If you've watched any of my other videos at all over the past year, you might have noticed
that the set, the background where I record my content, has changed quite a bit.
Back in January of 2021, I was working out of a 1 bed flat in
East London where I lived with my girlfriend, and then we spent 6 months, from March 2021
to September of that year, living with my parents.
And that was because our house, the one that I'm in now, was being finished, and so I've
now got this awesome room to work from.
So, just like I did a tour of my temporary studio space back in April of last year, I
figured I would make a tour video of this new space, show you the gear that I'm currently
using for all of my various work projects, and give you an idea of my plans for the coming
year.
Now let me make this clear, I don't do this to brag or to flex in any way, I'm making
this video because I know there are lots of people out there just like me who absolutely
nerd out on content like this, and perhaps some of the things that I've done will give
you some inspiration for your own place.
And, I'd love to hear your thoughts and opinions on how I could make the space better, so do
leave a comment.
This space is the culmination of more than 10 years of working, saving and spending.
So, let's talk about the space first, this is a double bedroom, and it's a really decent
size, about 3 metres by 3 and a half metres, with this little alcove section over here,
so loads of space to work with.
Essentially, what I've done is created 4 areas of the room, I didn't intend to do that, before
we moved in I had all these grand plans of drawing out the space and modelling it out
and coming up with a really awesome design, but it turns out I've got absolutely no interior
design vision whatsoever, and so this room came together by accident really.
So, the 4 sections are storage over here, a bookcase over here, my voiceover booth over
here, and then my desk over here.
Let me show you each section in turn.
I'll start with the desk area, this is where I spend most of my time, it's where I'm recording
the A Roll for this video right now, I prop my camera up on the windowsill, and use the
Parrot teleprompter to help me record my videos, I've honestly tried ad-libbing them rather
than reading them from a prompter, but I just waffle on, they're much better this way.
The camera I'm using by the way is the phenomenal new Sony A7IV, I got this just before Christmas,
and every video on the channel since the Eufy video on the 17th December has been shot exclusively
using this camera.
It's incredible, before that I was using my Olympus OMD EM10 Mk3 which, as much as I like
it, just isn't great in low-light shooting conditions, or my iPhone 13 Pro, which is
a great camera phone, but isn't as good as a dedicated camera like this.
I'm still learning both photography and videography, and definitely not looking to turn this channel
into a photography channel, but if you'd be interested in a review of the A7IV, drop me
a comment and let me know.
OK, so the desk is a Jarvis desk, by a company called Fully.
I've had it a few years now, it's a sit-stand in white with white legs, and it's excellent.
I love that when I want to work sitting down, which is most of the day, I can do so, but
at a moment's notice, I can move to a standing position, it's got this memory function for
up to 4 working heights.
I am looking to swap this out, probably later on in the year, for a corner version of this
desk, in a darker colour, this white was bought for the flat we were living in a couple of
years ago, and I'd like something darker this time around, and Fully do an excellent L-shaped
version of this, which I really think would suit the corner setup I've got here.
On the desk itself then, is everything that I use on a daily basis to edit the digital
content that I create, and in case you didn't know, I work on various projects including
YouTube, voice overs for corporate clients, and educational content, and I essentially
do everything from here.
The heart of the operation is my 14 inch M1 Pro MacBook Pro, this is the base model with
no extras, 512gb SSD, 16gb of RAM and a 14 core GPU, and it's blazing quick when working
in Final Cut Pro, even with the high-end footage from the Sony A7IV.
There's not been a single time where it's struggled, all of my plugins work perfectly
on it, it's a super impressive computer.
It's replaced my M1 MacBook Air, and I'm working on content at the moment where I'm comparing
the two computers across a range of different tasks, keep an eye on the channel for that
new content coming soon.
The MacBook Pro gets it's charge via USB C, which is connected to this, my Pro Display
XDR.
I've had this for 18 months now, and yes it's an insanely expensive piece of hardware, but
I look at this as a builder investing in a decent van or tools, this is where I sit for
10 hours a day, 5 or sometimes even 6 days a week depending on how much work I've got
on, and for me, when I look at it that way, I can absolutely justify the cost of this.
It's a phenomenal display, and because it's Apple, it works flawlessly with my Mac, both
this and my M1 MacBook Air can power this in full 6K resolution.
The screen real estate is perfect for everything that I do, and I actually dual-screen it by
having the laptop on this stand next to the display, this stand is nothing special by
the way, it's a monitor arm with laptop holder, I just took the monitor arm off, and it cost
about £40.
The Pro Display is being held up by an Ergotron LX mount, this is designed for heavy-duty
displays, it cost about £200, but I just couldn't justify buying a Pro Display and
then mounting it on something that could break or drop it.
My mouse and keyboard are nothing special, these are the regular wireless mouse and keyboard
from Apple, I have considered swapping out to something like a Logitech alternative,
I just haven't justified spending the money yet, these do the job perfectly well.
Here on the left is my iPad Pro 2020 attached to the Magic Keyboard, and I keep this here
as a second screen, I sometimes have YouTube videos playing in the background while I'm
working, it sounds really silly but I actually really enjoy having like silent walking tours
or driving videos on in the background while I'm working sometimes, the view from my window
is lovely but it can get a bit boring, and it's sometimes nice to feel that connection
when you're working from home of seeing another part of the world.
Or, sometimes I might have my email open there, keeping it off of my main screens, and sometimes
if it's useful I use it with Sidecar, and it becomes a third display.
Audio is handled by these, my Genelec 8010As, I've owned these for about 9 years now, and
they still sound as good as the day that I bought them.
They're professional studio monitors, designed to deliver a really honest, flat audio experience,
and I've got them on these stands which help point them up and towards my ears.
They sound amazing, and they can get insanely loud if you need them to.
Powering them is my Universal Audio Apollo Twin interface, which not only allows me to
record using legendary Universal Audio pre amps, it also gives me access to a bunch of
UA plugins emulating classic audio gear like the Teletronic LA2A compressor, the Pultec
range of EQs and loads of others.
My only gripe with this interface is just how painfully slow Universal Audio are at
supporting the latest operating systems, and now, the latest Mac silicon, they STILL don't
officially support Monterey or even M1 Macs.
It's a real shame, and there's no excuse for it really, considering M1 Macs have been around
for over a year now, and although I can generally work with this interface without any major
issues, it is a bit buggy, due to that lack of proper compatibility.
Plugged into the Apollo are my headphones, these are SP-5s by Adam Audio, and they're
the best set of headphones I've ever owned, I use them whenever I want to edit video or
audio content without using my speakers, and they deliver that same clear, flat studio
quality sound that I get from my speakers.
I keep them hooked underneath the desk, please forgive the absolute lack of cable management
going on underneath here, I'm still working out the best way to deal with the mess of
cables that I currently have under the desk.
Attached to the desk are a couple of devices that help me with my filming.
First up is the Keylight by Elgato, which creates a nice bright yet soft light that
I can control via an app on my phone.
If I'm shooting A Roll, I have this pointed up towards the ceiling to bounce light down,
and if I'm shooting an unboxing on the desk, I flip the light around and point it directly
down.
Next to that is the microphone that I use when recording A Roll, this is the MKE600
microphone by Sennheiser, it's excellent and I'm able to position it just out of frame,
yet still pick up a great level of clear, vibrant audio as it's pointed directly down
to where I'm sitting.
It's a shotgun microphone, and I plug it directly into the Sony A7IV when filming for ease of
use, I could plug it into the Apollo if I needed to, but I just find it much easier
this way.
Both of those items are held in place using Elgato mounting arms.
Then, over here on the right is an Ikea lamp that comes with a built-in clamp, with a Hue
lightbulb inside of it.
The light was dirt cheap, it cost about £14, and the bulb was much more expensive than
that, but it does mean that I can control my desk lamp using the same Hue controls as
the other lights in the room.
Then, just over here to the left of the desk is a camera tripod setup, this is actually
a cheap light stand that I've added a ball head to, but it means that I can very quickly
set my camera up here facing towards me, and it gives me an alternative shooting angle
which is really good for any content where I'm demonstrating things on the computer,
for online courses, that kind of thing.
OK so, that's the desk area covered, let's move over now to my storage area.
This was actually extremely difficult to figure out what to do with, I wanted something that
would perfectly fit the space available here, and in the end I settled on two of these IKEA
metal frames.
They're designed for garages, and have a pretty impressive weight bearing load level, and
so they're perfect for this corner of my room.
I then picked up 6 of these plastic boxes from a local home store, and have labelled
each one up.
Right now, they've become a dumping ground for stuff, and my plan is to get into each
of them and do some more organising to help me to use them more effectively.
Up top I've got more boxes, and then I've got this little YouTube plaque.
Now obviously, this isn't an official one, my girlfriend had this made as a gift last
year when I first got monetised and it's therefore got a lot of sentimental value to me, but
it's also kind of nice to have it as a reminder of how far the channel has come along, I'm
edging ever closer to hitting that 10,000 subscriber mark, and did over 1 million views
last year, so I would like to take a moment to say a massive thank you to you, the people
who view my content, none of this would be possible without you, so thank you.
On the top left and right of the storage are two more IKEA lamps, the same as the one on
the desk, and again those have got Hue bulbs in, connecting them to the Hue network of
the rest of the room.
And, I'll just take a moment to show you that, I've got this Dimmer Switch V2 over here with
a socket cover that means that I now use this as my light switch when I walk into the room,
and it allows me to power all of the lights in the room on and off, as well as cycle through
the various scenes that I use which is really handy.
Let's bounce across quickly to the opposite corner of the room now to show you this, this
is my IsoVox vocal booth which I've owned for a few years now, it's been seriously well
used and abused unfortunately, but it doesn't matter, it still does the job.
Essentially, this is a small vocal booth that you walk into, you can prop your phone or
your tablet up on the shelf on the inside, and then you just do your voice over thing.
My fiancé and I actually have a voice over business that we run alongside all of the
other things that we do, and this booth is a pretty crucial part of that.
It doesn't completely shut out sound, but it massively reduces the impact of outside
audio, and gets rid of a lot of the room echo, and then these panels that I've hung up around
the room kind of get rid of the rest of the room echo, so I'm now seriously happy with
how our voice overs sound when we record them in this booth.
The microphone in here is a Shure SM7B, not a traditional voice over microphone I know,
but just a solid all-rounder that originally was purchased so that I could bounce between
using it here in the booth and also using it at my desk, but I've since purchased a
second microphone, I like this one so much.
So finally, the last part of the room is over here, this is a glass shelf unit that I also
purchased from Ikea, and this is definitely more of a decorative space at the moment,
I was using this as a background for videos, but I've since changed the look of my videos,
and so this area now only really features when I'm shooting training content at this
angle here.
I do also kind of use it as spillover storage, I've got some Apple boxes, my HomePod mini
which is connected and I do use, my spare SM7B microphone, my Olympus camera setup and
my windows laptop for if I ever create any Windows content.
And then down here, I've got a couple of items related to my love of music production, something
I used to do every day and now don't so often, but definitely want to get back into this
year.
So there you go, that's my office slash studio setup right now in early 2022.
I don't have any major plans for the space this year, other than perhaps being able to
swap out the desk here for something L-shaped in a darker colour, and perhaps a bit more
acoustic treatment, other than that I feel like I've kind of got the space how I want
it right now.
What do you think of it?
Any suggestions for changes that I could make?
Or want to let me know about something you're working on for your own setup at the moment?
Drop me a comment, and let's talk about it.
And as ever, if you found this video useful, do please consider leaving me a like, and
subscribing to my channel for more content like this in the future.
See you on the next video.