How to Look and Sound Good at $10, $100 and $1000 With Producer Randy

Welcome to Syntax. Today, we have producer Randy on the show.

I pitched him on this episode. I was like, hey, Randy. Can you come on and tell us how to sound and look good on video and audio for and I I just said 10, a 100, and a $1,000 mean that as the professionals, we need to, like, look good. It it amazes me that we went through a whole pandemic of online conferences and and people talking to each other on Zoom every single day, and most people still look and sound like crap. It's not as easy as just, like, buy a really expensive camera because there are a lot more things you can do, in how you use them that will make it make you look and sound good. So this is one for you. Welcome, Randy. Thanks for coming on. Hey. Thanks for having me, guys. This is gonna be fun. Yeah. I'm stoked. I I I have this broken down into

3 kinda sections. So there's the audio tips, the video tips, and then we'll go through some packages that people could purchase if they're interested in kinda upping their game at home.

Okay. Right? And as far as looking good, do you have any makeup tips or how to dress tips? Do you have any of those?

I don't I don't typically wear any makeup, but I'm I'm sure some people would say I should probably have some, Deno shiner on my face because I get pretty glossy. So

Oh, that's good. So for anyone who doesn't know, Randy is the producer of Syntax.

He turns the knobs and and does all the planning and all kinds of good stuff. And he also you have also have a YouTube channel where you do a lot of audio gear. Right? Yeah. Yeah. So I I review

mostly mostly microphones. I was doing some interfaces and stuff like that, but pretty much just microphones, some talking audio, getting in the weeds about really nerdy stuff. And I I love it. Honestly, it's a nice creative outlet to be able to just, like, make videos that I would wanna watch about really, really nerdy stuff. Yeah. And you do with great presentation, by the way. Oh, thank you. Which should be no surprise given,

that we hired you to be our producer. But, you know, you you do such a good job on on your channel that I I love watching your videos when they pop up. Let's kick it off with the the audio stuff, 1st and foremost. I think this is a big thing for people, still to this day JS, man, you get on a call and they're just using their laptop mic or just in general, maybe they're being invited to be on a podcast, and they use their laptop mic or or Wes, their AirPod mics, which are these little tiny little tiny, diaphragms inside of here. Do they even have a diaphragm in there? It's like it's crazy. Very cool. Yeah. So let's talk audio. Give us give us the rundown, man.

Yeah. So I'm a big believer in learn the tools, learn the tips, learn the, sort of the practical component of it and, actually, the physics of it as well. And that way, you can kinda figure out what rules you want to break. Basically, you're informing yourself with all the evidence so you know which rules you can break for your setup. And if you're looking for learning all the info that you can to break some rules, you might wanna check out Sentry.

Scott, I'll throw that one over to you. Yeah. If you if you wanna break some rules in your code, you just may end up with some bugs, and then that can happen. And to solve those bugs, you wanna head on over to century.ioforward/ syntax. Sign up again 2 months for free. And let me tell you, it it gives you this perfect interface for being able to not only, find your bugs, but also solve them. It lets you step through them and lets you understand it, how many people this is affecting, who specifically it's affecting. You can even get a replay to see how that error happened.

It it's just an amazing tool all around. We use it every day over here at Syntax. So check it out, century.io.

We'll have the link in the show notes.

Because it's the first time that the guest has thrown that to you? Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Is it it's Yeah. Actually, you know, it's just to make sure we get our Sanity

read in there. And, if we forget, then he's chasing us around for it. So he's he's not gonna have that in this episode. If you forget, I'm trying to splice it in at some point. We did have a guest that tried to do the ad transition. Do you remember who it was? Yeah. Who was that? There was a guest who came to us beforehand and said they wanted to do it and then gave it a a whirl. I do not remember who this was. I'm so sorry. I'll try to look it up, see if we can find that. But, yeah, that was hilarious.

Sick. I'll add that to the show notes as well. But, yeah, let's jump into the audio crash course.

So the biggest takeaway that I could give people today, the one thing that I hope they can leave this episode with JS understanding signal to noise ratio. This is, like, the one thing that fixes just an abundance of audio issues. Also fixes things like audio issues in your space, audio issues with your equipment.

It's kinda like the go to audio technology principle that we really like to enforce. So signal to noise ratio is, basically, the signal being your voice in most cases, or if you're recording music or something like that, it's the instrument.

And then noise is everything else. It's the, dogs barking down the street. It's the cars going by. It's the HVAC system in your house. Mhmm. Even things like reflections within your space will cause noise.

And then we have things like electronic noise too. So these are things like not enough power to your microphone. This is a really common one, especially people who are using, like, USB hubs.

They tend to be pretty bad at powering microphone sometimes. So sometimes your microphone won't get enough draw. It'll cause a in your audio. That's kind of annoying. Also, other issues, power, grounding issues, and RF, so things like cell phones getting picked up by your microphone. That happens quite a lot as well. Yeah. Remember the the old days where you hear

before you get a phone call? That was the best. With his old Motorola, like, candy bar phones, the bassist in my band found out his bass pickups picked up the noise from the cell phone and then ran it through a looper and ran it through some reverb and and made it sound like outer space noises, but it Wes, yeah, just like the beeping from his phone. Oh, yeah. He he was he was like that. He's the now the guy that, works on a Volfepec's stuff. So Oh, sick. He went on to big things. Yeah. I know personally, especially because we we interview a lot of people on here, the one of the big things with noise is, like you mentioned, like, HVAC or fans.

Right? Like, I feel like people don't realize that that's something they should be turning off or if you can, if you have a loud HVAC.

I used to turn off the HVAC at my my last house, which was, like, a 100 years old because it was super noisy.

And the insulation was so bad, I would just be roasting while I was recording. But it was worth it for the noise. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Well, actually, I have a preset for your mini split that you have on during the winter.

So I'll click on a preset to get rid of that. Yeah.

I don't turn it off in here because that would be, would yeah. It would be a bad situation. But that's interesting. So you have a preset ESLint, what, like, a a VST, specifically, at which denoiser?

Yeah. I use Isotope's voice denoise.

And, basically, what I do is capture a second a section of silence. So whenever you're not speaking, I'll capture a section of that. And then that basically runs a it trains the the tool what the noise looks like, and then it will take that out of all the parts that are your voice. Interesting. I use that on a lot of videos when I well, when I hear it, but, usually, I'm just putting it on sort of a base level. Yeah. We've had a couple of guests that are, like they're recording from, like, a bus shelter in, like Yeah.

I don't know. It's it's wild, and it sounds a lot better once it it comes out. But, like, if you're hopping on a Zoom call, you're not you're not running that type of thing. Right? You're just Yeah. Trying to get the best possible input from a microphone. Right?

Yeah. And that's the thing is, like, real time plug ins aren't quite there yet with the quality. Like, there there's some good real time denoisers and stuff like that, but they they often add artifacts to your voice that you just don't want. And it's something that you can't babysit while you're in a call or something like that. So I tend to run a pretty raw setup just so that I can do all the processing and post if I want to. But, yeah, it's it's funny. Often, a space that looks like a good clean recording space tends to be one of the worst things for sound just because it's there's no furniture. There's, you know, things bouncing around. Ends up being a bit of a nightmare.

Yeah. That's why people like to re like, it was common to, like, record in a a closet with t shirts hanging down or something like that. I actually I brought a a an old couch into my office, specifically, to absorb some some reflections.

Reflections.

Yeah. My wife is a a voice actor, and she, for the 1st 2 years of her career, had, like, microphone stands set up beside her, like, as high as they would go, and then patio cushions draped over it. Like, she she was legitimately in, like, a 5 and a half foot tall vocal booth.

Yeah. Well, blanket fort. It's not a vocal booth. It's a blanket fort. Let's be real. Blanket fort. Yeah. Yeah. And she's she spent, like, 2 years in this. Like, no windows, no daylight.

I don't know how she did it, but it sounded great. So And to be clear,

that's not for soundproofing.

Correct?

Yeah. Yeah. And we'll go through that a little bit more, in just a minute here. But the big thing with the the acoustic noise Scott of what we're going on with, like, the the sounds around your house, the baby crying in the other room, really, the cheapest and most effective way to eliminate that is just to get closer to your microphone.

It's it's kind of the the quickest, easiest fix. You can make a really, really cheap microphone sound great just by getting rid on the thing. Yeah. That's that's something we often have. People have really nice microphones,

and they're they're sitting, like, this far back from it. And Yeah. It's you have to tell them, like, eat the microphone. Or even, like, you go to, like, a a wedding or something like that, and people don't know how to properly hold a microphone. And I'm always just I, like, hey. Like, I don't wanna be that guy, but, like, eat the microphone. Node the mic on. We can't hear you. Yeah. Get out of you know, it's so funny. My wife, Courtney, was doing our school's auction, which is, like, a big deal for public schools. Right? She was, like, the cochair of the auction, so she had to speak, and she was on stage with the chair of the auction. She was like, do you have any tips for me for the microphone? I was like, yeah. Eat the mic. Get, like, real close to the mic. And if you see your chair holding it out, like, let her know as well. Like, make sure she knows that because there's, like, several speakers all the time. They hold it way far away, then the audio guys gotta turn up the gain, then you get the the noise feedback or whatever. Whenever I'm in a a venue, somebody's trying to speak and you're hearing gain, I just wanna go up to them and be like, or that the feedback. I just wanna go up to him and be like, please, just eat just get the mic closer.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, they the their inclination is, like, they hear the feedback. They pull the mic even further away. It's like, no. No. No. Like, they're they're trying to compensate for you. So yeah. Get nice and close. Node we have electrical noise, like, we're talking about ground loops, power issues, RF in your signal, these are way harder to diagnose and to to fix. I know, Wes, we had some troubles with your not with your audio, but with your camera for a long time, which we thought was coming from a hub. You're down this absolute rabbit hole of trying to figure out if it's getting the right power, if it's the right cable. Mhmm. Ordering from Amazon constantly and swapping cables, it's just a it's just a nightmare. Yeah.

No no fun doing that type of stuff. But, like, I'll tell you, don't cheap out on cables, and don't cheap out on

a powered hub. Or if you have some, like, crappy little plug in hub that doesn't even plug into power, get a good Node, because that will eliminate a lot of your random issues that seem to pop up. Totally. Now the next thing is the the advantage of getting nice and close to your microphone, which is the proximity effect. And so this is something that we use in audio to bring out some of that warmth. It's kinda how you get that radio sound. This happens more specifically on dynamic microphones. But, yeah, as you get nice and close, it sounds like that AM radio show. As you back away, you start to lose some of that low end. You start to lose some of that high end, and it sounds a little bit more thin. So getting nice and close, you're gonna get that really, really rich tone.

The pitfalls with proximity are that you often get plosives and sibilants.

And so plosives are the annoying p's that you hear. Probably hear them on, like, church pulpits all the time with the big and it sounds absolutely awful to listen to. If you just turn the microphone a little bit off to the side, it's it's a really, really good way to avoid that as well.

Oh, interesting. So you're just, like, like, kinda to the side of your mouth is ideal, so you don't get the because a plosive comes from the actual the wind coming out of your mouth. Right? Exactly. Yeah. And it also helps with the sibilance. So sibilance is like the sharp s's.

When you turn the microphone off Wes slightly, the audio waves leaving well, the yeah. The the sound waves leaving your mouth don't have enough physical energy to bounce off the diaphragm if the diaphragm is sideways. So if you put it slightly to the side or just just off kilter a little bit, it will remove some of that sharpness as well. So I usually have my microphone kinda just coming in from the side, just to sort of warm up the sound a little bit. Yeah. Nice. Big believer in placement is the most important thing that you can do. So if you get your placement set up of your microphone first, that's kind of the first step before deciding, do I need to go out and invest, buy acoustic panels or anything like that? So I always try to set the placement of the microphone first and then jump into the sound treatment after that. And, Scott, you talk you're chatting about this. You were talking about the sound treatment versus soundproofing and how they're two very, very different things. And it's really frustrating, because if you go on Amazon and type in soundproofing Yeah. You get all sorts of these, like, little Amazon panels

that are just these little foam panels that you just stick to your wall. Yeah. Thin foam. Yeah. And they're they're enticing because they're so cheap.

Yeah. Yeah. You get, like, 12 of them for $50. Yeah. Those do work because they're not soundproofing. Right? They they will absorb echo and and reverb that's in your room. Right? Totally. Totally. Yeah. It's it's just tough when people want soundproofing. This this really requires construction. It requires mass. It requires changing materials. Like, the sound physically has to go through different materials to be absorbed. So that's why when you go to, like, a movie theater, if you were to look at a a cross section of the walls between movie theaters, they have, like, brick and then metal and then drywall and then drywall and then green glue, drywall. Like, all of these materials to help absorb that sound and continuously and then air gaps too to actually make little pockets where the air will vibrate in between, anticipate in there before going into another material. You you need so much mass to stop sound, especially low frequencies, that these little foam panels aren't gonna do anything. And I I threw something in our little our little run sheet here. This is a bit nerdy, so buckle up. This is called the quarter quarter wavelength rule, which is, basically, that all of sound waves look like we can draw them out like sine waves. So they would look like, you know, they go up and then they go down. That's sort of the the cycle. If you think of, like, a, a beach ball sitting in the water in the ocean, the beach ball's almost still for about 75% of the wave until the wave comes by and moves it a couple of feet, and then it just sits there again for a few more seconds.

So as a wave goes by, there's only a short part of that wave that actually has velocity, and we need velocity to turn sound energy into heat energy with the acoustic panels. Mhmm. So we basically need acoustic panels that are about a quarter of the wavelength that we're trying to get rid of, which is crazy. Because if you think those acoustic panels that you'd buy from Amazon, those would be good at stopping high frequencies like 15 kilohertz and above. So, like, the top end of the human audible spectrum, like the s's and the t's. That's why they sound good for, like, if you clap, you don't hear as much of that, like, shrill sound bouncing back and forth. Okay. But it's doing absolutely nothing for your low end.

Because if we were to take, like, let's say, a 120 hertz sine wave, so a note that's, like, kind of in the middle low end of my voice, that wave is, like, 3 meters long. So a quarter of that, we'd need, like, a, you know, a 2 and a half foot thick acoustic panel to be able to stop that frequency.

It's just, like, unfeasible. Wow. Yeah. So low end is you like, you could put mattresses on your wall and start to make a difference.

It's really, really difficult to stop low end. So if you have issues in your space, like, there's a garbage truck that comes by every Friday and it's super noisy and I can't get it out of my microphone, you're stuck with that. Like, the Yeah. Short of rebuilding your room, there's nothing you can do. And I hate to say that because it it sounds discouraging.

As someone who did build rebuild his room, I can tell you. Go back to episode number 5 16, syntax.fmforward/516.

And I built this whole office, and it is essentially the walls and the ceiling and the HVAC is everything is, like, physically decoupled from the the outside with the it's hilarious. The exception of the windows, I I we have nobody behind us, so I don't have to worry about outside noise. But they're working on cutting some trees down in the forest behind us right now, so you might might hear it. But, yeah, it's it's nuts.

All of the you cannot just buy stuff and slap it on and make make it soundproof. You can you can absorb the sounds, and I got rid of a lot of echo that way. But I literally had to hang the ceiling down and Node sure that there was not a single screw going into the above

what is it? The joist above. Yeah. Yeah. They call that, like, a room within a room Yeah. Construction. And, you know, it's there are some things you can do, I think, to reduce, like, reduce super loud sounds. Would like if you have an air gap, right, your door has an air gap underneath it. Man, sound's just coming right in there. Or even if you have really crappy, old, super thin doors, you could replace those with heavier, thicker doors and put, like, sweeps on that to help. For me, the the biggest things that I always had a trouble with in the past house was we had really super old windows that were not quiet at all, and we had really loud venting system so you could hear throughout the whole house. And there's nothing you can do about the venting system besides building a sound trap. The windows, you would have to replace.

But, again, if you're going through all these lengths, you might be wondering, like, if it makes more sense just buy, like, a, like, a vocal booth. They they make these things like studio bricks, and they're not cheap by any means. But if you're professional and you need professional sound and you can't read in your room Yeah. My wife has Node. Which one?

We have the studio bricks Vercel Oh, you do have StudioBricks? Yeah. Yeah. It's the actual StudioBricks voice over edition.

And so it's, like, I wanna say 5 feet by 3 feet. And it's, yeah, it's it's double walled. It's really thick. Like, the door is probably £350.

It's just Yeah. Significant chunky thing. But it looks great, and it sounds great. And it's kind of the the perfect marriage between soundproofing and sound treatment, because it soundproofed really well from pnpm outside, like, 45 decibels of of reduction, which is really nice. But then it also has a really nice sound treatment inside to make it not sound like a little box.

This is actually one of the challenges with, those Amazon Sanity, for instance.

If you were to go buy a1000 of them, cover your entire space with these Amazon Panels, what's gonna happen is you're gonna have no top end in the reflections only. Mhmm. And so a recording is really the source plus the reflections.

And so if your reflections are coming back and they have no top end in them, now your recording just sounds really woofy and muffled. Like, it's gonna start to sound a little bit just disproportionately muddy.

And so it really is about kind of balancing understanding how they work and then balancing that in your space. I bought some,

say, GTK, I believe JS the brand, panels, and they're not like they're not like foam panels or whatever. They're boxes. They are thick boxes, audio foam in them, hard constructed.

And the most important ones for me are the corner ones because,

well, the corners can create some crazy reflections. Right? Yeah. I have that. Can I can I tell you all my problem? Maybe I can, move my camera right here. If you can see

above me,

you see, I have this little lip above my desk, and I would spend all this time on my, soundproof office.

And when I sat right here, I got a resonance, like a in my ear. I couldn't pick it up in the thing, and it was just, like, coming back at me. And it was so annoying, and it was because I was sitting in the exact spot. So I ended up putting, I just bought some, like, really thick felt, and I cut them and put them at an angle, and it sounds so much better.

Oh, that's awesome. The ones I have, were g I k, by the way, not g t k.

Okay. Sick. Yeah. So, Scott, you're mentioning corners are really bad. They can be awful. Also, direct reflections are a good spot to start. So if you are thinking, hey. My my space sounds a little bit echoey, a a good way to think of this is think of your mouth as a laser pointer and all of the walls as mirrors and whatever would be the 1st bounce back from your source. So, in my case, I have speakers on my desk, and I want to soundproof those so that I'm not getting reflections off my walls. So thinking of the speakers as the laser pointer, I wanna do the 1st wall on my left, the 1st wall on my right. My desk, even, is a massive source of reflections.

The ceiling above me is a little bit of a source. I don't care about anything behind me, because once the sound goes back there, it's hitting the walls. It's hitting the, you know, things I got in the back of the room. By the time those reflections get back to me, they're diffused enough. It's just sort of these first reflections that are really the ones that are causing issues. So that's a a a good place to start.

Yeah. And there's a like you said, with the stuff behind you, right, it's hitting all that stuff. If you ever been in an empty room, you've moved all of your furniture and you clap, it sound crazy in there. So, like, yeah, that is that is the same scenario. You put your stuff in, it sounds very different. I I have a question. Does even, like, pictures and stuff matter? Because

Wes I built my office at the cottage, I put all this tongue and groove paneling in, and I basically built a wooden box. And it sounds great in there. I have no treatments at all. And I'm wondering if it's because of the tongue and groove have all these little indentations in them and if are the sound waves hitting that?

Yeah. That could that could help. I think, probably, the the main win with that space would just be the fact that it's wood, because wood is a relatively absorb absorptive material.

Yeah. So it's it's probably doing a little bit to absorb it. In in general, like, irregularities in the shape are really gonna help. If if you look at the back of a recording studio, they have usually, on the back wall, they have what's called a a diffuser, which is like a a slat warp. Like, I'm I'm how do I describe this for the audio listeners? This is like a a bunch of vertical panels that are all really thin, spaced maybe about an inch apart, and there are varying depths. So some might be, like, 8 inches Deno. Some might be a foot deep. Some might be, like, an inch deep. And these are actually built based on really specific calculations that determine, how to properly catch the sound and break it apart and scatter it. This is called diffusion in in audio, so we're we wanna, like, basically, take those really high pressure sound, sound waves and then disperse them in the room evenly so they don't come back as an actual reflection. Yeah. And they're they're really cool, but they're really expensive. They're, like, super custom. Style. That's cool. They look awesome too. Yeah. Yeah.

So, yeah, irregularity has definitely helped. Any sort of odd shapes just to you you just wanna avoid, basically, 4 straight walls. That's that can be really difficult for soundproofing or for sound treatment. A a question that I I hear a lot too is, about the good old fashioned egg crates. Do egg crates work for sound treatment? They they do have some irregular characteristics to them and that they're they have an interesting shape. So the shape may work to do some level of diffusion, but the answer is no. Your egg crates are doing literally nothing for your sound.

Two reasons because of this. Interesting. So, actually, I had a friend in high school that worked in a kitchen, and he would save up egg crates from, like, their Sunday brunch. And he'd bring home, like, 2 or 3 at a time.

And he he did his whole drum shed out in his backyard. He brought me. He's, like, yo, Node. Look. It's, like, completely soundproof.

And I I didn't have the heart to break it to him. But there are 2 reasons why egg crates don't do anything. So, one, the material is is pretty thin. So we know we're only affecting yeah. We're really only affecting frequencies like 16 or 17 k above, which people in our, you know, in our thirties, we probably don't even hear 17 k and above at this point. So if it was affecting anything, it's such a small, small fraction.

And then if you think of the absorption coefficient of that material, it's not very absorb absorptive. It's, you know, recycled cardboard. It's it's decent.

It's just it's gonna do nothing for your sound. So, while it may look cool to have egg crates plastered all over your wall, it's just not that effective.

May look cool. You know what we did in high school is we, got some, like, carpet padding from a construction site, some thick old carpet padding, and then we Oh. Hung sheets of it from the ceiling in my basement, which probably did absolutely nothing. It might have cut down on just a tiny bit of reflections or something. It did not do anything. We thought it we thought it was, doing something at the time being, you know, 16.

Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. One last thing before we get into the video stuff, USB mics or an XLR mic with an interface? I think that's something just about a lot of people ask us.

Up until this week, my opinion on this has been very divided. I'm reviewing a microphone right now that I'm really stoked about. It's the Shure MV 6. I'll link that in the show notes. So USB microphones are way more efficient. You plug in a USB c to your computer and you're set to go. That's it. You can even plug your headphones into the microphone, which is great. So you don't need a a fancy sound card or anything like that. You plug your microphone in, you're off to the races.

For the vast majority of people, this is going to be perfect, especially when you pair that with getting good signal to noise ratio. We actually had, Taylor on this last week.

And in his episode, he had a $30 microphone from Target, and the thing sounded awesome.

And it's because he's holding a microphone right on his face, he's eating the mic, and it's a $30 USB microphone. So I'm I actually wanna check out that microphone from my channel because I was really impressed with how it sounded. I usually try to avoid, like, holding a microphone because you get massive handheld noise, but I didn't hear it in his recording. So I'm I'm I'm pretty impressed with that $30 target microphone.

I think, for the vast majority of people listening to this video or listening to this podcast, USB microphone is gonna be more than adequate for any of your your needs.

I don't think having a dedicated interface is necessary these days. Although you will get a slight bump in quality when you switch to an, dedicated interface. It's just you're separating the components into 2 different dedicated parts. They're both doing their job. You get significantly better quality. But are you gonna notice this over a Google Meet call? Probably not.

Dope. Thanks, Randy. Let's get into the video section, then we can talk about, some packages you've put together for us.

Sick. Yeah. So video it's funny. You know, when you when you work with people and they they log ESLint to their call and they're using their laptop webcam and it's pointed up at the sky and all you see is, like, the top of their face and then, like, 6 feet of headroom above them, just take a second to to put your camera in the right spot. So the 1st section I have here is composition, which is just getting yourself framed nicely within the shot. You know, you wanna have sort of a medium close-up, couple inches of space above your head. You don't need to go down as far as your waist or anything like that, But just you wanna look nice and centered within your shot. And a good rule of thumb is to have the camera relatively at eye level.

Some people like to shoot from a little bit above or a little bit below.

It does get challenging as a work from home setup when you're balancing monitors. And I know, Wes, you you had challenges with this. Like, where the heck does the camera go? Because Yes. I have this monitor. I love this monitor. I have that 1. I love that. There's not a space for my camera unless it's, like, way up there just pointing straight down at me. So that can be really, really challenging.

It it's gonna be one of those things you have to sort of prioritize.

What's the most important thing to you? Is it looking good on camera, or is it, you know, your sick developing setup?

Yeah. It's it's a never ending, like, thing. Actually, right now, I'm testing out this BenQ monitor, which is, 3:2 aspect ratio, so it's square. And I don't know if if you Node or not, but my camera is much more, in front of me. Usually, it's usually, I'm a bit more angled.

And it's it's because, like, I'm not putting the camera on top of it. I'm not slamming my monitor down super low so that the camera doesn't look too high.

But it but then, also, it's wide as well. You know? It's and, also, some people put the camera right in front of them and then do 2 monitors on either Node. And, like,

they all day, you're you're looking to the the Node, and you're you're you're good. Let me say, Wes. So I Yeah. I don't have my camera set up in the middle, and I only have 1 monitor. I took a photo of it. We can include in the show notes. My camera is right here, obviously.

My monitor is right to the side of it. So my monitor is, like, right here, and it isn't directly over the top of my laptop, but it's pretty dang close.

And to me, that is not like I'm not turning my head. I'm, like, almost shifting my whole body when I'm working. So it doesn't it doesn't, like, feel like I'm here to here, but, again, I don't have 2 monitors or whatever. And my camera's not directly in the middle. My camera is positioned off to the left. My monitor's positioned slightly off to the right. And it so right now, I'm, like, staring into my monitor right now. It's a it it works for me. I'll I'll I'll include a photo of it in the show notes.

Sweet. Yeah. I think for a lot of people, it's just it's the last it's the last thing they think about. They get their whole setup ready to go. They're working. They're happy. And then they gotta get on a call, and they're looking at their oh, which camera am I using? Either it's the 1 on their their Sanity, on their laptop.

It can be it can be really tough. So just a little bit of thought into positioning yourself nicely in the frame goes a really long way. And then when we move into lighting, I would say windows are your best friend. Definitely, try to get a window either beside you or in front of you. I have a massive window off to my left side here. And so if I were to not have my light on, I would I would look pretty backlit, which isn't ideal because then it it lowers the contrast of the video, makes you look a little bit washed out on camera. So I have a massive light right in front of me here to, kind of, make me pop out a little bit from the backdrop.

But if I didn't have a light, I would probably end up turning my desk more towards the window just to get a bit of that natural light coming in. So you you want either the Rembrandt lighting, which means coming in slightly from the side, or direct flat lighting is is another sort of easy win. And it it looks good all the time. It'll look nice on calls. I would say just avoid the backlighting.

And somebody can they just, like, get, like, a lamp or something like that? Or should they be getting, like, a a key light? Or are we gonna be talking about that? Yeah. We'll get into some of the stuff that that you can buy. I think, like yeah. You use use what you have. It it doesn't need to be fancy. Modern day cameras, especially cameras built into your, like, computer, tend to be really good at correcting for white balance and stuff like that. So Mhmm. You turn on a a bright orange lamp beside you, and it's gonna make you look natural no matter what. So, definitely,

you use what you have on hand. Yeah. I have a question. You said no backlighting. I actually do have a backlight right here. Is that a problem? Well, you have a $4,000 camera.

Yes. I do. Yeah. You have a super, super nice camera. I actually have a backlight behind me as well, so I'm breaking my own rule.

But I'm doing Okay. That's what you're saying now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's just giving me this glow on on the side of my face, like and it if I'm wearing a dark shirt, it'll kinda separate me from the backdrop. But I'm doing that knowing the rule. I wouldn't just have a backlight.

Okay. So yeah. The same goes along with knowing the rules before you break them. I do feel like that is such a big thing that people underestimate, especially if they're try I know, you you know, not everybody's trying to have a professional setup, but it you know, just to have a good setup, I think everybody underestimates light. I have a a huge natural window here, but I also have a light here, a light here, 2 sidelights, and then a backlight just to fill fill this space. I know that these 2 are just for color effects, backlights to pull me off. But one thing that's really Yarn, because you didn't you didn't touch on this, is the glasses, people with glasses. Oh. If I have the light in front of me, it looks like this. If you're looking my my eyes, you can't even see my eyes. The the reflections are so bad. There's even, like, a glass door in front of me that I have to cover up because otherwise. So for for me, I have to do 1 key and then, like, 1 fill over here and then just not turn my head in the directions of the lights.

Oh, that's great. West, what do you have for your your setup? For my lights, I just have a single

light. I don't know what it is. It's like one of these big square, like, key lights, I guess you would call it. And I just I have that on a little button right here, and I I hit the button, and I can turn it off right now. So that see, that's off.

And there it goes. It's on. It's very, very subtle, but it kinda just fills out my face.

Yeah. It looks good. It's a little further back right now just because I'm playing around with my monitors. They're usually a bit closer. I don't like it at all because it's I find it too bright. It's it hurts my eyes, but I have it on anytime I'm filming a video, and then I just hit the button to turn it off. Yeah. Hey. Here's a treat for people on video. I'll turn off all 3 of my lights at once. So this is the key light.

So that's without the key light. This is without the fill, and then this is without the backlight.

Wow. Which the backlight's really getting a lot of the side of my head. This is a very expensive camera that Yeah. Does very well with low light and Totally. And it's, but it, like, it look it looks so much better with your lights added on. Yeah. And this is I have a full big window open right here. Yeah. Yeah. I have a And I have, like, a great low light performance camera. Yeah. And then you turn it all back on,

ta da, it looks so much better. Yeah. And and this will make that impact will will be tenfold on a, you know, a worse camera. One quick thing about lighting if you are looking into to getting some lights. We'll talk about the different packages later. Panels are great because they're just it's just a a box shooting light into your space.

You can use them to sort of bounce light off your walls just to to sort of fake a window. I wouldn't look into ring lights because ring lights are a weird thing to me because they sort of got a ton of hype. But they're they're really for, like, macro photography. Like, that's where they come from, where you'd put the camera inside the ring and then take a picture of something Oh, okay. Completely, completely lit all the way around it. If you're putting a ring light 4 feet away from you, it's not providing the effect of a ring light. So ring lights get so much hype on, like, TikTok and stuff like that, but a panel is gonna do probably a better job because it's a a you have more fixtures in it generally. I I wanted to pnpm the hype behind ring lights a little bit. Yeah. And I can see the weird eyeballs too.

Yeah. You get the weird eyeballs. I was at a a dance battle, Randy, and it was, like, semi outside.

It was very bright. And a guy filming had, like, the whole ring ring light and camera inside the middle on his little dickhead. Like, bro, that is not doing anything. Like, what is it? What's the plan here? You're competing with the sun.

Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Let's chat cameras for a second. So this is another one of those things that is a big Scott of belief of mine JS that resolution is, like, it's the it's the last thing you should be prioritizing when you're looking for a camera.

Everybody says, hey, Scott 4 k, Cotton 4 k. You Node, oh, this guy did this. He caught in 4 k. TikTok is entirely 10:80.

So no one's on TikTok getting caught in 4 k. Yeah. You can upload a 4 k video. It's going to downsample that video to 10:80. So it's just What what is what Yarn you saying? Cotton Scott in 4 k? Caught in 4 k. Scott 4 k. It's like a meme when somebody did something,

and they have been caught doing it.

If people say it's if it's been filmed on their phone camera or something that they've been caught 4 k. In 4 k. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Cotton 4 k. Yeah. The cotton candy. Yeah. So it's just it's a funny thing. Like, everybody really, really stresses about 4 k.

And we record this podcast in 10:80.

And, like, 10:80 is totally fine. You're you're not hurting anybody by filming in 10:80 or getting a 10:80 webcam, especially if the price is is obviously, it can be much cheaper. So resolution, least important thing. I always say 7, 7 Wes p camera with really good lighting will look way better than 4 k done poorly, and not all 4 k's are created equally. So in one of my 1st weeks working with Syntax, I went over to Wes house, and we were checking out different different streaming services and how they would how they would treat your camera feed. And codecs are hugely important in how good the image quality looks. Like, we we looked at what we must've we must check out 6 or 7 different Vercel.

And there were really, really bad ones and really good ones. And it was the same feed being sent to all of them, so codec is definitely hugely important.

Yeah. It's it's crazy, the bit rate that Wes there were just, like specifically, this blue sound panel behind me, I would have banding on it because there's a slight gradient on it. And the ones that were more aggressive with the lower bay bit rate, presumably to save money on storage fees, you could you could definitely see it. Yeah. Even even tweaking my OBS,

setup for because I've been recording primarily on OBS now. Man, just turning the knobs on all of those things, codec, bit rate, all this stuff, made such a huge impact. You'd you'd make one small change, and it would look terrible. Then you'd make another small change, and 10 minutes of video would be 10 gigabytes. And you're like, what is the between here?

Yeah. And then so another thing to think, 30, 60 frames. Most people are filling either 30 or 60 frames right now. It doesn't really matter for your calls or anything like that. If you're looking for a webcam, I would just look for one that looks good. Check a lot of YouTuber reviews because that's gonna give you a good idea of how they perform, especially in low light or changing light. That's another big one. If a cloud comes over your house, is the camera gonna auto correct to the right exposure for you? So I would say if you're looking for a specific camera for your setup, you don't wanna use the internal baked in webcam, definitely just do a bit of YouTube research. That's gonna be one of the best tools.

Should we move to packages? Let's talk about these packages. Yeah. So I've I've Yes. Let's talk about these packages. Sanity. Yes.

Been waiting for you to talk about these packages. Yeah. Wes titled this episode,

How to Look Good and Sound Good for $10, $100, and $1,000.

$10 is really tough. I would say if you're trying to look and sound good for $10, go get yourself a coffee from Starbucks and then just get really close to your microphone.

That's the whole tip for $10. There's there's not a lot that you can do.

You get a lamp from your bedroom.

You get, hang up, maybe, some T shirts around your desk.

Yeah. I got it. Got it. Because, like, it got lighting. Right? Like, you use you use the MacBook Pro webcam,

put a couple nice lamps on your face, and you throw throw a T shirt underneath your keyboard so you don't have the vibrations going through. How about this? Instead of a couple of Node lamps on your face, you can just turn you can open up a web page and put, like, a a yellowish orangish color at full blastness and just get your monitor nice and Node. Yeah. Oh, that's great.

Alright. So I got I I've changed this a little bit to a $50 package, $150 package, and then you're sort of, like, 500 to a1000. Like, you're you're a big spender. You wanna really deck out your setup. So for the $50 package, couple of different microphones that I've tested myself and really enjoyed, sort of, around the 50 to $70 price point. I I should say, in this $50 package, we're not even talking cameras. Use your webcam. Use the internal baked in Node in your laptop. Or if you have external monitor that has 1, cameras below $50, they're just it's just not gonna work. So the Feelworld PM Node is a $50 USB and XLR microphone.

It's really great because you can either go USB Bos.

Or if you feel like upgrading down the road and getting an interface, you can get an audio interface with an XLR cable, and you're gonna get that Scott of that nice graduation into the next step of audio quality.

So I like recommending tools that won't limit people in the long run. So Feelworld PM 1 is a good option. The FiFine k 6 88 is another great option. It's about $70. That's probably one of the most popular USB and XLR combination microphones on Amazon. Nice too. Yeah. It looks nice. My only my only gripe with that microphone is that the the handling noise is awful. So if you are one of the people who want to plug in your headphones into the microphone itself, if you move like, I was demoing this on my channel. I was moving my head with Apple earbuds plugged in, and you could hear every time I shifted. So

maybe plug ESLint your laptop with your headphones and just use the microphone. Try not to touch it. That's gonna work a lot better for you. I was always having an issue of just bumping my my desk or my mic or anything. I had to, like, change how I am. Totally.

So yeah. The one thing with the Feelworld Node is it's r RGB to, like, presumably attract the gamers.

Yeah. It's awful for continuity if you wanna make a cut cut in your video because

it, it shows

it. Also, I don't think that, like, RGB is very professional. You know? Like, it's the same thing when you get on a meeting with somebody, and they have, like, a gamer chair, like one of those baby Yeah. Yeah. Car seat chairs. The baby car seat chairs. Oh, man. Yeah. I have a microphone right beside

the, Shure SM what is this? M v six. This is the one that I was talking about earlier. There's no RGB on this thing, and that's, like, my my main takeaway in the video is it looks great and it sounds great.

That's actually in the next package, so we'll get to that. But Feelworld and FiFi microphones are great.

I would say the main thing I would look out for is look out for peripheral companies that are making microphones and buy your microphones from audio companies that are making stuff in this price point. There's a big difference between companies that try to create high quality audio and have never done it before Vercel companies that have, like, Shure, for instance, has a 100 year reputation.

And then they're, like, hey, let's make a cheap microphone that brings all this technology that we have. They they just they know what compromises they can make and what sacrifices they can make to make a really, really good product at an affordable price. And in my experience, these peripheral companies, I'm not gonna name them, tend to fail when it comes to quality. They make really flashy products Is it that don't make any sense. Is it Elgato? It's Elgato. It's Elgato.

Okay. It's it's Elgato. It's Logitech with the Blue Yeti.

It is Razer with their siren.

There's a few other ones that they have. There's HyperX.

They make gaming headsets. Not a microphone company.

There's a few. Yeah.

If you see bright shining colors on the microphone, like Wes said, probably, it's it's not it's not for you. Wait. The Blue Yeti is by Logitech. Yeah. They got bought. Yeah. They bought it. They got bought.

Interesting. Because I have a a a high end blue microphone that I Yeah. You know, one of the vintage ones that I love dearly. But wow.

Yeah. The Yeti is an interesting microphone. It's like it's like 15 years old almost. Like, it's it's an old microphone, and they haven't done much to to change it all along. So it's definitely wouldn't be in my my recommendations. But let's move into the $150 price point. So this is where we're starting to add in some some video stuff here. So in this package, I would say get one of the same mics. You you don't need to upgrade the microphone from the other ones, but we have about $80 to spend now on lighting. And I think lighting is the next big step here. So I would say look for a Neewer is it the company? Neewer Panels on Amazon.

Same. Yeah. Sick. Yeah. You can get, like, a 2 panel package for $70. They come on on stands that go down to the ground or they you can get ones that clip to the back of your desk too. If you find that you're getting hot spots on your face because these lights are LED panels, you may have some, like, hot spots. What you can do is actually shoot them at let's say, you're butted up against a warp, shoot that light at the wall and use the wall as a diffuser. It's kind of a nice way to make a cheap light look a lot better. But, definitely, something that's dimmable is key because then you can you can dim them. A lot of them will be, bicolor as well, which means you can go from, like, daylight to tungsten. So you can get it a bit more yellow if you wanna have a bit more of kind of a, a moody vibe. I have mine about, yeah, mostly yellow

because I'm a a somewhat pale person, so I find that it makes me feel a little bit warmer. And I'm also actually like you said, I am mostly pointing it at the wall to fuse it off a little bit because it can get a little Scott, like you said. I've had this one for quite a while, and at at my old house, I would do what you said. It was just I bounced it off the ceiling,

because I had, like, a an angled I was in, like, the the top floor of a house, and I bounced it right off the warp. And it filled my face really nicely.

Mhmm. I think that's and that has the added benefit of it not, like, blasting your eyes out as well.

Yeah. So let's move into the sort of 500 to a $1,000. This is the premium package. This is the the person who wants to look super pro when they get on their their Zoom calls. I would recommend this microphone, the Shure MV 6. I've talked about it a couple times.

Just really, really solid metal build, very chunky, no LEDs, and it sounds phenomenal. So really stoked with that. If you think, hey. I want an interface because maybe I wanna record music or something like that on the side, I will link a microphone slash interface bundle that you could look into, which is pretty good. I I don't know if it's, like, worth it to go that route because it's a lot more cumbersome to have other devices on your desk, but something to think about.

In terms of webcam, I don't know Node space, and this space changes very, very, very quickly. So a quick trip to YouTube to check out what's the latest and greatest. And, Wes, I saw you were looking at the, Insta 3 60.

Yes. Yeah. They sent me what I saw. Really used it, but it's it's, like sorry. I, like, I have used it, but I it's amazing how much better it is because

I've gotten sent webcams for years, and they're always like, that's kinda crappy. This is the first one where I'm like, that's that's pretty good. Yeah. And I saw that they have a second version of it which does not have the moving gimbal, which, honestly, I'd probably go for that because I don't feel like I would care to, like, walk around. I don't know. The the moving gimbal seems nice, but it seems a bit gimmicky to me, I guess, if you're Yeah. If you're using for Zoom calls. Yeah. Yeah. That's you could just move the camera and point it where you're gonna be. I think if you if you need to, like, flip it down and show your desk, that's kinda nice. But, yeah, it is kinda unique, I think. Oh, yeah. It does that flip down thing. Yeah. That's cool. That's cool. Yeah. Desk view, which is good if you're doing, like, electronics tutorials or something like that.

Yeah. For sure. I would do I would say if you're looking for a webcam, just make sure you check the reviews online. Again, as I mentioned before, deprioritize resolution and just look for really nice compression and low light performance. So the best way to do that, just through some YouTube reviews. Another option you could go is using an old DSLR.

Getting a cheap DSLR, like a used one with a Cam Link, those are about $100. So that's gonna be a pretty good option. It'll give you a lot more control over your image.

But I think in today's day and age, it's hard to beat tethering a cell phone. That's like cell phone cameras look so good for the money you spend on them, and everybody has 1 kicking around their pocket. So I would definitely recommend, if you're looking for a camera,

try your phone. It it might just it might just be the best option you have. Yeah. I wonder at what point does it get cheaper to buy, like, an old iPhone, like a 2 or 3 year old iPhone for a couple $100 versus going to buy a a DSLR? A lot of people might have a DSLR, but I always think about that because at at a certain point, it's it's it looks good enough. You know? The cameras on these things are are really, really good, and they're not they don't get worse over time.

Yeah. They also have, like, incredible they call it computational photography or, I guess, computational videography, which is that they they auto adjust to the different surroundings so seamlessly. Like, it's you you you turn it on, it's gonna look great every single time. So that is a a lot of mental relief from having a deal like, when I have a DSLR, I have to set it up every time I turn it on. Have to make it look right for the surroundings. So that that that part kinda sucks. Yeah. Is there a

a common DSLR that is good? I I always wondered this. I'm like, is there, like, a old DSLR that's really good for a webcam that's, like, $250? Do you know of any that people are like, oh, get this one? They're a dime. It doesn't on eBay.

It's I don't know. It's lenses, though. Hey? It's lenses for sure. Yeah. Lenses. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I would say if if you're looking at older cameras, just make sure they have the I think it's called UHS support, which means they can act as a webcam on your computer. So you can actually get all most Sony cameras, you can just plug in a USB cable and use it as a webcam via USB, which is really nice. Oh, yeah. That way, you don't have to do the whole Cam Link setup with, you know, the HDMI.

So that's that's definitely an option.

Maybe not in the price range, Wes was suggesting, but I know the Sony Alpha a six thousand, you can get for, like, 650, which is with a lens. And that doesn't sound cheap. But as far as, like, DSLRs with a lens, that is

pretty decently cheap for what it is. Yeah. And then you also have a nice camera that if you wanna do any camera stuff. Yes. Yeah. Totally.

Then to upgrade your lighting, I would suggest getting a, panel softbox. So you can get, like, a what's called a parabolic softbox, which JS, like, those big kinda comb cone shaped, softboxes.

I have 1 in my space, and I wish that I didn't get it. They're technically, like, the most natural looking light from a soft Bos because they just they avoid hot spots really well.

If I were buying a new setup today, I'd get, like, a panel with a panel soft box, like, a a much slimmer version. That way, you can kinda get it pushed closer up against a wall. It doesn't take up quite as much space and you it's kind of that compromise. Right? You're you're figuring out what's gonna work for the the setup and not be totally invasive because it's a home office. So that would be my suggestion there. And then for sound treatment, get yourself some moving blankets from Amazon. You can buy a set of, like, 6 or 7 moving blankets for $100, and then hang them over things, whatever you have. Like, put up a I don't know. Put up something, hang a moving blanket over it. That's kind of the easiest way to do that. Nice. That's that's a good tip. What about mic stand?

So I know, like so we have a mic.

Do you you mentioned holding it can cause a lot of noise.

What about Mhmm. Stand? Do are we talking? I because, like, Wes and I both use kind of I I think it mine's, like, a pneumatic, not like spring one. Is there anything you recommend for on desk mic stands? Yeah.

I would say avoid these desk mount mic stands, like the ones that will often come shipped with microphones.

These Yarn, like, the Yeah. Kinda 6 inch articulating mic stand that would just sit on your desk.

Desks are awful for sound transmission, especially for you devs who are doing all these keystrokes all day long. That's gonna go straight dev and Yarn, that's gonna go straight through your microphone if you have it on a stand.

Getting a boom arm that clips to the edge of your desk is 1 step above that Wes it's it's more material that has to go through, so you're likely gonna have less sound transmission getting into your microphone. If you wanna go 1 step further, get a floor mount mic stand, like a a traditional music stand that you'd have for, like, a band. Wow. Have that beside your desk and boom your mic over. That's gonna give you the most isolation, but it's also less practical. You Node, it's one one other thing to have to vacuum around.

Yeah. Yeah. And what about, shock mount? Because mine is screwed into my Wes, but I've gotten rid of all the dong dong dong dong dong, from typing, which I when I first started making tutorials, I had major I kept a teacher underneath my, keyboard because I was always doing that. But getting a shock mount helped it a lot.

Yeah. Yeah. It's it's tough if the microphone doesn't come with 1 because

it can be really difficult to retrofit those. Like, a lot of microphones Yeah. Don't have a body that would just fit any old shock mount. So Yeah. Yeah. My shock mount is very oddly shaped for this microphone specifically. Yeah. Yeah. That's like the old, like, broadcast style too. Yeah. Before you know it, your, like, whole office is turned into, like, a production studio. Like, I I don't want that either. You know? Like, those huge, parabolic lights I want that. I don't want that. I don't want anything touching the ground, knock it over, kids hit it. You know? I want everything bolted to my Wes. So it's it's always like a trade off between Yeah. Probability. Even with the mic arm, I tried I probably tried 6 different mic arms from this Node. And I tried all the low profile ones, but they got in the way of my typing. And I tried a lot of the high profile ones, and they were they weren't coming in at the right angle. And I finally I returned them all, and they went back

to my old faithful here, which is the Heil mic arm. I have this Vivo Node, which is pneumatic, like I said, but it has some, like I'll I'll I'll share this link in a second. What's crazy about this one is that the the stupid mic arm comes with, like instead of a standard, threaded screw end for any normal thing, it came with this stupid, mic clip, and I had to, like, retrofit a actual correctly threaded. Oh. Just it was so down. I don't even know why or how, but, yeah, it was super obnoxious.

I have their monitor arms. I'm pretty sure Vivo. They're good quality, especially the pneumatic ones that are, like, air.

So That's what this is. And it's It's great because when you put it somewhere, it does not move. You know? It stays. Yeah.

Yeah. After I left Wes' studio, I came home and I bolted everything to my desk. I got it. So Yeah. I was so inspired by your setup because, like, you have it so you can just, like, bloop. Everything goes up and it all moves at the exact same speed.

So I did that. I got my monitors mounted on my desk. I've got my camera clipped on to my desk with, like, a a friction a massive friction arm. Oh, yeah. Look at this. This is great. Wes is disappearing underneath his desk at the moment. I got my microphone tethered to it, so everything can just move at one thing. Oh, Scott, you have it as well?

Oh, yeah. I'm standing now.

Oh, yeah. That's great. I got I got the presets. Let me just sit down.

Yes. Yeah. I did try to mount my camera to the same I have, like, a single post right through my desk that my all my monitors hang off of and my light hangs off of. Mhmm. And I was like, I'm gonna also hang the camera. But it's it's once you get out too far on, like, a, what do you call that? It not a pivot point. It just it's too wobbly.

Every little bump of the desk makes the camera shake like crazy. I have 3 separate arms. Yeah. 3 separate Yeah. Yeah. That's a good call.

Alright. Well, that that's super helpful.

Hopefully, there's some good tips in there for people to up their game when they're having meetings. It it seems silly to care about what you look like on a Zoom call. But, like, if you think, like if you were meeting in person, you would care what you're wearing, you know, when you go to somebody's office. You do care what you're wearing and and how you appear.

And, quite honestly, it's really hard to communicate with people when they have poor audio video over a Zoom or or whatever call that you're doing because you just don't get all of those in person cues and tells and whatnot. And when somebody has good audio video, you feel just so much more comfortable, talking to them.

Mhmm. I wonder how many people have lost job opportunities from bad looking cameras. Like, how many people have been between 2 different candidates and they subconsciously went with the one that just looked better? Yeah. Subconsciously.

There's gotta be some numbers there, for sure. I would imagine. That that makes a lot of sense.

It it is funny. Every time I hop on a call with, non pnpm folks or even tech folks, everybody's instantly like, woah.

What what do you do?

Alright. Let's move into the last section here, which is sick picks and shameless plugs. Randy, I hope you came prepared as a sick pick for us. I did I did come prepared. I've been thinking about this for a long, long time. Yeah. I can't I can't be the one that's unprepared here. So my sick pick is a creator on TikTok, also on YouTube, called Etymology Node. And I don't know if you've seen this guy, but he basically will take a word and just give you the entire history of where it came from. And he does these really cool Scott of like, a theme section of of words. So, like, he for instance, he was talking about how all, these these different sailing terms exist in business culture. So, like, know the ropes, run a tight ship, onboard, all hands on deck, smooth sailing, change course, leeway.

And he's saying that this comes back because English was spread by sailors, and so there's a whole ton of sailing etymology in business culture. Crazy.

It's so cool. And he does these, like, quick little 62nd hits.

So well researched, so well spoken, really, really cool creator.

Yeah. If people are wondering why you get on TikTok at all like, I know some people are like, I'm never gonna get on TikTok. This is, like, the peak type of TikTok content. To me, this is, like, what you go there for JS this type of thing.

And a shameless plug. What would you like to plug to the audience?

Shameless plug. Yeah. I'd love to plug my YouTube channel. It's just, youtube at randy rector, r e k t o r. And I nerd out hard on there, so I'm gonna be posting some more videos of, some microphone reviews. I've got 5 or 6, in the queue ready to go. So, yeah, if you wanna nerd out, learn about audio, it's a fun place to be.

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on, Randy. Appreciate all your, knowledge and whatnot. I'm glad that we could pack this up into an episode and and share it with everybody else. Yeah. Sick. Thanks for having me, guys. This is fun. Anytime. Thanks so much, Randy. Bruce. Peace.