The working from home thread: tips and advice

My setup now looks like this.

I've swung the mic arm out of the way so the keyboard and panels can be seen.

But basically a lot of wood, plants, light, and space. Very little by way of cabling mess (given the unbelievable amount of cable there is here and the 12 power sockets in those two cable tidy boxes). The desktop on the left is the machine.

The only really weird thing going on is the camera... it's on a tripod on the desk to get that behind monitor position. It's on a boom arm which then needs counter-weighting with the dumb bell weight. It works, I don't notice it... and the camera is rock solid and stable.

So... what's in this picture?

• An old NEC 27" monitor EA274WMi
  
• A Sony A7rii on an old tripod with a cheap boom arm attachment... and a counter weight to keep it stable
  
• SSL2 audio interface is the middle box under the monitor, provides microphone input and headphone (monitor) output - it also gives me a nice volume knob to use to adjust the volume of others during a meeting
  
• Stream Deck is the thing on the right, and lets me control all lights and media without leaving the desk... this includes turning on lights behind me to make conference calls look good, or adjusting colour throughout the day manually if I don't like what Home Assistant is doing
  
• Jabra 710 conference call speaker/mic is on the left... I use this in training sessions to hear things, the SSL2 and mic I use during 1:1s
  
• Keyboard is a Filco
  
• Lights are Elgato Key Light Air
  
• Mic is a Shure SM7B - this goes into Reaper where I gate to remove background noise, equalise to remove more background noise, compress to de-ess, and then have a dynamic vocal rider to ensure my voice always comes across at a consistent volume
  
• Headphones are ATH-R70x - high ohm so they need the SSL2 to drive them
  
• There's a CalDigit TS3+ dock for when I have a MacBook
  
• There's a Lindy USB switch that allows both the Windows PC and a MBP or any other device to share every device on my desk with a single click
  
• There are some old Monitor Audio floorstanding speakers... this goes to the Arcam amp on the left, which goes to the DAC on top and a Chromecast Audio, which I use to play music from Plex in the other room
  
• The PC is a HP Omen Windows 10 gaming PC... nothing special... but now my MBP is bricked I've discovered it's about 2x as fast as that was for 2/3 of the price of it... so I'm probably sticking with the PC even when I get the MBP back.