Before:
After:
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Haha, now the real question is: how long is it going to stay neat and tidy like this? 
It’s looking good. I love minimalist setups, being a little OCD about ergonomics and “clear desks” myself. I couldn’t work on a laptop screen all day long, though, that’s for sure.
Why are you streamlining? Is this your main mixing desk?
Well…I just used my thumb and index finger to expand the picture to check out your gear. Yeah, that happened.
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I don’t so much mind the laptop screen. It’s using a touchpad instead of a mouse that bothers me most, and also having to be so close to the screen when you use the in-built keyboard. I solve both of those problems by using a remote keyboard and a bluetooth mouse.
I had a big, bulky set up in our lounge room for the sake of the good acoustics there. It just took up too much room. My wife recently bought me a new MacBook Pro M1, as my old computer was getting a bit long in the tooth. She also bought me a new UA Apollo Twin X (Quad Core) interface.
I had a lot of gear piped into my old setup that aimed more at recording a full band, and has been kind of surplus to current requirements for a while now.
Yes.
Well, that would be fine if it was on your phone or iPad… But I’m guessing you did it to your computer screen?.. haha - I’m pretty sure we’ve all done that - I know I have!
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Wow your wife has been really nice to you! I have a couple audio engineer friends who bought an M1 recently and it seems like everybody’s thrilled about how it performs for music production. I’m still a Windows guy myself, only because I’m used to Windows and I’m more efficient this way.
If the space allows it, I would experiment putting your monitors on dedicated stands with a proper isolation. When I moved mine from the desk (even though they were resting on ISOacoustics stands) to proper stands the low end response and the stereo image made a giant leap in performance, I was truly amazed at the huge difference it makes, and I couldn’t go back now.
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I can almost feel the atmospheric differences between those two pics. Even though the first pic has lots of pieces of audio candy and eye candy, it leaves me with a “burdened” feeling. The “after” pic feels like I’ve freed myself and escaped from my mental prison.
I have way too much music gear and other stuff that’s cluttering my recording space. I had planned to sell some of that gear last year, but COVID struck and I became very hesitant to post my items on Craigslist and other sites because I felt it would be an awkward and difficult time to sell equipment.
We just began another lockdown over a week ago. It’s supposed to last for 5 weeks or so. I’m crossing my fingers that this summer will be better for selling my gear than it was last summer. Many people are getting their vaccinations but we’re constantly hearing about the new COVID variants and nobody seems to know when things will return to normal.
That minimalist setup that you have now should make you feel much better mentally!
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[Off topic post]
Where are you located? Here in Singapore it’s been approx. 6 months since we had more than 0 or 1 new case per day so we’re lucky to be safe, even though it’s still very difficult to travel abroad (you can leave the country but coming back is complicated and costly). I can feel the weariness though, and I have news from my family back in my home country (France) so I know how hard it can be in other parts of the world. Hang in there!
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I’m in central Canada. Very close to Toronto, Ontario.
In this province (Ontario) we were locked down in January and also a partial lockdown throughout February when case counts began to lessen. In early March the lockdown ended even though our medical specialists were warning the government and the citizens that the new Coronavirus variants were beginning to spread…So what happened is, with each passing day and week that we were out of lockdown, our COVID cases grew…very quickly. By late March, our hospitals were becoming overwhelmed again. Our infection rates over the last 2 or 3 weeks have been higher than any other time during the pandemic and our hospitals are now more overwhelmed than they’ve ever been.
Last week, a 13 year old girl that lives in my town died of COVID. I think it’s not very common for youth to die from the virus but when the sheer volume of cases gets high enough there tend to be more casualties in every age range.
…Yes indeed - she is indeed a wonderful woman. ( I’m nice to her, too!)… That’s why we’ve been married for 30 years! 
I had that before - The stands took up too much space. I have my monitors on Auralex Pads - that works fine. I’ve had opportunity to compare both on an off dedicated stands. Apart from the fact that the stands make the speakers wider apart, I don’t really hear any difference TBH. I’m working closer to my monitors now, so the equilateral triangle is much smaller - I like it that way.
It is nice to have a simpler setup and a less cluttered space. In practise, I’m still acclimatising to the new interface, so I’m not super comfortable yet when it comes to recording… but I really do like it - it feels good.
I’m like that too, but I find it hard to sell stuff off. I think I’d like to sell a few pieces here, but I’ll have to wait to see what is still useful to me and what is not.
That’s really terrible - sorry to hear that - please keep safe!
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I know the feeling… married 24 years here, and 30 years together. It is a blessing.
It’s good to know you’ve already tested the speaker stands. For some reason it really made a huge difference for me, probably because my desk is large and acted like a big sounding board, and also these ISOacoustics stands are not as good as they first seem.
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Just goes to show you don’t need all that much to deliver professional quality mixes!
That is if you have the skills… I may have a roughly similar setup, but come nowhere near the skills! 
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Love the POD. It was always hard to play through, but it always sounded better in the recording than you thought it would. Good for effects too.
I gave mine to my brother a couple of years ago.
Amazing how it’s possible to get such great results from four square feet of gear. It’s all in the ears.
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