BOA in the house...
Wednesday, May 19, 2010 at 12:15PM I spend an inordinate amount of time in what I call "my office/studio".
There's three whacking big monitors on my desk, a couple of Mac Pros under the desk, a MacBook Pro, speakers, mixer, audio outboard gear, USB hubs, microphones and wires, lot's and lot's of wires. Much as I try to keep it tidy, it doesn't take long for it to descend into an untidy mess.
Add in the fact, I want to re-organise the studio to do more live streaming and be able to do spontaneous videos at the drop of a hat, it's time to get serious about sorting the mess out.
Another issue I have is the lack of working space on my desk. It's a big desk, but I built a shelf for the monitors to raise them up slightly, but this reduces the working area significantly.
So what to do!
First action will be to sort out the monitors to remove the shelf and free up some working area. Ideally, I'd like to have all three monitors on articulated arms that would allow me to move and position them. Once the monitors are free from standing on the desk, it would give me oodles of room, and allow me to position the monitors exactly where I want them.
Enter my good friend Victor Cajiao of the Typical Mac User Podcast. Victor made contact with "Monitors in Motion" at Macworld this year - purveyors of fine articulated arms for the Mac and PC. He managed to snag a couple for review (at a discount) and ended up keeping them.
You can see the results of Victors efforts in a short video here.
Hmm... I thought, I wonder what they could do for a three monitor system. A quick email to Victor and he put me in touch with his contact.
After an exchange of emails, the guys over at Monitors in Motion suggested this beast:
The Triple Boa!
The Triple Boa is machined from Pure aluminium and capable of supporting up to three 30" displays. I currently have a 30" and two 20" Dells so that should be adequate.
The only stipulation I gave was that it may potentially need to support up to three 27" Apple Cinema Displays (if Apple ever release them!) so I'm taking the long term approach to future planning.
As this is a special order, it's taking a while to put together, but the guys seem to be taking a lot of care in making sure everything is just right. In the interests of full disclosure, Monitors in Motion are also allowing me to purchase the mount for review at a discount.
So that's the monitors sorted.
All I need to do is now decide how to tackle the wiring problem but I'll leave that for another post.
The probable scenario is that when I get back from WWDC, I'll do a complete tear down of the studio and rebuild from scratch including lighting. I will be videoing and blogging about the various stages so keep tuned as I start to assemble all the bits I need. Once the Triple Boa arrives I'll do some unboxing and perhaps rig it temporarily
Reader Comments (6)
Sounds like a neat solution Don - did you buy the VESA mounting kit for your Apple Cinema Display? I know for the new ones like the LED there is a special "kit" to remove the mounting bracket. I've heard a plastic credit card will work too.
Can't wait to see how this works out for you since I am in the planning stages of a studio redesign here as well.
Will be following with interest Don, and of course stealing any idea's that fit my needs :-)
Get the Quad Boa with a snap in mount for your iPad.
Anyone have any idea what the prices are for these mounts? They aren't on the website.
You could just smash down a wall and take over the dining room for extra space :-)
Hi Don
Looks like you will be very busy in the next few weeks sorting out your work space not a enviable job but interesting to the likes of us your followers.
How about a time laps video of the whole refurbishment process.
Cheers
Mike