Studio Tour 2022 - Casual stroll through our hybrid setup

welcome back to the channel my name is stephanie and i'm memes today we're doing a studio tour finally this is our very first studio tour we were just thinking about it for quite some time we have been yeah the reason why we haven't done a studio tour yet is because historically i always change things around every six months pulled things out switching around all this stuff since the pandemic i actually haven't really changed things around a year and a half yeah almost yeah which is like a record actually for me not pulling everything apart so our studio is actually set up to be able to be uh relatively modular and we've had to make a lot of adjustments for doing youtube as well the more we've gotten into doing youtube content for the music production side the more adaption has happened with the the technology so i'm gonna try my best to be as descriptive as possible with how the setup is uh because it's definitely not a typical setup and uh you're gonna be a camera operator right that's right dp memes that's right director of photography i wish with this cinematic adventure all right let's get to it so starting over on this side uh i've got the micro freak i actually don't even have it plugged in audio wise i use this for some interesting sounds you know when i want something esoteric and all that um so it gets used from time to time but the main workhorse synths are honestly the um the summit and the pro 3 right here these get the job done for like 90 of the stuff that i need if i'm producing a track for working on something soundtracky or something like that and i need some sounds these like get the job done most of the time you have a peak you basically have a summit but the summit is like a jumbo peak it's got you know just basically two peaks plus some additional stuff which uh and also the keys itself the way the keyboard feels i really appreciate the feel of the keys as well pro 3 feels great too but uh those two workhorse synthesizers right there so moving on over to the desk setup which is messy right now we could have done some cleanup for this tour but we didn't well that's it's the creative process yeah you got to be messy sometimes just to be creative i'm managing wires and all that crap so one of my visions for having a desk set up like this was to be able to treat the gear as like kind of modules or modular not modular synth but like the gears are module to be able to put together some sort of production at any given time so the idea behind the desk is that i can swap in pieces of gear to experiment with to do sound design and all that at any given time and the way we achieve that is we have a patch bay on the side right here this patch bay has i believe it's 16 channels that are connected to our mixing board off to the side so this is where everything gets patched in when we're building a setup to do like jams and stuff typically the pro 3 and the summit are usually patched in all the time and where that ends up going is right here to our analog mixing desk the mackie onyx 1640i it's an old oldish one not old but you know it's like 15 years old or something like that it's kind of old yeah it gets kind of old it's not new the thing about this desk is it's got 16 direct outs and inserts so each channel 16 channels they all have direct outs and inserts on there so i can patch in analog gear and i can also have all the direct outs go out to our audio interface which is a motu a28 what was it again mo 2828es with a ao yes 24 ao so we have a total of 32 channels that can go out via analog if if we desire for our mixing purposes we don't always do that but sometimes we want to do analog hybrid mixes so that's the reason behind that and having it connected with the mackie mixer being able to output any of the 16 channels that we directly patch in to the board gives us the freedom so we don't always have to have a computer on we don't always have to track things to say ableton or anything like that we can just have an analog desk set up set up some gear and then uh make jams you know right tracks and that type of thing so let's go back over the desk here for a second because i didn't fully explain everything that's going on so now that you guys know the routing so when gear gets hooked up onto the desk it gets routed off to the side so on the youtube side of things what we discovered is we like multiple angles of stuff when we're making youtube videos so it started with needing an overhead camera type of thing and originally i was thinking about uh using like a tripod or something like that but then i was like man i want to just be able to move something around to be able to get like a different angle and then i was talking to king gathalian a streamer and he said uh he posted a photo of one of his uh cameras being hooked up to a boom arm and i was like hey how do you do that how you have it zipped into the wall and then you send me a link it's the five foot articulating boom arms they're not terribly expensive i think they're like 150 bucks or something like that and then what we did was zipped in a board to the wall right here and then added these uh these plates which the company sells as well to then have them attached to the wall because if they were attached to the desk they would shake easily every time i'm like making a beat hitting the pads or something like that so that's not good the downside is that if uh the door gets opened or closed these end up shaking so we have to be careful about that yeah it started with just one in the center and that was obviously working and then we're like it'd be nice to have multiple angles and we had these uh panasonic gx85s we had been using for streaming before so they were kind of just sitting around and i thought well let's use those and have multiple angles so so again being able to just like do this and like adjust for an angle on the camera is really awesome and then i have hdmi outs going into the computer so i can see what i'm doing fact let me set that up real quick now that this is on you can see i can adjust the camera via seeing the computer and then i can i can still record it via 4k but i can see in the computer what the the shot looks like and adjust it accordingly so it's a little um it's a little excessive [Laughter] i don't always use these cameras but there's times where i really want an extra shot or if like this camera is used quite a bit for getting the mpc screen when i need to get a more up close shot of the npc screen i end up using this these panasonic gx85s are not bad they're not great but they're not bad the the biggest thing is they're light because you can't really have too much weight on these arms i think it maxes out at like two pounds so that is uh that's one of the things the main camera that we have for overhead is a um gh5s which is a bit overkill for an overhead cam but it's uh it's a cam that we had left from uh from doing projects video projects so that ends up getting the job done so basically micro four thirds is what the cameras are overhead and then we have basically three camera setups for the eye level stuff so we have a a6400 right there another a6400 right here and then the facecam which memes is holding recording with is a a7s3 yeah in terms of lighting we have one of these nice photo uh adapter diffuser thingies this is like a 36 inch one we actually just recently got this because we switched up our lighting from where it was before before we were using some like 50 dollar light that was okay wasn't bad but now we're using uh i think it's a godox godox light with this umbrella diffuser and it's getting the job done it's good i like it in terms of our lighting around the room we use philips hue lights which i actually wouldn't recommend for video because they're not good at um because you get a lot of flicker and lights we haven't switched those out because we're just kind of dealing with it at the time but something to keep in mind if you look at those philips hue lights unfortunately they're not good for video so but they're really cool for mood how about blue that's a mood this one's called creative stream yeah and then pink i think this is pink here's green okay here let's go back to full lights yeah emerald city right moving off to the side we have some rack gear this is our audio interface setup we also have our zoom recorder off to the side we use a f6 for video and that captures oh i completely forgot my bad uh it captures our um boom mic this is what we use for talking on the videos it's a sennheiser mkh-416 it is really nice but it's a bit overkill at times we have it because of video production so we use uh we use it so it's a really nice boom overhead mic um that again is plugged into a zoom f6 which is a 32-bit recorder and i also have a feed off the analog desk that sends a stereo mix to the zoom recorder as well so once again we don't have to use a computer to be able to capture ideas or come up with like jams or listen to anything we can have the computer completely off and just plug in a few pieces of gear with the analog desk turned on and then we're good to go basically so yeah audio interface uh we also have a couple of lexicons we only use one of them and memes reverb on doing a lot of the jams tends to be from that if it isn't mixed in ableton afterwards moving on to underneath the mixing desk so here is the patch bay this is where all the magic happens for the analog stuff what you're currently seeing right now is a a mix from our previous track heart stops actually haven't pulled out the cables yet so these are all the this is the the patching that i did for that there's no labels on here and the reason there's no labels is because i've changed things so many times that i found it like cumbersome to label things so what i ended up doing was uh taking photos of it and then annotating what each patch does on my phone so anytime if i i get confused about something i just look up on my phone to see where the patch points are supposed to be so no i don't remember all this in my head i do have notes on the phone to keep track of where everything's patched into so this top s patch right here is connected to all this gear right here so this tower right here is this top patch the next one down is this tower of gear uh i don't have the uh the reel-to-reel plugged in into the patch so keep that in mind but all this gear is patched into that second bay and then this third bay is patched into the inserts of the mackie and connected to the summing bus of the d-box right here which is what i used to monitor everything with i've been i've used this for almost a decade i really like the dangerous d-box i think it's awesome i know there's a new one that came out and i would totally just get it again if i needed really really high quality digital analog converters in there this fourth patch bay right here this is what connects the burl b32 along with the outputs of the motu the 24a ao this is how i'm able to output things out of ableton patch them into a certain piece of gear and then bust them into the b32 vancouver i haven't talked about this yet but this is our summing bus it is a it's a really nice semi bus it can do 32 channels i actually only use 24 channels of it right now and it has transformers in there and i think it sounds great i tried to hit it just hard enough to get those transformers to warm up and uh yeah it's awesome so that's that i do have another patch bay underneath that um i think this is like expansion there's a few of the things that go right here that i hardly ever use i forget what they are though i'd have to look at my phone moving on over here we have tower number one we start with the clark technic eqs these eqs are they're okay they're not exceptional but they're cheap and when i need some extra eq in the analog domain i always reach for those if i need something quick then i've got a six pack right here it's got an expresso 500 and then the x filter 500 as well i like these pieces a lot i have a purple audio odd which i use from 10 to 10 and then i have a preamp right here that gets used once in a while not too often actually if i need to plug in bass i usually plug in bass right here bass guitar and then we have our main piece of rack which this is this gets turned on all the time because we have memes vocal chain right here a rupert neve 511 going into a pizza place bac bac-500 going into a buzz audio essence opto compressor and followed up by a little packer for purple audio as well this chain right here has just been fantastic we use the we use it for the sm7b we use it for the wa-251 sometimes i patch in or i patch in the sm57 to plug in guitar with it as well it's just a really phenomenal channel strip it's got fat compression and optical compression and like this tube rendering eq like really good moving on to the next pieces over here this is our our bus processor essentially we use an ss style uh vca press the compressor from wes audio and then followed into the prometheus so wes audio dione followed into the prometheus pull text style this has been my go-to chain for probably a good year now i really really enjoy it and basically everything just gets run through um run through those pieces of gear and i do have a api 525 sitting right here which i also really like this compressor fantastic on bass guitars sometimes little vocals but like it's it's got quite a bit of character anytime i need something to have a nice compression character i reach for that baby moving on we got the buzz audio soc20 it is once again an optical compressor similar to the essence but uh a bit better it has stereo linking and you can also do mid-side compression which i use a lot i love the mid-side compressor on this uh synths almost always get run through this with mid side compression moving on down we got the buzz audio dbc 20 this is the diode bridge compressor and this gets used i'd say about 50 of the time sometimes the character is exactly what i need other times it just doesn't really do it so sometimes gets patched and sometimes it doesn't it's a great compressor though really good and then we have an art pro vla compressor this is like a studio standard it's surprisingly good for it being like 300 bucks like it's not bad definitely worth picking up um it's not gonna get you super gritty type of sounds but it's it's a good compressor if you just need compression in the analog domain we have this piece of rack gear and we obviously have a quite a bit of 500 series gear uh we have two chromas and these are basically preamps slash saturators so if i need a api or neve style preamp these have two switches right there that you can switch between api neve which is really cool so it has nice character in there and also has a saturator built in so i can actually crank up the saturator to get even more bark and bite out of it if needed moving on from there we got two rnd 535s and this is again another diode bridge style compression it's got a certain clean like grab it's like clean but also vibey at the same time kind of you know it's like a dichotomy it shouldn't be clean and vibey but it should buy it should be either vibey or super clean or something like that but it kind of bridges those two for a certain character so just like the buzz audio one it doesn't get used all the time but when i do use it i'm like it's usually hidden just right next up we have two parametric eqs from tonalux the eqp or eq5p these sound fantastic they just have lots of character when i eq with these so the bass sounds phenomenal on there it has huge sweeping values for what you can do with bass in fact again it's parametric so all these you can sweep between the what value you want and then um and then dial in your eq and all that so really great stuff these are actually some of the first 500 series uh eqs we ever bought so good job tonalux they're cheaper now too i think they when we first bought them i think they were like 700 800 something like that each and now they're like 500 or less now so pretty good deal for those moving on we got the purple audio action set compressors these are very aggressive sounding compressors that are also very dirty i don't know if it's just mine are specifically dirty because i did buy them used years ago but they definitely impart a lot of noise to the signal when the compression hits hard so when i use these it's specifically for dirty sounding things like if it's a vibey drum loop that needs to sound super crunched i will reach for the actions almost all the time because they have like they got that gritty character to them that doesn't work for vocals or like clean acoustic guitars or something like that but it really works for drums or things that need to sound distorted so i keep them in the kit for that reason moving on we got the e m p eq another poltex style eq that is great from a designs i use that quite a bit on bass in fact i think it's on bass right now possibly actually i don't know i know i put this on guitar for the previous track there was two guitar tracks in the previous uh in the heart stop song and this was on the rhythm guitar and this was on the the lead guitar the 551 so both of these uh are great eqs right here uh the the rupert neve 551 is a i can't remember the names oh inductor says right there it's an inductor style eq so it's very um musical sounding when it gets eq'd and which is once again why guitar sounds really great on that vocals guitar all that stuff so then i do have an extra 511 right here in the rack just in case if i need another preamp but that's patched in right there moving on to the next row we've got another lunch box we've got two rnd 542s they are tape emulators and they get used i'd say 60 of the time because it's one of those things where at a certain point you can have too much analog warmth so between like transformers yeah too much exactly between transformers and all that and then also the the bus summing transformers sometimes it's too much actually so we have to dial it back but sometimes something needs a specific tape feel to it so these guys come in handy for that you know you can switch between 15 and 30 ips and it's got the the silk red and silk blues blues are a little more on the low end warmers and reds are a bit on the high end kind of gives a bit more shimmer on there they're great uh again i don't use them all the time but i would miss them if i didn't have them so that's why they stay in the rack next up we have a pair of the little peckers right here these are what i use on memes voice but they're also fantastic on a stereo mix if needed uh again they just have a really great musical top end and also the low end can give have quite a bit of um a certain low end boom that they can produce which is really great next up we have the tonalux 5cs these guys are also some of the first compressors we ever bought in fact between the eqs right here and the compressors these were i think our first 500 series pieces of gear great compressor very versatile uh doesn't always have character that i'm looking for but it's one of those things where it's like a swiss army knife if i need to stamp something down or kind of gently hug something in the analog domain then i reach for those for just general duties right there then moving down we've got the drummer 1968 this is a tube compressor stereo tube compressor and this i almost always put on the stereo uh vocal bus because it just does something that i really really like i like it a lot that's all i can really say about that and then finally we have the drummer 1978 right here this is a a phet compressor again stereo effect compressor this is almost always on my drum buss just it has it's got a saturation built into it it's got a great character to the the actual compression you can do wet dry summing as well it's great this is just i love this compressor this is my go-to it's always on and anytime i'm doing uh drums out of the computer it's always getting hit by this so that's that awesome the wa 251 right here we don't always have it out because it's not being used all the time but an hour you know yeah using it more often it's coming out yeah so that's that guy right there it actually doesn't really have a home specifically to like just sit somewhere um and that is one thing about the studio it is a it's like a guest bedroom you know it's a 9x10 room so our space is very limited in fact something that i didn't mention on the the desk side of things is we don't really have speakers you know we have speakers hung up on the wall but we don't use them because we're almost always using headphones with our setup so it's kind of like a trade-off if we had a bigger room you know like 20 by 15 or something like that we totally have some nice monitors set up to be able to to listen to stuff like that but we've just gotten so used to just using headphones that's how we roll right now so in the future again when things might end up changing so electron gear is sitting right here in this shelf and then i have my modular right here as well and then we've got a core mini log sitting right there you know sometimes the pieces of gear can rotate and change sitting on the shelf depending on what we do you know at any point i could grab some of these put them on the desk set up a mix in fact i'm planning on grabbing the octatrack to do some experiments with the tascan model 12 because i'm in the process of experimenting right now over here we have a pv base this gets used like 10 of the time but whenever i do need a base like i'm always super sad if i don't have one that i can just pick up and play real quick so it's nice to have something that's like a p bass essentially so and that gets the job done really good i actually bought it for like 200 bucks off a reverb and it sounds fantastic so awesome right there so let's head on over here to the guitars on the wall we've got a prs standard awesome electric guitar then we have a taylor 714 ce this is actually a gift from my mom when i was in high school because her mom got her like a really nice saxophone and then when i got into music she was like i'm gonna do that for my son so she bought me a really nice guitar which i had absolutely no right having an instrument of this quality when i was starting out but it was it was amazing so thank you mom for that um and then we have a 1987 american made fender strat a guy that i knew wanted this to go to a good home so he gave me an insane deal sold to me for 300 bucks because he was he was like i want this to go somebody that that's going to play it he didn't want to just sell it and uh yeah so that guy is the he's the homie so thanks for hooking me up so i've had that for almost 20 years i've had this for over 20 years i've had this for like i think 18 years so yeah moving back over to this corner because i forgot a few things i do have this mic set up right here it's an sm57 directly connected i have the ability to patch it immediately into the patchbay if needed so this is how i record some acoustic guitar if needed for on a whim um additionally i have a brooklyn adc uh converter right here this is our mastering grade converter and this is how we capture the analog mixes coming off the board or coming out of the summing box so that is uh that's clutch sounds amazing and below that i have a scarlet 18 i8 which is exclusively used for being able to plug into an iphone and capture an idea so one thing that we do all the time is we'll come up with an idea that's you know on the desk and then it means you'll want to do like an idea yes it's a quick improv it just comes out yeah sometimes and i tend to forget my ideas unfortunately there you go so you gotta yeah you gotta have uh gotta have a way of capturing that real quick so what we do is plug in this guy which is connected to that 18 i8 into an iphone and hit record and then idea captured we can even do video and it's a real simple way of doing that but it's basically just the stereo lead that's being patched off somewhere i don't remember where specifically that's being bussed into the 1898 and that's how we can capture ideas catalog them put them on the phone listen to them later and then pull them up to recreate something so one final thing you might be wondering where these paintings come from they are from my mom who actually the past five years has gotten more into painting so every time we've gone over there i've been like hey i'm gonna take this painting and she's like okay so we've been putting them on the wall from time to time so thank you mom again for the guitar and for the paintings um yeah that's our studio well that is the studio tour i hope you enjoyed it yes memes thanks for being the camera operator of course for the details always fun yeah if you enjoyed it make sure to hit the like button subscribe all that stuff that helps out with the algorithm drop us a comment below as well uh we try our best to answer them sometimes heavily technical questions can be difficult to answer over comments so keep that in mind but we do try our best yeah we really appreciate all the support and knowing that we just made this video i'm probably gonna end up pulling apart the studio within three months and completely redoing it it's like we did the studio tour time to you know shake things up time to completely rearrange yes [Music] all right that's the video thank you so much we'll see you next time [Music] you

Channel: Tefty & Meems

Views: 1,227

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Id: wIoWTMmahro

Length: 26min 47sec (1607 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 17 2021