Well hello and welcome to our first holiday special live stream with my beloved who's and joining us for the first time and her name is I'm Marie and guess what I'm real she's real she's not the photograph that you see behind me in most of my videos I've actually invited my sweetheart my beloved to join us tonight to answer some of the questions that came in from the group which mostly centers around our relationship how we met some of the challenges we face in our relationship and I'm excited to have my beloved with me tonight how do you feel about doing this this is fun I've never done anything like this so I apologize in advance for any bloopers but hey we're gonna make the best of it well this is very impromptu this isn't scripted I literally other than asking that she get ready I didn't prepare her whatsoever so we're doing a test run to see how we work together this will be interesting for us and I'm very excited to have you all join us tonight so many of you have asked me about my relationship many of you've been following me for a very long time and you've known my journey and my journey from after my divorce and some of the dating or some of my relationship history so many of you have been very kind and very generous expressing how you felt about how I've shared my content with you all interesting enough my sweetheart has much of a journey not similar to mine but you have your own experiences of how you got to where you're at today and would you be willing to share with everyone our age difference because many people think you're 20 years younger than me so what's our age difference seriously yeah okay I'm a year older than she's a year older than me so I want everyone to know that I am not this guy that's you know basically dating younger woman I've got an older woman in my life and that just illustrates that not all men are seeking younger women so I hope most of you recognize that there are good men out there that are seeking a serious relationship so with that said I think I'd like to share kind of how we met with the group and the challenges we face because you know right off the bat well first off we were a long distance relationship and I say we're because we now live together yes that is true my question is are we gonna share the relationship how it evolved from my perspective or from your perspective so let's see it says the freeze I think there's something wrong with the camera so I hope it's working looks like we have people in here so that's good so let's start with we'll start with your perspective because you well first off I want to officially say she wrote me first on a dating site and that dating site was match.com so you initiated contact well he seems to think that that was our first contact but our first contact was actually one year prior to that and he didn't give me the time today so then a year later I wrote I wrote to him and he wrote back and basically thank you but no thank you you know you live in Chicago I live here and you know so when so I wrote back because I'm like you know what look I was raised in LA I have two kids in LA I have no problem moving to LA and you know I think you know we would get along and so he said wow that's a lot of stuff to unpack that was the first time I heard the word unpack and like what sort of unpack did you read it? Well I was actually really impressed with what you shared I was really impressed with how you articulated your point for me to consider someone long distance because you know I really didn't want to do long distance dating I talk about long distance dating with my community and I don't feel like it's a good move for most people so you you made an argument that at least made me want to consider her but I've been candid with you and you know this I really even when we first met he didn't like me wait what wait first off let's clarify this not when I first physically met you when we first spoke on the phone I didn't feel like we were a fit yeah well and then what did you do next? I called you a week later thinking oh my gosh that that last conversation went so well and what did I say I didn't like our last conversation like really like wow okay can we share why I didn't like it? Okay so I said to her I felt like you talked all about yourself and you didn't ask me any questions and what did you say after that? I said yeah I've heard that before and actually by her sharing that by her owning it it actually made me think you know what I want to get to know you a little bit more because you owned it and that was that was really important to me well and you know now when you think back when I didn't do a lot of dating I did a lot of meet and greets but I don't call those dates and I felt that I needed to tell everybody my story so they knew about me and and then go from there his perspective is different you know he wants to be asked questions I'm not somebody that yeah I don't like volunteering I like to I like to be invited in the conversation I don't like to over share although I do unpack things so we talked about that earlier so in that conversation we said let's be Facebook friends you know let's keep in touch you know if either one of us is ever in town let's connect with one another well and the other thing is that I didn't come to California often last year was a little bit different because I was in a car accident so it changed things a little bit for me but when I came out here in November and December I blew her off wait a minute let me rewind for a second so first she we met in May of 2021 via the dating app but she believes we met a year prior to that or at least connected with each other so for about eight or nine months we just kept in touch we called each other wasn't even romantic it was just like friendship you were liking posts on my Facebook page I was liking posts on your page so when she came to visit I wasn't in really a good mood I wasn't really in a good place when you came that first visit I had just had a brief encounter with a woman who totally messed me up so I wasn't in the mood I didn't blow you off intentionally well I know that now but at the time I'm like okay what I'm not somebody that is I don't want to say that I chase people I put myself out there I have no problem staying in touch and stuff but when you know he tells me oh yeah 1 30 would be a good time and then he says that but you have to come here I'm like I didn't run well I was working I had only I was working and I had a slot available and it didn't work out yeah well so then then the next time I came out of here it didn't work either so yeah so fast forward a few months after that I was coming out to Chicago to officiate a wedding for a dear friend of mine and I called you up and said hey do you want to meet up yeah before that oh yeah we did talk well that's right we did like in January he had contacted me and he said oh that's right forgot about this you know like oh so how's the dating world going and I'm like it's going I turned it off I turned it on I mean we all go through the same things of just getting overwhelmed with just the nonsense of it and and so we you know we talked a little bit about that and then but by the way and then I would I'd leave her messages if we don't meet anyone if you neither one of us meet someone in six months let's just meet fall in love and get married this was before I came out for the visit I would make little innuendos like that so what did you think of those little innuendos oh I thought yeah in your dreams oh so okay so now it's uh it's April I said I'm coming out to visit yeah so he said he was coming out to visit I cleared I thought I cleared my schedule wait didn't you offer yes I did I did I offered to pick him up at the airport because he was staying downtown where I was living it was very convenient to just you know pick him up at the airport however I didn't check that I had a hair appointment and we all know the hair appointments are very difficult to change at times so I you know I had to call him back and say hey I'm really sorry but my appointment is going to run into when your flight gets in and to drive back to the airport was not a good deal and it turned out that particular day there was a mad house on the freeway anyway and it took me an hour and a half from the airport to get to downtown but I did finally make it and we met at a restaurant yeah and it was really gorgeous restaurant overlooking the river just a really great choice by the way sweetheart and what happened when we first saw each other so when I first saw him you know it just I you know I feel like I've known him for so long so I give him a hug and a kiss and did you give me a french kiss I did not that's what you like to tell people I did not I don't do that in fact I usually just give a kiss on the cheek because Colombia I'm Colombia by the way Colombians that's just the norm you you greet somebody with a kiss on the cheek but he kind of turned his head so it was kind of like yeah you kiss me on the lips yeah so we sat at a high-top table we ordered a couple drinks and we proceeded to talk for the next six or seven hours we closed the place down we had a great time yeah great time and but I said you know I'm not really sure I want to do a long distance relationship remember that yeah and I was like okay right but I was kind of vacillated in back of my head because I thought oh my god she's this amazing woman or at least that's how I felt but I was really reluctant to do a long distance relationship so but what happened next was we we went our separate ways and we didn't know if we were going to see each other again but I call I texted you the next day and said um well he wanted me to go to this wedding with him yeah but I had to get there after after the the dinner and I'm like she was crashing the wedding I'm like nah that's not my style I don't crash wings no you had no you had oh that's right I did I did have permission to invite you so but what happened was I the next day I couldn't stop thinking about her I texted her and I said I really I really miss you I appreciate you will you be my date to the wedding I know you're crashing it but you know go outside your comfort zone and join me so I did and she shows up in this stunning red dress oh my god drop dead well you can tell she's dropped in gorgeous but she looks stunning and from that moment on I knew I knew I really wanted to get to know you and then I started to think you know it maybe long distance won't be so bad it'll be fun it'll be traveling you know he was going against everything he preaches yeah so um and at the same time though when and we had a great time and when I got back home we immediately arranged um well I was already coming to Los Angeles for my birthday uh to spend it with my two kids that live here because I have two kids in Chicago and two kids here and I feel like the ones here always get neglected so I try and come as much as I can and they're the ones that are not married so um my best friend planned this dinner at you know master's and stuff and so I already made the plans um you just extended a few after days to hand out hang out with me and initially it was um supposed to be just like a three dates kind of thing three days um we ended up spending three days unpacking our entire lives laying the cards on the table I mean we shared the good the bad the ugly because we thought you know what we actually were serious about this we said if this is something worth exploring then let's just like I said lay our cards on the table the good the bad the ugly and what I mean to say is we shared each of our marriages what we liked what we didn't like we shared our past relation or our significant relationship after our first marriage and then where the our dating experiences we even shared our personal development work you know you had done life spring I had done Hoffman and Insight and you had done the naked divorce and by the way that's a plug for go to the naked divorce dot com it's a great or at least I'm pitching for you it's a great um impression teller about it yeah we should um but a great way to heal after divorce so we felt like if we're going to explore this relationship then we would have to do this in the same city I mean so we began early conversations about um how are we going to take this distance from long distance to short distance and what and during that time we also arranged um a couple visits here which were extended visits I mean the first one was 12 days the next one was 18 days and they were only a two weeks apart each and even during the 18 day visit that included trip to Mexico for my birthday yes it did and my point in bringing this up is it's I've often said everyone knows I'm really big on spending a lot of time together I know if you live in the same city my belief is you should spend three or four days and nights a week together doing shared activities hobbies mutual interests you know so forth and so on she's heard my rhetoric over and over again but my point is you really don't get to know someone until you spend a lot of time with them so I'm not a big proponent of piecemealing the dating process I'm a big proponent of spending a lot of quality time together so those first three days initially it's we're going to go out to dinner and we're going to go bike riding and we're going to go this and then we decided no we're not going to do that we're just going to we're just going to sit around in pajamas and basically we literally you know got on the floor picnic on the floor and we just order food and just let's just unpack and you've learned what unpacking really was unpack was oh I gotta back up though yeah so um when we were talking on the phone uh before I came out for my birthday I had told my daughter about him and I said you know like he's a dating relationship coach and I don't know he's a little exhausting so that's all I said because like he's asking questions and questions and and so I thought I'm just not sure about this I don't know if I can handle this so when I told my daughter that I had a date with him after my birthday she's like oh the exhausting guy so let me ask you a question all the relationship gurus will tell you not to interrogate someone yeah okay don't make it an interview process everyone will tell you not to do that why was that worth doing for us because we had a small time frame well was it just small time frame well I look I didn't want to waste my time yeah I didn't want to waste my time on you but you know look at the camera tell them I didn't want to waste my time so I wanted to get as much accomplished in those three days before you know to see if I wanted to even go down that road yeah you know this is where I again I'm a big proponent of of don't waste your time with someone who's not a fit with you so when I say interrogate someone yes it may not be fun it may not be attractive at the same time I think when two people like each other it's actually good to dig in the nooks and crannies to see where you're actually similar with one another and what's interesting about you and I I love it how we literally are thinking the same thing at the same time we have our back stories are very similar to one another to some degree and we always seem on the same page so it didn't feel like an interrogation it felt like it was like a crash course into getting to know someone so anyway that's my two cents on that one but the other side of that is that I wasn't sure that I was that into him and he thought I was really into him that's right so that's why he thought I was like so into him and I like okay I really want to get to know this guy hey wait what's not to be into oh and then he was really offended because I had never seen any of his videos oh god I forgot about that she'd never seen any of my videos I wasn't offended I was he's like what you haven't looked and I'm like no I don't want to watch I don't want to watch your videos I want to see the real person and I didn't I thought that watching these videos I don't know how it would sway me so I thought no I'm not going to watch any of his videos oh and he did give me his book and I'm starting she still hasn't read it yet so after seven months so listen we've got some questions from the members of the group I'd like to you know toggle off a few of these to see how you felt so okay here's one from Renee she says what questions did you need answered before moving in well I needed to know that he wasn't a psycho well how can you not know that I'm not an amber herd or Johnny Depp um no we what questions like what was the like if you had to say what was well one thing you wanted answered not what question but what did you need to feel safe to make this decision well first of all I wasn't sure that I was that I was gonna move in with you I've never lived with somebody um I've been in long-term relationships and marriage and you know so like I didn't I didn't know that this was for me um so I started looking to see okay it's a lot easier because I you know as even though I have my kids there and grandchildren I do not have a job where I well you're retired yeah and I'm retired and so I thought okay I'm going to look to move there um that way I could spend more time with my kids here as well and then I realized how expensive California was but but those are different questions like what did you need to feel safe with me like why did you feel safe I spent three days with you how could I not well but a lot of people go travel long distance they spend a weekend in a bubble and they think they know someone so this wasn't I mean we didn't talk about stuff that you talk about when you're in a bubble we talked about like real life things like what you're looking for in a person um the type of I think we were almost like it was almost like prove me instead of prove me right prove me wrong does that make sense in other words instead of approaching it from a fantasy perspective we were like I want to know the nitty gritty that's how it felt I mean I don't like we had fun too don't get me wrong but I felt like what the the way we structured it it really allowed for our vulnerable authentic transparent selves to come out and one thing I want to say about Marie is that she's incredibly transparent and she's authentic if she basically says don't ask me a question to something you don't want to know the answer to because sometimes I do that and I appreciate that that she's in integrity always and while that's not easy to recognize in the beginning I think when somebody shares something with you that's uncomfortable that's something you may not like kind of like like I think you need new deodorant working yeah exactly she shared that with me I felt like that was a good starting block so okay so let's see what you know what before you go on it makes it sound like we decided to move in together after three days no no no we we took a couple it took another six weeks before we took that leave yeah we took our next visit and the visit after that and what happened was she just happened to go I'm looking at apartments there and she places to live or we're in a condo actually she found a place that was literally walking distance from where I did previously live and we checked it out we just fell in love with it and as many of many of you know from the videos that I shoot I think we have a great place to live yeah and it wasn't it so it's not like we said okay we're gonna do it now it's just you know it I didn't I was ready to leave Chicago anyway she wanted to beat the winter I wanted to leave before winter came but so it was either I was moving to Florida I was moving here so it just came down to okay this is what I had planned what do you think and and then we just decided okay let's do it all right let's see what other questions we have let's see since you were in a long distance relationship what are some of the questions oh that's we've already got that so before you decide to move in together what kind of conversations did you have was it more about the end game of possible permanent partnership or marriage or was it more just about being together also did you bring up living together did she so who brought up living together first um I don't know I really don't know I remember that I sent to this well I do it also said that you were looking at moving I think I think it was you were thinking about moving somewhere here first and you looked at the how expensive it was and then I probably said well why don't we just live together that may have been how it happened I don't know but it was really quick yeah I mean and and not that I'm recommending this for everyone at the same time though you know it occurs to me like you're okay really quickly how long did your parents know each other before they got married 12 days okay my parents the same way so it makes me wonder you know is it better to dive in and maybe fail than have it drag out for years which a lot of people do they have these long relate these you know not even relationships they're dating for years without any real destination and I'm not suggesting it's safe to do this because here's the thing look to some degree we're strangers with each other but at least you know I had a public persona you know that I never looked at yeah you never look but you knew I had a public persona look I get that there's a lot of people we don't know who they are that I'm a big proponent of vetting people it's why I teach this in my private coaching but at the end of the day I'm a big believer now it's better to dive into the deep end of the pool to see if it works versus dragging it out some people drag out relationships for years that it's kind of I don't want to say fail but they're going to end and I like that we dove in the deep end quickly well let's face it we're not 25 yeah exactly so to me we're not even 35 45 or 55 okay we'll leave it at that no but it just you know I thought to myself you know what the heck I talked I talked to my kids talked to my daughter and my daughter's like mom he seems like a nice guy go go do it I mean I laugh because it's I was so proper my whole life and here I'm doing something that my kids might view as not proper and and then they were all they were all supportive and it's like okay so we we revisit our journey just like we did with you all right now we oftentimes revisit our journey and some of the some of the little bumps along the way and there weren't really that many thankfully we tend to get along really well with each other whatever we joke with one another we have a saying that we say to one another because where we started and where we are today do you know what that is yes like for example you know we talk about when he blew me off when I was in town yeah not once twice and then you know then we go oh and here we are so it has been a true pleasure to enter your lives today to share a bit of our story we hope to be doing this more often we hope to be doing some youtube live stream certainly for our group here I am really grateful for this group midlife love mastery this is a great opportunity to talk about some of the challenges that we face at midlife and and you know we both had a significant we had a marriage we had a significant relationship after that and and I believe that prepared us for where we are today we both had a lot of not a lot of well I had a lot of dating app dating app experiences flybys coffee dates that sort of thing but ultimately what I do want to say is it's as I talk about frequently in my videos it's important important to do the individual work and what I mean by that personal development work that self-help that spiritual work so that you can be prepared to be in a relationship so you can have the relationship skills and the emotional maturity and ultimately I think what we both had in common was we knew we'd meet someone special we just knew it we didn't doubt it and I'm here to say to everyone when you have doubt it's going to carry forward when you come from a place of knowing and I do believe we both came from that place we were able to find each other and I always jokingly say thank you for finding me because you are by you are the most amazing person in my life and I'm very grateful for you all right everyone well I think this would be a great place to wrap up today so as I wrap up my typical videos I always give myself a big gigantic Jonathan bear hug but I'm going to give you a big gigantic Jonathan bear hug of appreciation thanks for joining us can I get one okay you can have one back thank you sweetheart hey everyone hugs are a great source of love and I want you to reach out to someone right now a pet a teddy bear a pillow and give either them a hug of love because hugs are a great source of love and I want to share our love with you on a regular basis and I hope we do come back for more we'll see all right thanks everyone have a great evening bye now bye now


The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they're too strong to be broken. Samuel Johnson couldn't have said it any better. If you're a young person who wants to make the most of his life, you already know the importance of having good habits that help you to achieve greatness. Greatness will never always be far from you when you form good habits. Although great achievers are often applauded, yet these achievers are simple men who've learnt to build great habits that help them to achieve their success. As a young person, do you think you're too young to overcome certain habits that would hinder your success? No, you're not. You need to make up your mind and start to overcome these habits. As Charles Dieg, author of The Power of Habit, why we do what we do in life and business, said, change might not be fast and it isn't always easy, but with time and effort almost any habit can be formed. If you have failed to build good habits for success in time past, you need to try again until you succeed. In this video, I'll be sharing with you some habits you must overcome if you must succeed as a young person. Do like this video right now and also subscribe to this channel, so you don't miss other exciting videos like this. 1. Not Planning You have read this maxim before. Failure to plan is planning to fail. If you do not plan your life and even your days, you are likely going to wonder how time went so fast when you grow older. Those who do not plan their lives are merely going to watch it go where they never imagined. Eleanor Roosevelt said, It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan. When you make a habit of planning your life, you are training yourself to be focused on what you must do to achieve your life's vision. All of life's successes are characterized by planning. A vision that is not connected to a plan will never be actualized. But when your vision is tied to a plan, you have set yourself up to succeed in achieving that vision. You can overcome this habit by choosing to plan each day, each week, each month, each year and beyond. Sun Tzu said, Plan for what is difficult while it is easy. Do what is great while it is small. 2. Not Preparing What you don't prepare for, you don't become. But if you are ready for it or are preparing for it, your opportunity will eventually come. Abraham Lincoln said, I will prepare and someday my chance will come. When Jerry Seinfeld wanted to start as a comedian, he got a 365 day calendar and decided to write a joke for each day. Each day he wrote a joke, he ticked it off on the calendar. Even if the joke he wrote on a particular day wasn't good enough, he didn't mind. What mattered was that he wrote. Doing this for 365 days, missing not a single day, made him very good at writing jokes in just one year. Today, Jerry Seinfeld is one of America's highest paid comedians. Do what you must to prepare yourself. Your opportunity will eventually come. 3. Not Dreaming If you're always waiting for the perfect time before you launch your dream, there will never be an ideal time. Those who wait for a perfect time to get into their dream will achieve nothing. Solomon, the wisest king who ever lived, said, The farmer who waits for perfect weather will plant nothing and would reap nothing when the harvest comes. If you aren't dreaming or you're afraid of dreaming, you can quit it. No matter how hard things are for you, you can still discover your dreams. Chris Gardner had a goal to become a successful stockbroker when his wife left him and their only son because he was poor and homeless. He achieved that dream. Poet James Langston Hughes said, Hold fast to dreams. For if dreams die, life becomes a broken-winged bird that cannot fly. Hold fast to dreams. For when dreams go, life becomes a barren field frozen with snow. You too can dream. Don't be afraid to dream. 4. Being Quick To Give Up No one portrayed the bulldog attitude better than Abraham Lincoln. He failed in business at 21. Lost a legislative race at age 22. Failed in business again at 24 and lost a congressional race when he was 34. At 45 he had lost a senatorial race. And he failed in an attempt to become vice president when he was 47. Although he failed several times, he didn't give up until he became the US president at the age of 52. Stephen King's stories were rejected 1500 times by different magazines. But he kept writing until he succeeded. Jack Canfield and Mark Hanson's book series Chicken Soup for the Soul was rejected by countless publishers. Not giving up, they soon found success. Success is achieved by those who never give up. Bulldog blood. Bulldog blood. Bulldog blood. That is all you need to keep going. Each time you're tempted to give up, tell yourself it ain't over until it's over. 5. Making Excuses There will always be a reason not to do what you must. If you leave your life to excuses, you won't always have to do what you have to do because there will always be a reason why you cannot do it. But super achievers are men who've learnt never to consider excuses. When you learn never to accept excuses for yourself, you've broken perhaps one of your most significant barriers to becoming successful. Because no matter what you plan to achieve, there will always be a reason why it cannot be achieved. Jordan Belfort said, the only thing standing between you and your goal is the story you keep telling yourself as to why you can't achieve it. The impossible is always seemingly unachievable until someone tries. The person who tries blazes the trail for others to follow. So, will you try and try again? And when you fail, stand up still and try again. Giving no excuses for not doing what you are supposed to do. When you're tempted to give excuses, you must always remember that no one is in control except you. Mark A Cooper, an author of Absolutely Nothing said, everyone kept telling me not to worry, someone will do something. No one did anything, so I became someone and did something.


Hello, and welcome to the live stream. Today we are taking a look at Unify for the Mac. Now I've got to say right off the bat that this is as yet unreleased beta software. So there is a beta program and I'll give you details of how you can sign up for that in just a moment. But just note that, as I say, this is as yet unreleased beta software. So not only is it beta, but it's not actually a public beta either. So that means that if there are any issues with it, just be aware of that fact. Although having said that, I've been using it for a week without any issue whatsoever. So, but just wanted to make that perfectly clear from the start. And this is actually something that I'm really excited about when they announced Unify back whenever it was their new mixing software from from road. And I'll walk you through it, obviously, in a moment. It was a PC only. And so I was just really chomping at the bit to get all of the advanced routing that this gives us for the Mac. And as I say, now it's here, but really where this is going to add a lot of value is going to be people who are using the stream X, but also the Rocaster. So I know that it's talked about in terms of Unify really enhancing the stream X, but it can add a lot more functionality as well to your Rocaster, your Rocaster Duo or whatever it's got, but also actually just for general audio routing on your Mac as well. So even if you're not using an external device, maybe you're using one of the road mics, maybe the Podmite USB going into your Mac, and you want to do some of the sort of audio routing that we can do with the Rocaster, but just do it all in software. And then it's going to be really, really great for that. I'll just quickly mention though where to get the beta, or rather where to sign up for it so that you can get alerted as soon as it is available. And I'll drop the link into the chat and you'll find all of this in the description if you're watching on the replay as well. But basically it's this site here for Rode X, getting started with Rode X, the user guide. But if you scroll right down to the bottom here, you'll see that there is a sign up form at Unify for Mac beta program. So just go and enter your details there and then as soon as it is publicly available, you will be notified. So then what exactly is the Unify software? Let's take a look. So if I come over to my screen share, this is what it looks like on the desktop. And essentially it's kind of like a virtual mixer. Now what I'm going to do now is just bring in this other microphone. So I'm going to look like I'm at a press conference, but basically the audio that you're hearing is actually being rooted through my Rocaster Duo. And I've got another microphone plugged into the Streamer X so that we can take a look at. You can actually just see something moving on the screen here in terms of audio. But yeah, because I'm going to be messing around with all the audio rooting, I figured let me just keep it safe for today and root my audio through the Duo. So incidentally, as we'll see in a moment, the Unify stuff is also rooting through the Duo as well. So I'll explain how you can do that. But essentially what we've got here then is we've got a virtual mixing board and you can see that we've got one thing on the board as it were. And you can also see that it says here what that is. So right at the top there it's saying that it's the Streamer X microphone. And I mentioned it opens up a lot of functionality for the Streamer X. And you may recall, if you watched my previous video about the Streamer X, that we do have three separate mic inputs on the Streamer X. You've got basically the XLR on the back there. You've also got a headset port here. And then you can also pair it with a Rode Wireless Mi or Rode Wireless Go 2 as well. Now when you're using this with Rode Central, there are these three mic inputs and you can basically switch between them. So you can see there it's selected the headset. If I press it again, we've selected the wireless mic. And so that's how you kind of switch between them and you can adjust the levels in there. When you actually turn on Unify, it will detect that you've got a Streamer X attached. And it will say, do you want to use the Streamer X with Unify? And if you say yes there, then basically then we take control of the Streamer X into Unify. And one of the advantages of using this over the Rode Central for Streamer X is that you don't have to choose between the particular microphone input you want. You can actually select, you know, any one of them or all three in fact. So you could potentially then have the Streamer X giving you three microphone inputs from that one small device. I think it really does, you know, it just just enhance the Streamer X quite considerably. So the way that it works then is, as I say, we've got this virtual mixing board. Now as you can see here, we've got this little plus symbol so I can just add other things into this mix that we're creating here. But actually when you first start it up, it will take you through to this screen here, which is the channel assignment screen. And that looks something like this. If I put it somewhere where you can see it would help. It looks something like this. Now what you can see here is that is the one that we've already got on the board. But we do then have, as I say, these other two microphones that we can add in. So we could add in our headset. So if we had a headset mic plugged into the back of the Streamer X, we've got that wireless mic. So if we had a wireless mic, we can add that one in. But then don't forget, there is a kind of really a fourth microphone potentially, which is that you've got your HDMI in. Now if you are using the Road Streamer X as an HDMI capture device for your camera, technically you could plug a fourth microphone into your camera because the audio from that would get passed through as well. So, you know, that's a potential worker and to get up to four microphones out of that one little device. It's quite amazing really. Next you've got the USB 2. So that's the USB 2 channel from the Streamer X. So just to show you that again, on the back of the device, as well as having the USB 1 here, which is how it's connected and powered at the moment into my computer, there is also this secondary USB. So that could be from your, you know, another computer, a gaming device or whatever it happens to be. You could actually just plug that into the same computer. That's what I do with my Rocaster Duo and Rocaster Pro 2. They both go into the same computer to just give me an extra channel of input output. So that USB 2 there, though, does just show up as an option here. So these are all the Streamer X ones. You can see they say Streamer X on them there. And if I just close this down momentarily, you'll see that those are now all on this board. So we've got all of those different inputs. There are more, though. So if I come back over to that channel assignment, you can see that down here, we've also got some other audio devices. Now, these are virtual devices that show up on your computer. So when you, if I add this one in, for example, system, then this is going to be capturing the system audio, obviously.  I should have dropped this into my scene in advanced, naughty, not getting this prepared. I'll just drop it right in here, though. So here you can see this is my system audio, basically. And this is like in the Mac when you click the drop down. So these are all the different devices I've got. So you'll notice here that we've got the Rode Unify browser about halfway down. Rode Unify Chat, Unify Game, Unify Music, Unify System, Unify Virtual and Unify... Oh, that's it. Then we're into the Rocaster Duo. So that's just to say that all of these virtual devices are essentially just inputs and outputs on your computer that are then, you know, addressable. So you can send audio in. So let's say that you want to capture your system audio, but then maybe you want to also grab. Whoops, if I actually just grab the right thing on the screen there. If I grab the chat, the chat channel might be something that you want to have for Discord, perhaps, or maybe for a Zoom call or something. So you've got a separate channel for that. Then it's got music. So if you're going to be playing Spotify or some other music, bear in mind that, you know, when you're in your Spotify app, you can select the channel that you want. So you would just simply select the output from Spotify to be the Unify Music. So that's where it would go. So it would come into this channel. You've also got another one here for game. So if you want to, if you are playing games, you're streaming games, you could send it there. Just bear in mind as well that although they have given these names to, you know, give you some, some virtual things with some meaningful names, you know, you can actually use them for whatever you want. So I'll talk a bit later about, you know, doing some advanced audio routing with it. But certainly for me, you know, using Discord, Zoom, Ecamm Live, three communication style apps with two-way audio simultaneously, I need to have those all on their own dedicated channel. So it may be that, you know, I decide that I'm going to use chat for Discord. Maybe I might assign the music one to something else. So you can really use them for whatever you want. They just, they've just got that name. And then you've got one for the browser. And then you've also got this one here, this virtual. So that's just basically almost like a spare channel, if you like, that you can use for whatever you want as well. But it's just got this virtual name. So it's just from a point of view of being more sort of meaningful. But as you can see, if I just close this down, then now I've got all of those different things on this, this mixing board. And if they're off the edge, you can just sort of scroll along. So you can really add quite a lot to there. So what I'm going to do is just actually take off a few of those, just so that in, yes, yes. So I should be back. Sorry about that temporary little glitch there. That was just a bit of a bit of a computer overload. So hopefully the stream should be back up now. Let me just try and get things back up and running once again. Sorry for the slight, slight disruption there. This is just another thing pointing me to the gas. Takeouts. Try and get my stuff sorted out in the background as well. So let me say hello to a few people then, and I'll get back to the demo in a moment. Hey, Richard, great to see you here. Hey, Jamie, I hope everything's good with you too. Walter, yes, it's, so this is a pre-release version of the beta, as opposed to the release version. I left a link to go and sign up, which I think you already have. Actually, I've just noticed your other comment. So yeah, it's as yet unreleased, and I can't say when it's going to be officially released, but I just wanted to give you my impressions of it, and thank you to Road for giving me some early access to it. So I've been digging into it over the past week. And so yes, the buffering is all down to my system, getting a little bit overloaded. So let's take a look at this. Oh, hey, Michael, great to see you too. A glitch in the matrix indeed, or maybe a signal from the gas gods to upgrade my computer. Take two tech indeed, yes. I won't try a restart now, but what I will do is I will just try and open up some of my software again. I know me too as well. We're back, we're back again. Right, sorry about this. Let me carry on now. I think we're back in business. So let me pick up where we left off, and I do apologize for all the disruption here. The joys of live streaming. So let's take a look once again at Unify, and I'll try and pick up where we left off, which was with the, I've just shown you how you can do the audio routing. And what I'm going to do is the channel assignments. As I say here, you can see the system, the chat, the music and so on. So we can add those all into the mix as well. So then essentially we just have this large mixing board, and as you saw earlier, you can basically just, you know, add more things to this, and then this just becomes a scrolling mixing board. You can make this a little bit smaller, by the way, but in the horizontal direction if you want to resize it so you can make it a bit smaller. Also, once you've set all of the mixes up, which we'll look at in a moment, you don't have to have this actually open all the time. You can just set everything up and then have it running in the background. So if you are going to do some audio routing for your Discord or your Zoom calls or whatever it might be, or your gameplay, whatever, then you can get all this set up and then, you know, put it in the background and just have it running as a background process. So let's talk about then the different mixes that you can have. Obviously here what we're doing is, you know, this is effectively a mixing board, isn't it? You can see we can adjust these faders up and down and adjust the levels. You've essentially got, though, we've talked about the inputs, so that being all of those different inputs that you've got here on the channel assignment. So those are all the inputs, but bear in mind that some of these can also be outputs. So I think that sometimes people can get confused a little bit by, you know, what's an input and what's an output. I find that when I'm on coaching calls with people with the ROCASTER Pro 2 or the ROCASTER Duo now as well, that, yeah, sometimes people get confused about where, you know, what's coming in and what's going out. Well, what you're looking at here is actually the input levels. So that's showing you the level of, oh, sorry, the inputs coming in, that is showing you the level that is going out to, in this case, the stream mix. So you're going to have one main mix that is going out for, you know, the, yeah, everything's coming into this as a little audio hub, and then everything's going out to the stream, but you're also listening in your headphones. So that is a separate one down here where it's showing you the headphones that you are going to, but you can actually choose what you want to monitor. So I'll talk about different mixes in a moment, but you can choose what it is that you're actually listening to in your headphones, but there's also an option over here to choose a monitor out that's a speaker as well. So we've actually got two sort of outputs aside from all of these different mixes. So here we've got the main stream mix, and as I say, you could just adjust all the levels. Maybe, you know, you want the, if you've got stuff coming in on this mic, you might want to tie it all lower, but then you've got all of these other different mixes. So you've got the stream mix there. You've got the headphone mix, which is the one that's going to your headphones. So let's say, for example, you want something set up where in your stream, maybe you've got a channel here, say the Streamer X USB 2. Maybe that's coming from another device and you don't actually want to hear that in the main mix, but you do want to hear it in your headphones so you can switch over to the headphones. Now, with any one of these ones here, what you'll notice is you've got this extra little blue icon on the side there, and what that means is that that's where the level is set for the stream. So the stream is kind of like, think of that as the main mix, but now we can adjust this for the, in this case, the USB 2, that is going to the headphones here. But you've also got this option here to either link it to the main channel or to break that link. Now, what that means is if I was to link it to that main channel and then I was to go back to the stream and I'll push that level up a bit, then you'll notice that in the headphones, it's also pushed the headphones up because that difference between those two there is now completely linked, whereas if I was to break that link, then no matter what I do to the main stream mix is going to have no impact if I go back to that headphone mix on that level there. So that's how you can use these faders on each individual mix. So that is what I'm hearing in my headphones, but then we've also got chat recording, which I'll come to in a moment, monitor and USB 2. So it may be that the chat, if your Zoom is on chat or whatever, then you can select chat here and you can then adjust the level of that. And of course, if you've got the chat channel in here, maybe I'll just tempt fate and try to add this back in again. So if I put the chat channel in there and click on finish, we've now got that chat channel and it has been muted for itself. So basically what that means is that's kind of like Mix-minus. Mix-minus is whereby anything that's coming in on that channel is not being sent back down it because that would cause what they call slapback. So that would mean that the people in Zoom, for example, can't hear themselves or the people in Discord are not hearing themselves back with slapback echo, whatever people want to call it. And so that's what that is doing. But that means that you can adjust all of these mixes, as I say, individually for all of these different things here. So we've got the headphone mix, the chat, the monitor out, the monitor being this one just down here. And then we've also got the USB 2. So it means that as well as audio coming in on that USB 2, then you can also send audio back out through that as well. The USB 2 on the Streamer X is what I'm referring to there. So we've got this secondary USB. Now that could be going to a second computer but again, you could have that plugged into the same computer to just give you an extra two-way communication channel there. So that's how the sort of mixing board works. So if there's any questions about that, then do drop them in. And of course, as we go along. And yeah, just to answer your question there, Shane, USB 2 can also be another... Oh, sorry, another mic. I'll have to get back to you on that one. I understand that the pod mic USB can plug into the Rocaster and the Rocaster Duo. I don't actually think that it can plug into here, but I might be wrong about that. I'll have to get back to you on that one, Shane. I'll have to test it out. I'll definitely test that one and let you know. Hey, Elizabeth, great to see you here. And hey, Roy, great to see you too. I need you to find so I can make more mistakes. That's the trouble with these things. They've got so much power that it is easy to overlook minor little things that can cause issues, but it happens to us all. As you can see, having a bit of a tech day of it today myself as well. So yeah, coming back over to the app though, the outputs then. So you've got the headphones, so that's what you're hearing. But you've also got this one here that's monitoring. And by the way, you can just mute that. So if you wanted to mute your headphones, you could do it there in the software, so just clicking that one. And you could also choose what you want to listen to. So it may be that you want to have the headphone mix, but maybe as you're setting this up, you want to be able to just see, you know, actually listen to what all of these things are sounding like to make sure that the levels are all correct. So as well as having one that's just your dedicated, you know, in headphones channel, you can also just then go through and just monitor each of these individual ones in your headphones to just listen to, you know, the levels that you are setting in here. Then over this side, you've got this one, which is a monitor channel. And once again, there is a dedicated monitor channel, but you could actually send any one of these different mixes out to that channel. And then here you can select where that's going to. So this is going to give you a list of all of the different speakers, apart from the UniFi outputs. It's going to give you a list of all of the different audio output devices that you've got attached to your computer. So at the moment, I've got this going into my Rocaster Duo secondary. And what this means is then that I'm using UniFi to give me an extra layer of mixing into the Rocaster or the Rocaster Duo. And this was something that came up on the live stream last week, where I was talking all about the Rocaster Duo. And somebody asked this specific question, will we be able to use UniFi with the Rocaster Duo? And the answer is yes. So you can just literally come in here and select the, you know, the output that you want with that, so the Rocaster or Rocaster Pro 2, Rocaster Duo, or any other external device you've got for that matter. And what that means is you're going to have a dedicated mix which is going into there. So if it is the case that, you know, you want to have some additional mixing capabilities more so than you've got with the already, you know, quite helpful three USB channels on the Rocaster Pro 2 and the Rocaster Duo, then technically you're going to have like an extra level of software mixing going on here. And then maybe feed that into one of those channels to then give you that extra level of control over stuff. So it's a really interesting pairing because I was always looking for like ways to get a little bit more fine control with the Rocaster Pro 2 and now the Duo to be able to, you know, bring in different apps and adjust levels independently. So this is effectively going to allow you to do that. So I'll come into the settings here as well because there is some preferences. And if I come into the preferences, you'll notice we've got recording, so stereo or multi-track because that's the thing about this Unify software is it is actually also a recording software. So you can record, as you can see, either stereo or you can actually record the full multi-track mix from here. So if I come over into this recording section, well, first of all, you can see that there is a big record button at the front top here. So if I click that, it is now actually just recording. We've got some similar functionality as we've got on the Rocaster Pro 2, the Rocaster Duo. You can drop in a little marker if you want, drop in little timestamps as you're going through. And if I, whoops, I've double clicked there, click that. And if I come over into this section then, which is the recording section, then here you'll see the recording that I've just made. You can obviously playback the recording. There is the exporting, so you can export for a custom platform. If you're recording your podcast on this, for example, choose the format, the frequency and all of that kind of stuff. And then also you can just export from here too. And then you can, if you want to go through and color code all of these. So you can see that that is the color coding of that, maybe for a good take or a bad take or whatever it might be or for just to color code your recordings. And then obviously whilst you are in this mode, in this recording mode, you've got the playback is what you're hearing in your headphones and also in your monitors as well. Your speakers, I should say. So that's the recording feature. They do also, you can actually sort of zoom in on different places here, move the timeline back and forth and so on. So that's the recording feature. Now that's probably not something that I personally would be using too much, but it's great that we've got this as an option too. They're kind of almost replicating a lot of the functionality of the Rocaster, but just in software. So let's come back to the mixer for a moment and I'll just check in with a few questions as we come. Indeed, that is this, isn't it Jamie? With increased flexibility comes increased complexity. Although I've got to say, from a usability point of view, when you get the software and it just detects that you've got the Streamer X plugged in and then you just, as I say, it just detects and say, do you want to use Streamer X with Unify? It does actually go through and set up a lot of the stuff for you, so putting in the different mixes and so on. So this thing is quite easy to get set up, it's when it comes down to, you know, you're creating all of the different sub-mixes and things like that that we can get ourselves caught out. One of the things that I think is worth really noting here, if I just come back to the sub-mixes, something that could well potentially catch people out is let's say that you're creating a mix for USB 2 and you want to, just for the sake of argument, you want to reduce the volume slightly of the chat, but you've still got it linked to the main one here. So we've got this little link icon down there selected. Let me just drop this little comment off just so that we can see. So let's say you've got the, as I say, you've got this fader down here. So what's happening there is we've got this level for the chat set lower than the stream mix for that particular channel. But you still want the audio to actually pass through just at a lower volume. Well, if it is linked like this, what you could have is you could have a situation where if I go to stream and then I move this fader down, let's say to there, then we come back to that one that we were just in, which was the chat, where were we? USB 2, sorry. You can see that that's now gone down to zero. So you do have to be conscious of where you've set all of these relative levels if they are linked to the main mix just because you could be in a situation where, as I say, you think you've just got something at a slightly lower volume when in actual fact, when you move the main one down, you've actually cut it off altogether. So that's just something to be mindful of that you understand where all your, or remember where all of those relative levels are. Let me just check in with a few more of these. So once we get unified, will we even need Road Central except maybe to do firmware updates? The firmware updates can be done through this as well. I will say that Road Central is probably going to be what most people will use just because it simplifies the process. I mean, we've got those very clear things of this is for presentation mode, this is for streaming and so on, and you can create those custom mixes. I'm really hoping that they add in custom mix presets in Road Central so that we can actually just create two or three. That would be really useful. But the very thing that I was just talking about actually is the reason why I think a lot of people maybe don't necessarily need this. They're not setting a different mix for each individual channel and maybe not so geeky as a lot of us. But in theory, no, you wouldn't necessarily need to use Road Central. The firmware updates do come in here. So if I go into available firmware, it will just check if there's firmware for the device as well, for the Streamer X when it's plugged in. I should also say, whilst we're here, speaking of the link in with Streamer X, one thing that I haven't mentioned is obviously the sound pads here. So this is exactly the same way as in Road Central, we can update the sound pads. Well, we can actually do that from here and we just simply right-click on it and we've got the same familiar interface that we have in Road Central, but it's just here as a pop-up. And I find that actually the interface for things like this in Unify is slightly better than Road Central, just because it is right here, you can just right-click it. You can just go into any extra layer of settings, obviously, because this is intended to be an app that you interact with as opposed to Road Central, which is more to go in and makes changes. So it's a kind of different style of app, really. But here, yeah, you can do all the same things, you know, add the effects and so on, add the MIDI. And here you can choose. So for the voice effects, obviously we've now got three mic inputs rather than just the one. So you can set things up for, you know, what do you want that to apply to. So maybe you want this, you know, robot voice or whatever to apply to your main mic, the headset mic or the wireless mic. So that button, you know, you could have a button to apply it to different ones. So that's another sort of slight difference with Road Central, because we have got those three different inputs. We've got the same thing, obviously, the mixer, the MIDI controls and all of that kind of stuff there as well. One other things, well, and by the way, you can switch to presentation mode. You can see to go forward and backwards on your slide deck and then also start presentation and so on. And so this whole thing, you know, using presentation mode, I've had a number of people asking me about Streamer X, because they want something just a small lightweight device on their desk that's a small footprint more to the point that they can then use for online meetings and presentations. Well, this does give you the audio routing then, you know, to have your Zoom on one channel apply the Mix Minus to your Zoom channel in your presentation and so on. And you've got that same presentation mode just here as we have in Road Central. Another thing whilst we're comparing Road Central with the Unify is that when you come into the microphone, if you click on a microphone, you can see that we've got this. I actually prefer the interface of this to the Road Central. But one of the main reasons why I prefer it is because you have actually got this live update in exactly the same way as we have on the, sorry, live charts in exactly the same way as we have on the actual Roadcaster Pro 2, on the Roadcaster Duo on the screen. Sorry, let me get that back up again. Well, we have that same thing here. So that means that when you are adjusting the noise gate, and by the way, I've left a link in the description to a previous video I did all about how to get optimum setting out of this advanced audio processing. So I won't go through all of this. But just to give you an example, with the noise gate, this is basically how much audio has been let through, like when you're not talking effectively. So if I stop talking, you see that that line goes all the way down to zero. So that's basically, you know, do we want to have the audio completely stop when I stop talking, or do we want to just let it through? And in fact, I would have to do this on my other Roadcaster, but if I had my, let me do this on here, on the fly. If I just turn the noise gate off for a second on my the one that you're hearing me on now, then you can probably hear this background noise all the time, because I've got an air con going, and there's various of the little noises here and there. But I have the noise gate on so that when I'm not speaking, I actually have it so that it shuts completely. So just coming to this then, with the noise gate in the Unify, you get to see this little chart. So this line going up and down is my voice. This white dotted line here, the top one, that's the threshold which the noise gate is going to open or close. So that's what this value is here, the threshold. I can move it up and down. So if I had it up there, you can see that the lines white. Basically, that means that there's no audio coming through because I'm not speaking loud enough to trigger the gate to open. Whereas if I move the threshold down to a point at which my voice is above it, you can see now that it is kind of opening and closing. So when the line is green, the gate is open, and when it's white, it's closed. There's lots of points here where I'm dropping down below that level and the gate is basically shutting again. So let me just adjust that and put it down to something perhaps a little bit more reasonable. I've got the microphone in a weird place here as well. You can just the microphone gain here as well. But then you've got the attack which is how quickly it opens effectively. The hold is how long it kind of holds the gate open before it decides to shut. And then the release is how quickly it actually shuts after the levels drop below that level. And this range is the thing I was talking about.  And that's because generally I use these devices, although I'm obviously streaming now, predominantly they get used in online meetings and presentations and stuff like that, where I don't want to have to mute myself in the software, but I just wanted to be that when I'm not speaking, none of my audio is coming through. So nobody can hear me typing on the keyboard or doing whatever, you know, clicking my pen whatever.  So if it was at this 50 here, that's effectively going to be allowing, I guess half the audio to come through. And if it was up to zero, then basically that's not doing any closing off of the audio whatsoever. So that's how I tend to set mine. And then the hysteresis here just quickly is this is where you've got this second lower dotted line here. And that is instead of having the same threshold for the trigger point for it to open and close the gate, the threshold becomes the point at which the gate opens. But then if I turn the hysteresis here to 50%, that means that the level of the point, you know, the trigger to actually close the gate is effectively going to be 50% lower than the than the opening point. So you can see that even when my audio now drops below this dotted line here, the top dotted line, the gate still stays open and it's still green. Whereas if the hysteresis was all the way up here, it goes white as soon as it drops down underneath that line. So that's basically just to set a different level. And you can have that anyway up to 100% is basically once it switched on, it would never switch off. So that would be pointless. I tend to have mine at around about 50. It seems to cover any sort of background noise. So it's not going to get triggered by anything. And that's that's fine for me. So that's what the way I set mine up. I digress though because this is just all to show you the fact that you do have this live view. And I find that these charts are really useful when you are making settings to this. And of course, we have got the same things like the compressor and I explain all of this in the Rocaster Masterclass. I'll leave a link to that. I'll drop a link into the chat as well. But the Rocaster Masterclass basically covers all of these audio settings and is really kind of the reason why I did it. Why I made the course that is. I also did a whole live stream specifically about these advanced audio settings as well. So you can find a link to that in the description as well. And so let's go through these. So you got the compressor the exciter that is, you know, adjusting the higher end and lower end frequencies, the high pass filter. And so just having this as a visual, I think it's really nice that they've bought these over from the as I say from the actual screen of the Rocaster Pro 2. This is what you see whereas in Road Central, it shows you kind of like, you've got a space for the graph, but it's not dynamically updating in the same way as this. And then we've got the equalizer and de-esser. So yeah, this will stem from a question from Roy who was asking about, you know, do you even need Road Central once you've got Unify? And it's really a choice as to which one you'd prefer to use really. And once you do set up, once you open Unify, if it detects Streamer X, you can then select that you want to use that. Once you've selected these mixes and set these all up exactly as you want them, then you can just, you know, if I was to close this down now, it would say, do you want to quit Unify or do you want it to run in the background? So you can set all these mixes up and it can run in the background. But here this is where to answer the question from last week. If you were tuned in last week and somebody had asked about, you know, can this be used with the Rocaster Duo? And this is exactly what I'm doing now. So I've got my monitor here going out to the Rocaster Duo. And actually, hopefully, if I just unmute this for you, I switched all this off, but I'll unmute this for you. So now if I press a button on my Streamer X Famous Last Words, let me try to do this. Is that coming through? There we go. Famous Last Words. I think I've oh, it's because I'm pressing the wrong one. That's why. Let me change over to this screen. Let me try this. Okay, so if I press this button here. Hopefully you can hear that that is audio that has been activated from my Streamer X. So it's there built in sort of music bed. But that is now feeding through the monitor channel into my Rocaster Duo and into the and into the mix that you're hearing. So that audio was just basically passing through Unify and that was just to demonstrate, you know, obviously you've got soundpads on the Rocaster Duo as well. So you probably wouldn't use it to play audio from your soundpads on your Streamer X through the Duo. But what that means is you would also be hearing all of the other audio there as well. And in fact, my mic audio would be coming through on that as well. So that's how you can basically use this, you know, as an enhanced interface to give you some extra mixing capabilities for your Rocaster as well. One other thing I've talked about the recording, obviously, where you can just hit the record button there. You can select a separate mix for that as well. So that is one of the things where you can set up a mix. So maybe you're recording a podcast, maybe you've got a discord going in the background and you don't want that to come through. So maybe you want to just say, okay, let me just remove that completely. So that one's off.  Let me just check in with some of these questions. If I connect USB 2 to another computer, can I send a different audio channel to it, like for a zoom call mix minus? Yet you certainly can if you if I come back over to here a second. So the USB 2 is actually an output as well. So the USB 2 is obviously we've got an input there but it is an output as well. That's the input. So if you are on the USB 2, you can basically root whatever you want to it. So maybe you want if let's say that I'm not sure that is the if the zoom call is on the other computer you could just eliminate itself, you know, to turn on mix effectively mix minus there or if you mean that you're feeding stuff from a zoom call into a second computer, then it just be a case of choosing the channel. Maybe this is your zoom and you've assigned zoom to unify chat channel because as I mentioned, you know, all of these things do just show up as as you know outputs that you can assign. So if you've done that, where was that that overlay that I just had with it on this one? So yeah, you see you see in your outputs in zoom, for example, you can assign that to any one of those channels about halfway down. I've got a load of my other ones at the top, but you can see road unify, browser chat, game music system, virtual and so on. So you could assign zoom to the chat channel and then that would then just you know, you can just route that down the USB to if that's what you're talking about. So yeah one thing about this to just note and it's one thing that's slightly different between unify on the Mac and the and the PC. In fact, I think it's the only real difference technically from a routing point of view. Well, obviously technically there's a lot of different coding but I mean from a functionality point of view with unify on the Mac, basically you can adjust the you can create all of these different mixes but you can't pull in a specific app. So you can't just say you know, if you've got some some other kind of app running on your computer and you want to pull in, you know, that specific app, rather you can just pull in the audio from things where you're basically assigning it. So like for example, I'm not explaining that very well, like in discord, you can set the speaker and the microphone. So that's how you would assign discord, for example, to the chat you just go in pulling up that list that I just had up on screen and then on in discord you would set your output to be the unify chat but in an app that doesn't have that like I don't know, Excel maybe if you've got some little audio file playing in Excel you can't really designate in Excel where you want to play the audio it's just going to go to system audio so it is kind of like a catchall for everything which is system audio and then these other ones can only be assigned for, you know, things where you can actually assign an output if that's making sense, like Spotify, for example, you can select where you want the audio to go. I mean usually it's a bit of a non-issue really because everything that you would normally want to be able to route from an audio point of view if it's some sort of audio generating application or an application that uses audio, it will always have an output anyway so it's kind of really a non issue I think but it's just worth just sort of mentioning that, that I think in Unify on PC you can actually specify specific applications if there's audio running in it, you can bring it in that way but as I say, it's not really really an issue there is there any comparison between Unify and Loopback in terms of routing, oops let me bring that up again sorry just killed your comment there is there any comparison between Unify and Loopback in terms of routing system audio to road products yeah so what I would say is Loopback is an audio routing application for the Mac that allows you to route audio from actually in that case you can route audio from any application to anywhere and you can set up all these complex things what I found with being people's tech support for these things is that Loopback was a bit confusing for a lot of people what I like about this and where this kind of can replicate that you can do with Loopback sorry that you can't do with Unify but Unify just has this nice interface where you can actually see what's going on and I think it makes it a lot more intuitive that rather than creating these virtual devices just in a little chart style format which is what you do in Loopback that Unify just makes it you can actually see the levels moving when you've got audio coming in you can actually monitor to listen to what are they going to actually hear in Zoom because as I mentioned you can come over here and you can select your headphones you can say right I've set up this mix that is specific for my chat so let me go ahead and now listen to what they're listening to so there's that element of just being able to actually test all of this stuff out and have that confidence that stuff's going where it needs to I think with Loopback what a lot of people felt was on why people felt that there was complexity to it is that it was not just virtual in terms of creating virtual devices but it was also just virtual in the sense that a bit of a mystery is to whether it was even working until the point where you're actually putting it into action if that makes sense so but to answer your question for general stuff that you might be doing with Zoom with Ecamm Live and things like that this would totally replace Loopback for that you could certainly do all the things of having Ecamm Live routing audio into into Zoom and Zoom routing the audio back into Ecamm Live and having your microphone in that mix for everybody as well so that you're then taking your Ecamm audio into Zoom and any other thing like your sound pads and stuff like that and then you're also capturing your Zoom audio to go back into Ecamm if you want to record your Zoom session in Ecamm with your full Ecamm production but also be capturing the audio of your participants as well so it would totally replace Loopback from that point of view and that's audio routing and arguably easier and more routing as well because then you're not having to set up these individual mixes in Loopback where you're creating I need one for Zoom, I need one for Teams I need one for Skype or whatever different applications that you're using where previously you would have used Loopback now it's just a case of well when I'm in a Teams meeting I'm going to set it up to the unified chat channel for example and I'm going to set it up to at the same time and it means you don't need to go through and select a whole load of different things I know that when I look at my Loopback profile or whatever Loopback application it's got so many different things in that are essentially just solved with a couple of simple mixes in Unify or the ROCASTER or whatever so yeah hope that answers that question let me see where I am in terms of comments can any software be used with shortcuts commands from Stream Deck and not at the moment as such as always there is ways with keyboard maestro but there aren't let me just double check this quickly I'll rephrase that I haven't found or haven't really looked let's be honest I haven't looked for keyboard shortcuts for some of these things so it would be interesting to see if we can assign keyboard shortcuts I'll say as well there isn't a big menu bar like you would get in some apps on the Mac where you have the menu let me rephrase that in the menu bar of the Mac when you open an app you've got obviously a series of different menus so there isn't really much in the RODIFI the RODIFI menu we've basically got hide, unify or quick unify so you don't have like a long thing with lots of different actions including the interface itself so no whether that's something that will come later to be able to assign keyboard shortcuts we will see but as yet there is nothing to do that with there is obviously one thing with the actual pads on the Streamer X you can assign certain things so for example you can have mixer effects so if you want to do things like well in fact they've got in here I haven't actually looked at that beep tone or that's the image maybe I haven't got quite as many that's something I haven't looked at haven't got quite as many of the mixer actions I was going to say you can do things like ducking and things like that but that doesn't seem to be in here but that might be just a beta thing I don't know so no you can't do that what you can do is go the opposite way though Peter which is you can use the MIDI controls to then potentially control other things with the Streamer X and you can set that all up in here just as you can in Road Central so for example people are using Ecamm Live and are not using a Stream Deck and I don't know who is doing that in this day and age because Stream Deck just does enhance that but you could use the app ELMC Ecamm Live MIDI Controller and then you could assign the buttons here two different MIDI controls so you could technically be switching scenes with a button on your Streamer X and incidentally you can do that on the ROCUSTER as well the ROCUSTER Pro 2 as well and you can even grab the MIDI from a fader so you could technically have a fader on your ROCUSTER Pro 2 that is adjusting your guest audio in Ecamm Live as well incidentally I mentioned Stream Deck just there I normally mention my ROCUSTER Masterclass here when I'm talking about road products I do just want to mention though that I did launch my Stream Deck Masterclass just earlier this week and there is 25% off if you sign up by the end of the month so the Stream Deck Masterclass is 88 there you can see it 87 lessons covering all things Stream Deck and really what this is intended to be is first of all a foundation of Stream Deck so obviously it covers all the different models the basics of setting it up understanding plugins and actions so it gives you a foundation of just like how do you even use this thing but then the next two is organization and personalization of your Stream Deck and these are two I think often overlooked aspects of Stream Deck because what you're essentially doing when you've got your Stream Deck is you've got a blank canvas and you are in control of your own user interface so it's really important actually that it's easy to use for you it's intuitive you've got some sort of organization because you quickly find that even if you've got a 32 key you'll quickly fill those up so talk about how to effectively do that and then the personalization is not about making it look pretty although that is a kind of side effect it's about designing a user interface that works and that becomes a joy to use as well bear in mind that companies spend millions and millions of dollars on user interface design and yet with Stream Deck sometimes people throw a load of random icons up there and then wonder why they're not using it when it's not really intuitive they're not really sure what button to press and it just doesn't become part of their workflow and they don't get the most out of it so those two are really important parts actually and I give you sort of foundations and a framework there to set up a system that is going to work for you then I focus in on three really core areas of Stream Deck so one is that it is the ultimate productivity tool and when I bought my first Stream Deck it was for live streaming I didn't realize actually how much it was going to revolutionize productivity in everything I do so I've got a whole section on there about how to use it as the personal productivity tool then going on to obviously its intended purpose maybe is what is originally conceived for live streaming and video production so we've got a whole section on that and then finally we've got another section on elevating your online meetings and presentations and how actually one of the things that people are daunted by when they're looking to enhance their online presence by using all these things the Stream Deck really unifies all of those things together and so instead of feeling like you're fumbling around with multiple different applications you've actually just got one sort of mission control and explain how to do that and then we go on to the inevitable what happens when they start multiplying and you start using multiple Stream Deck so I cover that in there as well and then finally we've just got some going through the Stream Deck preferences, the next steps and things like that in the Stream Deck menus as well so that is what is covered off in the Stream Deck Masterclass as I say you can get 25% off if you sign up for June there is a coupon code but it's automatically applied so when you go over to the page it will look something like this you can come down here get instant access, check out some of the reviews and check out what's inside as well and as I say that will just be automatically applied through to the end of the June but of course you do get that but do be sure to check out the Take One Tech Academy as well because all of my courses are included for members of the Academy so there we go slight digression into Stream Deck but since the question did come up about Stream Deck I thought it was worth mentioning just coming back to the range on the gate how much the gate is closed yes that is the Snore Guard so you have an XDM100 which is a USB mic so hopefully the Streamer X can see it if it is plugged into the USB 2 slot I'll check that out actually yeah I'll check that out because as I say I do understand that the PodMic USB will plug into the USB socket on the Rokaster Duo I just haven't actually tried it and I can't recall whether it will work on this but I will check that out for you so let me check in down here where we've got to another one here show you should make a video just showing how many mic you can get into the Streamer X and Unify basically just a test for the options yeah definitely I will be testing out the boom mic and the wireless as well I'm really interested to see obviously we can apply all of the same audio processing to those microphones as we can the XLR mic so I'm really interested I'm sure that we're going to get really great audio quality out of those as well I'm not one to wear cans as it were on the head with a big boom mic but nevertheless I know lots of people do so the Rode NTH100 there is a boom attachment for this that comes out to the front so I'll see how that one sounds as well and then also the wireless I'm really interested in the wireless because previously I was using a small rig so I had this set one thing I liked about this particular set was that it does come in a nice little case so this is small rigs wireless mic but then it means that you've got to have the receiver you've got to have the transmitter plugged into the the back using one of Rode's little attachments there the wireless mics though just pairing so the Rode Wireless me and the Rode Wireless go to just pairing directly with Streamer X RodeCaster Duo and RodeCaster Pro 2 is just a really nice sort of convenient feature so I'll definitely be testing that all out as well let me see if I have missed any questions down here hey Aubrey great to see you thanks for stopping by yeah so in terms of other features of Unify I think I've pretty much gone over everything in terms of the functionality as I say there is a public beta that you can sign up to that it's not actually quite live yet but you can certainly sign up to it and you will get notified when it goes live and that is about it in terms of the overall functionality but if there's any other questions about Unify or maybe about Streamer X or the RodeCaster Duo I love the fact that Unify gives us all of this extra routing capability for the Streamer X but I am totally in love with the RodeCaster Duo as well I've said it so many times in different posts and videos and stuff but the RodeCaster Duo just feels like Rode made that device just for me because it's got exactly everything that I needed in that one smaller form factor so I'm really loving that but now to add Unify for that extra control I think that is going to be a really great pairing as well so what I'll do is I'll leave a link to some of my other Rode content for those watching on the replay thanks so much for watching you'll find a link to that over there and I'll be posting a whole series of videos all about a deep dive into the software and also some more in-depth reviews of the Streamer X and the PodMic USB as well in TubeCourse. Have a great day everyone see you next time


Minasan konnichiwa. Hello. I'm your host, God Perry, and this is Let's Talk Hawaii, live from Honolulu. This is a program about pronunciation, communication, and interesting things in Hawaii. You can see me here every other week at 3 p.m. Today's topic is, Reading English is Bad for Your Pronunciation. Yes, I'll repeat that. Reading English is bad for your pronunciation. It's true. Over my 30-year career teaching pronunciation, I've discovered many odd things about pronunciation and trying to improve my student's ability. And one of the things I've noticed is that when students are reading English, it is basically, actually my students from Japan, when they are reading English, it is basically like reading their mother language or katakana English. So as a result, their pronunciation sounds like their original language. Basically, it's kind of like saying, 今までは, you've seen the color red, and you've always said red, but when you come to America, you have to call it yellow. And that's very strange, but in America it's called yellow, in Japan it's called red. Basically, the sounds are different. And to suddenly have to speak yellow when you see red, it's a little bit confusing. It took me many years to figure this out, but what I found was that if you rewrite the words based on sound, you have a better chance of speaking clearly. Now, the problem is not being able to speak the same thing over and over and over. You're not able to get the repetition. Repetition is what helps people improve their natural speaking ability.  So having a method to continually say the proper sound allows you to improve by repetition. 正しい正しく英語できたら becomes a habit. 新しくてができます。 今までは1回目正しい2回目 間違い3回目これが正しいそれが間違ってる。 で4回目は半分ok. そしたら上達できないですね.  So I've developed a way to help my students improve naturally. 私が長い間頑張りましたけどやっぱり最後にこの techniqueができました。 これは helps my students to improve over time. Now, today I have a special guest. Her name is Yu Nakamura and she's going to visit us live from Tokyo, Japan. Yu is a businesswoman in Tokyo, Japan working for an international company and you need to use English or work on a regular basis. She has taken my private lessons years ago but wants to improve her speaking. ゆうさんは日本の日本にいるのビジネス女なんですけど。 彼女は国際ビジネスやってます。 毎日よく英語を使わなきゃいけない。 ずっと前は彼女は僕の生徒なんですけど。 今、出したいんです。 She wants to review and improve. And today I'm going to explain how she can speak new words, new concepts better. So, without any more waiting, I would like to introduce Yu Nakamura. Hi Yu, how are you doing? I'm good, how are you? I'm doing fine and thanks for joining us on ThinkTek Hawaii.  How is the weather in Japan right now? 日本の天気はそうですね。最近結構暑くなってきていて、あとは日曜日ですね。 暑くなりましたですよね。 And what temperature is it right now? 今、どうでしょう。30度近い日も結構多いです。 I see, so it's about 30 degrees. In English, I think that translates to maybe, I mean in Fahrenheit, I think that translates to close to 80 something. That's pretty hot. So how do you stay warm? I mean, how do you stay cool when it's so warm? 暑い時間帯を避けたり。 I see, so I know you were living in America at one time. When was that? 十年以上前になりますね。十分前ですよね。 That's right. 何のために来ましたか? Why did you come here? えっと、一応学医取得を目指して行って、最初は小学学校EASLから入って、大学に入ってという感じでした。 っていうことは、I know you were my student, but I never got to ask you these kinds of questions. こういう生徒だったりでしたけど、こういう質問は聞いたことないよね。このチャンスがなかった。 Where were you in New York, California, Texas? エースエルの時はカリフォリニアに行って、そのあとにウィスコンシーン州にトランスしました。 When you first came here, what was the most difficult for you? 初めて来た時は、本当に英語が何もできない状態でアメリカに行ってしまったので、何もかもがチャレンジでしたね。 でも、一番大変だったのは何でしょう。自分の頭で構築した英語を自分の言葉で話すということが、覚えたフレーズじゃなくて自分で考えた言葉を自分の言葉にして英語で話すということが一番難しかったなと思います。 So, figuring out what English to use. 来る前にはどういうふうに英語を勉強しましたか? How did you learn English before you came here? 来る前、日本に行った時ということですよね。 Before you came to Japan. アメリカ来る前に、日本の時にどうやって英語を勉強しましたか? Before you came to America. How did you learn English? えっと、多分典型的な日本人の英語学習だと思うんですけれども、私の場合は、文法はやっぱり覚えないとできないところもあったので、文法をきちんとやることと、あとは私は音読が好きだったんですね。 なので、教科書を声に出して読むって言うことを勉強してやっていました。 That's why I studied English. なるほど。いつごろ英語に興味ができた、中学校で勉強するとかみんなしなきゃいけないんですけど、いつごろ英語に興味ができた、中学校で勉強するとかみんなしなきゃいけないんですけど、 それから興味ができたか、なんですずこうと思いましたか? What did you want to continue? リズネスのためすると、工人のためですか? For the sake of the business, for the sake of the workers? 英語に興味は、実はかなり昔から持ってはいたんですけど、中学校校でちょっと苦手意識を持ってしまっていて、 オーラルのクラスっていう、こういう読み書きだけじゃなくて話すクラスもあったんですけど、 それで全然できなくて、でもできるようになりたいっていう気持ちの中ででしたね。 なるほど。じゃあ家族の中は他の人は英語できますか? Does anyone else speak English in your family? 私の姉が英語とフランス語を話せます。 My older sister speaks English and French. 本宿もテレブ? But that's not your idea, is it? え? So what are you doing in Japan now? 仕事は日本に帰ってきてからはずっと貿易関係の仕事をしていて、 今もう輸出や輸入に関する国際ビリネスの仕事をさせていただいています。 じゃあ貿易で何かいつも他の国と電話とか、という話するんでしょうね。 Your pronunciation now is much better when I first met you. We studied a lot, but what are your plans for the future? 今のプランとこれからの予定は何でしょうか? What are your plans for the future? 英語に関してですか? 英語に関しては、やっぱり自分らしさを出せる英語を話せるようになりたいと思います。 誰かが言った言葉を真似するとか覚えた言葉を言うではなくて、自分の思いや意見をきちんと自分らしく伝えられるような英語を話せるようになりたいと思っています。 間違いないと思いますけど、やっぱり英語できるからそのインターナションの仕事ができますよね。 そうだ、英語できなかったら if you couldn't speak, you probably couldn't do your job, is that correct? I think so. Right now, what is the most challenging part? 前よりかけの時から you've improved a lot. What's challenging now? 今何が一番難しいところですか? はい、一番難しいのは、ある程度コミュニケーションが取れるようになったりとか自分の意見を言えるようになったり、あるいは発音に関しても伝わるレベルになった後にそれよりも さらにアドバンスなレベルになっていくっていう部分がすごく難しいなって思います。 始めたばっかりの頃は、インターミリエットまではいけるんですけど、そこから上のレベルアップが壁が高いなと感じています。 2. Master English or at least one part of English. Are you ready for that? Yes. OK, so we're going to be coming up on a break but not yet, but at that time we're going to take a short break. Then I'm going to come back and go over some of these points for you, OK? So before we begin, do you have a pen and a piece of paper to write with? Yes. OK, great. Now, this is a strange concept. When I told you the concept, what did you think? Reading English is bad for your pronunciation. Reading English is bad for your pronunciation. I've been studying English in my high school and junior high school for a long time. I see. So a lot of people in Japan, they hear the English and then they copy it or they read it. But as I was saying before, when you are looking at the written English words, it's basically you are reading your own country's language. So it's just been taught to you that way. It's hard to break the habit, so changing the look is an easier way to master English. Now, I'm going to show you a couple of examples of some strange words. Well, they're regular words, but they will look strange. At this point, we're going to take a short break and we'll be right back right after this. Aloha. I'm Jane Sugimura, our host here at Think Tech Hawaii, a digital media company serving the people of Hawaii. We provide a video platform for citizen journalists to raise public awareness in Hawaii. We are a Hawaii nonprofit that depends on the generosity of its supporters to keep on going. We'd be grateful if you'd go to ThinkTechHawaii.com and make a donation to support us now. Thank you so much. Aloha. I'm Gwen Harris, the host here at Think Tech Hawaii, a digital media company serving the people of Hawaii. We provide a video platform for citizen journalists to raise public awareness in Hawaii. We are a Hawaii nonprofit that depends on the generosity of the supporters to keep on going. We'd be grateful if you'd go to ThinkTechHawaii.com and make a donation to support us now. Thanks so much. Welcome back to Let's Talk Hawaii. I'm here again with Yu Nakamura live from Japan and I am live from Honolulu. So we're back and I'm going to start teaching a little bit about this strange concept of not reading American English or to improve your pronunciation. Now, not reading Yori, not reading the dictionary version of English. Now, the dictionary version of English is the way it is written, the way it is grammatically put on the paper, but it only sounds a certain way for American people. British people say everything differently. Irish people say it all differently. Japanese people learn it and say it differently. So in order to copy another country's style, it's helpful to rewrite it so that you can say the sounds of English. So right now I'm going to put up a sample of some couple words. As you can see, on the far right, we have dog, fish and breakfast. Now, these are very simple words, but they're actually a little bit challenging for Japanese students. Now, on the left side, we have Nihon no styro. It is spoken like dog. So when the teacher in junior high stood in front of the board, they wrote DOG on the board. That's the same thing that my teacher wrote on the board. But when my teacher spoke the words, they said DOG, DOG. In Japan, the teacher most likely said DOG, DOG. So the vowels are different, the parts are different. It's just a different word basically. DOG, DOG. They're very different. Now, if you are an American person and you want to copy Japanese sound, it's not so easy to look at DOG and say DOG. It's much easier to look at DOGU and say DOG. Now, in the middle column, we have a better way for writing that word DOG, which is helpful to a Japanese person. Now, it's not the only way, and often I will have to rewrite it based on the person's style. Someone might want to say DAG, I would change it, or DOG, I would change it again. I would rewrite it until they said DOG. Whatever those letters were, those were the letters I keep. So, this DAHG is not just this, there are different styles depending on the student. DAHGG is fine, and the point is DOG. The reason is that it's a problem. DO, DO, DO. How is the Japanese word? Yu-san, can you say Japanese English and the American English version? I'm going to keep this on the screen and you can keep talking. DOG, fish. American English, DOG, DAG. DAG. Japanese too. DOG. American English? DAG. Very good. So, as you can see, it's very difficult to say DOG when you see DAHG. And if you can read that sentence like, my dog, that dog, you're always going to get it right. And that tatashi repeating the tatashi sound will help you create a new habit.  It's not incorrect, it's just Japanese. Versus the American sound, DOG. Let's look at the next one. Nihongo ego de wa e fishu. If I want to teach an American junior high school kid how to say Japanese English sound of fish, I would write F-U-E-E-S-H-U, fishu. Can you repeat that for me, Yu-san? Japanese version? Yes, Japanese version. Fishu. Okay, fishu. The American version, right? Fish. Good. So as you can see the middle, fish, the problem is letter I. That's a very big problem for a Japanese speaker. It's a big problem for a Japanese speaker. If you look at the letter I, you can only say E in Japanese. So there's no letter E. So you have to remember that. About 90% of the letters are A. I is most of the time it is A, not the E sound. ING, it will be E, but usually it is A. That's an E, but most of the time it's E. That means fish. Now, if you rewrite the word F-E-S, F-E-H, and then sh, you can easily not make the common mistake. Now, another big problem is the word asagohan. In English, it's breakfast. In Japanese, it's breakfast. Yu-san, can you say that one? Breakfast. That's the way it looks on paper. If I'm not American, I look at that word, I'm going to say breakfast, because that's what it looks like. But the truth is, we say breakfast. So breakfast. Can you see it in the middle? Breakfast. Another point is, I put the period there to make people see it's two things. It's not one. It's two things together. Breakfast. If you do that, it sounds a little more clear. More clear. Dog, fish, breakfast. Yu-san, can you say those for me? Dog. Dog. Dog. Fish. Breakfast. Very good. Now, that's basically a sample of what these words look like. I'm going to go to another slide, and we're going to see practical use. Okay, we're going to go to slide number one. Yes, good. This fish is very big. My cat is asleep because it should be it's. It's hot. My cat is asleep because it's hot. And my cousin's wedding was in October. Yu-san, that says it, but it should say it's. Can you put the S there for me? Could you read those three sentences for me? This fish is very big. Very good, correct. My cat is asleep because it's hot. Good. It's hot. My cousin's wedding was in October. Very good. Now, these are very basic English sentences, but these are challenging words for Japanese students. The vowels. So, of course, there's other smaller problem areas such as EH and V, mouth movements, and so on. The other big problem is the I-word. This fish is very big. That's how people were taught, and it's hard to break that sound habit. So, rewriting it will help everyone improve that sound. My cat is asleep because it's hot. My cat is asleep because it's hot. My cousin's wedding was in October. Now, those are the way you learned, and it's hard to change the sound when you can see only the dictionary version. So, how's my Japanese English? Pretty good? Yes. We're going to go to the correction slide, and I'm going to review that. Okay, now as you can see, everything has changed. Well, the important things have changed. The problem areas. The problem areas have changed. For example, F-I-S-H-E-H-E-S-T-E-S. The problem with the I-S is in Japanese. It's easy to understand when you write the I-S. It's not very, it's not B. So, if you write a big V, it's easier to help you see the V and not say B. Very. The I-word is always going to be something to focus on. If you write an I-word, you have to focus on it. It's a dangerous sound. Big, big, big, big. B-E-H-G, easy to see that. And the last of the middle sentence, my cat. Is, sleep, because. Because, because. Easier to understand. It's, E-H. It's, Hot. It's hard. It's hard. Can you read the first two sentences again please? The fish is very big. Cat is sleep because it's hot. Right. And the last one I'm gonna read. My cousin's wedding was in October. So this is just a little bit, but I think it's very helpful. And I've used this technique to help many people become surprisingly good just like yourself. And we're going to wrap up today. And I want to thank everybody for watching. And again, like I said, you can see me every other week here on Think Tech Hawaii. And this is Let's Talk Hawaii. Thank you again for your time. See you next time.