So, we're going to be talking about some hardware deals for this Black Friday season. And this is a special show tailored for those of you in the UK and Europe. Because I think, well, all of the deals that we're going to be looking at in today's show are from the site, Tomman, okay, which I think is just a great site for you guys to buy. I think some great deals there. Hello to the people in the chat. Nice to see you here. It's just great that I'm able to sort of do this at a different time and connect with different groups of people. I did one... Well, when was this? Yesterday. I'm getting confused about the time. Yesterday, for me, I did one for those residing in the US and we were able to look at some things in Sweetwater Road over there. But unfortunately, I don't think Sweetwater deliver to the UK and Europe. So, there you go. Now, you're all at various different times over there. It is 5 a.m. in the morning. I woke up actually because I'm not one of those kind of people that can just sort of jump out of bed and be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, as someone said earlier in the chat. I need time. So I actually woke up at 3.30 in the morning to do this, the dedication. I know the dedication. And it's actually a good thing because I'm planning to go fishing, I think, at 4 a.m. on Sunday. So hopefully, I'm getting my body in the right cycle for that. Yes, I love to fish. That's one of my past times. It's good to get away from the technology, actually, to get a bit philosophical here, but it's good to do different things apart from music production. I feel, anyway, things outside of actually just pressing buttons and what have you. Now, we are just a quick note on currency here. When we look at the deals in today's show, we are going to be talking in pounds, pounds sterling. Now, the reason for that is, and I know there's many, many people from different parts of Europe, the reason for that is mainly because in terms of my audience, the largest audience, as I was saying on my previous show, are from the US and the second largest audience in terms of viewing my channel are from the UK. So it's just going to capture most people, but the deals are still available in euros. So what they'll work out to specifically, I don't know, but you can follow the links in the description. Oh, that's a good idea, isn't it? Hang on. While we're chatting away, I should actually quickly update the description and put the links there. Oh, dear, I've made a mistake already. So a quick hi to some people in the chat. We've got Doug in there. I'm going to just find Doug. Where are you? Doug, nice. Always nice to see. I think you were here, Doug, weren't you for the USA show as well? Is that right? That's that's very, very, very keen of you. So I'm just copying and pasting from my notes here. Give me a second, guys. I'm just going to update. Don't just talk about yourself while I update the the links in the description. Done. Right, OK. Done that. Sorry. Hi, Paul, from London. I spent a lot of time in London when I was younger. I used to enjoy going there when I was a young teenager. I had an auntie who lived in Harrow and I used to go and stay with her a little bit. And I used to love to go into Central London and wander around a lot. Love the Natural History Museum. I would go there. And of course, in those days, I was a bit of a fancy dresser. So I used to love to go to Carnaby Street, which was a very important place for me with my funky fashions. And yeah, it was great. I the reason I've got this funky accent and I'm here in Australia is because I was actually born in Australia, although all of my family are English. And we moved or the family moved back to England when I was nine years old. So lots of people do it the other way around. I went that way around. So I was sort of Australian eyes. I was considered myself Australian and then went and went straight and lived on the Isle of Wight, which is where my father had originally come from and spent most of my childhood growing up on the Isle of Wight, moved, then escaped from the Isle of Wight and ran away with my band at the time when I was about probably 20 or so and ran away and lived on what Isle of Wight is called the Mainland, the Mainland UK. And I travelled around with my band over there for a few years before much later coming back to Australia in around about the late 90s. So that's why I've got this weird and funky accent. Who knows? Am I Australian or am I English? Let me know in the comments. OK, let's start talking about gear. It's Black Friday. It's time to buy stuff sensibly, I say. Don't just be buying stuff because it's cheap. Buy stuff that you couldn't normally afford and it's on a special deal and is going to be of great benefit to you. And I'm here to try to guide you in terms of what's going to be great benefit to you, stuff that I've used or some stuff actually in here that I haven't used, but I wanted to point you towards it because I think some of it's got such a great sort of reputation. So, yeah, that's that's what we'll be doing. Right, well, give me one moment here. Great. OK, I'm ready to go. Technology at five a.m. Gosh, OK, let's bring up my tommom page here and switch that on. There we go. I'm just going to rearrange things here. My system here does some strange stuff. I feel like I should be on the left looking at the page. There we go. So the first thing I brought up here is so no work. So I noticed this was on sale for Black Friday. This is their latest iteration of room correction. And if you don't sort of know what this is and what benefit it would be, I think it's the kind of final piece in the jigsaw puzzle for your room sounding good for mixing. OK. And the easiest way to think of so no works is what the easiest way to think of your room as an EQ. OK. It's an EQ which is boosting some frequencies and suppressing some other frequencies. But it's unknown to you. You're used to hearing your room the way it is. So you don't really know that those frequencies are being changed in that way. So what happens is is I I say, for example, my room has a boost at one K. OK. And I do my mix and because there's a boost at one K, my vocals sound good. They're poking out nicely. They're nice and clear. And that's all well and good. And then I take my mix and I and I send it to Doug in the live chat there and Doug has a listen. He thinks, oh, Mike's kind of stuffed up there. I can't really hear the vocals. They sound a bit quiet, you know. And so he sends me a message and says, Mike, the vocals are a bit quiet in that mix. And I say, Doug, you don't know what you're talking about. They sound fine. And that's because I don't know that the room has EQ. So to what Sonarworks is doing is measuring your room. It's finding out which frequencies are not where they should be. And then it's applying an EQ curve. It's applying an EQ curve while you're listening to your music, while you're mixing it. And that's the advantage of it, really. And it's sort of taking care of the things that you're not aware of in that way. Now, in order to do that, it's got to measure your room. So the software part of it has some, you know, test tones, which they play. And it's got to be able to hear those test tones and know how they should sound at particular frequencies. So the other part of the equation is having a microphone where it knows how that microphone should be hearing things at different positions in your room. So this package has that has a microphone with it. Now, you could use other microphones with this. There are other reference microphones that you could use. But you probably don't have those lying around.  I have tried to use it for other things. I heard someone say, oh, they're great microphones for guitars and things like that. So I gave it a try, but I don't think so. But, you know, it's going to be useful. It's not really, I thought when I first got, oh, I'm going to get a microphone. I'm going to use it once. It seems a bit of a waste, but not really as you do things like you get new monitors or you rearrange the furniture in your studio or things like that, you find yourself having to do this again. And the process itself is this is one of the things where Sona works to a great job because there's other companies that do this kind of thing. The process is wonderful. They've just really thought it out very, very, very well. So so, yeah, I think it's very, very cool. So that's my first suggestion there. Now it's normally two hundred and twenty two pounds, but it's one hundred forty nine pounds. That's a thirty three percent saving. It's not because I've got a good math there. It actually says it, doesn't it? So in terms of, you know, what you're getting, as I say, you're getting the the the software to actually listen to actually kind of assess your room, which is really smooth. And then you get the software, which is applying the EQ curves. And you may have things like multiple monitors. So you can do this several times. You can apply several, several EQ curves. Just taking a comment here from Michael.  Absolutely what it is. Yeah, applying a correct EQ. You know, I must say it's disconcerting when you first get this, because it can be quite quite extreme, actually the difference in the sound when you start to apply this to your master bus. It's like, wow, it was like that far out. It makes you worried about all your old mixers, to be honest with you. Now, I will say about this, though. It's not a magic fix for everything because there's more to a room than just the the EQ influence. There's, you know, there's reflections and things like that, which can sort of mess with your mix in different ways.  This is not going to fix that for you. Don't do, don't waste your money in that way. You need to have, I'm going to say room treatment, but I mean this in a very casual way. Room treatment could mean that you've just got a really well furnished room with some soft furnishing and some bookshelves and things like that. You know, so I'm talking about, you know, making sure your room isn't completely bare and that you're in some way taking care of reflections and things. And you should have some decent monitors as well. So I would be room treatment monitors and this is the final piece of the puzzle, but it shouldn't be the first piece of the puzzle at all. So if you're thinking that, then I wouldn't waste your money there. So I think that's good for so now. Oh, sorry, I just one more thing about it. This particular package also includes the headphone element of it. Now, I was a bit sort of thinking with this, with the headphones. Oh, yeah, is that going to be useful? Because they can't listen to your headphones. OK, it has to be done with profiles that they've already got existing. To my surprise when I tried this, the catalog they have of profiles for headphones is enormous. And I've got behind me somewhere hanging on bits of the wall. You can see you probably can't see. I've got something like 12 pairs of headphones hanging around the studio and they had profiles for all of them, all of my headphones. When I want to try this out, I thought, oh, that's that was very cool. So, yeah, that's so now works moving on from there. Moving on from there, what have I got up next? Well, let's go to all. I've sort of wanted to look at audio interfaces and things of that kind. And I always think that these types of things are great. By the way, if you were watching the USA show earlier, then there may be a little bit of repetition here, not completely. But I will for the I imagine some of you were not watching the USA show and are not interested in it because it's not deals that apply to you. So we'll be repeating myself just a little bit, Doug, maybe one of those people. So I will be repeating myself a little bit. Now, I'm going to be clear to say that I haven't actually tried this piece of hardware, but I think it's a good deal and it comes from a company who I trust. I've used and owned several personas interfaces and the interfaces at the core of this package here really one hundred and fifty nine pounds reduced from one hundred and ninety seven. And if you're just starting out, it contains the core of what you really sort of need to sort of get going with your home studio experience. So it has this interface, which is this personus one in here, the audio box one. Let's see if I can move the photos along to some closer looks at that. That's not very useful picture. Is it common? It's a picture of a volume control. OK, let's go to the front. OK, so you've got a couple of inputs here for your microphone.  So it's pretty straightforward sort of interfaces these on the back. What's interesting with these?  Thanks, Tom. So the review here was just something I want to quickly point out to you apart from the USB connection that the main outs. It's got MIDI connections on here. So I mentioned this in my earlier show. If you're starting out and you've got an old MIDI keyboard, this may be a convenience to you. And there's there's many, many audio interfaces at the moment. Don't have MIDI connections on them. I mean, there's there's ways around it. You can get USB to MIDI converters. But, you know, if you don't want to do that and you've got an old MIDI keyboard and you want to hook up some MIDI, they do have the connections on this one, which is handy. Apart from that, we also get a condenser microphone in there and probably a condenser microphone when you're just starting out. It's the most useful kind of microphone to have.  You can just get an audio interface. But, yeah, now there's lots and lots of debate about headphones and whether you should mix on the headphones. And there's an argument to say that some of the packages where you get some monitors with them, some studio monitors. Well, I'm talking about monitors and not talking about screens, talking about speakers. And there's an argument to say that that's something that you should have over headphones. I probably disagree in the sense of the cheap studio speakers are probably worse than using headphones, to be honest with you. You kind of need a bit of a budget to spend on some half decent monitors for your studio for them to be useful. None of the really cheap ones I've heard are really worth using. I'd probably rather use most headphones. So you do get some headphones with this to get you going. And as I say, the condenser microphone there. So a great little package and a good deal. I've got almost 20 percent off there for that. So if you're just starting out, yeah, you'll be fine with this. This will take you a long way. You can create great music with this. And record vocals, acoustic guitar, nice kind of stuff. So that's a good sort of start. Now, along the same vein and a little bit more expensive, in fact, but I wanted to mention it was this setup. So the same again, headphones, you know, your audio interface and a microphone. I know that with the one previously, just going back here with this personus one that it's got open back headphones with it. OK. So they open back headphones can be nice for mixing. Sorry, I'm just trying to go on the wrong screen here. Let's have a look at these headphones. They look very similar to some AKG headphones, don't they? The open back headphones are going to be good for mixing, not necessarily great for tracking. I'm not saying you can't track with open back headphones. But when you're when I say tracking, I mean recording. So when you're recording with a microphone, it's probably better to have closed backs. So on this Steinberg deal, you are actually getting closed back headphones. Now, the actual I'm starting Steinberg, I think it's owned by Yamaha, I'm not sure. But they're, you know, a well renowned company. Obviously, they make Cubase as well. And I have not actually used this interface again. But a good buddy of mine, Pete Johns over at Studio Live today, uses this interface a lot. And it's got a kind of a high spec, actually, for what it is. Recording up to 192 kilohertz, which you'll never have to record it. I never use that ability on any of my audio interfaces, but it can do it and go if you like. And really, it's a rock solid, it's clean, very useful if you want to hook up as well to some sort of mobile devices. There's many that can, but I'm not sure which ones can. But I know this one can. So if you want to hook up to sort of an iPad or something like that, this is what they call class compliant. Doesn't need drivers and things to operate. So, yeah, kind of good in that sort of way. But again, with this package, you get those headphones, you get this audio interface and you get a condenser microphone as well. Now, one hundred and ninety nine dollars is the price.  Got that wrong. I knew I was going to eventually one hundred and ninety nine pounds reduced from two hundred and thirty five pounds. So a pretty decent reduction there. If you're just getting started, it's a good way to go now. Bear with me a second here. Actually, let me just have a quick drink of water. I'm drinking water. I had a cup of tea already. A cup of tea that's the Englishness in me showing. And it was over here. What's left of it? And we do have Tetley tea over here in Australia. And that's my preferred. That's my preferred cuppa. Are you Stephen Foster? Nice to see you here. An old friend of the channel, finally caught a creative source. Yes, indeed. It's normally a tricky time for some people in the UK. Do you mean? Yes. So we're going to move on. We're going to another extreme, a complete different extreme in terms of audio interface. Next, we've looked at this sort of entry level stuff here. Complete packages, great deals. And first thing I want to say about things like these ones that we've just looked at, sorry, just to reiterate myself. This this one here, the personas one. Oh, my goodness, control things, Mike. The personas one and the Steinberg one. People are going to think, well, yeah, they're cheap. Can you really record high quality music on them? Yes, you can record high quality music on these. I believe with these interfaces at this level, when you take time to learn your your trade, you can definitely record to a really high quality, you know, a professional, releasable quality. So why would you spend money on a much more expensive interface? Well, that's what we're going to talk about now. Let's go over and pull up this page here. This is a deal. So the Apollo Twin X Duo Heritage Edition. OK, it's a bit of a mouthful, isn't it? Completely different price range. Reduce good reduction here because you don't often get a lot of big discounts on universal audio stuff, to be honest with you. They're not a company that is trying to compete in price. That's not their thing. Their thing is to produce really good quality hardware and software. So why would you ever go for this? Let's just bring it up to a bit of a different screen size. And and how am I qualified to talk about it? Well, I can't quite reach because it's plugged in, it's hooked up. But I have one up from this, the Apollo X4. And if you're cynical about this, the whole thing, then I can share that cynicism. I was cynical about this until I had one. Then I was like, OK, so could you produce as good a quality music on those cheaper audio interfaces? Arguably, yes. But the degree of effort you will have to put in to get there and the experience of doing it is different. Then there may also be a slight difference in the quality of things like microphone preamps. I do think that that's slight in terms of the way you perceive it, because I think most of them people listen to a song. They listen to the song. They don't listen to the preamps here. But the preamps and things on this are good. But the experience of using it is exceptional. Routing, all of that kind of stuff is very good. People don't talk about this enough with a universal audio stuff that the. The sort of mixer and the way you can reroute things is really smooth and it makes sense and it works very powerfully. But for me, the real advantage of these devices is in the fact that they have on they have this on-board ability with plugins. There's a whole, excuse me. There's a whole range of plugins available from universal audio. We'll talk about those in a second. And when you're using them, they don't reside in your door as such. When they're not being processed by your computer, they're being processed on the device itself. OK, it's doing all the heavy lifting. That means a couple of things, actually. It means that while you're tracking, while you're singing, so you're singing a vocal, you can apply a compressor. You can apply a preamp. You can apply some reverb. You can hear all of that in your headphones and kind of get the final sound of that vocal, if you like, while you're singing, which may, well, most definitely can improve performance when people are monitoring and they're hearing a good representation of their voices, especially that can improve their performance. So that's the thing about and it's not putting any strain on your computer while it's doing that. So that's great. Then when you're actually mixing, although these plugins appear as a plugin in your door, just like any other plugin, in actual fact, they're being processed on this piece of hardware. OK, so let's look at that experience. That means as you're singing, you get to hear those effects in your headphones and there's no latency issues to deal with because there is no latency with those effects. And when you're mixing, there's less latency because those things are being, you know, there's less glitch and latencies because those things will be in process. So that's why it's a much, much nicer experience. I know some of you are going, yeah, but Mike, I can't afford it. I know that. So don't feel bad carrying on using more entry level stuff or cheaper stuff because, you know, you're going to be able to make great recordings. But so the experience is different. And in terms of what you get with it, so this is why it's called the Heritage Edition. With these Heritage Editions, you get a whole bunch of plugins with it. These plugins are not cheap by individually either. So that's something to keep in mind. I'm just scrolling down here to see what information they've got. They don't have much information. Let me try and do this from memory. Some of the key plugins that you're after, so like 1176 clones, clones, yeah, well, they're clones and, you know, things like LA2As and things like that. I think there's a Marshall amp simulator and that you get, you get a good bunch of those. So actually, some of the main plugins that you may want actually come with this anyway. I think there's maybe about 10 of them. And at the moment, I believe, let me just find this. Here we are, this special offer. Then you get another nine hundred and forty five dollars. Dollars, we're suddenly talking in here. Yes, dollars of plugins with it, including the ones that you can see here. Now, I've recently bought this one here. This is the Fender 55 Tweet Deluxe. Wonderful, wonderful plugin, just a great amp sim, love it. If you want that kind of thing, it's great. So I'm Steven Foster has said it looks like the Antelope ZenQ. Yes, it does, of which, as you also know, I own one as well. Very, very similar. They're in that range. They and both of those companies produce high quality stuff. And the idea is similar, Stephen, with the with the with the way the whole thing works, slightly different implementations. There's pros and cons between those two. But overall, although you will break your bank to buy universal audio stuff, you will be satisfied with the results you get. I have one thing I want to say is I know there's USB versions of the Apollo twin. I haven't used that, so I don't know what they like. But that sort of ecosystem also gets more expensive. You do have to have Thunderbolt on your computer for these as well. Thunderbolt on PCs is the last two pieces of PCs I've had of Thunderbolt. There seems to be a sort of an old urban myth going around that it's so terrible on PCs to use Thunderbolts with universal audio stuff. But my last two PCs works fine, just no issues, to be honest with you. So it's just one of those things. I think it's a little blown at proportion. But yeah, consider that moving on from there. I was hoping to find studio monitors for you guys. I was hoping that in these deals that there would be some studio monitors that I could talk about, but there wasn't. Sadly, sorry, Tom and if you're watching, Tom and I couldn't see anything inspiring. There's not that there wasn't any there, but the ones that are in there. But I did find one thing. It's something I've had in my studio for a few months now. I'm just going to quickly talk about it. And this is this is a subwoofer, the Adam T10S. It's got they've got a nine percent reduction on it at the moment. Let's just bring that up there. Again, I'll do the shuffle. OK, so this was sent to me to do a review a few months ago by the distributor of Adam here in Australia, federal audio, the distributors over here and they represent Adam here in Australia, they sent it to me. And this is not one of those situations where I just get sent it and I get to keep it, by the way, it was sent to me. And just try it out and see if you like it and tell people what you think. So I was sent to me and I thought, you know what, I don't know, I don't think I need a subwoofer because I've got eight inch drive, you know, main monitors, some Adam ones here in the studio. And I'm not in a big studio, by the way. I don't know what the dimensions are exactly, but it's not a huge studio. So I'm probably pushing it a little bit already with the eight inch ones. Anyway, and I was skeptical not because I thought it was going to be bad in any way, I didn't really know. I was skeptical. I just thought this is not right. And I even said to them, look, I'm not sure that it's right for my studio to have a subwoofer, but they said, I will have a look anyway. They're clever. They're clever. So I got it and I tried it and I was like, gosh, oh, no, oh, no. I don't know how I'm going to live without this now. I took me about an hour to come to this conclusion. And definitely, there are probably circumstances where you really probably shouldn't have a really, really tiny room. I probably wouldn't have a subwoofer. But what I sort of understood about it, I guess, is that it's not necessarily making the low end louder. Like, I guess that's what people think of in home studios, when they really sorry, not home studios, home theaters, for example, when they have subwoofers, they really want to, you know, when they're watching that Hollywood movie, they really want to feel that bass, they kind of probably amp it up a bit and they want everything, everything to vibrate. That's not the way you're going to use it. What all this is doing is extending that range down lower, lower, lower so that you actually can hear it. OK, so I will tell you, just as a little side note, I didn't end up being given this at all. I had to buy it and I did buy it and it wasn't in my budget, but I stretched my budget because I was so impressed with what it did. And now, again, it's one of those situations where I when I bypass it, I think, wow, I was really missing information there. You can counteract this. I think with headphones that go down really, really low. That may be a good idea if you really want to hear low end because you do have to be careful with this. They did come with a guide about how to set it up. And I followed that guide in terms of the position of where it is. I know that, sorry, just in case people are going to jump on me for this. I know that sub or bass, I should say low end is not is not directional. So it doesn't really matter where you point it. But in terms of distance from walls and and its relationship to your other monitors, so you're avoiding things like phase, for example. So, you know, if because you think about it, if it's a meter in difference away from your ears compared to the to your main monitors, then those frequencies are going to reach your ears at different times. So you could get phase issues. Yeah. So I hadn't really understood that before. But yeah, so I won't press that anymore because I know it's of limited interest to people. But yeah, three hundred and twenty five pounds as opposed to three hundred and fifty nine pounds. Just a nice time to pick it up if you want one. It certainly it's very true. Stephen, washing machine is small. So moving on from there. I do have a little comment here. Any keyboard piano recommendations for beginners? Hi, Breezy. Thanks for dropping in. I did look. It was I was very, very determined to find some of those. And at the risk of people suddenly leaving the stream because I'm not going to have what they want. No, I did not manage to find any on Tom on Tomman at the moment. I'm sorry to tell you. But as always, I am kind of a big lover of it would be good if I could remember their name, Arturia Stuff. So if you're looking just for a small one to start off with Breezy, check out the Arturia Keystep 37. I say that with authority because I have one and I still use it, especially when I'm doing sort of more mobile stuff. Hey, Chris, nice to see you here. Chris Salim. Hey, if you guys haven't checked out Chris Salim's channel Mixed Down Online, do check it out.  But he look, I find with his tutorials and Cubase that if even if you're using a different door, you can even convert the concepts over to a different door very, very well. I mean, I think it's always worth checking out other channels where if they're not using your door and Chris is I've just because Chris has become a friend of mine. He's such a good guy. And he's hailing from Canada. So sorry, we're going to be talking in in in in palms here, Chris. But yeah, guys, don't do it now. After the show, definitely head over to Chris's channel and check out what he's got to say. You may see some videos there occasionally similar, some higher because I've stolen his ideas. Oh, dear, I can say that to Chris. I'm still that idea, Chris. So there we go. Yeah, that sub is great. Now moving on, we're going to work through microphones here, microphones. This is maybe a surprise to some of you. I thought I like to try and find microphones which are well priced to get going with. So we've got a few microphones to go through it in very different price ranges. So first of all, this one, when I saw the price of this. Well, I was like 20 pounds. Sounds cheap to me. Sounds very good. So if you're just starting out and you need to condense a microphone and you really strap for cash and I just want to say here, I never want to talk as if, you know, spending hundreds of dollars on something is just nothing. I've spent much of my life dirt poor. And if you're a musician, you may understand this experience. So I know I talk sometimes about this high end stuff. I don't want to come off as elitist. If you can't, if you just don't have the money, maybe you're a student, maybe you're unemployed, maybe you've got a young family and don't feel bad about that.  And the reason I'm bringing up this one, particularly this Behringer C1 here is because I have actually used it. I did have it many years ago. I think it's been around for a long, long time, this microphone. And it served its purpose as a condenser microphone. I will say, in honesty, and I don't know about the current version, I will say that it's kind of not as quiet. It can be a little bit of noise with this one compared to some other microphones. I don't want to overestimate that. It's just there. It's just there a little bit.  But, you know, honestly, in the thick of a mix, it could be well, it could well be something you you wouldn't even notice when there's a whole bunch of other things in there as well. So. So I definitely think if you're just getting going, you need a microphone. Then this would be a reasonable option. But that's for me is if you really are strapped for cash and you're working with a budget and you must be very, very strict. If you don't have to be quite as strict or you've got a few extra pounds or euros to spare, then I would go to this microphone. This is your Audio Technica 80 2020. I have I mentioned this before in previous videos. I did do a blind shoot out with this microphone and two others, the NT1A and the SE Electronics SEX. SEX one, the SEX one, as I like to call it. And I did a blind shoot earlier on the early on the channel. This was the cheapest microphone of those three. And in a blind shoot out by people who watch the videos, they all picked this one as their favourite sounding microphone. I tried it. We did exactly the same performance, male and female vocals. And it's seventy seven pounds. OK, and I will say just comparing the two and they're a bit of a different price, aren't they? Twenty pounds up to seventy seven pounds. And this is not a Black Friday special, by the way. I just want wanted to mention there's a big difference in price, but there is a decent jump up in quality there between those two microphones, I would say. So that would be another consideration if you haven't got the big bucks to spend at the moment. Um, what about the Shure MT-7? Let me just remind myself of this one. Give me a moment, please. MT-7, I'm just wondering if it. Sorry, I think you may. This is why I just look this up because I was thinking, have I missed the MT-7? You may be getting confused with the MV-7, sir. Which I did review on the channel some months ago, probably even a year ago or so. And, yes, that would be one that I could recommend to you if you see that a good price there. I don't see any deals for that on. Actually, was there a deal on Tom and for it? I may have missed it. It may be in the have a look anyway. But yeah, the MV-7 is something that I could recommend. It is a hybrid microphone. I don't normally like to recommend those. It's kind of a USB and an XLR, but it is USB and XLR microphone. And it's got some great features on the USB side. I just don't find that USB microphones are that great for podcasting. Really, really good. I just don't think they're a very good solution for making music because they don't normally have great features for monitoring what's already been recorded. Yeah, so I won't go on about that. But yeah, definitely worth checking that out if you can find a special. Moving on from there, I did want to quickly mention as well, just while I'm talking about microphones. Sorry, I just I just want to correct myself here. This 80 2020, I said it's not in the Black Friday specials. That's not quite true. It is in there that it's just the price is not reduced. And I did want to mention this because you'll see at the top here that you get this free of charge with his product. Two products at Nectar Elements and RX-8 Elements. It's worth mentioning here that these two pieces of software are wonderful for a start. I mean, Nectar can be really, really good on vocals and it can just really kickstart you in terms of we say a vocal processing chain, if you like. And RX-8 is just awesome for fixing up awful things in your recording. So mistakes that have been made with your recording pops and clicks and things like that. It's very, very good at that. It's like magic in some ways. So both of these products are just sort of you're definitely out there for sale and some of them, I do believe I should have prepared this. But the combination of the two would definitely be worth more than the value of this microphone, for example. So that's a deal. That's something that's happening with a lot of microphones at the moment on Tom and these two pieces of software going with it. So that's why it's a good time to buy this at the moment from Tom. And they really are worth it. Those two pieces of software, if you don't already have them. And that takes me on to this next one. This is, again, a microphone, which is a little bit more expensive again. And again, has that same deal. So it has that Nectar elements, has RX-8 elements with it as well. But no actual reduction in terms of palms on this. Why do I keep saying palms in that accent? I don't know. Rode NT-1A, why would I recommend this? It's always been around for years in this format with this package. You know, with the shock mount, with the pop filter. It comes in not a metal case, but kind of a hard and plastic case and all that sort of stuff, it's like a complete setup. And this is a microphone which I used on many, many recordings and still use it sometimes now, even though I've got a much larger collection of microphones than I used to have, but it's still the test of time. It's just a good microphone. Now, I will say, when I compare it to the previous one here, the Audio Technica here, that it's a bit sort of accentuated in the high end. And some people, some people find it can be a little bit harsh. So if you tend to have a lot of sibilance in your voice, this might not be the best pick for you. You may be better off with the AT-2020, but, but, but, but. Look at the difference in the two packages. This is just a microphone. This is a microphone plus your pop filter, plus a shock mount and all that. So by the time you add a pop filter and a shock mount to the Audio Technica one, you may be starting to get kind of close to the road one. But, you know, I personally, despite the results of the blind tests that we did, I still prefer the road. That's just me. Majority of people who did the blind tests on my video preferred the Audio Technica. Microphones are like that. You can't just say there's just one that's better than the other. There's there are opinions involved and there are different voices and things that you record. So, yeah. Now, I'm going to do my old trick again now. Excuse me. Oh, you like the sound of that? Yeah, it's like a little kiss on the end there. You can tell it's early in the morning for me. Still 544 in the morning for me here. I'm going to do my old trick of jumping up to a completely different price range here. This is a microphone which I spoke about on my earlier stream. So again, I'm going to repeat myself again here, the AKG C214. So let's talk about this microphone quickly. It's a microphone which is based upon and I'm going to use my language carefully here based upon the very well known C414, OK, which is a much more expensive microphone from AKG, which has definitely been used on some of the the greatest recordings of all time. It's a proper, proper professional studio microphone, the C414. Now, excuse me. The C414 is is got two capsules in it. It's got lots of different polar patterns. It can record from different directions. So it's got lots of features on it as well as being really high quality. So that's one of the things that makes it a great microphone. So what they sort of say they've done here is got rid of all those different polar patterns, gone with the microphone that has just one polar pattern, a cardioid pattern, which is arguably the most used pattern for in the studio microphone, so that's good. And then they've just taken one side of, you know, the capsule from a 414 and that's what they've got. So it's a sort of a standard microphone that way. It's got a cardioid pattern. It's going to pick up from one side. I will always go on about this microphone, though. It was sent to me to try out another one that was sent to me to try out. And I had the option of buying it. And I didn't at the time. I just sent it back after the review and I always regretted it. I've really regretted that, but I always regret this because of all the microphones that I've reviewed on the channel so far, this is my favourite. That's just it just is. It just is my favourite microphone. It just compared to other microphones we've been looking at here. Let's go back to this one. OK, it's pretty much what double the price there. But you hear the difference. You definitely hear the difference on it right away. It's not one of those things and you go, hey, I've spent all this extra money and I'm not sure if I can hear the difference. So so that's why I've got that one in there. It does come just so you know, it does come with. Let me just pull up the other pictures here just so I can double check. I believe it comes comes in this hard case and it comes with a pop filter. So well, sort of a pop filter, they call it windshield. So a foam one that's which works fine and it's got a shock mount with it as well. So that is definitely worth considering. If you're in that, if you've had some of these other microphones and you think, you know what, I'd like to step up. I just like to step up my game with microphones a bit. Then this is going to be the way you would go. And of course, at the moment, you get those two pieces of software with it, which I mentioned earlier, Nectar Elements and RX 8. OK, cool. Now, the last of the microphones that I'm going to talk about is is this going to be the most expensive one? I can't remember now is this one. This is the most expensive one. It's the very microphone that I'm talking through at the moment. This microphone can sound very, very warm and it can sound like this. There's a big difference, isn't there? Why have I got an SM7B? I've probably had it for a year now or so. It's a very hyped microphone, not in terms of sound, but it's hyped on on the internet for the last couple of years. It's been around for donkeys years in one form or another, but podcasters got hold of it and YouTube's got hold of it two or three years back, I guess, and it became trendy and popular. That's not why I've got it, although I did want to make sure for you guys that I've got sort of good sound in my videos and things like that for the voiceover parts, but it was designed as a vocal microphone. And it's a great vocal microphone, especially when the room is an issue. This is the dynamic microphone, by the way, it's not a condenser microphone. So when the room is an issue and you haven't got great treatment, this is a great microphone.  People will be telling you in forums, oh, it's got the same capture as an SM58. And they're right. They're correct. But there's much more to a microphone than just the capsule. And anyone who's got the two microphones, which I do and I've got an SM57 as well, will tell you right. Well, there's a difference in sound, for sure. It's not it's not a matter of opinion, in my opinion. It's a massive difference in sound. So, of course, anyway, it's a great microphone. Do you need a cloud lifter with this possibly? But don't assume that you do this. So what cloud lifter is basically something which boosts the signal of the micro preamp, if you like, which cleanly boosts the signal of the microphone before you put it into your interface. OK, because an issue with all dynamic microphones, not just this one can be that you need to turn the gain up when you interface a lot in order to get it sort of going. But I think this is overstated a little bit. I think there's an awful lot of interviews interfaces where, yes, you may have it turned up to eight or nine, as long as you're still getting clean sound from your preamps when it's turned up that high. Then I don't think that you necessarily need a cloud lifter. Cloud lifters are not cheap. I can't remember the price of them offhand, but they're not cheap. And when you combine it with this microphone, it can get pretty expensive. So by the microphone first, give it a try with your ear. It'll be usable right away. It's not like it's not going to hear anything. But you may find after a while, maybe I need a cloud lifter, but don't buy it with it to start with my advice, which is what I did. And I thought most of the time, I don't need it to be honest with you. So there you go. Learn from my mistakes. OK, moving on, we've got some quirky stuff coming up now, some of which I have not actually tried personally, but I think it's worth having a look at. So this is a quirky one. People have asked me a lot about this on the channel. And this is this. Oh, no, not this. So I've got confused with something else. Let's do this the other way. This is what they've asked me a lot about. People are always saying to me, Mike, what arm do you use? What arm do you use for your microphone? So this this thing here looks by the way, this looks huge, doesn't it? On camera, this is because I'm using a webcam and the perspective.   So my my webcam is making things screen. So the microphone, look at this microphone, look at the perspective. It's huge and the arm looks huge as well. It is chunky, which is why I've got it and it's solid. But it's not quite as big as my webcams making it out to be. Now. The actual one I've got is not the same as the one that we're looking at here. Let me just kind of zoom in on this. Hello, Internet, wake up. Thank you. But I have to say I've seen a few around and it looks to me like the sort of product which is probably made in China and gets rebadged by a lot of people because they all look exactly the same. The knobs, everything on them. I can look at this and if it didn't have that branding on there, I would say this is exactly the same as my one. So I believe it is the same one, to be honest with you. If it isn't, it's very, very similar. Internet's very slow, isn't it? It took some time there. If you've got a more expensive microphone and you want to make sure that you've got something that's going to hold it and it's not going to move around, then these things are definitely worth getting. I think for £48, it's definitely worth getting if you want. Now, you may be not a YouTuber like me or a podcast or anything like that and just a musician who's making music and you may wonder what use this would be to you. I think it's actually very, very useful to you, to be honest with you, because I've found since I've been using this and since I've been a YouTuber and had a need to use this, because it sits there with a microphone on it all the time, it makes me much more inclined to quickly record ideas I've had. So I'm looking around the studio quickly. Oh, that's a good guitar part. I want to record it and quickly do a quick demo with that and a vocal. It's just very, very convenient to have that with there while it where I'm sitting, etc., etc. Otherwise, I've got to get a microphone stand out, set it up, blah, blah, blah. Those sort of things are a bit of a barrier to recording when you have to set things up. It's like I say with my guitars, I don't keep. I've got hard cases for all of my guitars, and I don't put them in there unless I'm going somewhere. All of my guitars are out. They're on stands, they're on the wall, they're ever because you play guitar more when they're around you and easily accessible, in my opinion. And it's important to play your guitars often. Practice is never something you don't need to do. So great fittings on these. Compared to the other ones that you see, which have those sort of springs and I don't know what they're called. I don't know the technical terms for these things. They're much more sturdy and less noisy when you move those around. Clink, clink, clink, clink and springs vibrate and clink. And then also the other thing that I like about these because I'm a little bit OCD, a little bit OCD, if you've seen how tidy my studio is all the time, that the cable you can see here is it starts off there. It's conveniently got a length there to plug into a different place, but actually is routed down through the stand comes out the other end and they give you a cable that that cable is internal to it comes with it. So yeah, they're great. I had a look around on the side to there are black ones. And what they've done here is the silver one, which is probably the most unpopular color is the one that's on special. If you want a black one, you have to pay the regular price for them. I think it's a good price for those. It's something similar to what I paid in Australian dollars. Yeah. So the next thing up here is this one. I was looking at this one jumped out. I mean, obviously, this is not my studio desk. But. Oh, hang on. I'm just getting a little comment here, which I want to bring up. I'm a firm believer. If you can't see it, you don't use it. I have a road PSA and so easy to be able to record the kid. Absolutely. So even I've thought about the road PSA as well, and they've got a newer version of it as well, which looks really, really good. And I reckon that's a good one, too. But yeah, I agree with you. They need to be out and ready to use, otherwise you won't use them. Anyway, this one jumped out at me. A little desk here. Now, if you're if you're set up with some sort of table, kitchen table or something like that, absolutely fine. That's cool. But there's something about having a sort of a dedicated piece of furniture. To to record with, which can be really, really cool. And what makes this one a studio desk? And by the way, the price is extraordinarily good. Just have a look. What makes this really, really good is it's there for the task. It's got some areas there. You can sort of see them on top. It's got two areas for rack mount gear. It's got a couple of places to hang things like headphones. And it's got a place down below to put something like a keyboard on.  Let's put it in context. As you guys know, I built my own desk.  I bought it with wood from the local DIY store and hinges and screws and glue. And it took me three months to build it. All in all, in between doing other things, of course, but actually cost me Australian dollars. It cost me about two and a half thousand Australian dollars to build it, which is probably in pounds. I think, you know, over a thousand pounds, some of that. So time and money is what it costs for me. Now, of course, I built it custom to exactly what I want for my room, for my body, even everything like that. These things are expensive. They're not cheap studio desk for 122 pounds. It may not be absolutely ideal, but I think it's I think it's great to be honest with you if you just want a little dedicated thing. Now, what I would say with this is what I would pair it with. And I haven't got any specials for you on this. But what I would pair it with is some monitors on stands. It looks to me from looking at this, if you tried to put your monitors on top of it. So you had a I took monitors. I'm talking about speakers, by the way. If you had your monitor as your screen in the middle there and then you had speakers either side, it looks to me like they'd be positioned way too high because these racks that they've got for rack mounted gear are quite tall here. So, yeah, I would probably go down the route of having on. I prefer speakers on stands anyway. You don't get they basically don't vibrate down through your furniture, so it's better to have them on stands. So you can get isolation pads. I know I'm a little bit skeptical about those. But, yeah, so this combined with some speaker monitors, sorry, with some speaker stands, one of them I was talking about. Then I think you'd have an almost ideal setup. So good stuff there, worth looking at. And I know that Nick Ellis, Nick, is tempted. I think I've seen a photo of your desk at some point, Nick. Yes, I'm pretty sure I have. And, yes, I think you should buy this desk. But I haven't actually tried it. So if it falls apart, it's not it's not my fault. Sorry, I've tried to be clear here 20 percent off. I'm sure it's well worth it. OK, moving off from there to something else I haven't used. That is not good, is it? But something I'm going to recommend anyway. This is a an art pro. So I'm a pre-amp here. Art or ART, as they may or may not be called. I think are they a Canadian company? Could be not quite sure. I can't remember now. But anyway, they are just renowned for making outboard gear for your studio at a price which doesn't break the bank. You know, we're always being told by audio elites how much better hardware is. And then we go and look at the price of hardware. And and then you go, oh, OK, it really is for the elite. Especially when you look up sort of things like LA2As and things like that. You've got you've got the plug in. Oh, maybe I should get the hardware. And then you go, no, I will get the hardware. So ART stuff is not like that, but it's very reasonably priced. But you will see it in pro studios. If you look at some of my videos, I can't point, can I turn it around? I don't think I can turn the let me try this. Oh, God, this is a mess up, isn't it? Somewhere over there. I can't really point my I've got an ART voice channel, which is I haven't done a review on it yet. I've had it for many, many months and it's awesome. I'm so impressed with the quality of the gear is very, very good. And so that's why I'm looking at this because. If you want to sort of step up from the preamps that are in your audio interface, this could well be a good way to go. Now, I'm going to encourage you to look at other reviews before you make this purchase because I haven't actually used this. But as I was scrolling through, it just jumped out at me. First of all, there's a big price reduction here down from four hundred and twenty five pounds down to three hundred and fifteen. And I did look at a couple of quick reviews and they were very, very good. I'm recommending it on the basis of brand, OK, that everything I've tried from these guys so far has not disappointed, even though the price is reasonable. So if you're looking thinking you may get a mic preamp, then I think this one is definitely at least worth checking out. Now, moving on to something completely different for my final pick from Tom. By the way, I forgot to say if you are in the chat right now, the live chat, some of you was trying to remind me earlier, Doug, could you hit the like button for me right away? Do it right away. And that will make sure that other people come and watch the replay, which would be nice and they'll get to see these great deals as well. The links are already already in the description down below. Please follow them. This is not this has not been sponsored by Tom and Tom and don't know that I'm making this video at all. But the links are obviously affiliate links. So I will get a small commission, but it won't affect how much you pay at all. So there's nothing added in terms of what you pay if you follow that link. And if you do that, thank you in advance for that. It's a great help to the channel. And also, thank you for liking as Reg already has. What a great spelling of Reg that is. I like that. So moving on to the final thing, it's something I do have in my studio, which I've never reviewed, but you may have noticed it here and there. And I want to talk about it because we can do a little educational piece on it. While looking at this is on special at the moment. And that is the Vox AC 10 C1 custom. This is something I probably got about a year or so ago now, I'm guessing. I went to my local music store. I was trying out a lot of amps in this vein. And, you know, that included mostly Fender amps of a similar price and a similar size. And this is the one I went with. Now, that's going to be a personal taste thing. I was I took my guitars with me. So I was using my Gretch and I was using my Strat. And they both worked, in my opinion, really, really well with this amp for the sound I wanted. And that sound is really quite a classic Vox sound. It's hard to describe just much like fenders. I guess there's people describe it as having a bit of a chime. But what I wanted was there's many, many apps around that you can get at the moment with. And, you know, some of them include simulations of some kind in them, you know, of different things, which are probably very useful. But I didn't want that. I wanted a basic straightforward amp, which was a tube amp. So I wanted that natural sound that you get with some nice warm tubes. And I wanted to mic it up and get that authentic sound, which I do and I enjoy and I love. Now. The problem that I think the mentality, if you're thinking about buying a guitar for the studio, your mentality's got to be a little bit different.  The only issue is and it's just I'll interrupt myself here. It's wonderful to see my good friend and fellow YouTuber, Dan, from Lonely Rocker here. I think many of you in the live chat will be familiar. If you're not, you need to check out his channel. And I'm not surprised he's chimed in with a comment on tubes because he is a lover of tubes. Me and Dan have discussed this a bit. And I have to say I remember having a conversation with Dan about this, actually, that I was always a bit skeptical about people who sort of went, oh, you know, they can't emulate tubes with guitar sims and all that. And then after I sort of got this amp, then I went, yeah, absolutely, 100 percent agree. It's just one of those things. I know it's just one of those things that once you once you've heard it, you hear it and you go, yeah, that's definitely true. But having said that, I'm not, you know, these things are budget orientated, not everyone has the ability to go out and buy these things. And and can amp sims. Let's put it this way, they can change the sound so that you've got a different sound and it might be a sound that you like. Let's put it that way. Are they accurate to actual tubes? Not quite really when you compare them, to be honest with you. But they can still change the sound of your guitar.  But anyway, so let me talk again about the mentality of this. So when you buy amps for a live situation, you're going to buy something which is going to be able to project often out, especially if you playing, you know, in local sort of clubs and things. But in the studio, for most of us who live in normal houses, something like and Paul Paul's in here in the Chakray pool talking about his AC 30 and you've said exactly it's very loud, very, very loud. They now the issue you're going to have is in order to get the sound you want from some of those amps, you do have to get the gain up pretty reasonably loud. And there's two circuits in these. There's in terms of there's two different utilizations of the two two different stages and you kind of probably to get the sound that most of us are looking for going to have to get both of those stages up a fair amount.  So, yeah, you know, that's that's the issue. So really, and my thing is, is that for the studio, what you want to be looking for is a less loud amp, which you can then drive and get some tone from. If that makes sense, does that make sense? Dan, have I said it in a good way? Perhaps Dan could explain it in the chat in a better way. So it's actually very, very handy for the studio to have an amp which is not quite as loud, which sort of would be maybe be underpowered for a live situation, then you can drive it hard and you can get some nice tones out of it because you tubes need to be driven to get that tone. Yeah, they need they need to be sort of happening. So on the other hand, although I'm recommending this AC 10 for for this app for these applications, I will say this is still quite a loud amp. It's not quite it's not a practice amp. It's not like that. It's the size of it physically is nice. And that's another consideration as well for studios because by the time you pack them out with gear, but it's not too it's not too small. It's not too big. It's it's but I find that I can just drive it enough to get the tone that I like without it being crazy, crazy loud. OK, but honestly. Well, what I find is that I still for a lot of recordings, if I'm trying to be kind to my neighbors, have the gain on about the gain of goes up to about maybe thirty five forty percent. So I'm driving that first stage reasonably hard. But I have to have the volume down to like two. If I had it on five or six, you know, it would be pretty loud. I think you could use this if you're playing small venues as well. You know, small pubs and clubs. I think you could do this and let's face it. If you're playing big venues, you know, you're going to be the the amps going to be mic'd up and going through the PA as well. So, you know, now in terms of features, it hasn't got much.  Let's just look at some of the pictures here. Let's find a better picture than this. You've got a gain knob, which I was talking about there. You've got bass, treble, reverb and volume. Now, I just want to say with the reverb that it is a digital reverb on these. But it sounds good. It sounds nice. It sounds analog to me. So it's always nice to have that on an amp, I find. I think somewhere it's got an external speaker out. You don't get much more basic than this. OK, has it got an external speaker out? Yes, on the back there. OK. It's really just a very straightforward thing. I love the sound of it. I will mention, though, that the other thing about that you may consider, if you're sort of thinking about getting more authentic sound, these are not like clean when you switch them on, even at low volumes. There's a little bit of a going on there, probably a little bit lower than that.  So it's a different thing.  But yeah, that's the only thing I'll say about it that. Yeah, now there are there were Fender amps, as I say, that I tried out at the same time. I can't remember model numbers off hand. I love Fender amps in general. But yeah, this was just the sound that I was looking for. A good old British sound. And that was what I wanted. And that's what that's what I get. I really enjoy it. So that is my final piece of gear for this. And it took me an hour to get through all of those. I hope it's been a little bit of an education along the way. That was one thing I hoped for in discussing gear on these shows. I mean, it's not just what should you buy? And this is a great deal. But, you know, what should you be considering when you're buying gear? Because you can get burnt at this time of year just by price and you end up buying something and then you realize three or four months after you bought it. It wasn't that cheap because I haven't used it since I bought it. So it was actually a complete waste of money. Buy things that are going to be useful to you. If the things that are going to be useful to you are not available at the moment in these Black Friday sales, then wait for the next ones or save a bit longer or have you don't. I should probably shouldn't be saying this because if I just encourage you to buy everything, I'll earn more money in affiliate sales. But I'm not into that. I think still by cautiously, even though there's some great deals out there, it's more important to buy things that are going to get things done right for you. And I personally think that it's always if you can afford it, get that little bit of extra quality. And that doesn't mean it has to be more expensive. There are plenty of things out there. So it's been great that you've been here with me. I appreciate it so much. If you're watching on the replay, then let me know your thoughts on some of these pieces of gear. It's been lovely to have you folks here with me during this live broadcast. I'll be I'll be if you haven't checked it out, by the way, let me just quickly tell you about this. Then do check out this video, which I've paused on the screen here. I released this two days ago, and this was about the deals, I think, are really great on plug-in boutique at the moment. That's another great place to buy things. And again, this was on the theme of things that I actually use, plugins that I've used for a while that continue to be good, you know, not just flashing the pan plugins that just looked nice at the time. So check out that video as well. And I've got my regular featured artist live show with my guests, Pete Johns and Jade Star. That will be tomorrow. Like, think tomorrow a couple of hours from now, maybe four hours from now. I know for you guys, it's going to be like the middle of the night. Sorry about that. But you can catch the replay and that will be going out as usual this week. Wonderful to have you here. Thank you so much for joining me. Thank you so much for being supporters of Creative Source. Love you guys to bits and I will see.