Studio Setups: Behind the Scenes with Ian Anderson Gray

[0:42] And the whole point of this is to say that you don't need, a mega complicated professional setup. You can actually start off with something really simple.

[0:50] But we'll be showing you lots of different studio setups. We'll be showing some of the, the really fancy stuff, some of the simple stuff as well. Because sometimes, the tech gets in the way. From creating that content, but sometimes we can level things up and create a really cool professional setup as well.

[1:08] So there's, loads in here for you now, because it's around Easter time, we've had family staying and things are all over the place. were doing something a little bit different today. So instead of Special guest you've got me and I'm going to be sharing my behind the scenes and the story of my studio setup as well Which I'm excited about we'll get back to a special guest next week.

[1:30] Very excited about that But yeah brief history about me. I mean I back 20 odd years ago. I trained as a professional singer I was singing around the UK. I was teaching singing as well I wasn't doing what I'm doing today. So this has been quite a gradual process. Back in around 2011, 2012, I set up my blog, created a podcast back in 2012.

[1:55] In fact, you can probably still find it. It's called Seriously Social News. It's very old now. And I started off with a very simple setup. It was just my old laptop. It was a PC laptop, a Dell laptop. And I had, I think it was a Logitech C920. webcam, although the podcast was audio only. So the, only thing I really needed was the laptop and a microphone.

[2:19] And at the time it was the blue Yeti microphone, which was a USB microphone. The thing with that one that kind of held me back, I think was two, two things. The first of all, it was all about the, latest social media news. That was great, except for the fact that the episodes were out of date, by a week later, they were completely out of date.

[2:40] And I listened back to an episode the other day, and it was all about Google and Facebook doing, I can't even remember what it was, but it was something that was not relevant for today. The other thing was that I was a bit of a perfectionist. I'm, a recovering perfectionist, and I think it would take me like a whole day, possibly a day and a half to Record and edit these episodes and there were only 10 minute episodes, which is completely nuts now the and the other thing was the microphone the blue yeti microphone Was it looked great, but the problem with that was that it was picking up the sounds From around the house and back in 2011 Our kids were like two and my daughter was probably about three then I think so It's a bit I had to record at different times of the day and stuff like that You in order to make that work.

[3:31] So yeah, that's, how I started, but over the years I've, I'm a big believer in bootstrapping and gradually growing your studio. I, got a better microphone later. So this was back in probably 2016. I upgraded to the microphone I've got today, which is the Heil PR 40 and I upgraded my camera. And it's, taken a long time.

[3:54] And I'm glad in a way that it has because I've focused on the real problem for me and for many, which was Confidence of getting in front of the camera. Originally, I was really quite scared about it. And also confidence in front of the microphone. And thinking about the content is the most important thing.

[4:16] Audio matters. Absolutely. Video matters slightly less importantly, but it still matters. But that's yeah, that was my journey. let's, focus on what I've currently got. And this has changed really in the last two or three years, particularly my microphone setup.

[4:34] I have my high on my PR 40 microphone and I have it in shot because it's a dynamic microphone. Now I know this isn't everyone's cup of tea. We had Bob gentle on my show a couple of weeks ago and the in camera shot, they the microphone right close up to you. Isn't the kind of look that he's looking for.

[4:53] For me, I quite like the look, and I've got some branded, I've got a microphone flag here at the top, which I got I can't remember the name of the company, they're a US based company, but you can get your own microphone flags, and this gives a bit of branding, it looks professional, so for me, professional.

[5:11] That's really important. I want it to look professional, but most importantly, I want it to sound really good. The quality of the sound is really important to me, particularly for podcasts. I think if people find the audio difficult to listen to, then they're they're going to turn off or it's going to be frustrating for them.

[5:34] And I want this to be a really good experience and sound for me, as a, musician, as a singer. is important. yeah, I've got the, I've got the Harpy R40 microphone. It's in a shock mount, which means that if I I don't know, wiggle the table or whatever, the no fewer vibrations are going to come into the microphone and the sound.

[5:56] So that's good. It reduces the amount of knocks and bumps and things like that. I've got a pop filter, and to be honest, with the PR 40 you don't really need this extra pop filter because there is a pop filter built into the PR 40. But, why not? And it looks good. So I've got that I've also got this boom arm here which is the PLT PL Yeah, PL2T which is a nice one.

[6:22] This is actually from Heil and you can actually feed the cable through the top. So it's got like a nice, it looks nice and tidy. Now the question is for me, what's, am I going to carry on with this over, overhead one, or do I go for the low profile? And I'm not entirely sure. I might be thinking about going.

[6:43] low profile, which means that the microphone will just pop up here and you don't see the boom arm, which is better for video. I'd love to know what you think about that. It's something I'm thinking about. So microphone is really important. Now this is Not a USB mic. So back in the day I had the, blue Yeti and that was USB only.

[7:03] And the great thing about that is you plug it into your computer and you're away. With this, it's not particularly cheap mic this, but you have to also get an audio interface. Back in the day when I bought this, I got the zoom recorder and I can't remember the name of it, but it was a portable, it's a portable recorder, audio recorder with XLR, but it also acts as a audio interface.

[7:26] So you can plug the microphone into that and then that's into your computer. Not something I particularly recommend, but it was it was recommended at the time and it had the benefits of being able to be like a portable recorder. So you could take it to events and be able to record it on there.

[7:43] But then the next one, the next thing that I got was the Scarlett the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2, which is that a digital audio interface. It's got two XLR inputs or two line inputs, and then you can plug that into your computer. So it allows you, it's an interface for up to two microphones to plug into your computer.

[8:04] And my wife still uses that downstairs. It's a really good piece of kit. If you're wanting something super simple, the, either the Solo or the 2i2 are great. It's a great audio interface. There's nothing complicated. It just does what it says it does. Then I also got this thing called the DBX286S.

[8:22] I wouldn't recommend that today because it just, it's basically an audio processing unit and this helped. Enrich my sound and get rid of any background noises It was it's an amazing piece of kit, but I had so many problems with it to get it set up correctly so many knobs and dials on it and it just ended up being really complicated and I had lots of problems with it so I still have that somewhere upstairs, but i'm not using that so then the next thing that I got I did Ditched all of those and I got the Roadcaster, the first Roadcaster and that really liked that because it was I wouldn't say it was simple to use.

[9:04] It was, it had, it was reasonably complicated, but a lot more simple than the dbx286s. It has a, it had a mixer in there. It had the audio processing. So it really made my voice sound great. It had a recorder in there. And to be honest, I'd still be using that today except for the fact that RØDE sent me out the RØDECaster Pro 2, the updated model, which is even, it, the only problem with this is it's a little bit more complicated still.

[9:30] So the, one I'd recommend for most people today would either be the Scarlett Focusrite Solo, that's the simple one, or if you're wanting something that enhances your voice, I think the, Duo, the RØDECaster Duo is the one because it's a much smaller unit. It's. It's, I'm not going to say it's super simple, but it's, fairly easy to set up.

[9:52] So yeah, that's what I've currently got today. I've got the RODECaster Pro 2. That is awesome. It enhances my voice, gets rid of any background noise. It has, a recording facility. It has lots of other things. To be honest, I don't really use most of the other stuff. So I've got that. I've got the microphone cameras.

[10:10] Now I've had a bit like Bob he was on the show a few weeks ago, had a few kind of problems with cameras. I first of all had the C920 Logitech camera, which is fine as a basic camera. Then I got the, and I'm looking over here. Obviously, if you listen to the podcast, you can't see me looking, but I've actually still got my Canon M50 camera, which is a mirrorless camera.

[10:33] And I have the kind of pancake lens on it. I can't remember exactly what it is. It's the Mark I. The problem with the Mark I is that it, yeah, it basically, you have to plug it into your computer via USB. So you can't plug the HDMI out into your computer. We're getting a bit techie today, but because it does not have what we call a clean output.

[10:58] So when you plug that into a capture card, into your computer, you get all the kind of text on the screen, which isn't great. There may be ways around on the mark one, but it's not simple. And so I use USB goes into e comm live and I have. I read reasonably good. it's actually really good.

[11:18] The, quality is pretty good. But, the issue is that the camera kept on switching off. And the second thing was that the quality is not 1080 P it's 720 or even less than that. but the big problem was that it kept on shutting down, shutting and I've tried lots of settings on there.

[11:36] And it's just really annoying. So I couldn't rely on that anymore. So that's why I upgraded, or I got a new camera, the Sony ZV E10. I think it is, or for my American friends, ZV E10 and a Sigma lens. And this is the one that I'm currently using as my main camera. I use the Canon as a second camera when it doesn't switch off, at least it works most of the time.

[11:59] And that's great. And I have a teleprompter. In front of that with a little monitor. So it's actually technically this teleprompter is for it's for an iPad, but I have a field monitor, which is a little flat monitor, which I use instead of the iPad. And I plug that into my Mac. So that is a second monitor.

[12:19] And the cool thing about this 4k, but it says it's 4k, but it's not really, it's a field monitor is that it flips. The, you can flip the view. So it means that I can actually see text on the screen. I can see the people I'm looking at on zoom and I'm going to also look at the camera at the same time. So it's really good.

[12:40] So yeah, those are my camera setups, lighting lighting. I've had loads of problems with lighting. So over the years, I've, I used to use these led lights from a company called newer, which is with two E's. And. Yeah, N E W E R, I think. LED lights. They were really good, actually. The ones I've got at the moment are the Elgato Key Lights.

[13:01] And the thing I like about these Is that I can control them from my computer so I can adjust the color temperature and the brightness They're not particularly cheap. But if you wanting that control, I think they're great. There are lots of other ways lots of other Lighting setups you can do but I really like the key lights.

[13:21] They're great computer So i've used lots of Different computers over the years. I started off with a Dell laptop. I'm then moved over to a MacBook Pro I'm now my main computer here. My studio is an M1 Mac mini They're really as far as Macs are concerned at least they are relatively inexpensive you can get them really decent ones under a thousand dollars thousand pounds and It's an M1 Okay, it's not state of the art anymore, but for most of what I do, it's really good I could do with a faster one for some of the more hardcore streaming stuff that I sometimes do or for video editing But for most of the stuff I do the m1 is absolutely fantastic And I use I mean I've used so many different tools, but in my ecom live is one of them I use that for, most of my streaming and for recording videos and things like that.

[14:11] What else do I use? Screenflow is a great tool for recording for my screen. Lots and lots of different tools, which I'll probably come to in a future episode. So there we go. That's my setup. Instead, in terms of workspace personalization, one of the Best things I've invested in, I think, is my standing desk.

[14:34] this is from a company in the UK called Frisca Desk. And it's just beautiful. It's a really quite a big desk. I've got a big setup here. I've got my, I've got my Rodecaster over there. It's which gives me a nice amount of space here. Cable management is really cool. So that's, really good.

[14:54] I've got some little, fake plants around for a bit of greenery as well. I, really want to spend a bit more time though on making this a little bit more of a pleasant place to work in because in front of me, I've got this white wall, which is not so inviting. But behind me, I've spent a lot of time on the behind me because the wall behind me, it looks like a brick wall.

[15:20] It's actually wallpaper. I shouldn't have you. Said that really I've shared my secret. I've got a Calac unit from Ikea with an on air sign. I've got lots of other things. They're like headphones. Which for display purposes, I've got my old ZX Spectrum computer there. I've also got a plant there in the background.

[15:41] I'm still working on that. I'm not spending a huge amount of time on that. I've not spent much time on kind of RGB lighting or anything like that because Actually, what I'm really focusing on is the content and I could spend, go down a rabbit hole and spend too much time on that. So I forgot to talk about actually other things that I've got on my desk stream decks.

[16:01] So I've actually, this is completely over the top for most people, but I've actually got three stream decks in front of me. I've got two of the big ones. They're the, XL ones. And then I've got one standard one. And the reason I've got two XLs is because I do a lot of Producing for events. Most people won't need this, but I found that I've used one of the big stream decks for like different scenes and camera angles and playing videos, ending and starting the stream in the video.

[16:32] The other one is if we have multiple speakers. Or multiple sessions throughout the day, I can put all of those like the slides or the backup video and things like that for all on, on there. So I don't have to look around for them. They're all there. And then the small stream deck is for things like being able to mute the microphone and simple things like that where I'm.

[16:54] It's something that I might need like immediately, like, there's an emergency and I need to, I'm about to cough. I can press the mute mic button. I'm not staring in front of lots and lots of buttons with the big XL stream decks. yeah, I've got, that. What else have I got? Obviously the, yeah, the, camera to plug it into my computer.

[17:14] I need a capture card. So I'm using the. Elgato Cam Link 4K for that. I'm trying to think if there's anything else that I've got. Yeah, my display is something that I want to upgrade. I've got a very old Samsung monitor. I'd like to get a big widescreen one, but that's where I am at the moment. , so I suppose I've shared some of the things that I want to do next.

[17:33] Yeah, one of the things I'd love to invest in is a much bigger screen because I've only got a small one here and I've got the little teleprompter screen. The other thing I'd like to do is upgrade my computer. I've got an old MacBook pro now, 2018, which is an Intel one. And it's starting to get really quite slow for some of the stuff that I would like.

[17:55] Yeah. But these things are expensive. So we'll, see. One of the questions that I tend to ask my guests are my dream setup imagining budget and space weren't issues What would your ultimate setup look like and I don't really know if i'd spend Much more. certainly the, display, definitely.

[18:13] I'd have maybe the, Mac studio or the updated MacBook pro I would like to have a NAS set up for backups. this is a, because. it's, good to back up lots of times, not particularly exciting also to have one of these on, on, on interrupted power supplies. So if there are any power cuts like that I can keep going.

[18:35] Not that we tend to have power cuts very often. Maybe have a another microphone as well. So have a shotgun microphone as well as this. So if I want to have a microphone out of shot video, I can just switch microphones. But yeah instead of, in terms of the challenges that I've had, I think cameras and lighting are the ones that I've struggled with.

[19:01] Yes, I have had my audio problems over the time, but I think I was able to fix those and I was confident that I was able to fix those. I, think if I had my time again, I would have not gone down the complicated route, the dbx286s, although a really cool piece of kit. I think I spent too much time messing around with that.

[19:19] And I could have just gone for something simple and created good content. So yeah, I think lighting camera and also behind the scenes as I found that quite challenging, I think as well. So if I was to recommend for beginners setting up, I think what I'd recommend is go for a decent microphone first.

[19:39] If you've got the budget, yes, I love the Heil, but there's also this, the Shure mics, maybe go for something that's USB only. So not USB But make sure it has XLR as well so that when you do upgrade later, you can get something like a RØDECaster Duo or the, or Scarlett 2i2 or Solo. So yeah, I would say that in terms of cameras, use your phone.

[20:03] So like the, latest iPhones you can use with your computer as a webcam, they are fantastic. And instead of having to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds on the setups like that I've got why not use one of those so I think that is good lighting as well. I think if you can get the lighting So yeah, first one is microphone it doesn't have to be an expensive microphone, but one that has usb and xlr I think would be good and your iphone or android phone if you can get that working, that's what i'd recommend cool Okay so I think it is time.

[20:36] This is going to be very strange is to ask myself the rapid fire questions which is very strange because I'm asking the questions and answering at the same time So this could I don't know what's this gonna be like, let's see if I can get this working okay. Here we go. So the first question i'm asking myself is what's best going solo or with guests, I actually I do like guests.

[20:59] I do like guests because it's fun. Coffee or tea while recording definitely tea. I love coffee, but I unfortunately can't have it anymore because gives me heart palpitations stream deck essential or optional definitely optional but it does help green screen or natural background most of the time natural background always definitely but green screen can help in certain situations background music mood setter or distraction for me unless it's specifically to help me focus like brain fm headphones yay or nay absolutely definitely Headphones standing desk or sitting desk standing desk for me mac or pc depends but for me at the moment Mac webcam or fancy camera for me, I think fancy camera, but again depends when you're starting teleprompter.

[21:40] Yes or no? Yes, definitely Microphone in or out of shot definitely in shot ring lights good or bad in my opinion I got through 12 of those. That was quick, but I can't, I'm cheating because I, made these questions in the first place. So there we go. Let's go back to here. So there we go.

[22:00] That is the quickfire round. That is it really. I I think I managed to get through all of those things. I hope you found that interesting. And we'll be back next week with a special guest. This season we're going to be going behind the scenes. If you know of anyone that you would. to see behind the scenes of this year set up.

[22:19] Let me know get in touch. My email is [email protected] and Yes, I think that's probably it for today. So thank you so much for plugging me into your ears for watching And do spread the word do let people know about this the show notes for this episode will be at iag.me/215 I had to remember the number there because I'm getting confused with all of these.

[22:44] But that is it for this week and until next time I encourage you to level up your impact, authority and profits through the power of confident live video. See you soon. Bye.

[22:53] Thanks for watching the Confident Live Marketing Show with Ian Anderson Gray. Make sure you subscribe at iag.me/podcast, so you can continue to level up your impact, authority and profits through the power of live video. And until next time. Toodaloo!