 It's been a few months since the last time I did one of my studio tours where I cover you know a lot of the equipment that I've purchased in the last four years since starting the YouTube channel. So today I wanted to do, updated one of these studio tours because people have been asking about it and I have bought a lot of new equipment in the last few months since the last time I did one of these types of videos and you know people are interested because of course a lot of folks are interested in just the equipment I use to run Linux on a daily basis like new to Linux users want to know hey what kind of computer equipment do you use and things like that many people are asking because they're interested in making video content or sometimes audio content they want to know about the audio equipment the video equipment so today I'm going to cover all of that stuff. So I think the very first place to start with let's just briefly cover the computers that are in this room because many people ask this all the time so I have a triple monitor setup behind me for my main workstation those are not expensive monitors those are I bought them about six months ago they are AOC brand monitors they're 24 and a half inch monitors I've got a triple monitor mount from Wally that is that the monitors are mounted to now the triple monitor mount I bought was the kind of mount that you could either mount to the back of a desk or you could drill a hole in the center of a desk the problem is that desk was like three foot wide so it was actually way too deep for me to mount that Wally triple monitor mount all the way to the back of the desk so what I did is I got my brother-in-law to rig me up this nice wood U shaped base that I then mounted the Wally mount to you can see the Wally mount is actually drilled into the wood you frame and it's worked out quite nicely so that is the monitors I do have a fourth monitor in this room this is nothing special this is actually an old Samsung TV very old but it is HDMI so it does plug nicely into a Raspberry Pi and that's what it's plugged into right now it's a Raspberry Pi 4 that's running Manjaro's arm edition and I just keep a Raspberry Pi around just in case I ever need to play with anything Pi related I actually have a Pi 3 and the Pi 4 that's currently running right there now my main production workstation is this very large tower right here in this tower that is a thread ripper 1920x that is a 12 thread 20 I thought sorry a 12 core 24 thread thread ripper in that it's got 64 gigs of RAM the graphics card is a Radeon 7 and the motherboard is a I believe it's a ASRock brand motherboard I'm not sure of the model number on that but you know it's plenty of workstation for what I do making video content having a 24 thread CPU is really nice for video editing video rendering having 64 gigs of RAM comes in handy as well because video editing especially you know your video editors can actually use up that RAM so you can give it as much RAM as you want as much as you could afford I could only afford 64 gigs of RAM at the time when I bought that machine that machine now is about not two and a half three years old some of the other stuff on the desk here you guys often ask about keyboards and mice let me get that in frame there that is the ZSA Moonlander a very nice keyboard and next to it is my mouse which is a Kensington expert so that's a trackball mouse I really love the Kensington expert so I bought two of them one for the office and one for home because since moving to the trackball I really don't like using standard mice anymore so I've got two of those the Moonlander I've got here at my workstation now before I bought the Moonlander I also bought a ZSA Ergo Docks easy and that is another ergonomic split keyboard very similar to the Moonlander that is at my home I use that for my home computer and then I also have a easy plank from ZSA so this is well one of these see if I can get that in frame there that is a 47 key keyboard and I use that right now I've just got that plugged into the Raspberry Pi because I didn't have a keyboard or a mouse for the Pi so I'm using the easy plank there for the Pi and the mouse is just a cheap Logitech the kind of cheap Logitech mice you get for free when you buy a computer right yeah they usually throw in a one of these cheap Logitech mice I've got three or four of them in a drawer that I keep around just in case I need to use them of course these days again I prefer using the trackball let's talk about speakers because people have asked about that and my speakers here I don't know if I can get that in frame here give me just a second this little tweeter here now that is a Logitech Z313 so you have two of the little smaller tweeters and then it has a subwoofer box that is in the back of the computer that these wires are currently sitting on and those are very nice speakers from Logitech again the brand is Z13 and I use them mainly for monitoring audio while I'm editing video because again the sound quality on those speakers is really nice now I also have a much cheaper set of Logitech speakers that if I get in frame here you know they're just laying on their sides this is actually an insignia brand speaker that I bought probably eight ten years ago very cheap speakers I keep them around because they are convenient because they have a plug a headphone jack in the front of the speakers that has a knob that allows you to adjust the headphone volume and that is something that I really need anytime I live stream because I have to wear headphones or earbuds while live streaming otherwise you'll get audio feedback in the microphone so I wear the monitoring speakers the really nice pair of speakers I have the Z13's they don't actually have a headphone jack in the speakers no knob or anything that I could control headphones with so I'd have to do all that using pulse audio volume control if I use those speakers and it's just messy especially while live streaming adjusting volume with the pulse audio volume control I don't like that so I keep that cheap pair of speakers around and I plug those in just when I live stream just to plug in headphones now some of the other stuff here on the desk let's talk about lighting one of the most common questions I get is lighting now right here on my desk I do have one of these Elgato key lights and these are quite nice let me turn that on these are really really bright I mean they they're adjustable settings but this is the dimmest setting this is about 10% and as you can see that's quite a bit of light like if I turn off the lights and that was the only thing shining on me it would be like a spotlight boom just on me right 10% I put that thing up to 100% it puts out a ton of light the Elgato key light very popular among video content creators and very popular especially among live streamers you see a lot of YouTube streamers and Twitch streamers that use the Elgato key light and the cool thing with it is it has software that controls the dimmness and color temperature and everything it's Windows only software though it doesn't work on Linux but they do have mobile apps so they do have an Android app so I can control it with my phone I have an Android phone I have a Samsung Galaxy 10 phone so that is one of the lights and typically I have this light on about 10% and pointed away from me usually slightly off toward the back of the wall to illuminate the back of the wall which otherwise in my videos would have no illumination and you know typically when you're trying to capture yourself on camera the best thing you can do is to illuminate the stuff behind you because then that really makes you stand out pop out so that's kind of what I use the Elgato key light for but my main lighting is these soft boxes here this is a Favotec LED panel and I've got a soft box on it and it's got adjustable controls it's got two knobs and the two knobs control the brightness so you can adjust from zero to a hundred percent and it also adjusts the color temperature from you know very white to a more daylight you know yellowish color and typically you know on video kind of content if you want a natural kind of color typically you want to set the color temperature to about 5,500 you know 55k that's typically what you want but you know if I if I err on one side of 55k typically I'll go more toward the white side than the yellow side because on my cameras anyway I can I tend to get very yellow so I can I can correct that a little bit with these Favotec soft boxes by turning them to more of a white color balance and of course I've got two of the Favotecs and I've got them mounted on these stands these rolling C stands here so you can see it's got three foot or three feet not three foot but I've got the three rolling feet here and I've got sandbags on them because if I don't sandbag the feet you know once I put heavy equipment like these lighting that has some forward weight you know the rolling stands could topple over the other rolling stand I have the Favotec and then of course I have camera equipment and microphones and the various cables needed to plug in camera and microphone you can see I've got a tripod with a shotgun mic and this particular setup here when I did my last Haiti I was using that stand what I do is I sit in my chair and then I roll that stand here about two feet in front of me right and then I've got the camera I've got the lighting that's shining on me I've got the shotgun mic with a tripod to get it up high just out of camera frame and that's what I did the last Haiti on I'll try to roll some footage of how that camera looks on this video now that camera is the first camera I bought for this channel as far as an actual camera not just a standard webcam that is a Panasonic Lumix G7 and the lens on it right now is a 14 millimeter lens so it gets a really wide shot and you can tell on that last Haiti that 14 millimeter lens even though it was only about three foot away from me it looks like it's a million miles away from me right though that's the 14 millimeter lens on the Panasonic G7 now a newer camera I bought about a month ago although I don't think I've told you guys but if you've watched any of my standard videos where I'm sitting at my desk all of those have been recorded on my new Panasonic G9 and the G9 sports a 25 millimeter lens so not quite as wide so it's a little bit tighter shot you guys know the standard shot probably at me sitting in front of my three monitors and typically what it gets in frame is the server rack the audio server rack is usually in the background and it's got some bokeh effect you know where the lighting it's kind of got that blurred effect and it looks really nice that is the benefits of that 25 millimeter lens it it has some really nice bokeh effects to it now we should talk about some of the pricing because I actually haven't priced anything that I've talked about let's talk about the cameras so my old Panasonic G7 that I've used for the last three years you can usually pick up just the Panasonic G7 the body no lens or any extras you can usually pick up a body for about five hundred dollars so not a terribly expensive camera but definitely not cheap either but for the price it's a pretty good camera I really happy with the Panasonic G7 I'm glad I bought it got a lot of I mean I've probably made nearly a thousand videos on the G7 the G9 cost a bit more being a newer camera I want to say I paid about a thousand dollars a thousand maybe eleven hundred dollars for the G7 the differences between the G9 and the G7 one thing I don't like about the G9 is I've got the the flip out preview right but you can see that the cables that plug in this HDMI cable that I plug into my computer to capture the camera's video is in the way of the screen preview which is kind of annoying now I'm not sitting here typically when I'm recording I'm not looking at the camera anyway but every now and then I look up because I want to see how I am in frame and it's kind of annoying that that big HDMI cable is in the way where on the older model the G7 it has a mini HDMI plug in instead of a standard HDMI plug in so much smaller cable and it plugs in on the opposite side from where the preview window is and I like that setup a lot more and of course I didn't start the YouTube channel with the Panasonic G7 or the Panasonic G9 which again I've only had the G9 for about a month I started the YouTube channel using an old Logitech C922 webcam let's see if I can get that in frame there it's right now sitting on a tripod now I don't actually do much with that C922 here at the office I actually need to carry that home that is actually a webcam for me to use at home if I ever need to to record anything at home I have it at the office right now because before I bought the G9 about a month ago I needed to have two cameras for a video I did I did a video about the ZSA Plank Easy keyboard and of course I needed my standard camera on me and then I needed an overhead camera demonstrating the keyboard and the overhead camera demonstrating the keyboard was actually the Logitech C922 webcam now I don't like that setup and the reason I finally bought a second Panasonic is because typically when I do those kind of two camera videos where I need two different cameras the lighting really affects the Panasonic cameras these mirrorless cameras a lot differently than the Logitech webcam the 922 the Panasonics I need to actually turn off all the overhead lights here you know and typically I just use the Favitech LED lights right so it's really low lighting for the Panasonic mirrorless cameras well that really low lighting sucks bad on the C922 so I'll end up when I'm trying to record two different cameras in the same lighting one of them looks really good one of them looks really bad and then I'll adjust the lighting I'll raise the lighting so that the 922 has enough light to work with and then the Panasonic looks bad so finally you know that's why I ended up buying a second Panasonic and instead of buying a second G7 I went with the newer model G9 let's talk furniture a little bit I did buy this chair my chair that I sit in on most of my videos that is just a standard I forget what brand it is gaming chair I bought on Amazon it was on sale for like $99 this particular gaming chair that's black with some gray accents and it's a very comfortable gaming chair and it is a gaming chair it has you know some relaxation to it right it leans back it's not the kind of chair like you would use at an office where you need to sit up right all day that's more relaxing sitting back watching videos things like that I do have a second chair that's more appropriate for office work this chair here which was actually in the office it was provided with the office when I rented the office and that's a standard office chair that's got more of a straight back all the desks in this office were also here when I moved in I actually did not purchase these desks I've got two desks one is six by three and the other that the Raspberry Pi sitting on is a six by two desk I've got them arranged in a L shape here just for sake of space behind me that is a couch a little small love seat that is mine I actually purchased that for this office moved it in here and I have the couch in here mainly to dampen the sound otherwise the room would have a little bit too much echo and you see all the phone panels that I've got on all four walls that was made by me and my sister she helped me make all these panels these are two foot by three foot panels and we put about I don't know 15 16 of them around the four walls and still it was a little loud in this room I've got curtains on the window still had a little bit too much reverb you know a little bit too much echo finally adding the couch it got the reverb and the echo down to what I think is a much more acceptable level now let's talk audio equipment because that's probably the most common question I get and we've got a lot of audio equipment to cover so the most common question of course is going to be what microphone do I use this if I show you guys this tripod here that's swung away from my desk typically when I'm ready to record I just swivel that sucker around right here in front of my monitors and that's typically the shot you guys see now that microphone that is an electro voice re 27 in D and that microphone retails for about $500 these days you can usually pick it up for about $500 just for the microphone and I mean just for the microphone not the pop filter not the shock mount just the microphone the shock mount is going to cost you probably another hundred dollars the pop filter is going to cost you I don't know I want to say that pop filter costs about $30 for that particular one the little disc with the bar on it if I can show you that can I get that yeah it's just a bar that fits in right there clamps on yeah and that that particular pop filter I believe works on all the electro voice microphones the re 20 re 3 20 the re 27 in D that I use and I think it also works for the how the how pr 40 I believe is the how microphone that a lot of people use and so you're looking at about $600 for the mic pop filter and the shock mount now I spent another hundred dollars of course on the scissor arm that is the road PSA one scissor arm probably the most popular scissor arm people use for microphones very sturdy it's just a really nice arm again it's about $100 now other than that particular microphone I do have several other microphones that sometimes I use on camera I also have this microphone here this is another electro voice re 27 in D so I actually have two of those really nice microphones and that's why I have two of them is because they're nice and I I also wanted the ability to if I ever wanted to do anything collaborative with somebody else in this office maybe an interview or anything like that you know I I wanted to have two of the same microphones it just makes things easier because it's going to sound exactly the same because I can set them up you know on my audio equipment the compressor and the EQ and everything and they'll sound exactly the same because they're the same mic there's going to be no question hey what setting should I set for each microphone as long as they're the same now other than the two electro voice 27 indies I also have a blue baby bottle that is the microphone I'm currently using at home if I ever have to record at home that's like a $400 microphone from blue microphones and that sounds really really nice it is a condenser microphone the blue baby bottle is where the re 27 in D microphones are dynamic microphones dynamic microphones are more appropriate for broadcasting for podcasting or for anything you're doing inside a room that's not well treated that's not soundproofed because dynamic microphones they don't pick up as much background noise you have to be right on them right where a condenser microphone will pick up noise from outside the room across the street you know two blocks down so the blue baby bottle is not quite appropriate for what I do but it's okay like if I play with the gain enough I can't get it to where it doesn't pick up that much background noise and again if I ever do anything from the house you guys will see the blue baby bottle it has the like round capsule yeah it looks completely different than these microphones some other microphones I have uh we talked about this rig here that's you know this all-in-one camera lighting microphone the shotgun microphone that I have taped up here to not allow it to swivel around let me uh unswivel it if I can now we talked about the differences between dynamic mics which are more broadcast type mics they're quieter mics they don't pick up as much noise condenser mics pick up much more noise and then a shotgun mic they're typically these longer tubes they're condenser mics they pick up noise and they have to be condenser mics because these are mics that you don't get up on these are designed to be a few feet away from you so typically you know it would be me sitting in this chair I would roll that stand you know a couple of feet in front of me and you know again I'm going to have this microphone uh on the tripod up out of the out of the camera frame but it's going to be a good three or four feet away from my mouth right so it's got to be a condenser mic it can't be a dynamic mic so it's going to pick up a lot more noise there'll be a lot more crud in the sound you do have to clean up these shotgun mics a little bit so I do usually have to do some post editing so I'll you know open up audacity or one of the audacity forks like audacity or tenacity and I'll have to clean up some of the noise in it but it's not too bad now let's talk about some of the audio server equipment so I have a five foot tall server rack here that I've got various audio equipment so let's start well let's start with the first part of the chain so all the microphones plug into a preamp this neti preamp and I've got eight channels in the neti preamp and you see I've got two microphones plugged in right now those are the two electro voice re-278 nds that I showed you so I've got both of those plugged in and from the preamp they go into an EQ both of them I believe go into the first EQ which is a double channel EQ so it can handle two microphones and then they go into one of these dbx 166 xs expander limiter gates I have two of them they are dual channel I have two of the EQs that are dual channel the EQs are dbx 231 s so between the two EQs and the two expander limiter gates I can support up to four microphones right because I've got eight channels in the preamp and then up to four channels in the EQ and the expander limiter gates so I could power up four microphones and have them set to the exact same setting so if I ever wanted to do a podcast you know like you've seen those podcasts where it's just a chair in the middle of a room with four microphones I'd have no problem powering something like that up I already have all the equipment for something like that if I ever wanted to do something like that and so we go to preamp EQ expander limiter gate then the two re27 nds go into the uh this is a sonic exciter by barringer the sonic exciter basically it it excites the mid ranges right because the re27 nd dynamic microphones most dynamic microphones because you're right up on them they get what's called the proximity effect meaning the closer you get to them the more bass that gets picked up in your voice and I've got kind of a deep voice anyway so on the re27 nds you know it's got a little bit too much bass and it sounds kind of dead in the midrange the sonic exciter can help you know liven up those middle frequencies to make it sound a little better to my ears anyway the last part of the chain is this mackey 12 xx mixer so all the analog equipment eventually gets worked into the mixer here the mackey 12 fx where that analog signal of course is converted to a digital signal and the digital signal then gets sent to the computer so the uh the mixer basically plugs in via usb to the computer and that's how the computer finally gets the sound that traveled from the mic to the preamp to the ecu to the expander limiter gate to the sonic exciter to the mixer finally into the computer where obs can recognize that source and I'm going to provide links to all the equipment that I've talked about today and of course you can click on the links to find out the prices because I know I forgot to mention a lot of the prices I've mentioned some of the microphones I mentioned the re27 nds were about five hundred dollars six hundred dollars with the shock mount the sennheiser mke 600 shotgun mic that's about a four hundred dollar mic the blue baby bottle that's about a four hundred dollar mic this equipment here on the audio server rec I want to say that the dbx eqs run you about 150 to 200 dollars of course I got two of them but you know most people are only going to need one the dbx 166 xs I don't think dbx makes those anymore because I had a hard time finding the second one I had to buy one second hand off of ebay but I want to say when I was able to find those they run about 150 200 dollars um and then the sonic exciter by beringer I want to say I paid about 100 to 150 dollars for it the mackey pro fx 12 mixer that's about a 300 dollar mixer I forget what I paid for the five foot server rack but that's a good server rack heavy steel I mean it's built like a tank I'm sure I paid two to three hundred dollars for that server rack because again it's it's really thick heavy steels it's got rolling wheels on the bottom as well and again it's built like a tank some of the other stuff that you see in the backgrounds of my videos of course I've got this bookcase behind me that you see various items on most of it are boxes that my equipment came out of such as the cam link the cam link is actually what I use to capture video so many people ask this hey how do you capture video from your you know your mirrorless camera how do you get that into the computer well I get that into the computer via the cam link you see this big oversized usb stick that's actually uh plugged into a usb port but on the back of the oversized usb stick the cam link you can see it has a hdmi input for the hdmi cable that's coming out of the panasonic g9 I just plug that into the cam link and then the cam link plugs into a usb 3 port it has to be a usb 3.0 port and then obs will recognize that as a video source I've used the cam link now almost the entire time I've done the youtube channel you know early on in the youtube channel's history once I switched from using a standard logitech webcam to my first mirrorless camera I bought the cam link and uh I wasn't a hundred percent sure the cam link would work on Linux because back then there wasn't much information on it but it worked perfect and and I tell everybody that asks about hey how can I capture a camera on Linux the Elgato cam link works almost perfectly and now it's not 100 percent perfect sometimes I will turn on obs and and it won't actually pick up the signal from the cam link and typically what I have to do is turn the camera on and off and then close obs turn the camera back on or reopen obs and then it will pick up the cam link so that's one minor annoyance but for the most part the video quality for the cam link is great now I do have a second capture device just in case I need it because sometimes I might need to capture more than one camera right and we've talked about this before and I'm what I have for capturing a second camera is this mage will capture device again it plugs into a usb port usb 3.0 port and then it has a hdmi connection on the back for you know getting the hdmi input from your camera again this is a mage will capture device this thing was expensive I want to say I paid like 200 250 dollars for the mage will capture card and that was about three or four years ago the cam link at the time I purchased it was like a hundred dollars I want to say I paid about 95 dollars for it that price has gone way up recently due to the pandemic computer prices peripherals sky high if you can find a cam link now you're probably going to pay at least 150 dollars for it other than that most of the other stuff you guys see I mean you see like merchandise you see like my mugs here let me see if I can get some of this on camera my by the way I use arch mug you see I have my a buntu definition mug which is the brown mug my manjaro definition mug the dibbian stable Jurassic Park mug and of course I've got some of my other merchandise here if I look on my couch here that is actually my gym bag that I carry with me to the gym every day and then to the office but I do have a couple of extra shirts in it to change into if I ever record more than one video in a day for example here this purple shirt here I believe is the a buntu definition t-shirt let's see if I can get that on camera there you guys have have seen this shirt and I've worn that on video a few times I've also got my bald by choice shirt here let's see if I can pull that out for you guys bald by choice and then of course my my thumbnail there you guys remember that from a video I did bald by choice and then it says but it was God's choice not mine of course we all know dt is not bald and then the last thing I'll mention is I've got you know various little knickknacks so obviously for all of this equipment in this room you know especially when I rearrange things or trying to do different shots I need different cables different lengths of cables so on the audio server rack at the very bottom of it I've got two drawers and in these drawers I've got various cables so lots of xlr cables I've got usb cables and then in the desk drawers over here in this bottom desk drawer if I rolled it out and I've got ethernet cables hdmi cables display port cables I've got a million different cables I've also got a ton of straps velcro straps to tie cables to like arms and things so to make things neater especially as I'm rolling these c stands around right once I get in place and get everything plugged in then typically I'll roll the cables up and then zip tie them or or velcro strap them you know somewhere so that the cables don't look all crazy and so that I don't trip over them the last thing I have in a drawer here and this is really the most important thing in the second drawer here I have my cureg cups so this is of course joe's brand coffee for my curegs and you'll notice I also have two rolls of toilet paper and then in the bottom drawer below that I have paper towels and you're probably wondering DT why do you have toilet paper and paper towels in your office that's mainly for cleaning it gets very dusty especially around all these monitors and it's nice I've got some lysol spray and some odor ban and you know some cleaning products as well also I mean having two extra rolls of toilet paper in a drawer like there is a restroom here at the office the suite of offices here but you never know I don't want to be dependent on someone else because I may come up here one day and really need to go and then I get in there and they're out of toilet paper hey you know what I've got my two emergency rolls just in case so that was just a quick tour around the office a quick studio tour I hope you guys enjoyed it I know a lot of you guys enjoy these kinds of videos I know many of you probably don't care you're more interested in the content of videos rather than how they get made right you're not all you want to do you want to eat the sausage you don't want to know how the sausage is made right but for those of you that that do appreciate these kinds of videos I hope you enjoy it and we'll do it again you know a few months down the road as I buy more equipment you know it becomes necessary to do these updated studio tours anyway peace guys