January 2015

A Virtual Tour Of My Podcasting Studio - LEANING TOWARD WISDOM Podcast Episode 4048

4048 A Virtual Tour Of My Podcasting Studio

Welcome Inside The Yellow Studio. It’s yellow because it’s yellow. Duh.

Truth is, I love yellow, orange, red and hunter green. Those are among my favorite colors. I don’t have just one.

Randys_Truck
A 15-year-old version of me and the pickup

When I was 15 – yes, people, when I was young, living in Louisiana…you could get your driver’s license at 15 – I had a 1954 GMC pickup truck. It was an old truck some farmer had abandoned in a field.

My maternal grandfather bought it for $150 and got it running, then paid somebody a little bit to recover the seat in new vinyl. It was a “3-on-the-tree” transmission and I drove it back from Oklahoma, where my grandparents lived, all the way back to Louisiana.

No air conditioning. No radio. Bare bones classic truck in faded hunter green.

I loved it. So much that when I got it home a buddy and I painted it hunter green with orange fender flares. With a brush! And it looked good. Of course, it looked better if you were standing a few feet away. 😉

During high school I had great fun with that truck. My first “real” car was a Pontiac Lemans. It was “Sundance Orange” – that’s what GM called it. So orange was always a big player for me. So, why not The Orange Studio?

I never considered walls being orange. Frankly, it just seemed too dark and I wanted something lighter. I had a moment of clarity when the TV show HOUSE aired. His boss, Cuddy, had yellow walls in her office. Mustard yellow. The moment I saw Cuddy’s office I told my wife, “That’s the color I want to paint the walls.” She and Dena, a close friend, painted it after finding the right shade of yellow. So that’s how the name came to be.

Cuddy's Office
Cuddy’s office walls inspired The Yellow Studio

Here are some details about the actual physical space:

– It’s a room about 13′ x 14.5′.

– There’s an adjoining bathroom.

– It has a small closet, filled with too many cables and other audio paraphernalia.

– It has 2 large windows with wooden slat shutters on the inside.

– It has an overhead florescent light, which rarely gets turned on.

– I have a 19″ Chinese lantern with an LED bulb inside that hangs overhead and serves as a poor man’s video light.

– There are 4 full height bookcases behind my desk (out of seen most of the time) filled with books.

– There are 3 other 5′ high bookcases in the studio, also filled with books.

– There is one 4′ high bookcase filled with books, and a Polk Audio HD clock radio, plus a 3 monkeys lamp (hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil).

– There is a CD carousel in the corner that houses 2000 CD’s with more stashed here and there.

– There’s one Hon 2-drawer lowboy filing cabinet (lateral files or regular – it can configured either way).

– There’s 3 chairs that can sit around the “broadcast table” which is actually a conference table.

– The floor is carpeted with a light green low plush carpet.

– The ceiling has popcorn texture circa 1980’s (yeah, I hate it but it’s a royal pain and major mess to change it).

– The room has one HVAC vent without a vent fixture to prevent any rattling. Air just drops into the room.

Here’s a list of the cool stuff (these are not affiliate links; I do have an affiliate list for most of my resources here):

• Herman Miller Mirra chair
• Apple iMac 27″ with i7 processor (16GB RAM / 1TB Hard Drive)
• Apple iPad Air (128GB with ATT capability)
• Ambrosia Wiretap Studio ($69  – I love it, but it doesn’t work on the latest Mac OS and you can’t get support, so do not buy it)
Audio Hijack Pro by Rogue Amoeba
Twisted Wave (my DAW of choice)
Dialog by Wave Arts (my audio plugin of choice)
• Ambrosia Soundboard (sound cart software; this is $49)
• Sound Byte by Black Cat Systems (my main sound cart software; the interface isn’t as pretty as Soundboard, but I still rely on it more)
• ID3 Editor (to create ID tags)
• Transmit by Panic is my ftp program of choice
• Call Recorder by ECamm (the software I use to record Skype calls – when I don’t use Audio Hijack Pro)
*Watch an episode of Mixergy.com with Andrew Warner to see how this software records video Skype calls
• Edirol R-09HR digital recorder
• Broadcast Tools ProMix12 broadcast console/mixer
Zoom H6 multi-track digital recorder
• Yamaha MG124C mixer
Audio Technia AT2005 USB/XLR mic
• Heil Sound PR40 microphones (they’re my oldest pieces of gear)
• Heil Sound SM1 Shock Mounts
• Heil Sound PL2T Booms
• Heil Sound RS1 boom 12″ extension mount (for one mic; the other mic uses the C clamp)
VAC pop filters for each PR40
• Heil Sound foam pop filter (I have one of these in case I want to take a PR40 out in the field to use; never happens, by the way)
Giant Squid Cardioid Stereo mics (haven’t used them in forever ’cause they don’t work with my digital recorders)
• Electro-Voice RE50B microphones (I have two of these for field use, but they work equally well in the studio)
Rode NTG-2 shotgun microphone (it’s a condenser requiring phantom power, but has battery power capability built right in)
• Aphex 230 Voice Channel Processors (one for each PR40 mic)
• TC Electronic Finalizer Express (a final processor that handles everything going through the board)
• Telos One Phone Hybrid
• PreSonus FP10 Firewire Interface (awful customer service; I would not buy these again)
PreSonus FireStudioProject Firewire Interface
• Panamax power management
• Aphex Headpod 454 Headphone Amp (now called a HeadPod 4)
• Kensington Keyboards
• Sennheiser HD25-MKII headphones
• Kodak Zi8 HD video camera (made obsolete when the iPhone cameras began to set the standard)
Audio Technica ATR3550 corded lapel microphone
• Logitech 1080p Webcam Pro C910
Webcam Settings (an app that is terrific for managing webcam settings)
• ScreenFlow by Telestream (screen capture and video recording software)
Camtasia For Mac (a great alternative to ScreenFlow)
• iMovie by Apple (also for some video recording)
• Apple QuickTime Pro (can record audio, video or screen capture)
• Camera Stabilizer (this is great; buy one if you don’t have one)
Vonage VOIP phone service (this feeds the phone hybrid Inside The Yellow Studio)
• Apple AirPort Extreme (the old flat square version)
• Various hard drives back it all up (I’ve got two 3TB external drives)
• Toshiba 42″ HDTV on the wall – maybe my most used piece of gear 😉
• Lots of my gear came from the fine folks at BSWUSA.com (shout out to Kelley Sullivan; she’s been terrific to deal with through the years)
• Other pieces of gear came from Sweetwater.com (another shout out to Patrick Schaefer; contact him directly at (800) 222-4700 ext 1319).
• My two podcasts are HIGHER HUMAN PERFORMANCE (the rebranded podcast over at Bula Network) and of course, this one, LEANING TOWARD WISDOM.

Randy

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