It doesn’t matter what audio interface I use, the XLR ports never seem to be where
I want! The front, the back, too low to the desk, angled in a weird way… NO MORE!
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$15 gets you a right-angle XLR male to female adapter that can help you get your XLR plug
going exactly where you want. If it’s facing the wrong way, simply remove this screw, rotate the
pin hub inside here, and put the screw back in and BAM facing the other way. This seems simple,
but when you’ve plugged and replugged enough XLR setups or gotten annoyed enough with the direction
of your XLR cables, this can help a lot - especially for scenarios where you have the GoXLR
on a stand and the XLR is just awkwardly shooting out the top, this helps you pull it to the back.
OR you could stack two of these and take front-facing XLR ports and feed them to the
back - though at the cost of potentially blocking top controls on your interface.
Once your microphone is hooked up how you like, you might notice that your keyboard
is making a whole lot of noise that you don’t want your audience to hear.
First step would be getting you a lovely VHS-themed desk mat from
[eposvox.gg/merch](http://eposvox.gg/merch) - but AFTER that, $13 gets you THIS little baggy. They
might look like replacement bands for braces, but in fact they’re O-Rings for mechanical keyboards.
Mechanical keyboards tend to produce sounds in two ways: The “click” of a tactile switch as it
actually actuates and sends the keystroke to your computer, and the “bottoming out” of the key stem
hitting your keyboard as you press it all the way against the board. Tactile switches are easier on
my hands, because I’m less likely to bottom them out in general, but some switches - like MX Blues
for example - can still be quite harsh on the ears when bottomed out, and these o-rings help
reduce that. They basically act as a bumper pad to keep you from bottoming out, absorbing
both some of the force of you typing down and some of the sound that is produced. They can be a bit
tedious to install, and won’t be compatible with more exotic key stems, but it’s probably time you
cleaned your keyboard anyway, so throw these on after you’re done giving it a good scrub.
I guess this month’s ThriftCast is audio heavy because next up we have a gaming headset. Yes,
really. Don’t tune out yet. For just $76, you get some premium features that used to be exclusive to
much higher-end headsets - such as a detachable microphone, locking detachable cable - the cable
is also soft braided and has an inline mute switch and volume dial. The cable isn’t very long, but
they do include a bag to keep it in and a 4-pole to dual 3.5mm splitter for compatibility.
Comfort is fine for a solid band headset, it’s not heavy enough to
weigh the top of your head too much, and the earpads are soft but not super dense.
While obviously people feel one way or another about gaming headsets,
I think this is perfect for the console gamer or console streamer who just wants
to connect their headset to their controller - or to the Chat Link Pro to stream this audio
like we showed in last month’s episode - and not think too much about it. Cooler Master
isn’t selling you on some awful virtual surround nonsense, or over-playing how great it’ll sound,
it’s just a basic closed-back gaming headset that gets the job done.
Sound-wise, it’s not particularly detailed,
but the bass is also conservative and doesn’t overpower the sound, which is great for gaming.
Without some EQ-ing you might not have the most precise far-range footstep senses,
but it’s good enough for most gaming. Sound isolation is pretty solid, too.
Mic-wise, well… you’re hearing it now. It’s a gaming headset microphone. But it’s better
than a laptop built-in mic, or many cheaper headsets for sure. Just gotta master positioning.
Now that your audio is situated, video still needs addressed. If your viewers can’t see you at
all - you can fix that for $23. This is the IFROO HD webcam. In the broad market of cameras and
webcams, it sucks, calling it 1080p is generous for the video it provides, it only does 30FPS
at any resolution, it’s USB 2.0 so you only get pre-compressed MJPEG and H264 video streams, and
the manual settings aren’t configured correctly like most cheap webcams - but it’s $23. If you’re
just video conferencing, teaching, or doing your first stream, **this is literally all you need**.
Before buying anything expensive, you can look into free tools like Nvidia Broadcast or the
gamut of OBS plugins to help make it look a little nicer, and there’s nothing wrong with doing this.
If you do upgrade to another camera down the line, you can still use this one for a secondary
camera angle, a mouse or keyboard cam, project or overhead cam, that kind of thing. You’ll need
an active USB extension cable since IFROO didn’t utilize a detachable cable option, but it has a
monitor clamp, pivotable ball head, and a tripod threaded tap, so mounting options are plentiful.
Your viewers or callers can see you now, but can you see them? Acer has a high refresh rate monitor
for only $130. This is definitely reaching to the top-end of what I’d consider budget for
this series - and honestly I’d recommend looking on Craigslist or Facebook marketplace to get a
used monitor before buying new, but this SB220Q monitor gets you 21.5 inches, minimal bezels,
and 75hz at full HD! Most streamers, or computer users in general lately, IMMENSELY benefit from
dual monitors, so picking this up for your chat or monitoring OBS is a no brainer.
It’s IPS so colors and viewing angles will be great, AND it runs at 75hz, so if this happens to
be your main monitor or something you travel with, you’ll still have a pretty smooth experience.
My only gripe is the lack of VESA mounting support - I don’t think monitors should be
allowed to release without VESA mounts, BUT it’s SUPER thin and very lightweight so you
could… get creative with it, of course.
What’s better than cheap? FREE! This is the free app segment of this show
and we’ve actually got a two-for-one this month, as I think the two run hand in hand.
The first app is WizTree - this is a tool that will scan your hard drives and show you a visual
map of what is eating up space on it so you can manage and reclaim some space. I often have random
caches or temporary files get bloated that I no longer need and this makes it super easy to sniff
those out. You may have heard of WinDirStat - this is like the superfast version of that. Wiztree
only takes a few seconds, whereas WinDirStat could often take MINUTES just to show drive contents.
Once you’ve analyzed your drive, you can then use the second program, Compactor,
to freely compress your files and reclaim all kinds of space. Compactor leverages the fairly
new filesystem compression first introduced in Windows 10 (but also works with Windows 11
of course) and gives you a GUI for that built-in tool and allows you to squeeze so much more space
out of your hard drives. This leverages modern compression algorithms which run super lightweight
so you get zero performance detriment while using this. It’s honestly like magic. I’ve been using it
for a few weeks while waiting on a bigger boot SSD to show up in the mail and it’s been a LIFE SAVER.
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If that’s not enough money-saving for you, watch the first episode of ThriftCast
with lots more budget gear goodness, or check out this playlist of OBS
plugins to keep getting more out of your free streaming software. Remember: Be kind, Rewind.