The gear*
* The product links below are Amazon affiliate links. Buying through them helps support the channel, which I really appreciate.
I get a lot of questions about the studio, so here's the full tour. One caveat before we start: this is a lot of gear, and it's incredibly unnecessary. It's what you accumulate over years of making videos. To make good YouTube videos you genuinely don't need to go anywhere near this deep. I'm walking through every piece anyway, because the granular, every-detail version is exactly what I always wanted from other creators.
The caveat
None of this is required. A phone and a window will get you most of the way. Everything below is years of slow accumulation, a fair amount of it held together with Scotch tape and stubbornness. Behind the scenes it's an absolute dumpster fire of wires that I keep meaning to clean up. The footage looks clean; the setup is not.
Monitors & desk
Three 32-inch LG monitors, each on its own monitor arm. I prefer this over a single ultrawide for two reasons: the ultrawide is expensive, and with three separate panels on arms I can swivel and reposition each one instead of living with one giant stretched display. They're also cheap relatively speaking — a few hundred bucks each on eBay.
Screen recording
The screen-plus-my-face-in-the-corner look that people ask about is just OBS. The screen is one layer, and my face is a second layer cropped down with rounded corners. The background behind it is a Raycast wallpaper dropped in as its own OBS layer. A couple of things around that: an Elgato Stream Deck to switch scenes quickly, and Arc as my browser for anything I record — it stays clean and full-screen with no bookmarks bar cluttering the recording.
Bonus tip if you're using Claude Code or Codex: you can have the agent drive OBS for you. It can reach the OBS API, round the corners on the face cam, reposition the screen, and set up whole scenes programmatically. Every time I want to change something in OBS now, I just tell the agent and it does it.
Computers
Two machines: a Mac Mini with around 24GB of RAM, and a Mac Studio — the M4 Max, 64GB of RAM, with a terabyte of storage. For capture, the camera runs into an Elgato 4K X capture card, and that's what feeds the picture into OBS.
Audio
The mic is an Audio-Technica AT875R — a shotgun mic boomed overhead on an Elgato arm, sitting a few feet away just outside the frame. It runs over XLR into a Focusrite Scarlett Solo interface, and a Thunderbolt dock ties everything back to the Mac.
Why the boomed shotgun instead of a podcast mic right in front of me: my apartment isn't treated for audio and I'm on a really busy street. Booming a shotgun a few feet away gets me clean, usable audio without a mic parked in the shot.
Camera
The main camera is a Sony a7 IV on a Sony 24–70mm f/2.8 GM II lens. Lately I've been shooting 60 frames per second, mostly because YouTube compresses video quite a bit and I want to hand it the best quality I can. The settings sit around 1/125 shutter, roughly f/3.2, ISO 800. The downside of 60fps is that the files are basically double the size, which makes editing heavier. If none of those numbers mean anything to you, that's fine — ignore them.
It sits on a Peak Design tripod. Not cheap, but the best tripod I've used. I've gone through a lot of cheap plasticky ones; this one actually keeps the camera locked in place.
Lighting
One key light: an Amaran 200d, the cheaper cousin of an Aputure. It fires through an Aputure Light Dome Mini II softbox. The diffuser on that softbox is actually borrowed from a bigger light and held on with Scotch tape, because I was too lazy to track down the right one — so it hangs a little crooked. It works.
The whole thing is mounted on a Neewer arm that I bolted straight into the wall. I didn't want a C-stand eating floor space in an apartment, so wall-mounting gives me a nice professional light that stays out of the way.
Odds & ends
A Logitech MX Vertical mouse, which I genuinely recommend — your wrist won't hate you at the end of the day. I used to dislike vertical mice and came around completely. And there's a second camera on the desk that I only use for client Loom videos, not for YouTube.
That's more or less the whole setup. Like I said up top, it's all incredibly extra and you don't need any of it — I just wanted to give every bit of minutia, because that's always what I've wanted from other creators too. Hope it's helpful.
Full transcript
Okay, what's going on everyone — quick studio tour, since I get a lot of questions about this. Let me caveat though: this is a lot of gear, and it's incredibly unnecessary. This is over years of video production; I've accumulated a lot of this stuff. For making YouTube videos you really don't need to get this in depth, but I wanted to walk through it in detail. I always have these same questions for other YouTubers, so I wanted to show you everything. I'm going to get into every single one of these pieces. Maybe I'll do a dedicated studio tour video on actual YouTube, but for now, here's the rundown.
First, I've got three LG monitors — these are 32-inch LG monitors. I like these over the big ultrawide. First of all, that's so expensive, and second of all, this is basically the same thing and I can adjust these on monitor arms too, which I really like. I can move them around and swivel them, so it's not just one giant stretched display. I like these, and they're cheap too — relatively speaking — a few hundred bucks on eBay.
Then I have this Stream Deck. People ask me a lot how I get this picture-in-picture / screen-share view when recording. So let me turn on this camera — it's the picture-in-picture or screen-share view, and that's how I do it. It's just OBS. I'm projecting the screen right now, and then I have this background — it's just wallpaper. I got it from Raycast; go to raycast.com and search for their wallpapers, and you can set it as a background. It's an actual layer in OBS that I've set up. You can click it and move it around and set whatever background you want. And this is literally just me cropping my face. I have the Sony USB-C feed — the Sony we'll talk about in a second — and that's just my face being cropped, with the rounded corners and everything.
Bonus tip: if you're a Claude Code user, or you just know how to talk to the agents — open up Claude Code or Codex and tell it you want to use the OBS API (don't quote me on that — there's some way they can basically access OBS and do this all programmatically for you). I give this to Claude every single time — I want to change this in OBS, I want to do that — and it'll make the corners rounded, reposition where my screen is, everything. Pretty cool. Then I just have this Stream Deck because I like to switch over things easily.
For screen sharing, if I'm in a browser I use Arc. I don't use Google Chrome — I don't like the bookmarks bar showing up when I'm screen recording. I like how Arc is just full-screen and clean. I think that's everything for screen recording.
If we want to get into gear too: I have this Mac Mini — it's like 24 gigs of RAM, I think. And then I have this Mac Studio. I have this Elgato — this is for actually streaming, this is what connects to OBS. It's an Elgato 4K X. And then this is just an external hard drive. Excuse the wires — it's an absolute mess, I need to clean that up one of these days. That's the studio setup, more or less. And this Mac Studio is an M4 Max — the M5s haven't come out yet — M4 Max, 64 gigabytes of RAM and a terabyte of space.
Oh, and then the mic — Audio-Technica. If I can focus this... it's an Audio-Technica AT875R. It's connected like a boom mic. A lot of this is super janky — it looks nice and clean in the actual video, and behind the scenes it's an absolute dumpster fire. This is on an Elgato arm — a swivel arm — and I have it boomed over me, so it faces me from a few feet away, just outside of camera. That's how I get pretty good audio. My apartment isn't treated for audio and I live on a really busy street, so this is how I get good audio without having a mic right next to me like a podcast mic.
This is just an XLR cable, and it's connected to this Focusrite — Focusrite Scarlett Solo it's called — and then I have all sorts of adapters. Again, sorry about the wires, it's an absolute disaster. And then I have this Thunderbolt thing — I have so many cords that I needed this Thunderbolt dock that connects to the Mac, and that's how it connects my monitors and all sorts of stuff.
And then finally, cameras. This is a Sony a7 IV. It's on a 24-to-70-millimeter lens. Lately I've been shooting in 60 frames per second — and if this means nothing to you, I'll turn this into a transcript and you just copy the transcript and feed it into ChatGPT or something. But shooting 60 frames per second, just because Google compresses video quite a bit, so I want to get the best quality. My shutter speed and aperture are around 1/125, f/3.2-ish, usually ISO 800. Lately I've been impressed with the 60fps quality. However, your files are basically double, so it's tough when you're actually editing them. Like I said at the beginning, this is all incredibly extra, so you don't need to worry about all that — but I wanted to give every single bit of minutia, because that's always what I've wanted from other YouTubers.
And then I have this tripod — Peak Design. They make the best friggin' tripods. It's not cheap, but it's really stable. I've gone through a lot of tripods and they're usually cheap and plasticky; this one keeps the camera in place very well.
Oh, and then I have this light. This is kind of a janky setup too. I literally bolted this arm here — it's from Neewer — and it's really bolted into my wall. I didn't want a C-stand or anything taking up floor space in my apartment, so this is how I get a nice professional light without taking up a bunch of room. This is an Amaran 200d — like the cheaper version of Aputure. And then this light, you can see how janky it is — it's literally Scotch tape that I've taped on to keep it in place, because this diffuser is from another, bigger softbox. This is a smaller softbox — an Aputure, I think it's called the Light Dome Mini II — and I have the diffuser from the bigger softbox because I was too lazy to find another diffuser, so I just used this one. You can see it's kind of hanging, and that's why I have the janky Scotch tape.
All right, I think that's about it. Mouse — Logitech MX Vertical. Highly recommend; your wrists aren't going to hurt throughout the day using this mouse, which I used to hate. And then I have this other camera here — I use that for Loom videos and client stuff. I don't usually use it for YouTube.
All right, I hope this is helpful. Let me know if you have any questions, and I'll see you later.