You.
Hey, all. Marty here, back with another Unmute. And today we have a special episode for you. Damasi, say hello because you are here.
Hello.
And Michael, say hello. And why don't you introduce our guests?
Certainly. Can I say hello if I'm not here? Because that would be a little interesting. Thanks for listening. We have the duo, the world famous duo of double tap on Unmute, and I'm going to start by saying, hey, Sean, thanks for joining us.
Hey, it's good to be here. Thanks for having me.
Of course. And your sidekick, Steven say.
I can go quiet. It's fine. I can just sit here. I can watch you guys try and pull this together. Go on. There you go.
We'll see where it goes.
We'll see where it ends up at, everybody.
Hi. Welcome to the show. Yes, I'm great. Thank you. And yeah. What is this? Unmute Present? Why is it called Unmute present? Yeah, Marty?
Why is it called unmute?
So when we first started, we were only doing ACB community calls, and we were trying to think of a name when we went independent. And all the time you hear the host of the Zoom Call always saying, okay, whatever, insert name, go ahead and unmute yourself and ask your tech question. And it kind of turned into a joke, because it's like, unmute be heard, right? Everyone's always getting told, unmute yourself. You can do it. Come on.
Unmute.
I've got a nervous tick because of that, because in every meeting I would have I'd have some sighted person yes, I said it. Sighted person saying, Steven, you're on mute. Just so you understand, if you press the mute button, it's next to the other button. Could you just please shut the hell up for five minutes? I know. I just can't hear what my screen is saying because you keep telling me I'm on mute, so it's triggered me. It's a trigger word for me, I'm afraid. But you know what? I've got over it.
I'm glad to know that it wasn't just me that told you to unmute yourself when you came in and you couldn't hear your screen reader.
You would think, the blind people will understand that we need to be quiet so the other person can hear what the screen reader is telling them.
TD. Massey, you were the epitome of kindness, of decency, of virtue, while those two were ranting at me saying, you're on mute.
It's the wrong thing.
You're on something about roadcast. Damasi was silent. So. Thank you, Damasi. It's always a pleasure being with you.
We did put a positive on it as well, since it's people who are some are newly blind, some aren't very tech savvy. They're just learning their technology. We turned it into it's okay to unmute yourself and ask your questions. Unmute be heard. Advocate for yourself. Ask your question. It's all right. There's no dumb questions. That's the other side of it.
Well, so, Steven, I'll go to you first and jump into some of the questions. Since I picked on Sean, can you tell listeners a little bit about your checkered past and how you got started and what you're doing now?
Checkered past? What does that mean? Even on GPT again. You know it makes up half that stuff. Right? So I how did we get started in this, Sean? Honestly, I have no idea. I think we just have so much fun doing what we do. And Sean and I met back in I think it's 2015, we met I was doing a show on another radio station. Yeah, I know. And we were having lots of fun doing the show. I was on my own at that point. I was doing the show on my own. It was flailing, it was struggling. And then I met Sean and things got worse. No, it was actually hugely improved as a result of bringing Sean on, because he brought such a different dynamic onto it. And I think the best thing for me is, and I can only speak for myself, but he's become a great friend to me and we really are great friends and I think that's shut up. But we really are getting warmer. It's on that AC done a bit, but honestly, it is a joy to work with this guy. And we spend so much time together on the phone on WhatsApp? Never in person. I think we've met like three times.
But that's a secret early relationship. Not my wife.
And for that reason, it was great to just spend time with them every day. You just get together, we talk about things and then we started doing double Tap. And when we did that, that was weekly. And there was an occasion that came last year where we said, do you know what? We talk every day. Why don't we just do this every day? And we set up. But I'd left R and IB at that point, so I was sort of flailing around, not doing much during the day, and I thought, I need about structure to my day. So I thought, let's record something. At least every day, let's record something. And we'll just put out as a podcast and it was called Blind Guy Talks Tech. And we put it out for best part of seven months and we had a lot of fun doing it. And then the good people at AMI said, why don't we do this on Double Tap? And I'm like, that's a great idea. And that was it was born. Yeah, I told him later.
Every day.
On air and and I probably sent you an email about it, but you ignored it, as usual.
I ignore emails.
I'm surprised you joined the link.
Well, I had the email of it.
That's why I figured you WhatsApped it to him, because that's the only way to get his attention.
No, I was looking out for it. I did ask for the email, so no, I do check it every now and again, but no, Steven's absolutely right. It's just the fun we have. I don't know. What do you think it was that sort of made us click in the first place, though? I don't know what it was, because it was a different show.
Right.
You needed a sidekick. I think that's what it was.
No, I wasn't even physically, to be honest.
No, I wasn't.
Honest to God. The show was going okay, as far as I thought. Right. It wasn't going as well as it is now, obviously, but the show was going okay. But I wanted Sean on. I'd heard him doing a podcast or something he'd done, and he made me laugh. And that very rarely happens, right? Very rarely. Someone makes you laugh out loud. And it was about like Windows ten. And yes, I know that could be laughable in many ways, but it was actually the way he was presenting some demo and I thought, this guy really knows how to make something which is pretty mundane and boring, actually quite funny. And he genuinely made me laugh. And I thought, I'd love to get this guy on the show and just to get him on and find out about him and what he does. But because we clicked and we clicked over the white cane because we yeah, that's right. Both using the white cane. But we were using it. We're at that point in our vision journey where it was like, oh, we'll use the cane as far as we get to the opening of our street, and then we'll put it back in our bag so that our neighbors will never know we're blind. So we're trying to get into the wrong house. And we thought, Right, okay, best thing to do here is let's just kind of pretend we're not blind in the street and all this, and we were clicking over that we just totally were the same, and we just felt, you know what? This is something we clicked on, and that was it. That was the moment. And in life, you do meet people at that. You guys must be the same, right? You just meet people and you just go, these are people I want to hang out with. Definitely haven't been able to shake them since.
But not in the real world.
Cross in your show, too, because I think that people can tell how well you guys get along, but at the same time, you can always have fun. And I think that that makes the show, in a way, people want to come listen to what you have to say, but they also appreciate the light heartedness and the having fun part of it. Not everything has to always be so serious.
I think the mark of a show like this and you'll know this well yourself, Sean, with me is that the mark of a good show, I think for us is when we don't even realize we're doing it, it's like every call we make, we could say, we could record that. And that's what kind of brought this daily thing about because we thought every day we're doing this and we're just talking every day and everything we're saying I'm not saying it's interesting most of the time, it probably isn't to most people, but I think it shows an honesty and two real people talking about their lives. And it was interesting because just before we came on, you guys were talking about the episode you did on GoBAGS, which I thought was brilliant, and you were a little bit unsure, Marty, you're like, they were going to cover this. But actually, when you sit back and listen and you can't always do it from your own perspective, you have to sometimes have someone else. And that's why it's good if there's more than one of you doing the show. Because on your own, if you do a show on your own, you can be tempted to fall into that habit of thinking, it's the best show ever. It's the best show I've ever done, but no one's telling you anything else. And your family and friends will always be on. Well, maybe not all, but sometimes no family. You'll sometimes have people going, you're brilliant, or, this is great and good for you, well done, pat on the back, all that stuff. But listeners will tell you the truth and friends will tell you the truth. Real friends will tell you the truth. And if it's a good show, it's a good show. And don't get me wrong, there are shows we've done that I've called Sean afterwards and I've said, we're junk in that. That's gone. Because it was either just not quite right, something just wasn't sitting somewhere, and then feel it. Yeah.
My issue is I'm always hard on myself after we're done with the actual recording and I tell Michael, I go, I'm not sure this is going to be good. I'm pretty nervous about how this one's going to come out. And then it gets published and I go back and listen to it and go, wow, that's much better than I thought it was going to be.
My response to Marty often is too late, it's already published.
Yeah.
So, Sean well, first of all, actually, I got a quick question for you guys about double tap. And either one of you I have heard, and I know you guys have heard this feedback, too, sometimes you guys banter too much and don't actually talk about technology on a show that's supposed to be a tech show. Honestly, how do you handle that balance? Or do you even do you handle that?
I'm sure to answer that one.
No, please don't. Well, I know it's interesting, actually, because we have had this discussion a few times, actually. Sometimes I come away and you think, was that a little bit self indulgent because we're just having sometimes it feels like we're just chatting and forgetting even that we're recording. And other times you think, do we need to put together more technical demos, step by step guides? But to be honest, I think we're just led by the listener. And from the feedback that we get, the listener likes the balance that we've hit so far. We're still always thinking about that and we're always thinking about whether to tackle a new gadget that's come out or a new assistive tech specialist tech device, whether we need to just talk about it between ourselves or we need to get hands on and go through and record a demo about it. So it's something that does still come up and it is sometimes a balance that's hard to hit. But at the end of the day, the feedback that we get from the listeners, they like the conversational style. And to be honest, so do I.
Yeah, I think those are the best shows for us, really. And I think, you know what, you have to go with your gut sometimes. And you're right, Marcy, I've been exactly the same as you. You come off here, you think, is this right? Is this good? I mean, I went on the other day about climate change and thought it should even be good down this route topic, too.
It doesn't matter what you say, someone's always going to get mad.
That's the thing. That's exactly right. And someone's always going to be offended. And people can be offended by the most ridiculous thing you didn't even think about. I drink coffee every morning. Well, you shouldn't be drinking coffee, you should be drinking tea.
You're British.
It'd be like, right, okay, fine. There's always someone who's going to get on your case about something. And sometimes the big topics aren't the ones that catch fire. We've noticed this a lot sometimes. I remember the one we did on we did a story on Echolocation and that story just blew up. It was the nicest, gentlest conversation about Echolocation and by the end, people were screaming at each other on the show. And I'm thinking, what's happened here? How did we get from there to this? But that's the nature of the show. And it's my job, I guess, as hosting this thing, to try and get control of that a little bit, lead people into discussion. But also at some point you've got to take control and say, right, okay, we've had enough of that. That's fine, let's put the knives down and let's actually just get back to the conversation. We're only talking about Echolocation, for goodness sake. We should be using our bat like signals, not knives. There you go. Put that on an Echolocation training video.
But.
Honestly, I think that we do go off track sometimes and I think that that's part of it. It's part of who we are and our show that's what it's about. I think there was a few years ago, maybe even five, six, maybe up to ten years ago, where I was a lot more concerned about that. And it was because there weren't that many shows like ours out there. There's a few at that point, and there were very low traction, maybe very localized whatever. Right now, there's so many different shows, so many blind people doing this kind of thing. And we do seem to love to talk about tech. It's interesting, right? I saw this a comment on Mastodon the other day about this. Why is every show's about tech? But we do seem to love talking about it. But the point is, there's so many doing it. You've got the shows that cover everything like an instruction manual. That's great, because you need that. You've got shows that delve into topics in more depth, that take much more time over specific topics. That's fine, too. And you've got us in the middle, just kind of mucking about, but also having some fun, hopefully educating some people along the way. And I think he need that, and I think we can have that. I think that we're kind of trained. I've said this a few times on the show. I think there's a seriousness sometimes when it comes to blindness. And it's kind of this, everything has to be done in a certain way, everything has to be done this way, and you have to present it this way, and it has to maximize potential for every possible listener so they can get the most out of it. It's not an education. We're not sitting here trying to educate people. I'm talking about my experiences using the tech I use. We had an email the other day saying, you need to talk more about Android. And I'm like, I don't use android. I can't talk about something with any kind of credibility if I don't use it. I'd rather be honest with you and say I don't use that stuff, but we'll get people on that do use it. How about that? And that's how we do what we do.
That's the good thing about your show, too. And one of the things that I really like is, is the off topic, like, not so tech focused conversations you all have, because you bring it back around to tech a lot of times. But I think the most important thing is that you're sharing your experience, right? And tech is not just, oh, I sit down and use my iPhone and do XYZ with the iPhone. It's like, I live with the iPhone. It's with me. When I go somewhere, I do this with it, or I did this thing, but but it oftentimes takes telling the entire story or having the conversation. And another thing I really appreciate about your show is you touch on points that I don't hear very many blind people talk about, which is kind of like the whole thing with the white cane, right? I've been there, too, when I was much younger. I was much younger when I started losing my vision. I've done the thing where I had a folding cane in the backpack and I would use it in the mall. But when I got in the store, I would fold it up and try to surreptitiously put the cane away and then walk around and bump into all the little mannequins.
Sorry to them.
Sorry about that. That's just a rack of clothes.
It's worse when you say sorry to yourself and it's a mirror, but I've done that so many times.
Yeah.
I think that people appreciate the honesty and the experiences that you have. A lot of people who have lost their vision later in life, they are looking for answers, hey, what do you do about this? Hey, how do you do that? And I think most of the time they're always just told, do this, do that. And there's no emotional side. No one addresses the emotional side. They feel like they're on an island by themselves and that there's not other people who are going through what they are. But there really is. And I think with you guys being able to talk openly about your experiences, I think that really people really appreciate that.
So there's two things that stick in my mind with this. One is that the experiences of people losing vision versus people who've lost or never had vision actually, not never lost vision, never had vision is vastly different. And I think that that has to be acknowledged first, because our experiences, Sean and I, are very similar. Different eye conditions, different situations. I mean, arguably, if the doctors were right about me, I would have had full vision or not full vision, but much better vision than I had when I was in my teens, even in my early 20s. But it turned out they didn't know what they were talking about. So I had a situation where I was told my vision would never change. So what I had, I could get used to. So my twenty s, I was quite comfortable. And then 27 comes along and boom, that's it. Suddenly I've got massively less vision than I had, and that just got worse into my thirty s. And so I'm on that path. And Sean, you've gone down the same route. And it's been interesting. If we were to go back, and we will do this at some point, actually, we'll pull the records out and go back to the days when we were talking about reading things on screens and doing all the stuff we used to do and comparing and contrasting that to now. And it's quite different. But what I've noticed is that with that journey, our stories or conversation that we have on the show, it tends to feel even more personal. It's really impacting us now in a way that perhaps, maybe a few years ago, maybe not so much. Definitely affecting us, but not as much as the people we were hearing from. Now we are kind of going through that experience as well, and we're able to talk to people and what's brilliant. And Sean mentioned this as well. The feedback allows us to have that conversation with the audience, so they're as much part of the show as we are. But I think the other thing to recognize is the acknowledgment that it's not always great fun losing your sight or even being blind. Right. It can be crap. And I think the one thing that got me was I was listening to something the other night and someone said, sight loss is the best thing to ever happen to me. Now, the context for that person was they feel that it gave them a new path to explore new things, new things to try and to enjoy. And I would never take that experience or that feeling away from that individual. I just can't look at it like that. And I have to say that. And I feel that there's a bit of a line that gets trotted out sometimes with blindness, that everything's fine, you'll just be fine. Everything will be great. And actually, yeah, okay, it's not always bad, but you have to acknowledge that sometimes it is bad. There are dark days. And you've got to say that, I think, because then people who feel that understand. That's normal. That is part of it. It's grief, right? It is grief. And you talk about the emotional. I wrote a tweet one day about the experience I had using Be My Eyes, the virtual volunteer thing, to identify an image. And I got alt text so I could actually take an image and I could get the alt text from it, essentially the description of the image, and then put that into social media. I could never do that before, and I actually felt emotional about that. Yeah. And it's like you guys say, you got to acknowledge that stuff because that's the reality. And that is sometimes where you might think we go off track, but actually, like you guys are saying, that is actually us. That is very much on track for us.
That's the real life part of it. I think this strange dichotomy in the blind community that I have seen is we have so many of us that walk around and say, we want to be treated equally. We should be treated equally. And the outcome of that seems to be a complete disjointed equality, because while you have a ton of people yelling, we should be treated equally, we want equal access, we want blah, blah, blah, they're also the same people who, on the other hand, say, well, if you're not using this right, you're doing it wrong. Or like the conversations you guys have had about people on Twitter and social media in general with those who use dictation, right? And they don't spell check their Tweet right? And you get people who jump all over them about that. Or we have those same people who want to be treated equally and treated like everybody else in the world, but you tell them they got to pay $5 for an app, they lose their mind. Well, I'm blind, and I shouldn't have to pay for this just to have access. It's like, can you get your story straight? Right? And that's what I really love about you all show. And honestly, the highest compliment I can pay, double tap in general, in Blind Guy Talks Tech before that is.
I.
Wanted to model technically, working the show that me and Michael do every week, to be very much like your show. Not to copy your show, but for me and Mike to not only get on there and talk about the technology that we're using and the tools we use to get business done, but the struggles of being a business owner, like being honest about that. There are some days I don't get stuff done. There are some days that it just really sits down on my shoulders very heavily that I'm running a business and if I slip up any little bit away, like, my whole business is gone, my livelihood is gone. That's a tough struggle. And when you're doing stuff, like you said, just like being blind, we deal with things every day. Some days things are great. You pull out, Be my Eyes and the virtual volunteers, you're like, this is amazing. And then you go to the mall to go shopping for clothes. You're like, this is so strange that I'm in here and I can't there's probably stuff that I would love to buy, but I don't know, it's there. And it just bothers you, at least me. It bothers me in that moment. Like, people are pointing me at things that they think I may like, but what about the shirt or the pants or the shoes that I missed? Because no one thought I would like those. And I can't touch every single thing in this store. Whereas a sighted person comes in, walks around, they look, and they're like, oh, that is cool. And they go over there and grab stuff, and it's like, I would like that experience. I know I'm not going to have that experience right now, but I would love to be able to experience shopping like that.
Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. It sounds like a cliche, but it's all about that. We've all got separate personalities. And that comes back to the podcasts as well. People will consume or learn in different ways. Some people really like the no nonsense, just straight down the line, step by step guide to things. Some people prefer to have a more conversational style to learn or take advice or whatever it may be. And it's the same with anything, really. A lot of the time we're looking at other people and thinking they've got it sorted, they know exactly what they're doing. I'm looking at you. I'm looking at you then. But the point is that we think it's important that you are honest and you say you are going to have those bad days. It doesn't matter how confident or comfortable someone looks like they are at that given moment. Everybody, all of us have those days where it's just, you know what? I'm struggling today. And that's fine because we've already got the weight of feeling like we're not.
Sort of I don't know what the.
Phrase is, not worthy or we're not coping anyway. But to get that from our own community sometimes and we do sometimes. And sometimes we bring that on ourselves. Because I'm looking at someone who seems to have their mobility so top notch, so sorted. And I think I could never do that. And again, you sort of bring yourself down.
That seems impossible to have your mobility perfect all the time. I mean, that just is impossible.
But looking at it from an outsider's point of view, you don't realize some of the struggles the people may have. And I really appreciate you guys bringing Kayaker on a couple of weeks ago because now I'm talking to Demosi about, hey, I'm going to go sign up for this leader dog thing because I can go out and record OpenScape sometimes and get those demos recorded and use my cane and travel across the country. But there's always room for improvement. And that honesty made me realize, hey, I'm not the only one who can use a cane, but might be struggling a little bit with confidence.
That's also a really good point. Kayaka was a really good example of that because I always thought Kayaka, I mean, he traveled around, flew to different countries all on his own and I wouldn't have any thought that he was in any way not confident, but he recognized that, you know what, sometimes I do feel tense, I do feel nervous. I feel like I could improve and he went out and did it and, yeah, that's a really good example.
I sometimes think there's a bit of an old guard to blindness and it may just disappear in time, but there's often a little bit of and it's not a uniquely British thing, although I've seen it a lot in Britain, but I've seen it around the world as well. There's a kind of this is how we do things, this is how you do blind and if you don't do it this way, then you're doing it wrong. And I really want to push back against that because I just think, no, first off, we're all individuals, we all have our own strengths, we all have our own weaknesses, and I'm not going to be able to do all the things that someone else can do because they managed it, because they're blind. In the same way that I. Am able bodied enough to probably be a paralympian. I'm not going to be. I'm just not that I'm built that way. I'm built for comfort, not for speed. And I am definitely not, believe me, saying that so true, though, right? I'm not going to be that person. So there's no point in me even trying to so why would we put ourselves in a position where we think that we should all be equal in some kind of like we should all have this standard set, that we all meet that standard and then we're officially blind? What do we get a medal? What happens? Is it a ceremony? Do we graduate and then we're officially blind? Is that the new thing? Is that like, the new legally blind? The officially blind, professionally blind, professionally blind?
Negative jeweling, like the professional? I was like, I like that because it seems to be like a lot of people think that there is a specific way that you have to do things, and a part of us being equal is first accepting the fact and recognizing that, as you said, we all are different people, whether you're blind or sighted. Like, do people go through struggles, too? Like sighted people get I tell blind people this a lot when they're like, oh, I hate traveling because I get lost and I have to ask for directions. Do you know how many times I've been in the car with a sighted person? And they're like, I don't know how to get here. Let me stop and ask this person at the gas station. Let me stop and ask this person on the corner, or can you tell me how to get here? One of the funniest stories I've ever told in life is and one of the funniest experiences being a blind person for me was teaching a sighted friend of mine how to drive a stick shift. Now, I wasn't teaching him how to drive. He knew how to drive a car, but he had never driven a stick before. I grew up riding around with my mother with a stick shift, so I learned how you're supposed to shift gears. I had to teach a sighted person how to shift gears in a car. And the point of me teaching them was because I needed to get home, he didn't know how to drive the car.
But that's such an important point, right, that we all experience problems. I had a guy say to me once, are these sighted people? They don't understand the struggles we blind people go through? And I said, do you understand the struggles someone who's deaf goes through or someone who is in a wheelchair or someone who's going through cancer maybe is going for chemo this morning? Do you understand those challenges? Well, no, of course I don't. I said, well, how can you expect someone over here to understand all of your problems if you can't be bothered learning about any other ones, right?
Exactly.
Come on. This is where this whole identity politics thing just does my head in. Because if you're putting identity first, then all you're doing is you're making it about you and your thing, and you're completely ignoring the the world around you and the people around you. And I know some people think that this is a solution to, you know, it's almost like a raising awareness tool, but it's not, because all you're doing is raising awareness of your problem in a room where there are other people sitting here saying, I've got that problem, too. But I didn't say anything because I don't have blindness, I don't have deafness, I'm not in a wheelchair. So I therefore can't speak. I don't want to live in that world.
So Marty's going to yell at me when we get off this recording if I don't ask about your guys'equipment.
It's a tech show, honestly.
So I'm going to reach out to Sean because he's had some mixer issues over the last couple of weeks. Sean, what are you using now?
I am still using my Dodgy mixer. Yes. I am using A, and now I'm going to name it sorry. I'm using a Allen and Heath Z ten. Now, I love this mixer purely because each channel has its own mute button, and it means that I can easily decide which channels I want to record. If I want to record, I want to cut out my smart speaker or bring it in at certain points. I love that ease of use of it, using that physical mute button. I love that. But this is my third one and the buttons don't last long. That's all I'm going to say on that.
Is it all analog? There's no digital component at all.
It does have digital out. Sorry, I should say USB out.
So it does like the interface, it's all buttons and knobs.
Yes, the interface is totally analog. It's all pots and buttons. There's no companion app or no screen on it, which usually I like anyway, because it means it's more accessible. Exactly. But the problem is that, as I said, it just doesn't seem very reliable. I'm currently in the process of, well, begging. I'm going to use the word begging. I'm not proud begging Steven to send me one of his spare mixers from his drawer, because it is time that I try a new one. The trouble is, when it comes to mixers, I get so comfortable I suppose it's the same with software, really. I get so comfortable with this mixer that I've been using for years that the thought of changing to another one is kind of scary. But I think it is time. So, yes, I'm using an Allen Heath mixer with an audio technica, what they called now, I can't even remember, 8100 X microphone, which isn't an expensive microphone at all, but I've always used audio technica since when I was just recording under the stairs in my house doing podcasts. I love audio, baby.
Podcaster.
Yeah, exactly right. So I'm using that and that's pretty much it. I think the big change for me and for us, actually, is the emergence of these services for recording now, such as Clean Feed and Riverside and everything else like that. That's the big difference in what the actual process of recording. But when it comes to the equipment, I'm pretty basic, to be honest. Just a mixer and a microphone.
That's good.
I mean, it goes to show people who are maybe just getting into it that they don't have to go crazy on equipment the cost wise.
No, absolutely right. Yes, you really don't. The quality now, I mean, Steven keeps going back and forth between really high end equipment, audio equipment, and saying, this is it. I'm just using a USB mic straight into the computer using software like Loopback. Sorry, Steven, I'm stealing your bit. Using software like Loopback to bring in other audio sources or make chains, et cetera. So there's so many different ways to get there now. And the price and the quality of audio equipment is so accessible now.
Yeah, Sean is so right. I flip around so much with technology, it is ridiculous. And I had a mixer that it was suggested to me by my TV my TV boyfriend, Marco Flaldo. He said to me, get a mackey. DL 16. It's a fantastic mixer and it's really cool because the whole thing is web based. And I'm like, okay, so I got it. And he said, It's okay, I can set up for you because you just basically connect over remote and he can jump in and fix it. And actually, that was the best thing about that mixer. But that assumes that you all have a mark of flower in your life and if you don't, that's a problem. And basically, I thought, you can never, ever get ill, Mark, because I need you to fix this mixer. But there was nothing I could do with it. I mean, it was literally just a box you plugged all your sources into. And then the whole thing was controlled by either an iPad app, which was inaccessible, accessible, actually. I mean, I could find the mute button, which was a bit as far as I could get with it, but in terms of actual operation, no. So eventually I moved away from that and everything kind of felt a bit like a step down after that. But actually, I was using some pretty high end stuff. The RODECaster Pro came out at that time and this was the second version I'm on now. But the original version, which was pretty simple. It does have a touchscreen interface. Boo. But again, if you get sighted, help IRA be my eyes. Whatever. You can get it set up. The same with the second version. And to be fair, once it's set up, you could obviously do a lot more with it. But once it's set up for me, that's it. And I managed to get myself a decent microphone to go between microphones, because I have a sure MV 88, which not MV 88, sorry, MV Seven, that I love. That's the USB microphone. That's a great mic. I've gone between road. I've tried Neumann, I've tried lots of different microphones, and I kind of go between depending on my needs, so you won't always hear me on the same mic. And if I'm traveling, you'll definitely hear me on a different mic. Usually the shoot. MV seven. And that means I can just connect that straight into my MacBook and I can go. And that's, like Sean says, I sometimes think, is that just the easiest option? Because the great thing about the sure MV Seven is that you can plug in headphones into the back. All your audio can translate through that. So everything comes through that single headphone port. And it means that I can have my pair of headphones on, I can hear voiceover, all of that, but none of that's going into clean feed or Audacity or whatever else. And that allows me to do what I want to do. Problem is, of course, if you have to do multiple things, and I do, I have lots of different shows I'm working on. If I have to record more in one session, you need a bit more control, you need a bit more physical stuff to plug in and connect with. So, for example, with this RODECaster two, I'm able to connect two USB connections on the back of it into my MacBook. And that actually gives me a total of three outputs. So I've got three faders on the desk that I can control. One is for chat, one is for a main multi track, and one is a secondary. So I have my setup right now is and there's a funny story here, but it's a MacBook with obviously, Mac on it. I've connected voiceover and everything through the main multi track channel on the RODECaster. I've got you guys on clean feed, everything, all my zoom, my clean feeds, all that stuff. It goes through the chat channel and Windows, running through Parallels on the secondary channel. So everything's separated out. And then, like Sean says, I've got loopback, and I can use loopback to basically point all these different sources to wherever they need to go. And Demasi, you're to blame for that because I listened to your stuff on Loopback, and I thought, geez, this is fantastic. And I already knew a little bit about it, but I played around a bit more when I heard your demos, and I thought, I've got to listen to and try this out. So, yeah, I've now got pretty much all my sources. So when you guys were connecting with me and you said, what's this RCP two Ng mic? Well, that's my, as I call them, engineer mic. But it's really just my headset, which is a separate source. I've set up and look back and I can then choose that. And that means that I know whatever's going through that mixing desk, whatever's going through it will not be coming through to you guys because I know it's just that one source. And I've got the same for the main mic and I've got the same for a shotgun mic I've got over there. And I've also got my other sources, PC, Safari, even, which is cool because you can send Safari audio straight through. But again, you don't have to have voiceover in the mix. If I want voiceover, I can choose that as well. I can choose windows separately. I can do all that and look back. So it's a combination of both. And that's how I do it. And it's actually that's where I've simplified it. Now, the funny story is that before we were coming on today, I decided I would try something. I'd try migrating from my Mac mini to my MacBook Pro because I wanted to make my system portable. And then I forgot we were recording today. So I did all that and thought, oh, and I came into the the office here just about ten minutes before we started, and I realized the computer is sitting with the sign in to your Apple ID screen. I thought, oh, no, I'm going to be here all night. Thankfully, it was just a few steps and we're back up and running. But yeah, it's a great little system. And to be honest, as much as I love the PC, and I do, and I've gone back and forward and back and forth in PC and Mac and PC and Mac, honestly, the answer for me is to have both in one two bottles into the shower. No, hang on. One bottle into the show, not two. That's what I'm trying to say.
There's a funny story, too. I know what you mean by you forget something or you have a recording session and you're not sure what you're going to do in 15 minutes because you changed your whole setup around. So Michael decided he was going to get a Mac mini. And one of the things with this Mac mini is he decided he was going to turn it into a portable Mac mini so that he can use his Mac mini on the go. So yesterday when he was going to leave, he was going to be on a three hour drive down to where he had to go for his presentation. And he told me, when the show goes off the air, when you guys are done, I'll just edit it on the go and then it'll be ready to go when I get back and I'll upload it right away. And then, of course, yes, he did bring all of his stuff, he was ready to go, but he forgot the battery, so he couldn't boot up the Mac mini. So none of that happened.
Michael, I can help you with this. Right? I can help you. As a seasoned tech person in the field of broadcasting, in the waterlift technology, I can tell you there's a thing called a laptop. I don't know if you've heard of it. I tell you this, it's actually built for these exact circumstances.
It even has a battery in it. You don't have to remember the battery.
Built right in it's right in there.
You don't have to take a separate one or a power. How are you charging it? I don't understand.
How big is that tree for a Max mini? And how long does it last?
Actually, kind of small. And you can get pretty small batteries. And it lasts about six to 8 hours. It's what I'm taking, if I remember the battery to convention when I go to convention. So all I have to do is have the Mac mini. I can set it under the desk or under the table so it doesn't take up room on our exhibitor table. And we can have all of our goods out. And all I'm using is this MX keys. So no extra cables or anything. But, yeah, you got to bring the battery. And the battery is about twice the thickness of the Mac mini. And it's a little smaller than the Mac mini battery.
They have these things called laptops, right? And they've got batteries in them. And I should have mentioned as well, in case you were unaware, they have keyboards built in as well.
Oh, one last thing to carry. I should get this. For some reason, my wife ended up with the MacBook Air.
And then that means he would have to remember to charge the laptop before he leaves.
I mean, not really. Not with the air I love. And Steven, this is your fault that I have the M two Air. So you blame me for loopback? I mean, no, don't be sorry, man. I mean, I'm a little sorry about how much it costed me, but at the same time, this is probably the best Mac that I have owned. I have not tried the apple silicon pros at all. But this Air, man, like, I can go on the road with it and be doing an event, and I don't think about plugging it up to charge it up. It goes the whole 810 hours that I'm working with, no problems.
It's just an incredible piece of kit. And the pro is the same, I think, only once I noticed the battery coming up with a complaint. Again, it depends what you're doing with it, right? But mostly I will say, if you're running two operating systems at the same time, it does tend to eat the battery a bit more than it would normally be. More, yeah, but it's still I mean, honestly, I think that I bought the 14 inch MacBook Pro. I do have the MacBook Air M two which is currently my beta machine because I don't have a need to carry two around with me. And if I'm going to use one every day as my main, I'm probably going to go with the Pro just because I've got it if I didn't have it, fair enough. But I got the 14 inch MacBook Pro. I think this is possibly the best machine they've ever built. In terms of the Pro models, this is the best machine. It'll probably be the one I cannot unless something incredible comes out, which I doubt, I have no reason to change this. It is so good, it doesn't even blink. Someone contacted me the other day, they use a Lenovo laptop and they were telling me about all this blue screen of death they were having with Windows and how this was problem, and they touched a USB cable and the whole thing nearly exploded. Honestly, I had this machine running two operating systems. I've got two screen readers going at the same time. I had recordings on two different systems, one on the VM, one on the other, going at the same time. The whole thing. I had ICO transcribing stuff in the background, which is using all the onboard power as well. And this, my book didn't even blink. Just like, whatever. Yeah, bring it on. Yeah, well, you want to do anything else? Yeah, do you want me to compute the world for you? Do you want me to maybe run some eight K for you? Yeah, just make case streams.
The Apple silicon is amazing, though, isn't it? It's almost game changing because everyone is chasing that now. Intel, AMD, they're all chasing that ideal. Because the power, as you've mentioned, with the battery life, the amount of power that it draws for the performance that it gives is absolutely amazing.
So how's that setup process of that Mac mini going? Sean?
Yeah, terrible. I hate the mac. I can still recognize the technical and the hardware in it. That's how good it is. But, oh, man, I haven't got enough fingers for voiceover. It drives me so crazy.
Change your Vo keys to your Capsock key.
Well, this is the other thing, right? It's almost like the Android of the computing world because it's so customizable. Some people love the trap pad commander, the numpad commander. Go into voiceover utilities, go here, go to your web and turn this on and off. Or use the right control or right command key in conjunction with something else. There's too many options. I don't like it. I get confused so easily.
Isn't that weird? Like, the Mac is so wide open and so customizable, so flexible, and then you go to the iPhone and it's like, what do you mean I can't share this to this app? I'm confused. Why does it this work?
Yes, but so many people. I did exactly the same as soon as I got the iPhone. I was so blown away by voiceover and the accessibility, I said, that's it, I'm getting a Mac. And I got a Mac and went, oh, dear, what's going on here? And of course, it's not the same. It's a desktop environment, it's an operating system that's far more complicated, arguably, but of course it's not going to be the same. And I've heard from a lot of people that did the same thing, the voiceover in iOS was just so we were so impressed, right. And a lot of people jumped over expecting the same sort of experience and of course it's not going to be the same. That's kind of on us for assuming it would be. But again, like the iPhone and Android argument, that that rages on. I think it is a case of, you know, I've always been using Windows, so I just feel more comfortable no matter what. But, yeah, I am going to actually boot up this Mac at some point.
Don't worry. An inspiration, honestly.
I know.
Turn it on.
I bet if you turn it on a little faster, you might have more luck getting that spare mixer from Steven. See you're using the toys he's sending you.
I can, actually. Sean and I have this thing, right, where we like to send each other. Well, I'd send him stuff and he sends me stuff. And I tell you, the laugh is that we are hopeless at this, utterly hopeless. I mean, I have six months in a box. It is sitting there in the box and it's like now I've got a battle with a courier company to get a label, to get it printed and I've got to print a label. I mean, what am I? What is this, the 1970s? I've got to print it out. Well, I'll get my secretary in to do it. Come on. And then I've got to stick it to the box. What is this, the 19 hundreds?
And it always ends up that I'll just bring it down when we meet up. So once a year I'll just bring it with me.
On that roadcaster. Once it's set up. You said you had someone help you set it up, so once it's set up, you just basically don't touch it. Or is there any way that you're.
Able to use it? Not really. Not with the touch screen, no. There's very little you need to do. I mean, I suppose if you wanted to. There are a lot of routing options. There's way more in this new version than there was in the previous. I am intrigued, though, because I got this thing for the TV show. I don't know if we'll actually use it in the end, but we're looking at this thing called the Road Streamer X, which is another road kit, which is kind of similar, but the difference with this one is it doesn't have any touch screen interface at all on it. The whole thing is entirely tactile buttons and it operates via software. But I'm kind of convinced that you don't really even need the software because if it can see it as an audio interface, then you've kind of got it. SUST right. You can go into your settings, you can find it, and there's not much more to it than that. And this is interesting because it's got two USB C's on the back. So in theory, you can connect two computers to this at one time that I like. And secondly, I can connect a 4k camera to this a DSLR if I wanted to and hook that up and just plug it straight in and it will be seen. So I need to play around with it a bit. Was tempted to do it on the PC but I'm probably going to end up putting it into the MacBook and just seeing how it behaves. Not to replace the RODECaster but just as an additional for some of the stuff I'm doing. And I thought that sounds quite an interesting idea because it's got physical mute button, it's even got pads you can use for Midi controls and for stuff more kind of technical stuff you can do with it if you wanted to play jingles or stuff through, or even if you wanted to use those Midi controls for controlling something on your system. I know a lot of people use it in OBS, for example, to control different camera angles and that kind of thing.
So you can do lots sounds like an audio interface with a video switcher.
Basically, yeah, which is kind of new. We've never really seen that before, or at least not that I'm aware of. But we use lots of different stuff for the TV shows. I tend to get my hands on stuff that I wouldn't normally touch. Because videos I mean, yeah, I do a TV show, but that doesn't mean anything to me, really, because I just sit in front of a camera, which is all set up preset, and I just look in its general direction and have to continually ask the question, am I still looking at this? And is it even on? And if they tell me it's not honestly, there was one occasion we were doing double tap DV and someone said we're going live, we're going to do this thing and they said oh, your camera is not working, it's not there. I honestly wanted them to cancel the show. I was just like just forget it, just scrap the whole thing, get a new host, I don't want anything to do with this because I have no idea what I'm doing. It just panics me because when you can't it's like you were saying earlier, Demasi when you've got stuff that it can so easily frustrate you because you can't fix it. You've got people saying oh, could you just and I'm like no, I can't tell you if the lights on that thing or what that thing says. I don't know and so you end up in this frustration. So, video I tend to leave aside, but that is an interesting piece of kit, for sure. Maybe not so much for the HDMI, for most people. Most of us, anyway. But I don't know, maybe you might want to set up a fancy camera or even plug something else into your device. I suppose you could hook up an Apple TV to it, or you could hook up a games console if you wanted to, that kind of thing. It could be used for all kinds of different purposes, but, yeah.
Sound system in a hotel. Michael.
Yes, because Michael is the tech person. He gets elected to handle the hybrid connection to bring people in from Zoom to a local place.
You'll know, Michael, because he's in the corner pulling out a Dell Tower on the train with the big monitor CRT.
And the big size battery next to it.
And on that note, it's been a pleasure. Now that you guys are picking on me, we're going to wrap it up here. Marty or Damasi, either one of you have anything else? And, Marty, you can close it out.
All right, well, thanks, you guys for showing up here today and joining us in conversation. We had a great time. You're welcome back anytime. If anyone has any questions for us, feel free to reach out at feedback at unmute show. And we'll see you guys next time you.