not one that I own. And that's because the one that I own is this. Just hold on. Take a deep breath. Wait for the price. Is this one here? Now, I'm not saying that you should go and buy this one. I mean, if you can afford it, yes, I'm just using this as a point of reference because this is my experience of universal audio. I haven't done a video on this even though I've had this for many, many months. I haven't, I didn't want to do a straight review on it, but I haven't figured out the best way to present this. But yeah, I've been using it for a number of tracks that I've been recording recently. And it's a joy. This is obviously way out of most of your league. But if you, if you can afford this, this has got a decent saving on it as well at the moment. I don't want to dwell in there because I know for some of you, looks like, okay, Mike, thanks for telling me about things I can't afford. Okay, let's go to another extreme. We're going to talk microphones now. Now, as I say, in terms of microphones, I found that when I was looking through, there's some good, there's some decently priced microphones in the Black Friday sales. In fact, let me just go to the page and have a look at microphones. Oops, sorry. I'll go back and do that again because I want to make sure I get the ones I think on there. I'll just double check here. So these are the ones that are currently in the sort of Black Friday sales. I had a look through here. There's some awesome microphones in there. I wanted to see if there was anything in a decent price range for those starting out. And there wasn't enough that I could hand on hearts to say I've used, to be honest with you. So I've ended up with a couple which are not that cheap. So I was thinking about this and I was thinking, I was thinking, what would I recommend which was really kind of cheap? And I came up with this. This is not officially in the Black Friday sales on there. It's, I don't even know if it's on sale. But if you're looking for a well-priced microphone, I'm going to say, I was not just well-priced, cheap to be honest with you, if you're starting out. It has to be this, AT2020. I would not have been aware how good this microphone was if it wasn't for the fact that very, very on in the channel, very early on in the channel, I put this up against a couple of other microphones, the Rode NT1A and an SE electronics microphone. And I did a blind test on the channel. People were, we recorded exactly the same performance with the, with the microphones very, very close together. And we did a blind test and I let people decide where they liked microphone A, B or C. And this one without people knowing which one it was, clearly one. And this is something that, you know, is really interesting to me that it was the cheapest one in the test by some margin. It did really, really well. Now microphones are strange things because we can't just say there's, see you Ron, nice to see you here. We can't just say, this is the best microphone you know, everyone love this one because microphones are a little bit specific to your voice and your needs and that kind of thing. But I know people always say we should try them all without, but I don't know about you, but my local music shops don't really have the facility to be trying out lots and lots of microphones if you can try them out. Yeah. But you know, at the end of the day, you're probably not going to have that available to you and you need to take it on advice. So if I was saying that you've got less than $150 to spend on a condenser microphone or when people ask me that question, I say this one every single time, every single time. You can use it for vocals. You could use it for things like acoustic. So you can use it for loads of those are different things or those are the things I would use it for a lot. So this isn't a Black Friday deal thing. I mean, you do get, I think what's this bonus bucks they've got in there? So if you buy this at the moment, then you're going to get like a $20 credit for your next purchase. So that's that one anyway. So if you, because the next couple of things I'm going to show you are not sort of on the cheaper end of things. But I have to say the one that I am going to talk about next is this one. I absolutely love this microphone. The AKG C214, I reviewed on the channel maybe two years ago, I'm going to guess. And this one, when my channel was much, much smaller, I just want to be clear about this thing. So sometimes people send me gear and I get to keep it. But there's a lot of gear which I could, I may have the option to buy a little bit cheaper sometimes. And there's a lot of gear that I have, if I want to buy it, I have to buy it and it's a lot of gear that I have to send back. This was one that I had the option to buy at full price. I think that was what I was being offered at the time. Anyway, they sent me and I just wanted to have a look at it anyway, because a good friend of mine, from over at Recording Studio 9, had reviewed it or bought it and he loved it and I thought, I want to try this out. And this was a regret of mine after I got it and I reviewed it and then I sent it back to them and I thought, I should have kept that microphone. It was just so nice to use. And it would have cost me around about this price, excuse me, it would have cost me around about this price, $500. I should have bought it at that price it's worth it. It's one of those things that when you are dealing with those microphones, you have a lot of folks I know out there are dealing with microphones that are $150 or $200, something like that, yeah. And you know often with studio gear, you jump up in price and you get like 5% of difference in actual quality when you do that, yeah. This is not like that. When you go to this much, so I was just popping out to see what you guys were up to there. Let me just go back to that. I forgot I was sharing my screen. When you get this microphone, you don't get that feeling of, oh, I spent twice as much, but like, yeah, it's a little bit better. It's like a whole world of difference, to be honest with you, really is. Now the microphone itself, AKG, AKG say that this is based upon their very famous, I wouldn't say flagship, but very, very famous C414, which is a microphone which has been around at different iterations for many decades and used in really famous recordings and so on. And that's a sort of a dual side and a dual capsule microphone, okay, it can do figure of eight and all that kind of stuff. So what they say is that this is just like one side of that, yeah, without all of the different polar patterns. On a C414, you get lots of different patterns. I mean, maybe nine or 10 different patterns, yeah. Now, so the idea of this is that what they've done is they cut it down to one side and it's just a cardioid pattern. And anyone who's been recording for a while know that the cardioid pattern is the one that you use, 99.9% of the time, it's very, very useful. And that's really where you're just capturing, mostly just what's in front of the microphone, okay. So it's something that you go, right, okay, this is how they've made the savings and made it cheaper, but all the quality is there. Now I've heard some chat to say, oh, it's not the same capsule and what have you. I can only go by what AKG say on their website and trust that they're not lying to you. But regardless, because I find those sort of topics a little bit useless, does it sound great? Yes, it does. It just sounds really great. And the first time you sing through it, in my opinion, my reaction was, wow, what a world of difference in this microphone. It's the cheapest stuff. So the saving on it at the moment is, where are we? So originally, or normally $523 and it's $349. Okay, so I would say if you have that available to you, you've been thinking about microphones and you can't really go wrong with this. Build like a tank, great build quality, but it's the sound whereas, which is where it's at really. I think having a look at it quickly, yeah, it comes in a case. Cases are funny things to me. I don't find it handy to keep my microphones in these hard cases. So I keep them in a kind of a rack that I've got because I don't want to go into these cases all the time. So cases all end up. I think in America, you call it an attic. We call it a loft here or maybe the same term. So that goes up there. I never use the case again. So they're great. But if you do have to, if you're mobile and you're mobile recording, the case is great. And you get a shock mount. They don't look great, but they are really great shock mounts that you get from AKG with these and a little sort of wind block there. You do need, you probably need to get a pop filter, a regular pop filter to go along with it. They don't give you those. Moving on to another microphone, which is not cheap, but I can sing its praises. And if you don't know what this microphone is and you don't know about this microphone, then you're not paying attention because it's in two places on the screen right now. I'm talking in it. This microphone or this sort of iteration of the microphone, the short SM7B has become very, very popular in a different way over recent years. It's become very popular for podcasters and people like YouTube as myself for sort of speaking. But the fact remains is it's got a heritage as a vocal mic. Now, despite its size and its configuration and all that, this is a dynamic microphone. If you're not familiar with these, they're dynamic microphone. It's a dynamic microphone rather than a condenser, which if you are in an untreated room is a blessing or even if you're just in a treated room but it's not wonderfully treated, it's a blessing because it's going to pick up what's right in front of it and it's not going to pick up much of the room. And I've heard many, many people say that if you've got the choice between a UA87 and a sure SM7B and you're in an untreated room, go with the SM7B and I can definitely imagine that's true. Now, I thought before I bought this that there was a lot of hype attached to it. Well, I think there is a bit of hype attached to it but I thought, you know, it's really... And then I wanted to, on my videos, just improve the sound for you guys for my voiceovers and things like that. And I sort of at one day, I'm just going to buy the bullet. So I bought it and for a lot more than this special price here. And I've just been... It's just been great. I mean, it's just very, very, very, very good. I like the way that it just works for me out of the box in terms of my voice. But I've used it for vocals for singing and it's just wonderful. So it's got a different character, in my opinion, to a condenser mic. It's a bit rounder sounding. It has got less top end. It's a little bit less airy but it's nice. And I know that people say I've got the same capsule as a SM58 and SM57 and all that but there's more to a microphone than a capsule. And it doesn't sound the same as those two microphones, honestly, just... I don't believe so. At all. So yeah, it's a bit of a saving on this at the moment. Normally, $499 and you get $140 saving. It's $359. Now, a lot of people say that you need a thing called a cloud lifter to use this. I've got one. I've got one. I can't show it. It's just down here. And I do have this plugged into a cloud lifter at the moment. Is it necessary? I'm going to say buy the microphone first and try it and then really see if you... Because when you buy this in combination with the cloud lifter, which is really to boost the signal, for those of you who don't know, it uses... The cloud lifter utilizes the 48 volts of phantom power from your audio interface and boosts the signal of this microphone. And what some people were finding are they bought this microphone and in order to get a decent signal from their audio interface, they had to kind of turn it up full to get anything. And I think that that's not such a bad thing, depending on the quality of your preamps. If you're having to turn it all the way up to eight or nine, it's okay. You can boost it in the mix later and things. What I'm trying to say is, is don't go out and buy a cloud lifter unless you try it first and then find you need it. You may think... There's probably much more hyper attached to cloud lifters than there is to SM7 piece, to be honest with you, even though I bought one. I'm saying this because I bought one and I often think, I don't really need it. It's a little bit of a convenience. Anyway, moving on from there, let's talk about headphones. There's going to be some consistency in the headphones. I'm going to recommend to you because I'm going to recommend three and they're all from the same company because I wanted to do that because there's loads of those good headphones. You can't really see behind me. I think I've got 12 headphones in the studio now. All of them apart from one pair, I think are very, very good in different situations. One of them I didn't end up using very much. I won't tell you which one it is, but I won't recommend it to you. But in terms of deals, I'm not wearing them at the moment, I know, but these are some of my all-time favourite headphones and you recognise them, mostly you should recognise. Beyerdynamic DT770 Pros. Who in my community bought some recently? I know someone did. You might regret that. I think it was Doug who bought them recently. You may regret that because at the moment on Sweetwater, what have you got? They've got a recommended price of $259. I don't think they're often sold at $259. But anyway, $149, these are fantastic, fantastic headphones. They have a great build quality. They're very, very comfortable. These famous pads they have. I don't know why I'm holding these up to the camera. You can quite clearly see them on the web page. They are great in that way. Now remember, these are closed headphones, so they're more suited to tracking or recording because that's when you don't want sound leaking from your headphones and going through the microphones. I'll have something to say about that at the moment. But if that's what you're trying to avoid, you're trying to avoid getting the backing track on your recordings and your recording vocals. That's the cyber headphones. You want to get closed headphones. And these are classics really, to be honest with you. Great build quality. They sound wonderful. You could use these for mixing, to be honest with you. Not ideal, but you could use them for mixing as well as tracking and all that kind of stuff. They've still the test of time, those. Still use them. I use those for tracking. And they're wonderful. Now I've got a couple of versions to talk about with you here. So when I said three headphones, there's really two of them the same. There's a 770 Pro 80 Ohm one. And then there is the 250 Ohm, essentially the same headphones. Now, if the 250 Ohm ones, allegedly, people will say that with these, you could get a slightly better quality of sound. I haven't tried the 80 Ohm ones to know. I've got the 250 Ohm ones. With the payoff being that it takes a lot more to power them. So you may end up in a situation, depending on your audio interface, where you have to turn up full to get anything out of them. So I haven't had, I've got a range of audio interfaces. Got a lot. And I haven't had any problems with any that I can think of. Some of them do have to turn up pretty loud to get, I mean, it's okay. But just be aware of that. So if you're not sure of that, if you think that you normally even have, with your regular headphones, have to kind of turn up a bit, then it may be safe to go the 80 Ohm route. They're the same price either way. In my opinion, for tracking, I'm sorry, I'm thinking this one, how I'm going to put this, for tracking, quality isn't your primary thing. I mean, tracking is that you can hear clearly that the person can hear the music and that sort of thing. In actual fact, having a decent volume, I'm thinking it may be more important. To err on the safe side, you might want to go the 80 Ohm ones. But if you're confident that you've got a high output from your audio interface, then you get that apparently allegedly, you'll get a little bit of extra quality with the 250 Ohm versions. And the other one that I'm going to mention to you here, again, I think the same price are the kind of, I think of these as the other version of the same headphones. But these are the DT990. Now that I think they've only got the 250 Ohm version available at the moment on special. So I've got some here somewhere. Hang on. Oh, can you see I've got them sort of stuck over the headphone, right in the back. Let me make myself, make myself big. That's where they sit over the Logitech headphone. You may wonder why I've got Logitech headphones in my studio. I don't use them for mixing, by the way, just in case you ever wonder why I don't. They just get used for general use, you know, like watching YouTube and gaming when I get time to do gaming. All right, let's bring this back up again here. So here we are. So yeah, these are the open back versions of pretty much the same headphones. So these are not so good for tracking. They're better for mixing. You'll feel more comfortable in these over a long period of time. The mere fact that when headphones become sort of open backed, you tend to lose a little bit of low end in them, which is not necessarily a bad thing. But they do feel sort of more airy. You hear the room outside you a bit more. They feel more comfortable to wear for hours. Good day, David from, just say hello to some people here. David from TN, Tennessee. All right, I'm sorry, I'm showing my ignorance. I've been watching so much about Memphis recently. I don't know why I've gotten one of these binges on YouTube, where I've been reading about studios, famous studios around the world. And then I sort of watched one or two about Studio B in Memphis. And then I got more and more into that. So more and more videos along those lines. I'm sort of fascinated with recording from kind of the 1950s and stuff. That really, really fascinates me. And I just think that what they had to deal with, so I'm off track, but what they had to deal with then, if you look at the way they dealt with 1950s recordings, where they may have several microphones, but they didn't have several tracks. So the placement of the microphone in the room was key. They were mixing with the microphones. That is so cool. I'd like to do a session like that one day. I haven't really done anything quite like that. So I can always recommend these headphones for you. You won't be disappointed. And they are $149 at the moment, which is, I hate to use the word investment, but it's an investment. It's good to look after your ears, and it's good to buy things which can help you if you have to mix on headphones to get decent mixes. Okay. Moving on. I'll have a little sip of cold tea. It's good now, this tea. By the way, as we move on towards the end, regularly on from Belize. Nice to see you here. So before I move on to the last couple of things that I'm going to talk about, just let me know in the chat while you're there. Have you bought anything in the Black Friday sales yet? Let me know about that. I'd like to know about the deals that you guys got. There's a couple of things that I've still got to buy, yet when I have time. And just as a quick mention, G'day, Alan, who's just arrived there. Nice to see you here. Just as a quick mention, I released a video yesterday. Let me just pull that up for you. Not that one, that's you guys. This one, just check this out. This is a video I released yesterday if you didn't see it about the plug-in deals that are available at Plug-In Boutique at the moment. I went through my top five. And again, I went through things that I actually use and have used for a long time. When I recommend things to you, I just want to be able to confidently say it. That doesn't mean there aren't other great deals out there. I know there's a lot of great deals out there, but yeah. You're telling me at the moment about some of the stuff. Leon was saying that he wants to get Melodyne. And look, I did cover that in the video. I think that was number three in my top five. Melodyne is just one of those great products. It's going to go down as a little bit of a classic, I think in the long run. If you're against using that sort of thing, it's fine. It's up to you. I don't want to debate with people about that. I use, as I explained in the video, the way I use Melodyne is I target specific notes which strike me when I'm listening to it as needing some pitch correction. I don't pitch correct everything. And I believe in that way. You maintain the human character of the voice without it sounding robotic or synthetic in any way. But the way it does it, the ease with which it does it is awesome. So anyway, I won't go on about that here, but check out that video and take a look at that. Leon, you may want to check that out. And there's a few different versions available. Jacques, good day. I believe Jacques is in Canada. Sorry, I don't think Sweetwater delivered to Canada. Unfortunately, I did check that out because on the thumbnail, I was going to try and put an American and a Canadian flag next to it and I was like, oh yeah. But then turns out they don't deliver. I think there is a way that you can get stuff delivered to Canada from Sweetwater from what I was reading, but I'll let you figure that one out. Anyway, he was saying, you got a couple of TDR plug-ins for nine nights. Ah, you know I love TDR stuff. Which ones did you get? Let me know which ones you've got. The gentleman editions of their plug-ins. I mean, actually the free editions of their plug-ins are fantastic, aren't they? But the gentleman editions, sorry, I don't know why I've got that on the screen all the time here. The gentleman editions of TDR stuff is 9.90. You should feel bad at getting a 9.99. And those poor guys worked away at those awesome plug-ins. And you got it for 9.99. 9.99. Wonderful. Glad to hear that. Glad to hear that. Oh, you got the, we got, ah, good choices. I love Katelnikov and yeah, the slick EQ. Really, really good choices there. Enjoy those. And it's one of those things, isn't it? I was talking about this yesterday with one of the things I like about, I've forgotten their name now. Why am I forgotten their name? Arturia, Arturia plug-ins. Is that they do these great quality plug-ins, but they give you that little bit extra. That just that little something different that you don't see in some of the plug-ins. And that's the way I feel about Tokyo Dawn stuff. They give you that, you got EQs and you know, you've got compressors. And then they give you a little feature here and there you go. Oh, that's a really good idea. That's what I thought out to you. And even though this doesn't apply, I'm nice to see red baron here from the UK. Now look out, red baron, because I'm not promising anything because I've got to work out the timing. But at some point in the next 24 hours, I'm hoping to do a UK and Europe version of this show looking at what's available at Tomman. I've got to work out some things with my family life and things. First of all, I won't bore you with the details, but hopefully just look out for that. I'll suddenly appear at a time which is good in the UK. But nice to see you here anyway. It's been great to be here and just focus on the USA. I just wanted to say this at the beginning because I don't thank you guys enough. People in the USA are by far my largest audience around the world and you make up over 30% of my audience. Closely followed by the UK, some European countries, Canada, and I think India after that. Where I am actually in Australia, like a tiny, tiny percentage of people in Australia actually watch me. Maybe they don't like my accent, I don't know. But anyway, yeah. So what we've got here, let's just pull this up here. I'm going to buy tomorrow an old-school Prasanna Studio 192, 2632. Whoa, you're getting some good stuff there. I'll let you into a little secret here. What you're hearing at the moment. I won't explain why for a live stream, but what you're actually hearing at the moment is my microphone plugged into an Antelope audio interface. It's the Discrete 8, but the Antelope ZenQ is fantastic. I've got that. It's very, very good as well. And that then goes through, some of that via ADAT goes through to my Prasanna Studio 192. It still goes, it's still used in every single video, the 192 in one way or another, even though I've had it for a couple of years and I actually own about 10 audio interfaces, something along the line, I don't know. So good choices there. Dorian are very, very good choices, particularly the Prasanna Studio 192 is for its price is really great because you do get onboard DSP processing. It's not as fancy as the UAD stuff or the Antelope stuff, but it's very solid. For example, at the moment, I've got a gate on my voice, which is on the Prasanna's 192. That's happening in real time and a compressor and a limiter. And that's all on the Prasanna's 192. I won't bore with why I'm using two studio audio interfaces just for a stream. That's just my setup and that's the way it works. But yeah, so cool stuff, good choices there. So moving on to the final part, and that is going to be keyboards. Okay, it's a tough one to explain this one because when I looked at the keyboards which were available in the selection of current Black Friday deals on Sweetwater, there was not many that I'd actually used in real life. So again, I thought I could recommend them. And the ones that are, or the one that I can highly recommend, there's two because I use a Keystep 37 from Arturia. That's very good. I recommend that, but that wasn't in the sales. The one that was in the sales is actually my everyday keyboard. And I think it's the best controller keyboard for a studio you can get by far. But it's not the cheapest. But it's good that it's on special at the moment. So I'm going to show you this and I know it's out of the price range from many of you but we'll take a look at it. And then I'm going to show you a cheaper option which I know about as well. So this is the final out of the show just in case you're wondering. So let's just bring this up. So I was very happy to see that my keyboard, the one I use every day, the one you'll see in my videos, 88 Key Keyboard, is on special there at the moment. So this is normally $1,150 and there's a bit of a price reduction there of $150. There's just a quick hello there. Hello from Shamakin. I don't know if I can say that. See, this is what you get for following a dyslexic YouTuber. Okay, so back to this keyboard. So why do I love this keyboard? Because it's got everything, everything that I want in one place and it sits just above my knees and it's there. I did, when I weighed up buying this, which I did weigh up great lengths, I went, it went up against the Native Instruments one. I can't remember, it's there, there sort of, I think it's the S88, okay. That's also wonderful. Weighted keyboard as well. And to be honest with you, I was very, very tempted by the Native Instruments one because it's got a very nice screen on it which enables you to navigate through Native Instruments stuff. And I use a lot of Native Instruments stuff in my recording. So that was very appealing. And I was kind of what pushed it over the edge for me was just the feature set. The controls on here, the assignable controls, the eight sliders and the nine, which is really nice to have nine rather than the regular eight. If you use a B3 organ or something like that. But yeah, those, they're very, very good. The door control. I use the controls on this all the time because I've got, I'm just pulling mine out from the under the desk now. I'm getting further away from you because by the time I pull my desk drawer out, I'm away from my keyboard, my computer. I'm away from any other surface controls I've got. I need to have transport controls on them. Just want to tell you, before I used to have a big long keyboard off to the side and lots of you will be in that situation where it's off to the side, fine. But if you can get it in front of you, it just, the workflow is great. You're not twisting around all the time. It's right at your fingertips. So that's why I went for it. And because he's got drum pads on there, he's got transport controls, it's got all that stuff. He's got awesome connectivity on the back. Let's just go through some of these pictures here. Let's just pull this up. As is typical with Arturia, I mean the USB connection, but really regular MIDI connections that's just go through to here. You can see all the different connections on the back. Um, it is, this is what's hard to explain, you know, talking about it. And even in the review that I made of this, it's hard to explain the fantastic quality of this. It's heavy. It's, it's got a metal casing. The keys feel wonderful. They're weighted, you know, piano style keys. And I like weighted keys. Not everyone does, but I love them. Yes. So it's just got everything on there. It's just, I can't recommend. Look at, look for my review video on it. If you just, I know this is a big purchase for you. I know that when someone buys this, it's like, this is a big deal to be spending this. And I know that there are a lot cheaper options out there, which are all so good. Nectar keyboards, for example, I haven't played them, but I've, they're pretty cheap and they're good. So I'm not saying that you have to have this or you need this, but if you want to treat yourself and you've got a little bit of, this is a massively great addition to a studio. Now, let me just talk quickly about 88 keys as well. I know someone in their zoo is talking about the Keystep 37, which I mentioned earlier. And what we're saying. Trying to get me Arturia Keystep 37. So I've got, I said I've got the Keystep 37 in my collection of stuff. It's great for when I'm doing sort of mobile stuff. And that it's just really, really handy. It's a nice size, another very good solid build. As I say, it wasn't in the Black Friday sales. If you find it somewhere, then definitely it's a good choice to get if you just after a really small keyboard. But I want to talk about the 88 keys. Why do you want 88 keys? Because most of us, including me, some of you are, you know, piano players and I'm certainly not a piano player. So when I play piano, I don't know that I would, I guess it's nice to have it available there. But when you've got smaller keyboards, you find yourself sort of moving up and down, you're changing the octave all the time, which is fine if that's what you can afford. And that's what's maybe the size of your room determines that as well. Then that's fine, you can get away with that. But there's a massive convenience in having all the keys available to you without having to scroll up and down. And if you're like me and you use lots of virtual instruments with, you know, using articulations, and I almost forgot the word there and Jacques said it right away, articulations. Yeah, so for those who don't know, if you get just getting into this, a lot of virtual instruments will have articulations. So let's say violins. I want to get all the, I want to play staccato and then I want to play a long note. And then I want to, you know, play pizzicato and whatever. There's different sort of articulations for a violin. And you want to switch between those different articulations freely during performance. Then you use something called key switches. Normally they're areas of the keyboard which are not within the range of that instrument, the natural range of that instrument. They're off out of the way and they enable you to do key switching. And I just find that often when you put a small keyboard in the range of the instrument, the key switches are not on the keyboard anymore. So you can't do live key switching. That's it in a nutshell. Jacques may be right in saying 61 keys is enough. I believe you're right that 61 would be fine a lot of the time. But I just think 88 is the ultimate, which is why I go. So what if you are convinced by me and you think, yeah, 88 keys, that sounds like a really good idea. But this is just out of your price range. Well, even though I haven't actually tried it, then I'm going to suggest you this. Before I do suggest you that, I'm just going to say hi, Mike, from Mike. I'm going very, very well. Thank you, Mike. It's funny, you should say, how's it going? Because most people say to me, I hope you will. Anyway, so if you cannot afford this big huge lump of a keyboard, by the way, there's other features I haven't talked about just really, really well. But this may be a, this is a great option for you. Let's have a look at this. And this is another 88 key keyboard from Arturia, the KeyLab Essential. OK, look at the difference in price. Let's just go between these two. One's $1,000 and the other one is $380. Good saving here on this one, a healthy saving, not a massive saving, but a healthy saving. This is great if you just don't have that budget available to you. It's probably going to use about the same amount of space, roughly, in terms of length. I haven't had my hands on this physically. I want to say that upfront and be, you know, upfront with you guys. I haven't actually played this, but since I bought the KeyLab 88 and made a video about that, many, many people have contacted me and said that they bought this one and they're very happy with it. OK, so I'm going to go ahead and say OK, again, it's got kind of all the things you need. It's got the 88 keys. It's obviously got modulation and pitch bend on there. No big surprise there. It's got drum pads on there. It's got transport controls on there. It's got it's got the controllers on there. So both in terms of sliders and also knobs. OK, it's really great. It's just a fantastic piece of kit. I'm not sure what the connector is like on it. Let's have a look at the connection. So it's a bit more basic. It's got MIDI out on there. And let's face it, for controller keyboards, you don't really need MIDI in as such. Or a lot of, well, I'll say you don't. In some cases you do, but it depends on the transport controls and things. But, you know, you mainly don't need them. But you do have at least a MIDI connection there. You've got a sustained connection there, which you would expect to have. What's going to be the difference between this and the big flagship one we were looking at earlier? This has not got weighted keys on it. This is just regular keys. And to be honest with you, there's some people who don't like weighted keys. Some people, especially if they're more kind of like synth players and they're not going to be playing pianos, piano sounds, then they find that they don't actually want weighted keys. In which case, I think this is just being incredibly a great option for you. I've only just noticed, as I've been looking at this, that both of these, apart from their saving, also have these things that you get for free with it. They've got, looks like the free Mini-V. I don't know if they've got any screenshots of these down here. Doesn't look like they do. Well, basically these are great virtual instruments that you're getting with it. The Stage 73-V are a great plugin. And this one, which is the Rev Plate 140 here. One of my favorite, one of my favorite plate reverb plugins. You're getting that in there as well. So a nice little bundle with it. Arturia generally supply you with decent bundles of, with their software, with their hardware, sorry. But yeah, so I'm just trying to have a quick look at what else is in there, just to double check. But that looks like that. So just in terms of, let me just recap. If you're just looking for like the ultimate keyboard, and as someone was saying here, something about buying quality, where are we? I'm a working stiff, not wealthy tool, but you only buy quality once. It's so true, so, so true. I've got to say my last keyboard was a Yamaha one. I can't even remember the model of it now, but it was a weighted 88 key keyboard with transport controls on it. And I must have had it many, many years. Let me just put it that way. Maybe 10 years I used that for. And, you know, so I do feel that when you buy these types of things, you know, this is not going to be just a trendy flash in the pan thing. It's going to hook up to your computer and you're going to control instruments for many years to come in a really quality way. So that is the final two things that I have to mention. Now, I have links in the description down below for all of the things that you've seen in today's live stream. I will reiterate again, Sweetwater didn't ask me to do this video. I've had no conversations with Sweetwater. I just think that by the looks of it, Sweetwater is one of the best places to buy from them. If you live in the USA. Also, you'll notice on my videos, I'll put Amazon links, but I know that most of you end up buying through Sweetwater. Those are the things that I am suggesting a great value for money. As I can see on there, they also have some great deals with, you know, guitars and things like that. There was there's also some software which is worth checking out there. Some studio monitors again, you know, they're worth checking out there. They just didn't have models there for me personally that I had tried and had my hands on. And I really hate to recommend things to you guys. And I've actually had experience with them. It's easier to see here, for example, as we scroll down, we look at microphones. I mean, there's a Neumann TLM 102 there, you know, a great microphone. I think even the TLM 103, which if you were going to go much more expensive microphones, I'd probably try the few extra bucks for that, you know. These are all very expensive things. Anyway, it's nice if you've got that budget available to you and you've waited until this time of year, then they're great things. I do own some Neumann microphones myself. They're always fantastic quality, whatever ones you buy from them, to be honest with you. But yeah, that's not to say that you need them to make good recordings. That's a different topic altogether. So thank you so much again. Let me just reiterate again that the links are in the description down below for all these things. Check out my other video that I made yesterday about the deals at Plugin Boutique at the moment. And let me just, as I say, reiterate to you guys, I'm so thankful for your support of the channel. People who live in the USA in that time zone. I know a lot of my live shows that I've done in the past and not a great time for you. But thank you for supporting the channel. I'm very, very, very grateful. And when the situation in this world permits, I will look forward to traveling to the USA. I've been to the US maybe 10 times in my life, something along those lines. I've always had such a lovely time there and with the people I've met from different parts. And there's such a different range of cultures in different parts of the country as well. And the hospitality I've received has always been fantastic. So I look forward to coming again. And when I do travel to the US, I'll be sure to let you know so that I can meet some of you. That's a day to look forward to for sure. So thanks for being with us. And I will maybe be online again within 24 hours to discuss things for people in the UK and Europe. But I definitely will be here again at this kind of time in what for me is in two days time. I'll be doing my featured artist live show with Pete Johns and Jade Star. And we've decided to do a USA special for that and be there for you guys at that time. Thank you to Kay Jones in there for watching me at 3 a.m. in the morning in the UK. Hopefully I can keep you happy if all sort of lines up and I'll do that UK version of this show and we'll talk about what's available at Tom and over there. So thank you so much to everyone. Be safe. Make sure you hit the like button for me. If you're watching on the replay, love to see your comments there as well. Thank you so much for supporting the channel.