GoXLR Mini Hands on Review, VIVO Monitor Mounts and Goodbye Phillips Hue Hub v1 – HGG433

Posted on by

Mike has a new GoXLR Mini in his studio and is not afraid to use it, Live! We take a good look and demo it along with an Audio Technica AT 2020 microphone. Jim talks about the latest from Phillip Hue and the loss of support coming for the v1 Hue Hub and a solution to fix it. We wrap things up with some discussion around monitor mounts and find out that we both purchased VIVO mounts about 6 years apart.  I think you will enjoy the show.

Audio Only
Apple PodcastsGoogle PodcastsPlayer EmbedShareLeave a ReviewListen in a New WindowDownloadSoundCloudStitcherSubscribe on AndroidSubscribe via RSSSpotifyAudioboomSpreakerOther Options

Full show notes, transcriptions, audio and video at http://theAverageGuy.tv/hgg433

Join Jim Collison / @jcollison and Mike Wieger / @WiegerTech for show #433 of Home Gadget Geeks brought to you by the Average Guy Network.

WANT TO SUBSCRIBE? http://theAverageGuy.tv/subscribe

Join us for the show live each Thursday at 8pmC/9E/1UTC at http://theAverageGuy.tv/live

Podcast, Home Gadget Geeks, mixer, microphone, GoXLR, monitors, VIVO, Audo, mini, Phillips Hue, Audio Technica

 

Save $40 on your first Box of HelloFresh

 

Convesation

Mike moves to a new audio setup – 

Reviews

VIVO Quad Monitor Mount – https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01E5ZIE4E/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o06_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

Jim Collison  [0:00] 
This is The Average Guy Network and you have found Home Gadget Geeks show number 433 actually second time, recorded on February 20 2020.

Jim Collison  [0:23] 
Here on Home Gadget Geeks we cover all your favorite tech gadgets that find their way into your home news reviews, product updates and conversation all for the average tech guy. I’m your host Jim Collison broadcasting live from the average guy TV Studios. Chile, Mike, I don’t know if the weather can decide like what 15 on Friday on Sunday, we had seven this morning. Again I said it’s just crazy. It just keeps bouncing back and forth. Of course, we’ll post some more class show notes out of the average guy.tv Don’t forget you can join us live on our mobile app really the best way to listen when you’re on the road travel season is coming up for many of you think about maybe summer travel plans you want to listen to Home Gadget Geeks on the road. Easiest way to do it is stream it from Our Spreaker app, you can get that for free Android iPhone, head out to Home Gadget Geeks. com. We just paid for that again. So appreciate our Patreon subscribers who help us help us fund that fund. And Home Gadget Geeks. com. It’s free. Just download it. Just have it ready. You don’t just have it on your phone and have it ready. Big thanks to Ryan a bob. Last weekend. I mentioned this early on we actually tried podcasting last week and for whatever reason. I had terrible upload speeds Mike and eventually we I say we isolated it to Cox. It was their problem. I complained a couple times us chat called in couldn’t get any movement and then Saturday afternoon. I came home from the track up the tower stair climb and the internet was fixed. And no No, no, no, it was wrong. It was better whenever I think I got a hold of you in the afternoon. We tested it out. Then this morning. I went to check it. I’m like okay, every morning Now, like checking the speed just kind of this morning, I was back to one. So I was getting one up, basically is what one or two up and of course that’s not.

Mike Wieger  [2:08] 
That’s not going to work for us. Right. And on Saturday, did the technician come out?

Jim Collison  [2:12] 
No, no, I think they just I they must have got some complaints. And the the only, you know, it’s pretty cold Thursday, Friday and Saturday, and it started to warm up Saturday afternoon. Well, the internet went down for the speed. I did say it didn’t go down. It just degraded right? Thursday when it got cold, and when it warmed up on Saturday started working again and I’m thinking maybe they got a piece of equipment that’s exposed to the cold or where, you know, I don’t know, I don’t know enough about that networking equipment to be able to tell but it was down this morning. It’s back up. I think we’re fine. I don’t know. It’s kind of weird. It’s one of those things where because it’s inconsistent. You really can’t you call the first thing they want to do is troubleshoot everything. like okay, who did disconnect everything. Can you reboot your router Every single time Don’t you have notes on this thing? And I’ve done that, right?

Mike Wieger  [3:07] 
I know.

Jim Collison  [3:08] 
No, you can’t convince them, you know, like, like, I kind of know what I’m talking about. Can we get right to the to the issue here? So, Ryan, Bob, we haven’t rescheduled for March. And they’ll be back on here as well. I appreciate it. We if you miss the live show, it’s still out there. You can kind of still see the crew. We’re going through got Task Manager open, we’re moving USB things around. I’m rebooting the beauty of stream yard. Didn’t matter for you guys. You guys just kept going even though you know my connection sucked. Right? You guys kept going? I missed the whole conversation. You guys talked about anything, anything important while I was screwing around with the stuff or No, not really.

Mike Wieger  [3:46] 
Just like trying to theorize of what could be going on with your setup. That was pretty much the entirety of what we were talking about when you were listening.

Jim Collison  [3:53] 
Well, I appreciate you guys doing that. I appreciate those guys coming on. And of course we’ll think computers doc org If you want to check it out, they got a lot of stuff going on over there and you just might want to that might be a, they have a I think they podcast on on Wednesday nights, Wednesday nights on YouTube and then some gaming going on afterwards. So okay, Mike, you’ve got it. What are you doing? You got a new microphone in front of you might sound a little different. But what’s like what’s going on over there?

Mike Wieger  [4:21] 
I do we’re testing a few new things out so the microphone as Jim is probably alluded to was maybe a bad choice as we’re starting to learn as we him and I are testing things out. Know what, like back and forth. Okay.

Jim Collison  [4:32] 
Well, I mean, it’s it’s go ahead No, then I’ll then I’ll complain about it.

Mike Wieger  [4:36] 
And I think I was I’ve been as you were talking, I was trying to like fix stuff over here. I might have been able to do something well, we’ll test it out later. But anyway, yeah. So essentially what what happened on my end was I started streaming again, you know, me, like very up and down in my hobbies, right? What am I doing now? Well, I’m back into streaming a little bit. And what that led to was, we all know the ATR 2100, which is the microphone Jim and I have Jim still uses right now that he’s using the microphone I have always used for podcasting before tonight, it’s a pretty gain hungry microphone and I had really eliminated the mixer from my setup a long time ago. And for streaming or things like that it actually worked fine running that thing off USB but what I did notice was that I really had to crank the gain on my stream and I was having to do that in software. And it just it was it was distorting it just enough that was kind of driving me nuts and so the first thing that I want to do is like Well okay, I want to introduce a mixer back into my setup but man a mixer for me the way I the way I need to do things was was kind of a pain to run First of all, it took a lot of space. And number two, it meant wires running everywhere and things like that. So I just so happened at the same exact time that I was like thinking about all this Okay, do I put my mixer back on my table? Can I still had it? Do I want to go through that hassle? I actually heard one of my streamers mentioned the mixer. He was using and I was like okay this this is really interesting because this mixer Okay, now did you notice my air conditioner stopped running as soon as I okay, yeah probably anyway we’ll get to that. Um, so I heard about this this new mixer that had come out and it come out I think a year and a half ago and it was called the go XLR. So there was a go XLR mini and I did a little bit of googling and I found out all of the top streamers are using this thing. I’m like, Okay, what what is causing every single good streamer and a lot of podcasters to use this this mixer like, you know, mixes all of those things, Jim, at least you know, from what I knew for the past like people use all sorts of mixers it didn’t even matter like it all it did was make sure audio like as long as it did that I did it well. People use it. There was no one person you were going to find that really fun. Okay, this is like the mixer you might have had a few like podcasting like travel mixers that everyone went to, but as far as like a desktop mixer, everyone use different ones. So there had to be something different here and there totally was certainly night I want to kind of walk you guys through why this go XLR is like taking the streaming industry by storm especially, and now is really starting to get into podcasting because this thing is not your traditional mixer at all I almost I almost don’t even want to call it a mixer I want to call it like a streamer podcast or audio interface is really what I want to call it because that’s really what it is. So let me kind of describe this thing to you and actually I will show my screen because that gives you guys a little bit of a visual for those of you on video of what this thing looks like so it’s pretty

Jim Collison  [7:34] 
cool and and while you’re setting that up. The impetus for this for you right is really your gaming. Right and so it’s it’s not really podcasting we had we had no problems, no problems with your mic podcasting. It was fine there but well in the in the gaming world, you’re still struggling. We’re struggling a little bit more with it.

Mike Wieger  [7:54] 
I was in it’s really not the quality of the audio. That’s not the issue. Like all the mixers do a great job with audio. Um, this one does better for me just because it has some things built inside a cheaper mixer. But it’s really not the audio quality, it’s the features. And really, it’s the mix minus. So if you’re a podcaster or if you’re a streamer, I’m going to use the streaming just so I can stick to that example. Right, we’ll talk we’ll talk about streaming and I will kind of let Jim kind of talk about podcasting and how he might use it. But for example, when I’m streaming a game, I usually have discord open and I’m playing with someone and they’re talking to me through Discord. So let’s use Ryan as an example in our chat because when I’ve done this before, so him and I are in a discord and we’re talking to each other while we play a game and I want to be able to control his level of how loud he is because sometimes when I play with Ryan, he has a really good mic so he’s nice and loud for me. Sometimes I play with you know, someone who has a really quiet like I need to boost them up. So what the go XLR does is essentially when you plug it in, first of all my version I have the go XLR Minnie and so the Mini is completely USB powered. So the only cable running to my PC is one USB cable into the XLR. It has an XLR input. So that’s where my microphone is plugged into. It has a lot of other kind of inputs and outputs and like they have a line in, they have a microphone in, they have an optical in as well. So you can connect like a an Xbox or a ps4 via optical cable to this thing, but for me I’ll just explain my setup, my setup is just my XLR microphone into the XLR Mini, and the XLR mini into the computer, one USB cable. But here’s the magic. What the go XLR does is it creates multiple audio inputs and outputs on your computer. So when now when I play with a computer, when I go to my audio settings, I have different outputs. I have a chat output, I have a system output, I have a music output, and so with the one mixer It is mixing audio, but it’s not mixing analog streams, it’s mixing digital streams. So if when you guys look at this, I know it’s going to be really zoomed out because it’s full screen on the stream. But this is exactly so this is actually my mixer right here just in digital form. You guys will notice as I slide sliders up and down, it’s actually sliding things up and down on the screen. Okay, so I’m doing that physically on my device, not on the screen. So, on the left side, I have my microphone slider up and down. This is really controlling the XLR input microphone. So if I’m, I can actually do this live as I bring it down.

Jim Collison  [10:39] 
And then now we can’t hear you.

Mike Wieger  [10:40] 
And Yep, and now I bring it back up. So we’re going back up to the top. All right. So easy enough microphone. Simple to explain. Now, the next one is actually something I’m using right now as we’re streaming. This one is labeled chat. And why is it chat will so in stream yard, I have my input and my output set to chat. So again, that’s an audio interface that the glicks or is creating on your computer. And the reason I have it set that way is so Jim coming out the output on chat, it goes to this slider on my mixer. So right now I can control and pretend right now, you guys are hearing this through stream yard. Pretend I’m streaming to twitch, right, so I haven’t I have an output, it’s called the broadcast output. And that broadcast output is going to twitch. So when I turn that up and down, Jim’s voice is going up and down.

Jim Collison  [11:29] 
Yeah, and in theory, if we wanted to, you could be streaming this to twitch, right? Definitely could, right Yeah,

Mike Wieger  [11:35] 
yep. So I can be streaming this to twitch, I would be controlling my voice on the first slider. Jim’s on the second. And then this is where it gets even better. So there’s a third slider and a fourth slider on the go XLR Mini, the third one by default. And again, you can change all of these. They don’t have to be what they’re physically labeled. This is just how I have mine set up. The third one is set for music. So for me on Spotify on my computer, I have the output for Spotify. I set to the music audio interface that this thing creates. And those show up in your music preferences section. They do i mean your audio preferences just like anything else, just like any speakers, you plug in just a virtual microphone. Yeah, it’s just like selecting your ATR USB mic if you plug in that way or your mixer. So when I go when I bring my music slider up and down, if I had Spotify open, it would be controlling the music. So if you guys are kind of getting the gist here, it’s really being able to adjust on a granular level from a mixer with sliders, your different things from one PC. If we wanted to do this on a traditional mixer, you would need to be getting different either USB audio interfaces, or you’d have to have multiple cables running from outputs on your computer

Jim Collison  [12:44] 
or a modern USB mixer so that you have to get one that’s USB enabled, actually has some of that built in. So you’re right,

Mike Wieger  [12:52] 
but those are super expensive. Yeah, right. You’re gonna be paying a lot for one for the life of multiple inputs and outputs via USB Cuz I think on my mixer, I could send stuff back to the mixer. But I could only send one thing.

Jim Collison  [13:05] 
Yeah, right. And in this case, we’re talking about physical hardware. So like I can send the Amazon device to the mixer, but it’s plugged into it physically, right? Correct. I could take the output from another computer that’s playing music and bring it into the mix. Yep. And I can choose where you know, I could play that to you. But that’s all hardware based. This is literally just virtual.

Mike Wieger  [13:28] 
Yes. So that’s a really good point. This mixer is not what you want. When if you’re going to go like record a band and you want a microphone you want your drums you want all you want a bunch of physical devices plugin, not what you want. This is for the podcast or who is so low. Like even for Jim this actually, I’m thinking of in Jim’s use case, he could have me on a different slider if he was a podcast or who used music or stingers or things like that. He could have a more granular control over what goes where and I’ll kind of show you guys that because the real money here is the right table when I get to that

Jim Collison  [14:01] 
mic, so folks know what it looks like. I’m assuming this is the one this was the link, I gotta show notes. Yep, that’s what you’re talking about. So that’s what it physically looks like as well. Again, you might want to come over to the video, either through the RSS feed or on YouTube. We’re showing a lot of stuff. Here we are.

Mike Wieger  [14:19] 
Yeah, we’re showing a lot of stuff. So yet, the so and then the final slider that I didn’t talk about is just system. So I consider this the catch. All right, this is your system output of your computer. This is if I open up YouTube and it’s playing out the standard output, it would go to your system slider, see how that as well. So not only are these things all adjustable, so if we go to the mixing tab here, you guys can see that these are your different sliders, so slider one through four, and you can select what source you want. Again, I kind of walk you through my setup. So for the first one, I have voice chat, music, things like that. This is the really cool thing to be and this this is why this was built for streamers. Here’s what happens when you’re streaming I’m streaming, I have Ryan in Discord. I’m playing Tarkov with him. All of a sudden someone in my chat on Twitch wants to like ask me a question and I want to talk back to them. But I don’t want to necessarily bother Ryan with all of that Ryan doesn’t need to hear me talk to my chat. Ryan doesn’t need to hear me thank everyone for donations or bits or follows things like that. So these mute buttons are all customizable underneath each slider. So the one for my microphone, you’ll see here is a mute option. You can either mute it to everything. So as soon as I hit that it would mute my microphone to all the outputs. But what I have to do is just mute it to dear I’m on the wrong channel. I have it just mute to the voice chat, which means the chat slider so like right now, if I hit my mute button. You guys don’t hear me because you’re set on the chat. But if I was streaming the stream would still hear me just you wouldn’t hear me. So it’s perfect for that kind of scenario. So someone in chat asked me a question I hit that. Ryan doesn’t have to hear me jabber on to my chat. I unmute it when I’m Ready to talk back with him. So these mute options and there’s there’s a bunch of them. But really you would either have it mute to your chat or muted across the board. So customizable mute buttons. And then as we go across here, that’s the same for all for you do have one overall cough mute button, what I’m calling it on the bottom right, it needs it needs that microphone. It’s like a cough button. Right. Cough mute. I think I would I really want them to do in the next piece of software is to make that toggle, not just while I’m pressing it, because I would love to be able to tap it, do something and then tap it again. Right now. It’s just while you’re holding

Jim Collison  [16:37] 
it. Is there hardware cough button on your on the actual device?

Mike Wieger  [16:41] 
That Yes, sorry, when I’m pointing everything up here that I’m pointing to is a mimic of an actual button. So yes, when I’m pressing that I’m pressing it on my actual device. So it’s a physical cough button. And also on the left, just for Oh yeah. So here you go. So that bottom right blue button, that’s your cough button.

Jim Collison  [16:56] 
The bottom right, this one right there.

Mike Wieger  [16:58] 
Cool. Yep, and then bottom left is your is your bleep button. That’s just kind of a fun one. You know, if you’re gonna curse and you’re gonna say, Man, this is a awesome mixer. Just awesome. I mean, I could love this mixer more, right? Like, it did add some fun in Yeah, if you want to go if you want to so if you are someone who quit, but really, I have actually found that when you have someone in your party who’s cursing and you don’t want everyone to hear that before you can mute them if usually like tap that real quick. I run a family friendly stream. So I try not to curse myself, but nice little addition. And so the main part of what’s awesome about this, we’re going to get to kind of the meat and potatoes is the routing table on this mixer. And this is what I’m talking about when it comes to mix minus. So along the top you have all your inputs along the left of this table. And again, I’m going to try to describe it as best I can for you audio listeners, but it might be something on this section might have to come look. So imagine a you know a matrix grid and along the top you have inputs along the side you have outputs. And then each box you can check our Depending on if you want a certain input to go to a certain output. So here’s what I was talking about with that broadcast stream mix. So this second row across, that is for me, Twitch. That’s what Twitch is hearing. So they’re hearing everything. I don’t use the line in so we can ignore line in but if you were to checkmark that, but the customizability here is absolutely insane. So for Jim, for you guys on the podcast, you guys are on my chat output. So what are you guys hearing? Well, you’re just hearing my microphone. So if I had music going in the slider was up. The stream would hear that, for example. So again, let’s use the example of I’m playing with Ryan and he’s in my Discord. I’m using chat. He’s only hearing my microphone. He’s not hearing the music I play to chat. He’s not hearing my system sound so when I get the alert for a new donation that my stream wants to hear he’s not hearing that. He’s only hearing what I what I wanted to hear, but hey, Ryan, I’m listening this really cool song. Now he’s hearing my music. It’s as simple as just checking the box and it’s live right so as I click it on Click, he’s hearing it, he’s not hearing it. So all that sort of mix minus what I really love to is the headphones portion of this. So right now in my headphones, you can turn on and off certain things. So if the stream or if the podcast wants to listen to something, and you don’t you can unclick it. So for me if I’m really trying to focus on it, like if I’m in Tarkov, right, talk about some pretty intense game, I want to focus, I just unclick music and I don’t hear the music anymore, the stream can still enjoy it, but I don’t need to hear it in my own headphones, which is pretty cool. So this is an entire mix minus matrix essentially that this was the moneymaker for me. This was where it all started, like okay, this is why this thing makes sense for streamer. Or in some cases podcaster

Jim Collison  [19:43] 
So Mike, when you’re gaming, are you keeping this like because we’ve seen you posted both and discord in the Facebook group, your your monitors, so yeah, three monitors going across right one up, are you using one of your monitors to have this open full time so you can just go right to it when you need to make changes,

Mike Wieger  [20:01] 
it’s usually minimized, but it’s up. So I don’t usually because everything is pretty accessible on the physical mixer. And the only thing I would need to open this for is to adjust this routing table so easier to configure, or or the way to configure is in the software and then you’re using the physical device exactly do all the manipulation. But for the example I just gave, like where I’m in Tarkov and I don’t want the music to be playing. I have opened it up real quick before and just kind of unclear. I don’t wanna hear the music in my headphones. I’ve made that sort of change on the fly. Everything else is is pretty okay, but like is the same example for Okay, I want Ryan to hear this cool song I’m listening to. Right That’s an example you would need to open up the software just to click that box again. But usually everything is going to be running here by one big my biggest complaint and it’s a pretty big complaint on this mixer is there is no volume knob for your headphones. So now you can assign a slider but you give up a slider right and I can’t do that because I use my mic. chat music in the system audio I use all those right now. Some people have said, you know, well do you really ever bring your mic down and it’s a good point, I probably could assign that slider, but then I would lose the mute button to chat and that’s something I use all the time. That’s this this button right here is the most pressed button on my mixer. So I’m constantly muting myself to Discord. So I can talk to my chat.

Jim Collison  [21:22] 
So so why not run that out into a headphone amplifier and then use that headphone amplifier to control your, your audio?

Mike Wieger  [21:29] 
You You read my mind? That’s the answer. That’s what I need to do. I just need to run this thing into an amplifier and and have my volume

Jim Collison  [21:35] 
up there get a cheap little to to channel or four channels. There’s some advantages to having that that headphone amplifier to if you want to ever send audio back to something. Yep. It’s that splitter you know, typically an unpowered splitter is going to actually reduce the sound quality and in volume, but when you run it through an amplifier, everything stays intact and you can get it a little bit louder. So Andrew Run it to your

Mike Wieger  [22:00] 
to like desk speakers as well. Right? Right, you can have both of those on one little knob. So yeah, so that that’s in the works, that’s when I plan on doing. Okay, so we’ve talked about the downside of the non volume mixer. There was one other kind of area I wanted to cover real quick and this is again another big feature but and then we’re going to talk about the microphone and why you guys can hear my my heater now. This is the microphone settings. So the first thing you need to know is it has the Midas preamp, which in the music industry audio and my just preamp is a really good preamp. So for very gain hungry microphones, this thing’s be able to handle it just fine. And I agree when I plugged the 2100 in which is a very gain hungry microphone. I usually had my Gain knob pretty much cranked all the way to the right on my mixer if not all the way and also the way. So this one handles Okay, so when you first set your microphone up, can you guys still hear me when I talk right now?

Jim Collison  [22:58] 
Yeah, it just went down a little bit. Just went down a little bit.

Mike Wieger  [23:00] 
Yeah. So here’s where you’re, you know, changing dynamic condenser. So it’s going to add in the phantom power, if you’re a condenser, or you can have a 3.5 millimeter. Okay, so, so that would that was the initial microphone setup. Now here across the bottom it has and so on the mini, I should kind of be telling you what the big version has to but for the mini, you have a noise gate, you have an EQ, and you have a compressor. So the noise gate, this is where you have and it’s, it’s the reason why when I’m dead quiet, you don’t hear anything. And when I start to talk right now, you can actually hear a bit of background noise. Your noise gate is essentially a threshold where anything below this decibel level, it’s not going to allow in, it’s not gonna accept it. And then once something breaches that it kind of opens up, and it’s going to listen to, to the microphone. Okay, so, so so for example, so I’ll be quiet for a second and you shouldn’t have heard anything. Now if I turn the gate all the way off, especially with this condenser microphone.

Jim Collison  [24:00] 
It may be hard on what we’re doing. Maybe like process but earlier,

Mike Wieger  [24:06] 
yeah, I can hear my background as a ton when I’m listening to it in these headphones. So then you have your EQ, which was great to adjust, you know, if you don’t know about EQ, it’s essentially just adjusting your low mids and highs, which I think helps a lot. The My favorite part about this and actually, it’s really interesting because I jumped on and Jim and I were kind of I was talking about how everything sounds and and i think him and I like a little bit of different sound in the voice so did this last pieces of the compressor, and all compressor does that takes your lows and your highs and kind of levels them out in the middle kind of compresses them together. Right. The biggest piece about this is that you’re not going to have you’re not going to keep your microphone because as you go up above certain decibels, it uses a ratio to bring that and compress it way back down. So you should never really Pete your microphone, if you have a compressor on and you’re running it correctly. The other thing it can do, which I don’t have it set to doing right now. Is it can take your lows when you whisper and bring them up a little bit. That’s what they called this, this makeup game is what it’s called. And I was quiet. If I had that turned on that would actually have been boosting that audio up a little bit to get again to compress it to bring it back to a standard level. So I like a little bit more of a compressed flat sound. Jim prefers a more dynamic sound, which is a great example of everyone’s ears. They like things a certain way and I think a lot of it comes to like what you get used to hearing too. So I like a little bit more of a compressed flat, compressed flat sound. So I had mine very compressed. Jim’s like Oh, man, you sound very flat, Mike. Okay, let me change them and see if he would you think I turned that compressor off and I think it add a little bit more range to my voice, especially in the volume. Whereas before when I had it cranked up pretty high. My voice was very, like he said, flat. It’s a great way to describe it. That’s what it is.

Jim Collison  [25:52] 
Yeah, almost two almost two dimensional like getting ready. It just it literally feels two dimensional and you make the adjustment and I go It that feels more warm and no you know more three dimensional.

Mike Wieger  [26:05] 
Right? Right. Everyone’s saying the chat you know this is Billy Mays here for the for the mixer. You know, I have rarely found a device like this that I get really pumped and I just really, really enjoy.

Jim Collison  [26:18] 
No I think it’s a good solution I think from an average guy standpoint right where The Average Guy Network, this is a really nice kind of it fits into a space for podcasters or or or gamers like you’re doing. You know the really nice there’s a couple of versions that when you got this I thought well did you look at the mix pre three or the mix pre six those are both hardware enabled Elvis software but they do a lot of this but they’re 399 and 699. Right. The road caster pro roads road caster pro similar idea it’s got a lot of inputs, you can does a lot of things virtual you can do it in the hardware as well. 699 like protecting $700 for these This is a this is a 299 or 249. Yep, yeah to 49 I think on Amazon It was 248. So So and I

Mike Wieger  [27:08] 
got it on Amazon for 230. Last week, okay. Yeah fluctuating quite a bit.

Jim Collison  [27:12] 
what’s the what’s the retail? So this is the mini Do they have a pro version then? And yeah,

Mike Wieger  [27:17] 
the big version, you get pretty much everything you see here. The EQ is, what is this? This is a six band. I think the EQ is a 10 band on the big boy. You also get a de Esser but I should also mention tonight. Well, I’ll say that for my talk about my microphone, um, you get a de Esser on the big boy what a cat takes away those SS sounds a little bit, but apparently it takes a lot of processing power. And then on the right side of the go XLR. So if you take my mini version and you have a right side to it, you get two new things you get a sampler, which is actually a really cool way to bring in stingers or to record so on the sampler I could be holding a button right now it would record every step. Let go and that saved like preset right? Something I didn’t really need some streamers some podcasts was all about that I think actually the full version the sampler is actually where a podcast or could really enjoy it because especially if they program all of their sound effects over that sampler could make it super easy to add those back in live The other thing you get is a voice changers when I call it I don’t know what you really call it professionally but you know where you can mess with you know your your base and your your pitch and you can make yourself sound like a robot you can sound like a megaphone kind of have those set to priests

Jim Collison  [28:34] 
old school telephone yeah radio right those shadows effect Exactly.

Mike Wieger  [28:39] 
But the thing I liked about what they do with the mini and if I didn’t mention before I think I did the Mini is entirely USB powered, no external power. I that’s a good and bad right, it eliminates one chord. So especially if you’re maybe a little bit more mobile, it might be nice to not have to find a place to plug that in. For me. I wish they would have put it because Higher reason they don’t have a de Esser is because it doesn’t have the power to supply to, to do a de Esser but so there’s no but there is a power cable on the big version. And I think I don’t think you get any more inputs and outputs on the big version. And the internals as in like the mightest preamp, things like that are also all the same. So they kept the great audio quality you get from the main go XLR, and all they did was take away the de Esser, four bands from the EQ, the sampler, the voice changer, and and then you’ve got the mini and the main verse, The Big Boy version is $500 to double the price, which still isn’t bad, to be totally honest. Oh 41 on Amazon right now that that price dropped a little bit so it’s like

Jim Collison  [29:45] 
their prices are moving around a little bit. You might want to camel camel

Mike Wieger  [29:50] 
just released the mini about two months ago. So they had the Big Boy version out for about a year. And then everyone was kind of asking for a more affordable Like, I don’t need all these features. And oh, and I guess the big version does have like a few different things you have like you can change all the different icons above each slider. Whereas on the mini they are just written physically on the board.

Jim Collison  [30:14] 
I like the swear button on this one. It’s it’s got all the it’s got all the characters on

Mike Wieger  [30:19] 
this one has to do.

Mike Wieger  [30:21] 
Yeah.

Jim Collison  [30:23] 
That’s pretty funny.

Mike Wieger  [30:23] 
Yeah, but so it has that sampler was actually a 12 sampler because you have ABC and you have the four corners, you have 12 sounds you could program into there. And then a bunch of presets up top for for vocal changes. Oh, it on the big version. The other thing I like about this and this, it kind of drives me nuts, I should probably just delete my profile, because you were saved this thing to a default profile so that when you start it up, whenever you know the computer comes back from a sleep mode or anything like that, it sets all your volumes back to your saved wherever they were before. Well on the Mini. The sliders are not motorized on the big version. They’re motorized. So when you turn that thing on, and it load your profile, all those sliders move back to where you had them before, which is really cool. On the mini, it’ll have the it’ll have it set to those. But when you look down, they don’t line up. And as soon as you start moving, it was like, Okay, I’m resetting back to wherever your slider is now, not where did your preset set to

Jim Collison  [31:19] 
mechanical sliders are interesting. We, we had a big board, I worked at a church and we had a big at Channel, whatever. And they had bought one with the mechanical sliders. And you could you know, there’s 99 presets and and the thought was in between all our services, you could set the, you know, the volume levels where you want them and then each service would have its own number and it would just dial it in for you. It never really worked. But it was crazy when you pick the service number and then the fighters would go, you know, to the different the different settings and just go right back to where they were. So that was pretty cool and kind of surprising. They’d be available in just a $500 unit. So right you know, pretty, pretty interesting.

Mike Wieger  [31:59] 
Yeah, so $500 might be, you know, for someone who needs those type of things, it totally might be worth it to jump up to that model. But again, this is a device where I haven’t found too many downsides to it. And I know I went on Willie Mays on it. It’s good. It’s good. It’s a solid, solid device at a great price point. And the thing that was different for me is, and this could be different for other people. I just didn’t know something like this existed with those type of routing capabilities. Very simple at this price point. I thought if I want to get into that I was gonna be looking at for sure a $500 an up mixer. And I didn’t know there was something like that. At this level.

Mike Wieger  [32:37] 
Go. Yeah,

Mike Wieger  [32:39] 
yeah. So the The second piece of the of the new gear is we’re on testing on new microphone tonight. And the big change for me was going from a dynamic microphone to a condenser. So real quick, we just switched over to the at 2020. So when you’re hearing me talk, that’s what I’m coming through, which is now a condenser microphone, requiring that phantom power from the mixer, things like that. I had not used a condenser microphone before except for the Blue Yeti. And I forgot until I got on the gym tonight how much room noise this thing picks up. And it’s great for the price only 99 bucks, I think is a great sounding microphone. And I do like my vocals like right now I think you guys got to tell me because I do want to get your guys’s feedback on this because I’m trying to my ears way different than everyone else’s I think when I’m listening to my own voice compared to what other people hear it, but I am running this through the XLR. I have the gate on it. And right now I have no air conditioning on there’s no water pipes running. So it should be pretty clean sounding. But I think what you guys heard earlier and when I first got on with Jim what he heard was, I mean as soon as my heater turns on, I’m in the basement you can definitely hear that background noise of the heater but right now hopefully it sounds relatively clean. Jim does it sound the sound all right right now or you hear

Jim Collison  [33:58] 
sounds clean. You have a lot of baby

Jim Collison  [34:01] 
Alex was known Ron mentioning I think you have a lot of bass in your in your setup now it’s just kind of dialing it in to get it figured out is where you want it. Yeah, I think

Mike Wieger  [34:12] 
it sounds good. The EQ I left from my EQ that I use on the 2100 so I’ll probably need to adjust a little bit this one probably does pick up a little bit more of the low end so bringing that down I don’t want to be vibrating people’s deaths from their speakers just want a little bit of voice that’s good. So a lot of people are saying so base Ryan doesn’t like it as much

Jim Collison  [34:36] 
as soon as you started talking about this we got a little digital pixelization At least I got it I don’t know the early chat room Yeah, yeah. Can you find now but yeah, you know, anytime and they’re giving some feedback you know,

Mike Wieger  [34:48] 
what I want because turn period guys, I can still return this thing.

Jim Collison  [34:51] 
flat. It’s clean but maybe a little scratchy which is like it’s it’s the same but completely different. You know, don’t like this mic sound as much ronzo has a base in there. Um, yeah, you know, and Mike, I think it a microphone and I mean, I haven’t dialed this microphone. I have not changed this microphone since I, you know, probably four years ago, five years ago. So right. Everybody’s That’s the sound everybody’s used to, you know, it’s just it is what it is. I think if you had that if you kept that mic, and you kind of messed around with it, and dial that in and got out where you wanted. I think eventually that would be your sound. But anytime you change anything, then people are like, yeah, that sounds different. Especially when you ask them like if you come on tonight not said anything. People may have not even noticed that. Yeah, that’s true.

Mike Wieger  [35:44] 
But the addition of if people don’t like the sound of as much even when it’s clean, and then you add in the fact that I have to deal with now it hearing the heater and knowing that it’s way more of a headache in I’m willing to put up with a headache if it sounds better, but if it doesn’t happen again, You know, those are things like for people said to bacey Why can bring down the space a little bit as we’re talking? Yeah. And maybe that doesn’t sound as bad. Maybe now a little bit, my lows are fine. And I actually need to turn my compressor all the way off. Right? And then we can level out. I mean, this is really so if we went flat, this is flat on the EQ. So this is this, this should be

Jim Collison  [36:22] 
you know, what’s interesting is you’re making those adjustments. I’m hearing a little pixelization of your audio. When as as you’re adjusting them, so Oh, just as I’m adjusting,

Mike Wieger  [36:32] 
that’s progress. It is digital, right? Yeah.

Jim Collison  [36:34] 
Yeah. Which is why I never I never liked mixing in the software. I always like to hardware mix. Just because, you know, and I’ve moved this mixer around since I’ve had it. It’s currently back here over my right shoulder. But I just kind of like I like being able to go to the sliders. And because if something goes wrong with a computer, you get taken too many resources. It doesn’t sometimes don’t respond. That’s just always been, that has always been my preference.

Mike Wieger  [37:02] 
Yeah. Now the way that this is working is you’re right, if the computer went down, I wouldn’t be able to make us chatting, but it’s sending those settings to the mixer. Everything was processed on it, nothing is done on the computer. It’s all processed in the mixer. So these are just changing the settings. It’s like having the dials, but is that you’re setting digitally. Right? Right. I mean, you’re not like the sound of whatever I just did.

Mike Wieger  [37:28] 
I think that’s back to

Jim Collison  [37:29] 
Joe. Joe says, hard to spell booze in a software mixer though.

Mike Wieger  [37:35] 
I well. Hopefully, I’ve been clear that this is a hardware device that I’m just showing you guys my a software. So this this thing right here is sitting on my desk. This is just the software you use to set it control it and make some changes to it other than that is a physical hardware mixer.

Jim Collison  [37:52] 
Hope me now that makes Yeah, that makes sense. I think I showed that I’ll show it again. Just so folks know this is this is what we’re We’re talking about here, right? This this device that you have here, you’ve got the mini available there. So no, I think I know you could spill some beer on that if you wanted to. And it would probably do the exact same thing where you’d have to go buy a new one.

Mike Wieger  [38:14] 
Yeah. Okay, so you talked for like two seconds. I’m gonna switch and we’ll see if we can like a live real.

Jim Collison  [38:18] 
We’re going to switch to the 2100.

Mike Wieger  [38:20] 
Yeah. Okay, take seconds.

Jim Collison  [38:22] 
Yeah, yeah, we’ll see how that goes. Make sure you hit mute. Before you get that done. You know, I have while you’re changing that mic, I have been so tempted to go with a rt 320 or high LPR 40 those are both condenser really, really, really good mixing kind of the industry standard from podcasting perspective, but the room I’m in while it’s treated, and I have some pretty good audio in here with Sarah and the TV right behind me, I you know, like a we used to do on the Yeti shoot, she’ll even she’ll even laugh through the wall into this microphone. So every time I kind of think about it, I kind of go now so so you’re back on the 2100

Mike Wieger  [39:03] 
Yeah, this so this is back on the 2100. And I hear I hear a big difference. Now I just don’t know which one I like. It’s certainly better or worse. Now what I do think is I think the compressor makes a big difference on this microphone. So when I turn the compressor up to about 40 there, did that flatten it out a little bit. You just like the sound of this way better. Well, not laugh

Jim Collison  [39:32] 
now. Well, right. Right. I was laughing it Ryan he said like butter.

Mike Wieger  [39:36] 
So yeah. Okay, so this one is a little bit better. Hmm. And maybe actually without I turned to

Jim Collison  [39:40] 
so No, but I think the the, the, you know, the diaphragm on that.

Jim Collison  [39:47] 
Just a little bit better.

Mike Wieger  [39:49] 
Yeah, beyond right. And it just doesn’t have it doesn’t pick up all those background sounds as much.

Jim Collison  [39:55] 
I know, in going through that mixer. Like I think I think that’s a match made in heaven right there my friend. Okay,

Mike Wieger  [40:02] 
there we go. Well Then it’s settled. You guys saved me. 100 bucks. I’m gonna go return this 2020 that is exactly why I got it in. And it’s actually the reason I went and got it. I ordered it. I actually I didn’t order it. I was going to order on Amazon was like, wait, if I go to Guitar Center, I can pick this thing up in person. Try it tonight on the show. And then return it tomorrow. It’s like we’re

Jim Collison  [40:24] 
sir Guitar Center for you. Is that out by? Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah, it is weird. I, I’m getting a little digital pixelization every once in a while from you off of that off of that device. super interesting. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know what’s causing it. But it could be somebody when I adjust.

Mike Wieger  [40:43] 
It’s probably not was it just adjusting things right there.

Jim Collison  [40:46] 
It’s It’s when you’re adjusting it. So I wonder what’s going on there with the process.

Mike Wieger  [40:50] 
I won’t touch it. And you just told me it shouldn’t do it the rest of time. Okay, just got one there a second

Jim Collison  [40:55] 
ago and you say I won’t touch it

Mike Wieger  [40:58] 
in a little digital

Jim Collison  [41:00] 
Yeah, little little pixelization there a little dangerous

Mike Wieger  [41:02] 
dip. Chad, are you hearing that in the stream yard?

Jim Collison  [41:07] 
Yeah, it’d be good to know if if you guys saw take him a second to do that. No, this is a great test. Mike, I you know, we we have to use microphones for what we do we had they when we have Dave Jackson on, you couldn’t make it that week. But Dave and I talked about you know, all the sound needed now to be a remote worker like to work from home to you know, how it’s requiring better people are people are looking for and asking for better sound inside, you know, a call. There’s just nothing worse than when you’re on a conference call and somebody is in that, you know, there and there’s there an audio hell, you know, and you’re like, Oh, it’s so painful to listen to, could you do something different? I got a brand new Lenovo laptop from work and the microphone doesn’t work in it. I mean, it’s scratchy at best, not working most of the time. So I’m not In a spot anymore where I can just go, you know, you can just open up your laptop and start talking. I’ve got to have a headset or I’ve got to have something with me that you know, that allows me to be sat and have good sound. It’s kind of a requirement now. So Well, I hope we’re not forcing you back into but but that helped that helped you make the decision.

Mike Wieger  [42:26] 
Yeah, well, you gave me enough time right there to I haven’t changed them out back. We’re already mounted back up.

Jim Collison  [42:31] 
We’re guys. I kind of just

Mike Wieger  [42:33] 
wanted to give you a

Jim Collison  [42:35] 
little bit I almost ran out of stuff to talk about. So it’s it No, cool. It’s Um, and then you prefer over the beer cans as opposed to to earbuds

Mike Wieger  [42:48] 
in yet well, okay. But I will say this only when I can hear myself back with monitoring from whatever device I’m using. right because Brian turned me on to this actually, I didn’t know about that. So I have my mic monitoring. way off. And when you were over the year, you can’t hear yourself. Oh, it’s terrible. It’s awful. And there’s a word for Rhino but in chat, I can’t remember what he calls it. side side noise side side monitoring something like that. And once I’ve turned up my mic monitoring on the go XLR, I was like, Oh, so much better. And I do. Yeah, I do like this. I’ll probably go back to your phones at some point for especially for the podcast. These are more comfortable for me like sitting here. My ears start to ache when I was wearing those earbuds. I do not have a good pair of wired earbuds, right?

Jim Collison  [43:33] 
Yeah, your buds would get you in there. Last night I was doing was recording. So I produce a podcast couple podcasts for Gallup. And I was recording one in Japan and they it was Japanese in language. I don’t do those. They just produce them. And so they were they were talking and I was kind of listening but I needed to call my mom too. And I’m like, Okay, well I can’t I’m muted here so I need to do something different. So I got out my my boat was 35 and I paired them to my phone. Then I left my earbuds in and I put my phone over the top. So I could still hear I was still monitoring what’s going on. I called my mom and I could start to hear my mom through the speaking so at one point I took them out because it was just maddening to listen to them speaking in Japanese and trying to listen to my mom. We took him out but so I had that conversation with her on the 35 and then I saw some commotion going on in the live stream so but pull the earbud put it back in said hold on mom just a second don’t talk you know you’re not gonna hear him but don’t talk. So then I talked to them got their problem fixed got them started again went back telling mom on it. I probably could have done it if if I was thinking through I probably get it on an old machine but those 35 is actually worked out really well for me. They’re kind of optimized for phone calls. And I always forget that I’m I love him in a plane. I love him for the noise cancelling. But man pretty great. the only the only problem is and Ryan says side tone. That’s the Yeah, that’s that’s the word you were looking for. I don’t Yep. Those You know, when you’re on a Bluetooth connection, you’re not getting your voice routed back to you. And I wish I could get my own. I want to hear what it what’s what’s being sent. Exactly like, and I want to hear it in real time. And to this point, I haven’t figured out how to do that. Or if you can even do that on the 35. I’d actually when I’m on a phone call, I’d actually like to hear what they’re hearing from me. In real Toby,

Mike Wieger  [45:28] 
someone they could add into their app is like as an option, right? Yes. Is having a little bit of Mike monitoring,

Jim Collison  [45:34] 
though. I know. I should look I haven’t looked at that app in a while. I’m going to take a phone call on that thing and forever. So but they are great. You know those microphones that are built into those that headset have noise cancelling have them have their own you can be in a super noisy room, and it closes it right up. And then when you talk, it’ll open the gate, but they do some Bose does some wicked stuff with that microphone. So yeah, yeah. Yeah, super cool. Anything else you want to add

Mike Wieger  [46:00] 
on that? Like? No, I mean, this is this is great. You guys were here to help me out and now I know now I know the difference.

Jim Collison  [46:06] 
Yeah, yeah, no, I think you stay I think you stay there. I agree. I agree. I will.

Mike Wieger  [46:11] 
And this is a this was a great use case for the it’s super hard to try and make that sort of decision on your own though. Because Yeah, you have such your own bias of like, Oh, no, the condenser is gonna sound so much better. And am I hearing it better? It’s also hard unless you record listen back record this and back. It’s hard for me to hear background noise while I’m talking.

Jim Collison  [46:32] 
Yeah, so no, yeah, it’s right. Justin says Jim’s going to have a mixer in his car in his car soon. Yeah, maybe. I’d be I got a new one coming this summer. We’ll spend more time talking about this. That’s

Mike Wieger  [46:45] 
a great to even if even if you don’t podcast to be able to control all the different audio in your computer with one mixer like oh, I want my music down but I want to keep the chat up. Right. So think about if you were listening to your stream, or to your your people are going to be monitoring them. I can turn them down on this side a little bit, I can keep my music up without just turning my overall volume. Now, I know you can do that in certain apps, like Spotify has a slider, but some apps don’t have a slider. Right? Like, depending on what you’re watching. Yeah, it’s kind of a pain to use. Oh, sweet. Okay, which window is that now control the slider. So it could be a fun little device, just for people who are obsessed with controlling audio levels within different apps. The totally if you got any bones to throw at it, you know,

Jim Collison  [47:26] 
we’ve come light years in, in audio processing this way. And in you know, like, the way you started the whole conversation is it used to just have to be a mixer. And and that was that was those are often really, really expensive and hard to deal with a lot of cables. You know, the, the Yeah, a lot of them that the idea of the preamp hasn’t changed in a long time. It’s certain some of the some of the effects and some of the ability to run these mixers without a mix minus is is fairly new. And so just gives us some different options. You know, not everybody What’s a mixer on their desk I went to a little bearing or audio interface. So we’ve tested a bunch of those. Focus, right? We did the PreSonus one, the blue, the blue PreSonus. And then I got this Behringer that I’m now using at work and it’s replaced the mixer. Hey, when you have one microphone, all you really need is audio out in a preamp in it, it seems to be handling the preamp isn’t as good as I was hoping but it’s good enough for what I do. And that replaced you know as a $80 audio you know, an AMP basically right and not an interface that replaced a $300 mixer and so you know you’re counting on us that’s just not that’s not such a bad deal. So the sound the options we getting on sound are so much better and

Mike Wieger  [48:47] 
I and so affordable.

Jim Collison  [48:49] 
Yeah, right now right on and I think people are wanting better sound more often. The, one of my, one of the guys that I work with, I gave him he podcasts with me At least once a month, sometimes more. So I set a mic home with him. He works from home at Birmingham. And so I sent him home with him. And he does all his calls with that. And he the feedback he gets from people are like, wow, like, that sounds really good. And he’s like, yeah,

Mike Wieger  [49:16] 
of course, it was amazing what people are used to you had any sort of microphones gonna sound good, and especially when you added decent quality microphones can sound even better. Yeah. No, I got so used to that at work. I want something. But no one else uses it. Weird.

Jim Collison  [49:30] 
I know I have I you know, I’ve got this in my office now. And so although I’ve got those Plantronics that Plantronics and I forget the model on it, but round cans, I actually really liked those for just regular conversations teams or zoom or whatever. I really liked those. So it’s, it’s been good. Their last price $75 retail, so they’re a little bit better. You know, we’ve gotten you know, the early days of headsets, they were so terrible, right? And they’ve just got A lot better at the mics on it still sounds kind of tinny. You know not quite as as full as a mic like this but it’s easier to just throw the headphones on and and you’re you’re off to the races. Mike I’m a I’m a Gen one Philips Hue guy so I go way back to I think 2014 having Philips Hue light bulbs in here. I didn’t realize this but when we’re having all these problems around here all of a sudden this week my Hue lights stop working now they still work they turn on and off so you can use the switch form but like in all the in all my you know habitat and the app I couldn’t get it to connect and like what’s going on with the with the hub. And you know with with home automation, there’s a couple different options and many of the light bulbs that are out now just our direct Wi Fi Connect, but back in the day, wasn’t always that way you kind of needed a hub to put them together and Philips been proprietary on this so they don’t really mesh with anything else and And so I was watching youtube I said, Why does this not work? Well, apparently Philips Hue is pulled support for the v1 and it’s not going to work anymore. Now the the date was supposed to be like April but I can’t get my v1 to work it will not connect. It just keeps going through the Connect cycle and it was super frustrating. I spent about an hour and a half trying to troubleshoot it. So I figured this out last night, or a couple nights ago. Then I saw a YouTube video and the guy said don’t don’t buy v2 we need to punish. We need to punish Philips

Mike Wieger  [51:28] 
for this decision proprietary.

Jim Collison  [51:30] 
Well, what what no for waiting for eliminating the ones like they cripple the V ones, too so that people would buy the V twos or at least that’s what the internet says right? You know, who knows? They’re trying to get people upgraded. It was six or seven years ago but okay, depending on where you fall on the side of the fence. So my my Phillips hub is sitting huts hanging off the wall right now as we speak, and it’s just trying to find life and it’s not going to right. So I have a couple labels actually. Four in the house stop working all the upstairs lights have stopped working can flip them on and off. But that’s not really what I want. So the guy said well what you need to do so I could buy a v2 Phillips hub. By itself. It’s 50 bucks, maybe 4050 bucks. He said or Phillips has a remote comes in a box looks just like this. I just took it out. I just did an unboxing I should have done it while you were watching but I thought that was stupid. It comes this goes on the wall. It’s hard to see because of the thing but this you can put this the wall it’s got two little magnets on the back. It’s one of these remotes just comes off. You can pair this with all up to 10 of the lights and I just have four. So you compare it with 10 of the the old lights and then pair this to habitat or pair this to anything else that that that’s really standard and they’ll I should work again. haven’t done it yet. I literally just took it out of the box. But I’m going to give it a try and I haven’t had a dimmer now I wouldn’t I’m not going to use this dimmer I’m going to use the dimmer to pair it to the house. And I’m gonna set this dinner off to the side. Yeah. And never I don’t really have any lights down here that need them and the habitats working just fine. It’s doing the schedule lighting the way I want to it’s paired the two living room lights together. It’s really cool at dusk, the light comes on it comes on at 50% because that’s what I have it set and stays on all night and it dawn, it goes off, right. So those lights are on when they need to be there off when they need to be that part’s been working great. I just control of them again. So in a dimmer space, we’ll see how this goes. I’ll keep you guys updated. And another one of my home automation, like, oh, man, like, and I knew I was gonna have to replace that v1 hub at some point,

Mike Wieger  [53:40] 
right? It’s mine A while ago. Okay, remember when exactly I went in and saw your announcement in a while ago?

Jim Collison  [53:46] 
Yeah, yeah. And I have four lights. I don’t really want to get rid of them. They’re kind of expensive, they do their thing. This will get me in the demo space and give it a try. So we’ll get those pieces work that’d be great in a spot where you

Mike Wieger  [53:58] 
didn’t have a Mark device either, right? Like I’m making my garage be a great place for that demo where I have maybe a hue light but I don’t have an A lady device or Google device Oh out there to control it. You know, this was me I’m thinking about where I would use the one of those dimmers is a place where I can’t just tell a lady to turn that down to 50% which I usually do.

Jim Collison  [54:20] 
Yeah, yeah, no and I don’t I’m not going to put a device on those devices in the garage. So maybe you’re right once I get this plugged in, and then I’m kind of wondering, like, Do I have a light in there currently with the light I have in there currently is a govi light that has a bold has a sensor built into the bold. So for for the garage and the front of the house. I don’t know if I’ve talked about this yet. I bought to go v motion sensor lights were at the bottom of the bold, you know, so let’s just say have talked about this. Let’s just say this beer can is the bulb. Why not? And then I shouldn’t I should have brought an actual at the very bottom of it is a little piece of plastic of the bulb and now Motion Sensor and you plug them in, there’s no settings, they’re not there. They’re just set to be motion. So they’re on and then they’re off. And they’re not smart, you don’t connect to them. They just have a motion sensor built into them. And so perfect that I don’t in the garage. I don’t necessarily need to monkey with that light all the time, right? Yeah. Oh, for sure. And so when I’m in there and it’s in there’s motion, it’s just gonna stay on and yeah, it’s gonna be frustrating and sometimes you know, when you stop you’re working on something and you stop and then the light goes off and you have to do this well. Okay, I don’t work in the garage that often it’s not such a big deal. But what I did want to happen is it’s silly thing just to come on. Now. I didn’t want to put another sensor up with the sensor built into the light bulb. And at the bottom of the bulb, I was a little skeptical but they’ve worked really, really well. The other place I have it is in the on the front porch. When you come up the steps. It just comes on and it’s bright. I mean it is boom, bright white. The kids if they walked out the other day, like whoa, temporary, you know light of the sun you know, right, right? Um, and I don’t remember they were maybe 10 bucks each or something maybe less. I don’t know I didn’t I didn’t pay that much farm again govi same company that has the the human stats or the the hygrometers for the cigars. But a good little has been a good little light. So I’ve got some work to do. I think this weekend sometime. I’ll probably get these paired up because it’s funny how dependent you get on these lights when they don’t work. So Sarah’s the other day, she’s telling. She’s telling lady a turn that light on, hey, turn that light on. And it won’t you know, it won’t it won’t turn on. Because, well, one, we had those internet problems. So it’s amazing how badly the Amazon devices or the Google devices perform when you have degraded upload speeds. Yeah, kidding. So we would tell it to do things and it wouldn’t do them. And then, of course, this broke, and we were like, Well, okay, so So hang tight. I’ve ordered a switch I’m going to get this paired and we’ll get this back on habitat and then of course it will do it will do its thing once it’s back there and working once I have it synced with Habitat can do that directly once I have that synced up then of course everything will start working again and all the the digital devices will start will start doing that so 22 bucks 22 on Amazon not a bad way to go We’ll give it a try. So a little update one more thing like that solar panel for my ring like that is good or bad.

Mike Wieger  [57:33] 
Oh good.

Jim Collison  [57:34] 
It’s super legit like I I could not be happier it has not gone below 98% battery since I put that thing in and that’s even the winter months

Mike Wieger  [57:43] 
so that’s that’s

Jim Collison  [57:45] 
some sun comes out is south facing sun comes out 700% and it just has never gone below and I’m checking it all the time. You know we’re always checking it we have FedEx coming by all the time the garbage man and you know it doesn’t trigger on the cool thing. It doesn’t ground the traffic you have to come up into the driveway. It’s working that thing is working really really well. The only thing is you know 30 bucks a year per camera. So you think about adding another 130 more bucks that’s not bad to be honest

Mike Wieger  [58:13] 
there’s there’s it’s not terrible

Jim Collison  [58:14] 
not there. There’s 30 bucks a month that might that might be some of the different jokes in the chat room. Yeah, Sonus did something similar when we’re thinking about what Phillips did by just kind of basically crippling the device. forcing people to upgrade Yeah,

Mike Wieger  [58:28] 
cold. Hard. Yeah.

Mike Wieger  [58:32] 
When you think about it, like Sonos especially, there was a, the speakers were what I mean, at this point, old. I mean, think about technology. It’s supported. I mean, we don’t get mad at certain companies for getting rid of like, you know, Windows support a certain point. But the thing is, they still run, you’re just not getting upgrades,

Jim Collison  [58:53] 
things like this. It’s not you know, in sinesses case, they wanted to actually brick like you were turning these things in I think they talked about this a bunch on entertainment two dot O. And they Richard got really heated about this and that they actually brought them in. That’s what made some people mad like like, Hey, no, you’re turning these in for money, we’re going to break them. And you don’t have to turn them in. You don’t have to take the money for it, you can still use them. But if you’re going to do that, they’re going to break them. And so that was, yeah, no, it is the danger and all these things is it seems like there’s maybe a six to eight year window or companies started like, okay, we don’t want to develop on this anymore. We really want to move into the future and we really want you to upgrade. So we’re going to, you know, at some point, if you’re thinking about all these smart home devices, and I’ve got maybe worse than anybody I have a smattering of all I’ve got some TP link plugs, I’ve got these huge lights, I got my govi for some of these things, I’ve got just some Wi Fi lights. You know, you’re all of a sudden, so troubleshooting, then it’s like someone goes out Okay, so when this one out, I was like,

Mike Wieger  [1:00:01] 
What is it? And like,

Jim Collison  [1:00:05] 
you start logging into all your apps, I have grouped all my apps on my phone. So they’re all in one place. But you start thinking like, okay, where is it? What is it? How did it work? I had to log into habitat, and then it set up a bunch of stuff and habitat, which I thought I would remember. But habitat is hard enough that you’re like, oh, like, how did I watch somebody do it on a video and I can’t remember where the video is or how you know what I did? And you’re just kind of like, Where’s that setting? And how do I turn that off? I have a bunch of if this than that things that’s that Ron, I just don’t know where they’re going or what they’re doing.

Mike Wieger  [1:00:40] 
I do the same thing for like under certain unbraid. Next cloud issues, like I watched one video and how to install an article back then, like, oh, what was that video because I can’t remember the command and I need to turn that I also do the same thing. Sometimes for a website that I found a very unique URL you use to tap into one of the Cox security cameras. You can convert it to use it like I took the cocksucker cameras and use them on my system. I can never remember what that extension is on URL rockets activate, because they disable the web UI, the GUI, but there is a command you can use via the URL that you type in to activate it. And I always forget what that is.

Unknown Speaker  [1:01:18] 
And you think you’re gonna remember it?

Mike Wieger  [1:01:19] 
Yo, yeah. Oh, yeah, I got this, you copy and paste it. And I know, I’m gonna save this somewhere. I remember. I can remember where I put that dang text file that has the string in it. Right?

Jim Collison  [1:01:29] 
Yeah. Well, we won’t talk a lot about this. But crypto is picked up, right. I mean, we already has picked. Yeah, yeah, it’s picked up a little bit and got me thinking the other day. I wonder where all my crypto is, like, Do I know where all my crypto is? And I started going through. You know, I had a last pass note in their secure note where it had all the locations. And I hadn’t had updated that in a year. And I was like, I wonder if those are actually true. Now they’re not I’d move some things around. done some things different and never updated that file.

Mike Wieger  [1:02:03] 
It’s a great way to put it though. Yeah, no Oh, right on. That’s what I use on my like those bit Warden secure notes or last pass. Fantastic places to pull that information.

Jim Collison  [1:02:12] 
Yeah, yeah. Well you think you’re going to remember? And like, oh, how did this work? And then you get that feeling you’re like, I’m never gonna figure this out like, this is this it’s gonna be gone. I’ve lost the keys. I don’t know how to find this. It’s like the lock that’s on your shed that you haven’t opened up in a couple years. And you’re like, which key is this? You started none of them work. And so yeah, what you do, and then six months later, you’re rummaging through a drawer and there’s the key and it’s really marked. You’re like, you know, it’s like, shed. There it is. This is where it’s at. Oh, my God. So even with all the technology, you know, I was thinking about tax time right here in the United States is tax time and every year, I say I’m going to do a better job of keeping records and keeping them in a place where I can remember and all in one spot and get to the end of the year mine still fishing around for more, you know, trying to find them. They do make it easier and I think I’m a Turbo Tax guy. I think that’s what I used. And now that I’ve used them for a couple years I used h&r block for a while. And then now that I’ve used them for a couple years, they’re starting to remember things about me. And some suggestions, which is kind of nice and kind of creepy.

Mike Wieger  [1:03:28] 
Why I stuck with them. You know, I’m not a fan of their pricing model. But they they Yeah, they remember this stuff. And they asked me the right questions like hey, you did this last year. Want to? Don’t you have this form? Like oh, yeah, right. Should have that form.

Jim Collison  [1:03:41] 
For sure. Brian says it’s tax time in Canada, too. It’s probably tax time in most countries at this point. Mike, you one more quick thing. You You got some new monitors and you got a monitor mount. I did a brand new monitor model show that here talk a little bit about that. Because Yeah, we’re all in that boat.

Mike Wieger  [1:03:58] 
I mainly want to talk about it because I’m kind of mixed reviews on this one so the monitors are great bars nothing to talk about though I grabbed these from a company I was going at a sale they were getting the thing I loved about this and I was able to get four of the same monitor. The guy gave me four TDP 60 hertz great looking monitors 24 inch mark four of them for like 120 bucks total. So I think that’s beautiful for the Dell. They are viewsonic Okay, so Okay. Yeah, they look fun. So but this is what I want to talk about. So I was like, Okay, now I need a way to kind of mount these they are visa mount options. So I went and found this with a gym show on the screens, the vivo vi vo quad monitor mount and a $60 which is actually super affordable for a quad mount. Most of most, most modern mounts are gonna be pretty expensive, but this one is a fixed mount.

Jim Collison  [1:04:56] 
So we lost you.

Mike Wieger  [1:04:59] 
Oh, apparently I know. I found out on this I learned something known as mixer if you hold it, it will toggle it. Oh my goodness. I held it and I went away. So yeah, let’s talk coffee. Yeah, I had a coffee. Okay. So this quad found is when you first get it, it’s extremely sturdy and I was really impressed. I still am pretty impressed. It’s all solid metal. Very heavy, very heavy mount. Which is good. Right if you have four monitors hanging off this thing you want it to have some weight to it. Now I’m really glad I went with this version because the version that I have linked in the show notes you guys can see this has the like, almost as like a stand you just set on top of a desk. You don’t need to drill a hole it doesn’t clamp to the back. I cannot imagine this thing sitting in like a drilled out a hole or even be mounted on the back like with the clamp. This thing is heavy and especially with all these monitors. I’m really glad I got the version I did for this but for $60 it has a little adjustability. That’s what I was surprised about. You can tilt the monitors up and down the arms and move quite a bit. And you can really set things. What the only downside that I have found, I think this is pretty true with a lot of these cheaper monitors is it starts to fade like things start to just shift right like schools start to be not as tight as they were when you first set up, like this right monitor has kind of come keeps coming closer and closer to me a little bit. So I might need to get in there just like tighten things back up. right but that’s just the the, what comes with a cheaper monitor stand up. But that being said, for $60 getting four monitors up if you’re not a perfectionist because I don’t care like when I say coming at me it’s not drastic, it’s just a little bit like now all the top lines don’t line up with my monitors as well as they did. I could get it set back but again, with a more expensive monitor. It wouldn’t take me the effort it would to get these all set back up. 60 bucks if you’re just looking to get four monitors up. great deal on a little stand. Just don’t expect obviously super high quality But what you can expect from it is this thing’s not going to fall apart on you. Me it is sturdy. I could I could beat someone over the head with the same. This is a heavy piece of machinery here. Yeah, I was pretty impressed for 60 bucks, not terrible and I thought I have always had. I’ve never had a VESA mounted option. I’ve always had three monitors sitting on my desk. When you’ve realized how much desk space you clear off from not having stands. I was shocked I’m never gonna be able to go back to having stands again.

Jim Collison  [1:07:28] 
But you’re gonna fill it up with stuff though. That’s the thing like now I now I know I hide things that are Oh, you gotta bring the USB hub up for now. I got I’ve got to put my I have my Amazon Fire up here. Oh, those Surface Pro which I think is dead by the way. But my speakers my shelf speakers are now on the desk. Right? Which is the desk creep? For shell speakers?

Mike Wieger  [1:07:51] 
No, no free. Oh.

Jim Collison  [1:07:53] 
Oh, that’s a great question. It’s something similar to this and it’s it. I’ve had it for a while. It’s actually I think if you go to the average guy TV, there is a

Mike Wieger  [1:08:04] 
lunch there like spring loaded gas loaded arms that you could really just like, oh, that would be cool. Go. Those ones are a little bit more expensive. I couldn’t find obviously a quad version of that. Those were usually only for two or three.

Jim Collison  [1:08:20] 
I think so if you go to the average guy.tv and then you click on the gear tab, let’s see if I can find the post. It’s been a while. If you want to go back. Yeah, let’s see if these links still work. I’ll show you. Hey, look at that. They do. That’s this had this back end. So okay, yeah, same thing. It’s just the dual mount.

Mike Wieger  [1:08:39] 
brand.

Jim Collison  [1:08:40] 
Yeah, it is. Yeah. Funny. Once this put Hold on, when is this? I’ll show you the post. And the one thing I noticed about this too. Oh, man, I know. It’s young. Christmas Day. 2013. So seven years ago, yeah, seven years ago. I put this post together that That gives you some idea of kind of my setup and it’s pretty close these two, these two monitors are together. I have this monitor back actually, that moved for a while was behind me and I moved it around the one all the way to the right. It’s back in that spot, but I took a mount and put one above it. And then I have my the other PC with two monitors along this side. So I’m actually 123456 it’s six monitors and six monitors on my task. Yeah, it’s just stupid, dude. That’s just dumb. But yeah, let’s see.

Mike Wieger  [1:09:32] 
There we go. So the one thing they haven’t proved, so if you do they let you zoom in on the actual mount that would go on the back of the monitor. Okay, so David. Oh, yeah, you were just I mean, that was close enough when you were showing it. Just that that plate right there. Um, what you when you mounted it, this is gonna be hard to explain. When you are setting this up. It’s really nice because the top so you’re thinking about the VESA mount right there forced or holes, the top two Who have a slit that opens all the way to the top of the mount. So it’s not just a hole so that way you can put the two screws in the monitor ahead of time. Slide it down on and then do your and then screw in your last two but it doesn’t make you have to hope the monitor and screw in and your arms are shaking Drona they let you slide it on to the Mount. I just hit it, and then uh, and then go from there. So I like little things like that was like, okay, that’s pretty impressive. But they have I swear they have this quad version with that same desk mount option that you have.

Jim Collison  [1:10:34] 
I’m like, does a lot of weight. Oh, I think let’s look here. So if I found a guy, okay, so I actually have this version at work. This is so it’s got a pole. And this is dual dual.

Mike Wieger  [1:10:51] 
Yes. I mean, that would be it right there.

Jim Collison  [1:10:53] 
Yeah. So think about this, but then it’s got two of these, right? This is kind of Okay. Oh yeah, but its heaviest. I mean, it is.

Mike Wieger  [1:11:04] 
That’s why we talked about like, does that clamp on a desk? Good enough? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It’s all a desk I think. Yeah, IKEA table is not gonna hold that thing

Jim Collison  [1:11:12] 
up. No, you’d want a pretty beefy you’d want some pretty beefy MDF right on there. Yeah, but no it’ll it’ll hold pretty well it’s, it’s, that’s what I ran the quad monitor and work for for five years off one of the desks. Only to find out how I really need quads anymore. So it’s sitting, I got this quad monitor stand city just back in a storage room or Oh, really? Yeah. Supriya now, I don’t need any more monitors here. This is stupid.

Mike Wieger  [1:11:42] 
But I did like there are the two different options of the way you are thinking of is 1234. So two of you. I kind of like this three and then one. It lets me especially if when I’m gaming. I have my main monitor. I can just look to the right real quick, whatever over here, left, and then up is kind of up I can select almost like a secondary just throw things up there’s going to be looking at stuff. Yep, I do like the three three and one a little bit better than I think I would have liked the two into

Jim Collison  [1:12:10] 
Yeah, I like what has on your workflow and what you’re doing really does totally that’s what I was doing two and two is great in this setting. I actually have four across and then one up high and one down low. Don’t ask me why it’s just the way it works for me though, just works out for me and the one like for the one I talk on discord is all the way to the left. I’ve got it cranked up so that I can see the I can see the Ike I can see the words. Yeah, yeah, he sent me that stuff can be small. So it just kinda depends what works for you. Right? There’s there’s no right or wrong. It’s just just kind of whatever works for you. All right, we we are at a time Mike will do a little bit of post show folks want to hang around. couple couple reminders for folks want to say thanks for Patreon subscribers. You know, it’s just it takes time when you catch What that means from an annual standpoint, I’m just super thankful I did my taxes i had trouble sleeping in the night. So I thought, Well, you know what maybe doing my taxes will put me to sleep Sure enough, so I did the taxes for about an hour to get them all figured out figured out I owed and I’m like at that point, I’m going to go to bed. And it’s okay to Oh, that’s funny, I got to keep, you know, that kind of deal so but I appreciate you Patreon subscribers the folks that do that if you’re giving I appreciate that if you want to give the average guy.tv slash Patreon can do it for a month or you can just do it on a regular basis. We have a $5 plan that’s out there if you just want to join us to get that done. You can do it helps Academy do do things around here and so if you if you appreciate what we’re doing, head out to the average guy.tv slash Patreon appreciate you doing that. Mike mentioned the discord the average guy TV your new the average guy TV slash Discord. You can join our Facebook group, the average guy.tv slash Facebook where I want to remind you the average guy that TV platform both web and media hosting powered by Maple Grove partners Get secure, reliable high speed hosting from people you know and trust course, that’s Christian. head out to Maple Grove partners.com plans start at 10 bucks. It’s a really the greatest way to get on the web and Christian will totally work with you to make sure that’s done. Speaking of that, we put out cyber frontiers 60. Christian talked about I love this title that he that he kind of came up with when we were talking about AI, and machine learning, and it’s adversarial machine learning. So it’s a really cool Christian like when things go wrong. So it’s a really good episode, we’re out cyber frontiers, you know, we’re only about every six weeks so maybe you’ve forgotten about it, go back out there, re subscribe, whatever you need to do or just head out to the average guy TV. It’s sitting on the top of the page right now. And if you want to get awesome web hosting, whatever you need, Maple Grove partners.com We are live every Thursday, just about every Thursday 8pm Central nine Eastern my internet is working and we’d love to see alive Next week I want to thank Alex and Ron and Joe and Ryan and Justin and out there earlier in there who appreciate them joining us in the chat room always nice to have you guys out there and you can only do it if you join us live. So come to the average guy.tv forward slash live Thursday’s 8pm Central nine Eastern if you made it this far. Unbelievable that you listen to us for this long, so I appreciate that as well. We’ll be back. I think we’re back next Thursday, but that say Goodbye everybody.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

 

Get all your TAG SWAG!

http://theaverageguy.tv/swag

 

Join us in the Facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/theaverageguy/

On Discord at https://theaverageguy.tv/discord

Get the Home Gadget Geeks Mobile Apps at http://homegadgetgeeks.com

http://theaverageguy.tv is powered by Maplegrove Partners web hosting. Get secure, reliable, high-speed hosting from people you know and trust.  For more information visit http://maplegrovepartners.com