 Welcome to another edition of Haiti. Haiti is a series of videos I do where I respond to viewer questions and comments. These viewer questions and comments they typically come from the videos posted on YouTube and Odyssey. Sometimes these questions and comments come through social media such as Mastodon or Reddit and sometimes I get these questions and comments through email. Now as I was looking for questions and comments to address on today's edition of Haiti I noticed I was getting a lot of questions about the gear I used, a lot of hardware specific questions, a lot of questions about audio and video equipment, things like that. So today's edition of Haiti is a special edition. We're going to focus on questions and comments related to the gear I use. The very first question is, Haiti, how's the Moonlander working for you? I'm finding endless possibilities for configuration and I have gotten a lot of questions here in the last few weeks about my experiences with the Moonlander, with the Ergo Docks and with the Plank because I own all three of those keyboards. I bought all three of those keyboards from ZSA. I've done videos about all three of those keyboards, the Ergo Docks, the Moonlander and the Plank. I use all three on a daily basis. Well, I don't use the Plank every day but I use both the Moonlander and the Ergo Docks every day because I use the Ergo Docks at my home computer. I use the Moonlander right here at my workstation and I have the Plank on this desk behind me. That is the keyboard I use any time I plug up any of my Raspberry Pis or sometimes I'll actually plug up the Plank to my mobile phone and those keyboards are fantastic. I don't regret purchasing any of those three keyboards and I strongly recommend you guys, if you're interested in some of these programmable mechanical keyboards, I really like the split keyboards and I'm really loving the Moonlander which is what this person was asking about. He mentions there's endless possibilities for configuration because you can program the keys to do so much. There's various layers that you could add to the keyboard. So, you know, when you switch layers, the keys now do different things than on the previous layer and yeah, it opens up a whole new world of possibilities. If you're one of these people that love customization, you love tinkering with things, you love things like scripting or configuring, tiling window managers and things like that, you really owe it to yourself to eventually explore programmable keyboards. Now, there are a couple of things you need to be aware of if you're going to purchase any of these keyboards from ZSA. One, ZSA, fantastic company, customer support, if you got any kind of questions, any kind of concerns, they're really friendly. They're the kind of people you can reach out to and get quick answers and get things resolved really quickly. So, I love that about them. The other thing that you should be aware about these ZSA keyboards is they're not cheap. I know that, right? Keep in mind that these are kind of specialty items, right? These are not items, this is not your cheap little logitech that's been mass produced millions of times that you go and buy at the local Walmart, right? So, these are much more specialty items, a lot more, you know, research and development costs are involved in these kinds of products and I understand that and I hope you guys understand that too, but these things are built like a tank. I've had that ErgoDocs now for, what, three or four years. I've never had an issue with it, never had any kind of key switch break on it, the actual frame, the chassis of the things built like a tank and, you know, I spent what probably around $11 or $1,200 on those three keyboards, the ErgoDocs, the Moonlander and the Plank and honestly, I wouldn't change a thing. Moving on to the next question, hey, DT, what do you think of using a normal camera as a webcam and what camera do you use? So, when you start doing video content on platforms like YouTube or Odyssey, you can use a webcam. If you have a webcam, the most popular one, of course, is the Logitech C920 or the C920 to one of those and they typically run you about $100 to $150. They're not really cheap, especially these days due to the inflated prices of everything, but that will get you by if you don't have a webcam though, honestly, a pretty good mobile phone. So, any of the good Android devices such as, you know, any of the Samsung Galaxy stuff or if you have one of the Apple iPhones, the cameras on those kinds of high-end phones is actually really good. So, you can get by in the beginning of your YouTube channel by simply using your phone as a camera. Now, obviously, as you progress with making video content, if it's something that it seems like it's something you're going to stick with and you actually want to grow and improve this, don't make these purchases on day one because you would be surprised how many people don't realize how much work goes into making videos. So, don't think, don't go buy all of this, you know, thousands of dollars worth of equipment and then realize after you make two or three videos, man, this is really hard, it really sucks and I really hate it because then you spend all this money on this equipment that's never going to get used. So, start using the cheap equipment first, you know, if, you know, use your cell phone for a camera for a while or some cheap webcam and after you've made a few dozen or even a few hundred videos, then upgrade to actually a DSLR camera or a mirrorless camera. So, the mirrorless cameras are what I use. I actually have two different Panasonic cameras. So, the camera that I'm actually using right now, this is a Panasonic G9 and the other camera I have before I bought the G9 about six or eight months ago, I had a Panasonic G7. I still have that and it's actually sitting on a shelf right here. So, I actually have two cameras available for me, which is nice if I want to actually have two camera shots going on at the same time or sometimes I just don't want to move cameras around, right? So, I can have a camera on a position over here that's already mounted that I never have to move and a second camera over here mounted to something that I never have to move. That way, you know, if you only have one camera, then you got to unscrew a camera from a tripod over here to move it to the tripod over here. So, having the two cameras is kind of nice. I don't recommend that. The only reason I have two cameras is because I eventually wanted to upgrade from the G7 and, you know, the G9 is a very nice camera for the price. The G7, when I bought it, just the body itself cost about 500 bucks. I purchased that three or four years ago. The G9 that I bought six, seven months ago probably, I want to say I paid about $1,100 for it. Again, just the body. The real expense for these cameras though comes with buying the lenses. The lenses, nice lenses are going to cost you money. Sometimes the lenses cost more than the cameras themselves. And the next question is, hey, DT, I noticed your microphone and I just wondered what it is. Is it a dynamic microphone or a condenser microphone? Model number would be nice to many things. So the microphone that I always use sitting at my desk in front of the computer, which is where I record, you know, 95% of my videos, this microphone here, this is a dynamic microphone. This is the Electrovoice RE27ND. This particular microphone is kind of a standard. You will see it in a lot of broadcast settings. You'll see sportscasters using it, any kind of podcasts that you watch. You know, typically you will spot this microphone being used. It's one of the more common ones being a professional kind of broadcast mic. It's very easy to spot too because of the unique body and of course the pop filter. Most people are going to have this rather unique circular pop filter on the front of it. So this microphone, the RE27ND, typically these days runs you around 500 to $550 US. So not a terribly cheap microphone, but most microphones that I would say are of this quality typically do run in that range. Another very popular one that a lot of people use is the Shure SM7B or something like that. It runs you around $400 or so. The Electrovoice models, there's several other Electrovoice models that people love to use. There's the RE20, there's also the RE320, and I want to say those run you in the $300 to $400 range as well. And all of those microphones are really good and all of them are kind of standards for this kind of work. Now I do have several other microphones laying around here. I have a shotgun microphone, which is a condenser microphone. I have the Sennheiser MKE 600 shotgun microphone. I actually have it attached to the stand that's actually holding this camera that I'm recording on. As a matter of fact, I could have plugged in that microphone and used audio from that microphone. But since I'm sitting at this desk where this microphone is, this will be better quality sound. The shotgun mic is appropriate if I was recording myself and I was sitting somewhere where I didn't have the option to plug in something like this. The shotgun mic is really nice, especially in studio settings where you're walking around and you can have the shotgun mic then attached to a camera or a boom arm. Somebody can follow you around with it. That's typically what you see big time tech tubers like Linus Tech-Dibs and Marquez Brownlee. You know, they're using shotgun mics rather than these kinds of dynamic microphones because these things again being broadcast kind of microphones, these are for when you're stationary and they can be put on a swivel arm and they have to be right here within just a few inches of your mouth where the shotgun mic can be several feet away. The audio quality won't be quite as good, but you do have the benefit when you're using a shotgun mic is the shotgun mic of course is not in the frame of the camera, which is really nice. That's why a lot of people use them is because they don't want this big honking microphone in the camera frame with them. For me, I don't mind so much for the kind of work I do, but for other people, depending on the kind of video content you're making, having a microphone in frame is kind of a big deal. I also have a condenser microphone at my house. I have the Blue Baby Bottle SL and I use that for when I stream at home just because it's a really nice mic. It's not a dynamic mic, which is more appropriate, but it's a condenser mic. It's still got a really good sound quality. The Blue Baby Bottle SL runs you around $400. So that is what I use if I have to stream from home. I also have some other cheaper microphones around. I have my old Blue Yeti, which is a USB microphone. The Blue Yeti is actually a pretty good USB microphone if you're just getting started doing video content. The Blue Yeti, I want to say cost you around $100, $120 bucks or something. The price is being inflated. It wouldn't shock me if it's more of like $150 microphone these days from compared to when I first bought it. But a high quality USB microphone like the Blue Yeti is a good investment before spending $500, $600 on some of the microphones that I have. And of course, I bought several of these high price microphones, but it's not the microphone that's all the cost because then you have to buy the shock mount here, which cost me probably $50 bucks. And then I had to buy the boom arm, the swivel arm. That cost me another $100 bucks. You're talking about $700, $800 bucks just for the arm, the shock mount, the pop filter, the microphone. And then you have to plug in these XLR mics to an interface. You have to have an audio interface or you have to have some kind of mixing board that you can plug this thing into that the mixing board would then plug into your computer. Good audio interfaces or mixing boards are going to run you, I mean, for beginner kinds of audio interfaces are going to run you $150, $200. Once you get into more expensive ones, you can spend several hundred dollars on the audio interfaces. So if you're just getting into creating video content or maybe you're doing audio only podcasting, I would start with something like the Blue Yeti first before making a gigantic investment until you actually know that you're creating this content and you're actually going to stick with it. Otherwise, you could end up spending a whole bunch of money on equipment that in the end, you don't really need. And the next question is, hey, DT, what do you have in that giant mixer rig? So what he's asking about here is the audio server rack that you see behind me in most of my videos. I'll try to post a picture here. I'll place a picture here on screen so you guys can see exactly what he's asking about. So what this server rack is, it's a standard server rack. This is a five foot tall server rack. It's actually on wheels, so it rolls around, which is really nice. But being a server rack, I could use it for standard server stuff. I could actually get some blade servers. I could get some rack mounted servers, things like a NAS, for example, if I wanted a rack mounted NAS or I could rack mount a Raspberry Pi cluster or something cool like that. But I actually just use it for audio equipment because many of your higher end audio equipment actually is designed for being mounted to a standard size computer rack. So what you guys saw on that picture starting from the top to the bottom, you have an LED light strip that just gives me some nice lighting. It's just for aesthetics because it's in the background of my videos. Then you have, of course, the mixing board that is the Maxi Pro 12 FX mixing board. Then you have the Behringer Sonic Exciter that just livens up mid ranges for some of the audio. Then I have a power strip by Furman. Then I have a NETI PR8 that is a preamp. So that's a eight channel preamp. So I can have up to eight microphones plugged in. And then next you see two EQs. Those are 231S's. So I have two of those. And the 231S is a dual channel EQ. And because I have two of them, I could actually use up to four microphones with those two EQs. And then below that, I have two 166XS's. And those are Expander Limiter Gates as a compressor, essentially. And those are dual channel. And because I have two of them, once again, I can have up to four microphones. Essentially, everything I have in that server rack, it allows me, if I wanted to like do your standard like four person podcast, like I had a table with four microphones in the room, they were all the same microphone. I could actually plug everything into the four available channels on all of my equipment, because all of my equipment should have at least four channels available. Some have more than that. But I could actually have four microphones with the exact same settings, and they all should sound exactly the same. Now I never actually done that because I don't do any of these kinds of podcasts with other people, not especially live in the same place. But if I ever wanted to get into something like that, I'm all set up for it. Moving on. Hey, DT, what headset are you using? So he wants to know about the headphones. I typically don't wear headphones in my videos. Typically, the only time you see me wear headphones is either when I'm live streaming, because I have to. Otherwise, the audio coming from the stream would bleed into the microphones, right? Or if I'm doing prerecorded stuff where I'm playing music or video on video, and again, if it came through speakers, it would bleed through the microphone, and you get this really annoying feedback. So anytime you do video content, if you're playing any kind of sounds through speakers, it's going to affect the microphone. So you never can do that. So anytime you're in a situation like that, you have to wear headphones, either just cheap earbuds, or if you actually want to monitor good audio, then get you some high-end headphones. I have a couple of pairs of headphones. So typically, if I'm not going to be wearing headphones for very long, and I don't really care about the sound quality, I just use this cheap pair here. So this is a pair of Audio Technica ATH M40s. And I want to say I paid $50, $60 for these when I bought them. Now, the prices of headphones, all the Audio Technica headphones, especially, but just tech in general, inflated prices, this Audio Technica M40s now, I want to say cost you like $80, $100. It's ridiculous, because again, I probably paid $50 for those headphones. Those are okay. I mean, those are, you know, okay. They're definitely better than like earbuds, right? They're much better than that. But those are not high, high-end headphones. The high, high-end headphones, like if I'm really wanting to monitor audio and hear every little detail, or if I'm listening to music and I want, you know, the best audio quality, this is typically what I use. These are Audio Technica ATH M1000s. And I want to say I paid about $400 for these. I bought these a couple of years ago with the inflated prices now. I checked before starting this recording. I want to say now, these headphones cost you around $600. But man, they're comfortable. These headphones, you probably can see on the video here. They've got this felt padding. So you can wear these all day and they're comfortable. Wear that cheap pair of Audio Technica M40s with the kind of faux leather padding. It gets warm. It gets hot. It's uncomfortable. You know, I had to wear them for an hour or so. Okay. But if you're doing several hours, no. This much easier on your ears. You get less hot. They're also open back. And of course, the sound quality on these things is just amazing. Moving on to the next question. Now, this question has more to do with software than hardware or tech gear. It kind of deals a little bit with hardware, though. He asks, hey, DT, will you take a look at get T? So get T is another get repository hosting platform, similar to something like GitHub or GitLab. So I have all of my Git repositories hosted on GitLab. I've been a happy GitLab user for four or five years now. Would I look at Get T? Well, Get T is more of you host your own instance of Get T, right? You host your own Git server using the Get T software. I would have to manage that server, you know, that piece of hardware. And typically, I don't like managing servers for things that I could get for free, because GitLab, obviously, is all free. I'm not paying GitLab anything to host all of those Git repositories. So why would I move to Get T? Get T would be nice if I wanted to host my own Git instance, my Get T instance. But if I wanted to do that, I'm already a GitLab user. GitLab offers the same thing. I could actually have my own GitLab server. You know, I could call it dtsgitlab.com, right? You go to dtsgitlab.com. And if I install the GitLab software on my server, it would be like an instance of GitLab. It would just be my GitLab with my repositories. And I could set up rules. Maybe you couldn't even view the source code and everything on my repositories, unless you were a member and signed up to dtsgitlab.com, yada, yada, yada. It's really cool that you could do that. I'm not interested in that. I'm just putting my source code on these public repositories for free for people to look at and to actually be shared to the world. I know some people actually need to maintain their own Git servers. And that's cool. If you're one of those people, I'm not. So that's why I'm never probably going to look at Get T. If I really wanted to host my own Git server, I probably would just host my own GitLab instance, because I already know about GitLab. And the next question is about monitors. Hey, DT, what monitors? And I actually had one very similar. Hey, DT, just want to know why is your desktop so zoomed out? Is it some resolution stuff or something else? I kind of like that, by the way. I get a lot of questions about the monitors I'm using. And sometimes I get questions about the resolution of the monitors I'm using. So what monitor? So I have a triple monitor set up both at home and here in the office at home. I have three very old monitors at this point that I probably bought 10 years ago. They're 24 inch monitors, three 24 inch monitors on a planar triple monitor stand that the monitors themselves, I want to say are really cheap Acer monitors that I probably paid 100 bucks a piece for 10 years ago. They're not anything special, but they still work. And I have no problems, you know, using them. So that's why I've kept them the monitors here. Yeah, I bought these monitors when I moved in the office, because I'm so used to having a triple monitor set up at home. I also wanted triple monitors here. So I bought three 24 inch AOC brand monitors, nothing special. I want to say they were 140 bucks a piece, the three 24 inch monitors, they're on a triple monitor mount by a company called Wally. I actually did a video about the triple monitor Wally mount and how I've got everything set up on the desk here at the office. Check out some of those older videos if you're interested about the gear. Now the guy that asked about why is my desktop so zoomed out. Keep in mind, I actually, I don't have the greatest eyes. The fonts and everything on my desktop are actually rather comfortable for me to read. But when you're viewing them, especially if you're viewing them on mobile, yeah, everything on my desktop probably looks really small. That's why I always zoom way in. Like if I open a terminal or if I open Emacs, or even if I open a web browser, typically, I know the the key bindings to zoom in and those applications. So I zoom way in so you guys can read the text. You know, sometimes if I show you my desktop, not zoomed in, which is how you guys see it most of the time is when I'm really zoomed in. If you guys see it in its normal state, you think, wow, that's unusually small. What's DT doing? He must have like this gigantic ultra wide 4k monitor. No, these are just all 1920 by 1080. So it's just a kind of an optical illusion. You've probably just so used to seeing me zoomed in with gigantic text that when you see me actually reading normal text on the screen, it just seems weird. And while we're on this topic, let me give you one pro tip. If you're thinking about doing some YouTube content where you record your desktop, anytime you record your terminal emulator, your text editor or your web browser, zoom in. Zoom way in. It should be huge font, because if you don't, I'm telling you now people in the comments are going to complain relentlessly, because they're not going to be able to read anything you're doing, especially if they're watching you on a mobile device. There's no way they're going to be able to read anything going on in that terminal or that text editor. Always zoom in. Moving on, another question I get all the time. Hey, DT, why don't you make videos on how to build hardware? I'm not a hardware geek. I've never been one of these people that enjoyed building computers. I can crack the case and I can change parts. I mean, I know I know how things work in a computer, but I don't like building computers. Typically, I like software. I'm a software geek. I like playing with complicated pieces of software like Tatin Live and Blender and Gimp and Emacs. I like scripting and I like programming. I like building the software that runs on the hardware. I don't like hardware. That's typically you have two kinds of people. You have the people that are really into hardware and building the machine, and then you have the people that are really into the software and then building the stuff that runs on that machine. I've always been one of those software people. That's why you've never really seen that kind of hardware stuff on my channel. That's not me. And the final question on this special gear edition of Hey DT is, Hey DT, I heard you have 128 gigs of RAM. Do you think it's overkill? All right. Well, you heard wrong. On my main production machine here, I have only 64 gigs of RAM. On my home computer, I have 32. No, I have 16. I purchase 16 gigs of RAM with my home computer with the intention of eventually upgrading it to 32 if needed. But honestly, 16 is fine for the home computer because I don't do the kind of work on that home computer that I do here. Originally, I thought I may do some like video editing and stuff at home. But honestly, I've probably edited maybe five videos ever from my house since moving into this office over a year ago. So the 16 gigs of RAM is fine for the home computer. The 64 gigs of RAM on the main production machine, is it overkill? Absolutely not. My machine, you actually can use that RAM. Most people think that, you know, eight gigs of RAM, 16 gigs of RAM is plenty for what everybody does. But that's because you haven't actually used the kinds of programs that would actually use that RAM. For what most people use a computer for, 16 gigs of RAM is plenty. You're never going to use more than that. But when you get into things like video editing, 3D animation stuff with things like Blender, those programs can actually suck up all of that RAM. I can actually put all of that 64 gigs of RAM to work. So no, it's not overkill for me. Now for you, if you didn't do the kind of stuff I did, would it be overkill for you? Yes, you would spend hundreds of dollars on a whole bunch of RAM that would never get used for me. I actually put that RAM to work. And I get that kind of question all the time when people see some of the specs on the equipment that I use. And I'm sure other content creators that have higher end equipment even more so than me, you know, hey, why do you have this space age kind of machine? Or what are you doing? That's overkill. You don't need all of that hardware. Well, oh, actually we do, right? That's why we purchased it is because, yes, we actually do need that hardware. Now before I go, I need to thank the producers of this episode. I need to thank Dustin Gabe James, Matt Maxim, Michael Mitchell, Paul West, Wanyam, all homie Allen, Armored Dragon, Chuck, Commander, Ingrid, Yo-Kai, Dylan, Marsdrom, Erion, Alexander, Peace, Arch, and Vador, Polytech, Realiteakth, Relets, Fred, Profit, Steven, Tools, Devler, and Willie. These guys, they're my high-steered patrons over on Patreon without these guys. This episode of Haiti would not have been possible. The show is also brought to you by each and every one of these fine ladies and gentlemen. All these names you're seeing on the screen right now. These are all my supporters over on Patreon because I don't have any corporate sponsors. I'm sponsored by you guys, the community. If you like my work and want to see more videos about free and open source software and Linux and cool stuff, right? And me rambling. Subscribe to DistroTube over on Patreon. All right, guys. Peace. 128 gigs of RAM is an overkill. It's just damn expensive.