EXPOSING DEADMAU5's STUDIO - *SPOILER* He's a huge Geek!
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2018-05-06
·
1,736 words · ~8 min read
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Welcome to the Mouse House.
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Joel Zimmerman, AKA Deadmau5, invited us out here
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to hang for the day and give you guys a peek
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at the tech setup of one of the world's most iconic
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electronic music artists.
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Spoiler alert, this guy is a big, huge nerd
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and this place is flippin' awesome.
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Okay, now I know everybody else setting foot
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into this castle would start with the, you know,
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taxidermy, with, oh, I don't know, the taxidermy room
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or maybe the garage of supercars, but not me.
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I'm starting where the magic happens,
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if you know what I mean, the master bedroom.
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And that is an entirely appropriate thing in this case
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because Deadmau5 has turned it into one of the only
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Dolby Atmos mix studios outside of Dolby themselves.
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You actually need a special black box
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that he wouldn't tell me about
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in addition to the nine custom-made speakers from ATC
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that are perfectly positioned in the room
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in order to master audio in 3D space.
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Remember, Atmos can scale to hundreds of speakers
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surrounding the viewer.
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This room has actually been under construction
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for three years and it's still not quite done, but it is.
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It's really close.
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I mean, to be clear, slapping a MacBook on the table
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and chilling out to some sick jams in here is,
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as the kids say, dope AF,
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but it's about like playing CSGO on a supercomputer
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compared to what it will be capable of.
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And this is really cool.
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So this entire room is actually suspended
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from what used to be a vaulted ceiling.
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This was done for a couple of reasons.
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Number one, for improved acoustics, and number two,
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that with access panels under the floor,
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the like 800 cables for these pad panels here,
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or the like banging optical DisplayPort cables
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for the monitors that are gonna be installed here
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can all be run without disturbing
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the room's otherwise pristine aesthetic.
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And the gear in here is freaking unreal.
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So the Neve analog console in the center here
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would run you about a half a million dollars.
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As configured.
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And honestly, that's just to take in the inputs,
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apply some EQ and compression, and adjust levels.
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And check out these walls.
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On the left and right of the center console
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are different variations
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of what are called analog modular systems.
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Now, a lot of folks would produce electronic music
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exclusively on a computer through software these days,
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but you have to remember that those would be
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digital reproductions of what is inherently
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an analog thing.
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So this wall here is the culmination of over five years
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of curating and collecting tone generators,
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sequencers, filters, I mean, you name it.
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This one's called the Modulation Orgy.
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How can you not get one of them?
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And Joel was kind enough to give us an in-person demo
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of how something like this works.
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So here's my hip, and I plug it into there,
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and then that's the input, and then we wanna go,
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maybe an 18 dB output for a filter.
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So I'm just going from one module to the other,
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if I just say.
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And oh, now I wanna change the pitch of it
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to be like a tune, right?
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So this is a 1V oct, which means one volt per octave.
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I can get these little nuances of turning these analog dials
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and creating these sounds that subconsciously
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you probably know just aren't quite right,
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you know, which is neat.
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Now, he obviously doesn't use that for everything.
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I mean, it's the digital era.
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But from an artistic standpoint,
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what's great is having options.
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An applied voltage on a stepless dial
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provides, practically speaking, infinite options,
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which I guess leads us into why there are
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over a dozen synthesizers in this room.
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Now, to the stupid layperson,
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one middle C equals another middle C,
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but that is not the case.
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All of these have different tonal properties,
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and many of them have
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multiple stories.
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This Juno 106 worth about 1500 bucks,
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he got for $20 at a pawn shop
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from some guy who didn't know what it was.
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This Jupiter 8 and this Prophet 10 down here,
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these are really, really hard to get your hands on today
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because they were built in the 70s using components
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that even if the manufacturer wanted to,
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they couldn't build this stuff again
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because that stuff's not available today.
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And they have this unique retro tonality
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that like, for example,
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when they went to do Stranger Things,
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they had to use this equipment
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because we still don't have the capability
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to emulate what these sound like electronically.
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Like these guys would have gone
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for a couple hundred bucks in the 70s.
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Now they're worth tens of thousands of dollars.
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This one that folds up in a briefcase right here,
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this is R2D2.
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I don't mean this is the same model that was R2D2.
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This was R2D2.
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It still works.
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And to say this place sounds freaking amazing
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would be selling it short.
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I mean, I only even got to listen to a couple of tracks
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on the stereo speakers, but my God,
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it is an audio listening experience
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the likes of which I have never come even close to.
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And all of that, that's just the surface level.
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Let's head down to the dungeon of this modern day castle.
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First up is the Land Center,
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why wouldn't you need a Land Center in your basement?
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This is about as tricked out as it gets.
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Five small form factor custom built machines from NVIDIA
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with the cases customized by PC Junkie Mods to match,
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get this, to match Joel's cars.
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Every single one of them is also running
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a Blackmagic Micro 4K camera for game streaming.
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And the capture machine for his game streaming setup here
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is actually running under this.
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This like center pentagram console thing that I'm standing on
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and it's hooked into their 10 gigabit
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home networking solution.
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You heard me right.
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I found the only other person in Canada
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with a server room in his freaking house.
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And I couldn't be more excited to tell you
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that it's actually quite a little bit,
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maybe quite a bit better than mine.
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Not that it's a competition, not that I'm upset.
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It's just that that is where the two,
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gigabit internet connection comes in
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from the 103 foot tower with ubiquity fricking dishes
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on the top out in the yard.
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This one right here,
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this is a custom box with 16 NVIDIA Teslas in it
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that sounds like a freaking jet taking off.
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And this guy right here,
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this 45 drive Storinator is actually the reason.
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This was the springboard for this whole collab,
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because Joel reached out to me about a year ago now
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asking for some NAS advice.
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So I got him hooked up with the guys at Unraid
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and now he's all set up with 70 terabytes of,
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of course, highly expandable storage for all of his music.
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And actually now come to think of it,
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do music files really take up that much space?
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What do you even know?
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No, of course they don't.
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But the answer, the real answer is really freaking cool.
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Now I have to confess, I never really gave a,
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gave a lot of thought to, well,
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how do the graphics on the cube or the helmet
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sync with the music?
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I just assumed that it was farmed out
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to some expensive Hollywood production house
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and that it was just kind of done by magic.
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But no, Joel and his team actually build
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a lot of these tools and effects in house,
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including 3D modeling.
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So most of those gaming machines over there, like,
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So most of those gaming machines over there, like,
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So most of those gaming machines over there, like,
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So most of those gaming machines over there, like,
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So most of those gaming machines over there, like,
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when there are no friends over playing Rocket League,
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are actually being used as render nodes.
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And this is in addition to the Teslas in the server room.
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There are a total,
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and I think it's 43 NVIDIA GPUs in this house
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that are all used for rendering.
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So one of the animations for the cube that Joel showed us
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was actually recorded using motion cap
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from like his Microsoft Connect.
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Then he used a model
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from non-stop night, redid the head,
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and animated it using Cinema 4D,
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then rendered it out using Octane.
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And the visualizations and the synchronization
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to like the head, which by the way,
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I absolutely did get to wear,
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there is exactly as much sweat in there
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as you would imagine,
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were designed by him and his crew as well.
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And if you're a networking nerd,
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this is where it gets even cooler.
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So this massive touchscreen,
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that's a relic of Microsoft's acquisition
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of perceptive pixel,
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there are only four in the world by the way,
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can be used through the network
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and some custom software that Tim and his team developed
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to allow audio effects and animations
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to be controlled in real time on a massive touchscreen.
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So pretty much the entire show can be run out of this box
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with a couple of Mac Pros with this nifty mount on it,
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and this front house mirror.
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And this is the whole mixer.
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Well, I hope that this whole thing has been
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at least 30% as fun for you guys as it has been for me,
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because that means it's been pretty fun.
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Thank you to you guys for watching.
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Thank you so much to,
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oh, he's standing out in the driveway over there,
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but he's waving.
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I definitely had permission to do all of this.
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Thanks to Joel for allowing us to hang out here for the day.
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And I guess that's pretty much it.
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hit that like button.
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which has cool shirts like this one,
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