This is the fourth part in the series on setting up the studio. If you haven’t read Part 1, Part 2, or Part 3 yet, I suggest you head over and read those first.

I’ve hit the 80% mark!

Full disclosure, everything in this post I did about 2 weeks ago, as this past weekend I was booked up solid with personal engagements. But the good news is, we’re about ready to go into tech test, pending one final tech aspect for the studio that I’m waiting on some parts for.

Since I’ve hit that magical “good enough to get going” I’ll be doing tech testing likely this coming Saturday, Nov 12th, 2022. Keep an eye out on Mixcloud for that….

Ok, ok. Enough delaying this, let’s show you all the progress.

So here’s the view from behind the camera – I know it looks a bit off kilter, that’s just me taking a bad photo… Once it’s all on stream the shot is framed right. I’m still messing with the lighting and trying to get the colors to come through properly, but that’s part of that “80%” mentality. I can tweak that as I go.

As you might have noticed, there’s no ceiling! We never really got around to it when the room was originally built. If it becomes an issue on camera, I’ll get that back corner covered up, but the way I’ve framed the shot, I don’t think it’s visible.

So, this is a potential second camera angle I’m thinking on. You can see the little second camera there (it doesn’t work yet… I’ll get around to it), but I like this view a little better actually. We’ll see what happens. I have access to another good quality 1080p camera, and the stream PC can certainly handle it.

Moving into the booth – there’s what I see. You can see the stream setup over in the background. I’ll go over that more in detail soon. In the booth we’ve got my usual setup of Traktor gear, my terrible M-Audio speakers, a mic, and the Stream Deck to control the stream from across the room.

Lights and camera are back there as well, also to be discussed at some point in the future.

Here’s another view for good measure.

As you may have noticed, the lighting is pretty dynamic and changes as I’ve been moving around taking the shots. The frontboard lighting is done by a little DragonX bar light that I’ve just dialed in a preset on – no DMX going on here currently, but possibly in the future.

The back wall setup is done with some “smart tangrams”, knockoff Nanoleaf stuff, but hackable to fit into my workflow. For now though, I found that it works great on the built in “music” setting. The control box has a mic on it and picks up changes quite well.

Let’s take a look via a hastily edited video so the volume of my voice at the end wouldn’t scare the crap out of you…

I think this looks pretty good, but on the actual stream camera, it’s hard to lock in the settings. I’ve been trying to mirror them from my iPhone with a more advanced camera app, but it all takes time, and lighting for video is not in my photography background. Also, reviewing the footage, I think the triangles are slipping down. I used a laser level to put them up, but that was something I was worried about given the wall texture. I guess I need to poke at that at some point.

I’ll also be putting up some wiremold to hide that power cable, just need to remember to bring it from my place over to the studio.

So, what’s left?

I have a few minor things left that I can work on during the week when I’m at home. That’s mainly changes to the layout, on screen bumpers, graphics, etc – and it’s mostly all done.

The big things left to do at the studio are:

• Dial in the mic location, mount, and settings.
• I want to get some art or something on the wall adjacent to the triangle lights, and
• Most importantly, I need to drop in Ethernet to the stream PC and back to the main router.

Once that last one’s done – we can start a round of tech tests. The other two items are either doable as part of tech testing, or minor that I can deal with it whenever. I actually have an idea of what can go on there already – I have some trance vinyl that was damaged in shipping that I can put up there along with some LP cover prints that just came in from a very well known group.

Other upcoming changes

Since I’m posting, I might as well fill in the rest of the changes I’m putting the spit and polish on.

• Rebranding the Mixcloud page – I swear I’m going to finish the graphics for this and do it this week.
• Discord – it’s up, it’s there, it’s on the homepage but also you can go to https://discord.djcryptografik.com and help fill up the emptiness.
• Scheduling – I’m still banking on Saturdays, but it’s probably every other week once I get past tech tests given the holidays, but you never know. I’ll try my best. Sunday’s the alternate day.
• Other backend infrastructure stuff I could get into but that’s best left to a post about tech stuff, with a giant disclaimer about “this is highly technical and boring and is what works for me and probably isn’t going to fit how you DJ, but read on if you want” brain dump style post.