Alright, silly me missed your review video. It answers a lot of my questions, so thank you for that. But did you actually get this for free for your review video? If so I am going to reach out to them too haha 
I agree on a 4 legged version would be much better…seems very unusual on the market?
Yes they sent me one in exchange for a review, I think I may have already worked the standing desk for music production angle though 
There really aren’t many 4 legged versions available especially in the EU. I may upgrade to one in the future but I’m pretty happy at present with this one.
That’s amazing, may I ask how you pitched it to them? Congrats btw! 
Also, have you found the best chair/stool for this setup?
I went from a music studio angle as most of the current users seem to be office based. It took a while to convince them though.
I have a Herman Miller Aeron chair, which is great, the mesh base is a life saver for my back. I use the Topo mini for when I’m stood up, makes a huge difference to how long I can stand for.
Thanks, wow it is amazing to see that a standing desk music studio setup is possible. I have had this idea for years. I will not do a big change in the immediate future so I’ll have a chance to refine a good pitch until then. Also, perhaps they will have a 4 legged version at that point.
Haha of course Keith, and you bring the goods!
That gear collection, and btw…what is that mixing console in the last picture? I thought you mixed in the box?
The console is a Tascam tm-D8000 …it was Tascams first shot at a digital console … 16 preamps and an additional 8 lines in …a great console to learn the craft on …everything is only 3 clicks away at the most .I plan to put it back into service at some point …and all the controls on the console send midi messages…as well as you can assign different sliders to different tracks or groups … It does sound very good …
Yes you are correct, I have been mixing in the box since Feb 2018 …I still prefer the comfort and tactile feel of a console … There is a matching direct to disk recorder as well and you can basically go all out without the need of a daw just on the console alone .tracking, mixing,mastering and no computer .! …yep…guess I’m still old school!..
The console has seen a fair chunk of work over the years … its mixed slot of local projects and demo projects. Regrettably it’s been everybody else’s music but my own lol…
I put up a pic of my smaller workstation as well …That’s were I developed ideas and flush them out without the necessity or complexity of a bigger studio …once its sorted out …the project gets flown over the network to the main studio for finishing .
In retrospect, in this day and age about 90% of my studio could most likely be replaced by vsts and the appropriate software (if not all of it)…I still have “tube” technology for some dynamics processing!
I still teach a bit of recording and it’s funny, new producers and artists that are learning the art of recording instantly think vsts for dynamic processing.
So when you say were going to use a tube compressor they automatically think vst plugin…I pull out a hardware tube compressor and they say “I’ve never seen a hardware tube compressor before” lol
So I get a lot of kidding at time on the do you mix in or out of the box? Another studio owner said " Keith can mix outside the box without a computer" lol
Hi All,
I’m pretty much a newbie to music production. I’m also working full-time as a logistics contractor for NATO in Afghanistan. My living accomodation is essentially a converted 20ft shipping container inside a hard-shelled structure. But I am trying to make do with the space I have. So I’m posting some pics of my space and my gear setup. Nothing too serious as some here have posted as I am just a beginner. But I’m having a great time learning.
Lovely setup! I’d say it’s pretty decent for beginning. Hope you are safe, cheers!
Hi Venn,
Thanks. Also thanks for the encouragement. It is a little awkward in that to use my keyboard with my DAW, I have to move the other gear off to the side to make room for the laptop. But I’m managing so far.
So I was having this dilemma about studio furniture a few years ago. On the one hand the bigger stuff was a client impression maker, and there was a part of me that was used to hearing things bouncing off a console from the near-field monitors, so I had always just gone for desks that had the outboard gear embedded in them. But my personal project rooms (a succession of second or third bedrooms in apartments and then houses) seemed filled up by these things, and they were not only sources of first-order reflections but also, being large hollow things, giant resonators.
So I went to a session on an album I was working on at the engineer’s home studio and saw something I loved. On one wall, he had his speakers, on stands to be seated ear level. Between and slightly behind them he had a 55” monitor on the floor. The floor was carpeted but for a square of wood in the middle of the room. On that was a small rolling cart, like a TV tray almost, with a keyboard and mouse on it, with a chair behind it. On the back wall were tilted racks with all of the outboard gear and converters and so on. I spent a lot of time in the chair making tweaks, and I found that I loved the experience - it was like listening to music in my living room, except it sounded great. (The room was well-treated also - not utterly dead and with controlled bass.) The room felt spacious and comfortable. And in a literal and figurative sense, there was nothing between me and the music.
So: I made a decision. I turned on Sketchup and made several simple designs for a stand. Some were made of metal, some of wood - and though the metal ones were sleek and cool (and I might have someone make me one of them someday) I began to really want to make one myself, which meant wood. The brief was: no surfaces that caused first order reflections; no hollow resonant spaces; and as little footprint as possible. I also originally designed it to accommodate an arm to hold my LG Thunderbolt 5k monitor low, with a comfortable line-of-sight for my neck and eyes but still low enough not to be in the way of the speakers. I sold the desk I had (a Sterling desk - very nice if you like that sort of thing) and bought a table saw, a miter saw, a piece of plywood and a whole lot of wood screws. I used 2x4’s that were in the garage of our house when we bought it - the ones that were straight, anyway - and cut them down to exact widths to match my design and make the edges straight. My intent was to mock it up with them and then when I saw it work I would build it again with better wood.
So I had my first taste of how the room felt when I had the keyboard controller on an X-stand with a little piece of wood holding keyboard and mouse, and I immediately liked it. It took me a little while to get comfy with the woodworking machines and learn all I could about safe practices with them - I like the number of fingers I have - and I built a little side cabinet for a synth and a turntable and storage for microphones to figure out how to do any of this. Then in a weekend or so I cut glued and screwed together my little stand. I made a bit that sits in front of the controller, just deep enough in the center to hold a keyboard and trackball and support my wrists, and on either side, beyond where reflections can hit my ears, are two “wings” made to accommodate a Maschine controller and a cup of coffee on one side and an ArtistMix fader box on the other. Underneath each one on a leg is a hook - one holds my headphones and one holds my breath controller. I’ve stopped using the ArtistMix but now use an iPad with Lemur, and it sits comfortably in that spot.
Subsequently I found the monitor’s placement to be a little weird - so I replaced the screen after some experimentation with a 65” screen on the floor, slightly tilted upward on a stand I made in fifteen minutes. What this buys me is the ability (approved of by ergonomics experts) to look slightly downward at my screen - and at that size, and that distance (about 6 feet) it has the same apparent size and readability as the much closer 5k monitor did.
The last thing I’ve made is a low rack for my outboard gear. It’s a minimal collection of a few nice things. It has a very low profile, and represents the first time I’ve made anything with a curve.
The next thing I will make is stand 2.0, which will have wider-spread legs and may be a hair lower. Or I’ll try something with a sliding drawer for the midi controller. I never have bothered to even put a finish on the 2x4’s - they still have the lumber yard stamps on them.
As a woodworker I’m a good Pro Tools editor. No idea what I’m doing, and things that would be quick for a knowledgeable person take me longer to do. But it’s been fun - the first and only hobby I have ever had, as before that the only thing I considered a hobby was playing instruments I was no good at. My room feels open where it should, and sounds pretty good too. And I barely ever want to leave it.
My rig, so far. No hardware synths or analog gear, so I’m compensating a bit with these wooden contraptions of ancient design. They don’t even take CV!
Computer: 14 core i9 @ 4GHz, 64 GB RAM, 5.5 TB of SSDs, 4 TB HDD, in a machine room (the black box on the left) with sound traps.
Audio interface: Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 Mk1.
Displays: 40" 4K VA panel, 2x 27" 2560x1440 165 Hz IPS screens, 49" 4K IPS TV.
Speakers: Yamaha HS8 and custom 500W RMS 15" sub in a reflection-free zone setup. (Sound treatment on the back wall only, since all first reflections from the front wall bypass the listener.) Some missing bits in the front wall right now, after adding that 49" TV, but surprisingly, that only causes minor issues that Reference 4 can handle.
Headphones: Beyerdynamic DT 770 PRO and DT 990 PRO.
Microphones: ADK S-51, a pair of small diaphragm measurement mics, some t.bone mic for strings, and an ancient Samson Qmic.
Controllers: Fatar hammer action keybed integrated into custom desk (prototype), BCF2000, TEControl BBC2.
DAW: Cubase Pro 10, Pro Tools 12 (which I rarely use currently), and a ridiculous amount of plugins and sample libraries.
Instruments: Yamaha student violin and Eastman advanced cello, both with some hightech upgrades.
Ah David, 4 screens…you know how much I love screen estate…I want more now! 
That is one heck of a powerful computer. 14 cores with high clock speed, is that overclocked or native?
I would love to have an integrated MIDI keyboard like that, space and reach and ergonomics is always tricky for composers.
How are your SSD’s distribution, meaning what kinds and how many? I have been contemplating getting an SSD raid array box some day in the future, would you say that is crazy or brilliant?
There is no such thing as too much screen real estate! 
Would like to replace the 49" with a 55", though; that would precisely fill up the space between the speakers (don’t want them further apart, for stereo imaging reasons), and get the “projected” size slightly closer to the main 40" screen. Plugin GUIs are a wee bit tiny on that one as it is now, even for my eyes.
The base clock of that CPU (i9-7940X) is “only” 3.1 GHz, and that’s effectively what you get when running a heavy multithreaded load. Only a few cores at a time can run up to the max turbo clock of 4.3 GHz normally. (And Cubase absolutely hates that, and glitches hysterically on low latency settings. Better to just lock all cores at 3.1 if you don’t want to OC.) I lock all cores at 4 GHz when running Cubase, which is technically not an overclock, but makes the CPU draw almost 100 W more than the max spec on full load, so it still needs extra power and extra cooling, compared to stock. I’ve tested it up to 4.4 or so, but I don’t have enough cooling capacity to run that for more than a few minutes, starting cold.
You might want to check out Doepfer’s caseless kits, like this one:
I’m considering building my final version around one of those, as it’s a newer and more advanced Fatar keybed than the one I have, and the electronics, wheels etc seem much nicer than the ancient Fatar parts. (It’s from an SL880.)
Not on that machine right now, bit IIRC, there’s currently one 1 TB M.2 (system, mostly), two 1 TB SSDs, one 2 TB SSD, and one 512GB SSD. The SSDs are Samsung 850 EVO and similar, except for the 2 TB, which is a Crucial MX500. The M.2 is a 970 EVO - about 5x as fast as the others. Ludicrous (Kontakt is too slow to leverage it!), but it wasn’t much more expensive than “normal speed” M.2’s, so why not?
Nice I would love that power in my studio computer. Especially super fast and lots of RAM + those insane fast M.2 drives.
I would also love to have that Fatar Keyboard integrated into a composer’s desk. But as we say in Sweden: I have the thumb in the middle of my hand. Meaning: I suck at practical work and craft, so I would never be able to build such a desk myself!
I’m finding it well worth the research and investment, especially since I only have so much time and patience left after work. Less waiting and fewer workarounds reduce the stress levels.
You might want to have a look at the cased version of those Doepfers, then. They’re pretty compact, seem very sturdy, and unlike basically all other serious master keyboards (I honestly don’t think the designers of those actually use DAWs…), they have the entire control panel on the side! So, you can just combine it with an ordinary desk, and you’re pretty much there! The Spitfire Audio guys have an arrangement like that in at least one of their rigs, as seen on their videos.
Mike very nice set up I post my tomorrow but please donot laugh 
to hard
Jonny that looks close to my very very ,limited setup
but one thing minus the track pad the auto interface two hard drives the microphone and mic stand the big keyboard
nice set up though you have 
Wow!!! That is awesome just love how the desk goes up for standing wow 
Nice set up😀
