The MKBHD Desk Setup Tour 2021!

Okay, so it's something I knew I was going to do this eventually, but we had a little

desk

tour

section of the original studio

tour

and of course people were interested in the

desk

setup

tour, so What better way to get into the heart of the matter? on the studio channel than doing the desk tour, okay, so this is going to be one of those super well produced desk tours with a glorious akb reel of everything I'm actually going to cover, like everything that's on my desk that I didn't do. clean it up everything I usually use to get things done and I hope it's useful to people.

Hopefully some inspiration so from the start it's a standing desk so the desk itself is a custom sized x shaped desk but an x-desk air pro right it's this huge thin sheet metal and it has these telescopic legs that have motors on each of them and the thing that everyone likes to mention about cable management is that there are a lot of exposed cables down here. you see the computer, you see the cables that go to the things on the desk, it's because there are many things on the desk that need power from below, but one thing that this desk has, if you come in here, you can see that, surely there is a Lots of power for all the things that are on the desk, I try to plug them in right here, so that's kind of advice: it could be a lot worse, but any time you have a desk that changes height, you can't really handle the cables. both heights so I've done the best I can, well that's the desk and I guess the things on the desk I'll go from left to right, some of the things I've had for a lot longer than others, I start with this. it's actually a mouse pad and it's a little red mouse pad that just heats up adhesives adhesives adhesives it sticks it sticks to the desk and it's in the corner of the desk because I just put things in here that I have ready all the time These are a couple of Airpods Pro, they are actually painted by Colorware and are super sick.

They never leave the studio because any time you paint something matte black like this, they can get scratched very easily, so I don't do anything too crazy with them. these um besides editing and yes, lately I edit with these wireless headphones, the sound quality and lack of delay are good enough for me to edit and the transparency mode is good because when someone else wants to call me from my side or on somewhere else in the studio I can still hear them so I've been using them but other things like I have a flash drive here this is a USB to USB both versions are available a little flash drive which is nice a key card from Tesla, a very sharp unboxing knife. shout out to peter mckinnon for recommending this knife it's a pro-tec and it's very sharp uh hand sanitizer some keys i have an iphone 12 pro max which is used a lot for social media posts and a water bottle to stay hydrated but I put it on This is like a little mat here so things don't scratch the desk.

There is a coat of white paint on this desk which I learned the hard way because I have had previous desks that can get scratched if you are careless enough if you unpack something. on the desk and cut through the desk, you'll get to the metal underneath, that's why it's there, these are the yamaha hs8s studio monitors, this might be the longest running item in the

setup

right now, uh, eight inch woofer, one inch tweeter and them. sit on these little oralx foam acoustic pads and they're on this just so they don't like the noise on the desk and they're totally isolated they sound amazing they're extremely accurate and they can be very, very loud um and I'm powered by the Apollo Twin, al which I'll get to in a second, but if you ask Andrew or anyone else in the studio, if I like editing and it plays a sound like my voice, it might sound like me.

I'm actually talking to them so I have to use headphones most of the time otherwise it sounds like I'm talking to people through speakers. I can confirm that yes, other than that, that's the main audio material that you've seen, this is a Pegasus Promise one, two, three, four, five, six, seven eight, so that's eight times twelve. I think it's 96 terabytes of hard drives here and they're just backups. Many people asked about backups of footage or video files. I usually only save the ending. exported video file, the thumbnail and some key clips, if there are any key elements that need to be reused later, other than that, get rid of everything, so I have some raw footage, but not really many interviews and stuff like that. they're great to keep, but all of that is backed up locally here if it's not on Google Drive, Dropbox, or youtube.com, so the monitors here are Pro Display xdrs.

These have been great. Both have the nano texture coating and are swivel. there you see all these lights and the windows that would actually be quite reflective if it didn't have the nano texture coating, so I'm really happy about that because I had glossy monitors before and this has been a big win. I'm a side dock person, so if I'm ever here you'll see the apps I have open. Yes, I used to be a bottom pier person, but I'm happy with the design. I usually have some combination of windows open here I have discord open. I'll go ahead and write a bit.

You guys always see me writing here, but hey, I'll almost always be here, so keep in mind that there are no built-in webcams. these things so I have a logitech pro opm on the top and it magnetizes on the top here it's designed for it and it connects via USBC on the back and the other thing that connects to the USBC on the back is The dongle for this mx master iii this is my favorite mouse, it is laser engraved. Logitech decided to go all out and put

mkbhd

on the mouse, which is a great pro tip, although for anyone who has one of these Logitech mice, you can use it with bluetooth. or with the little dongle that comes with it which is USB always use the dongle but also if you put the dongle too far away from the mouse like I used to plug it in and the mac pro down there and you have this huge sheet of metal in the middle it was enough that it stuttered and had all sorts of weird lags and input issues, so I found that just uploading it back here is easy, it doesn't lag anymore and it's great, so big.

A fan of that mouse has also been using the mx series for a long time and, uh, this is almost the same mouse pad. This is a funny story because I had a different version of this mouse pad. It was like square and much more. firm and I like to import a couple of them from Japan and as you wear them you like to slowly wear out the fabric and eventually they become like old you want to replace them and uh I couldn't find it anymore so this is the closest thing I could find, but I think they just stopped making it.

I should have bought a lot more anyway, a black magic trackpad here and a kikron k2, I think it's the k3 or k2, I think it's the k2, yeah, and it has a ton. of custom keys and it's nice and heavy and metallic so my setup here is I have my magic keyboard here to switch between sorry, magic trackpad to switch between spaces and I always have a couple and then the keyboard in the middle and the mouse . So I'm kind of a three-entry type person. I feel like that's not so normal. Because you can't make spaces with the mouse yet, but that's my current setup.

I really only use that to navigate spaces. And then here. I mentioned this is the Apollo Twin Mark II, it's space gray, it's almost the same as the Mark One, but we have here powering any headphones that I use that are wired or all the time, these HS8s and this one is literally basically glorified volume. knob I don't use any of the plugins you know or instrument recording and stuff, but I love this as a preamp and to power all my audio stuff, so that's nice and I like the cable management back here, like It goes directly into the desk and then that's the mess of cables that you see behind that goes to each speaker that goes to the Mac Pro, it's a lot.

I have the 16 inch macbook pro here, it's like the work machine that just fits into every room. and it's like audio recording or screen recording or whatever you need to do it's just a workhorse that moves around so it's cool it also has a little bit of skin and then the other monitor so it's like the surface. I have some charging cables here, all they do is plug them into the desk and that's a lighting cable and a USB cable. I used to have a wireless charger here, but I don't because I just find plugging things in is faster and then getting under the desk.

I guess this is a good place to start. This is maybe the second longest thing I've ever had in the studio, which is Herman Miller's incarnation. Every time someone asks for a chair recommendation, I ask what your budget is and how. How much time do you spend in a chair every day? Because for the thousand dollars or 1,200 or whatever we spent on this over the decade I've been in, it was worth it. It's easily my favorite chair. Shout out to Herman Miller. big fan of this and then down here is the little craft bar or whatever it's tall sometimes I just put my feet up here when I'm editing and then the mac pro which is the machine that powers everything so there's a reader mini mag usb there aren't a lot of usb-c ports back here so this is going to usbc this is a cf card reader and this is my sd card reader so whenever i need a sd card any audio any footage a1 you and brandon Yeah, I don't know, it's not the best solution, but I mean, this is where I connect things, but yeah, everything else that's connected on top of the desk, like the speakers that are through the audio interface , they are all there.

I stopped by and found out that that is the best version of the airflow going through the machine. I could go ahead with it, but then it would blow hot air into the wall and that's not so ideal for airflow, so I almost get like a thing. I had to hold it here, but it didn't support the full weight of the Mac Pro and it was a little awkward to have it hanging here, so I didn't do that. It would have been great for cable management, although I think it could be, oh, here I have my presets, so the way the desk works is it has presets one, two, and three and I can move it up or down. down manually if I want, but if I want to go to preset number one. that's standing, I'm just holding it for preset number two, that's sitting, I'm holding that I don't have a preset number three, I could do one, um, you might notice there's no drawers or anything, there's not a lot of storage, I have some other things like a cabinet here for documents and some like color charts and other random things that appear behind me in the videos.

Also behind you is like a corner of this central desk where I often have all the storage on any SSD, we're moving images back and forth with recent devices. I just had to put one in the embargo box, so we don't show you anything you shouldn't see, but that's my desk, that's basically all that happens here I don't know, there's not a lot of spicy crazy, I mean, this Wired keyboard setup is probably the strangest thing on my desk. I actually wasn't a big mechanical or wired keyboard person until the last minute. a year or two and then I got really into it and I'm a big fan, I don't think I'll go back to the latest version of mac os final cut pro, there's a lot more we can talk about workflow wise and I'm sure that we'll do some of that and show you those things on the studio channel, but yeah, that's it, that's the death story, thanks for watching, we'll catch you later, peace.