Best products from r/TwinCities

We found 23 comments on r/TwinCities discussing the most recommended products. We ran sentiment analysis on each of these comments to determine how redditors feel about different products. We found 81 products and ranked them based on the amount of positive reactions they received. Here are the top 20.

6. NEEWER Adjustable Microphone Suspension Boom Scissor Arm Stand, Max Load 1 KG Compact Mic Stand Made of Durable Steel for Radio Broadcasting Studio, Voice-Over Sound Studio, Stages, and TV Stations

    Features:
  • 【Adjustable Microphone Boom Arm】 Conveniently adjust the angle and height of this mic boom arm to suit your vocal recording need—just loosen the adjustment knob and adjust the boom arm. It’s also easy to fold up and carry. Perfect for stage/studio recording, broadcasting, TV stations, and more
  • 【Stable Arm Support】 With the strong springs and metal positioning screws, the boom arm is compact yet stable enough to support a load of up to 3.3lb/1.5kg. And the springs don’t get in the way of tightening the adjustment knob
  • 【Desk Mounting Clamp】 The desk clamp has rubber padding to protect the desk surface from scratches and scuffs. Compatible with most desks with a desktop thickness of up to 2”/5.3cm
  • 【3/8” to 5/8” Screw Adapter & Mic Clip】 The 3/8” to 5/8” adapter allows you to mount a compatible microphone (like Blue Yeti or Blue Snowball) on the boom arm. It’s not compatible with Blue Yeti Nano which has a 1/4” thread mount. The microphone clip mounts a microphone with a shaft diameter of 1.26”/3.2cm to the boom arm
  • 【Cable Straps & Solid Base】 The five cable straps help organize your microphone cable and make the boom arm look neat. The base connector is solid for durable and reliable holding
NEEWER Adjustable Microphone Suspension Boom Scissor Arm Stand, Max Load 1 KG Compact Mic Stand Made of Durable Steel for Radio Broadcasting Studio, Voice-Over Sound Studio, Stages, and TV Stations
▼ Read Reddit mentions

Top comments mentioning products on r/TwinCities:

u/mstrblueskys · 2 pointsr/TwinCities

I have a buddy who runs a music studio, but if you needed the space, he'd definitely set it up for a podcast interview.

I do tend to agree that you should be able to get pretty close to studio sound on a budget assuming you have a computer already. I understand that sometimes owning stuff is a huge hassle itself, but if it's something you want to do a few times, the cost savings would start to be there.

Since no one has given you any real advice on how to do this, I can give it a shot.

I'd start by installing Audacity on your computer. It's super basic, but what you're doing is super basic. And it's super free. That's a huge plus.

Next, decide how you want to do microphones. First, you'll want stands. If it's an interview/two person thing, you'll need a couple of these (or more if you want more mics). We're at $25 for two now.

Next, decide what quality you want to be at. The Blue Snowball is a pretty great entry level microphone. I've honestly never run two into a computer before, but I imagine it'd be easy enough to record two different microphones on two different tracks in Audacity. That would bring our total to around $150. To upgrade in this way, you would go to something like the Blue Yeti. At over $100/unit, that adds another $100 to your cost.

The other way to do microphones is using a USB Interface for your computer and buying standard microphones. I'm keen on that option because it's a little more flexible if and when you look to upgrade your setup. You can use $15 microphones to get by or if you're locked and loaded, you can upgrade to really nice condensers.

As far as soundproofing goes, you can decide if that's possible wherever you're at. The last voice over project I worked on, I hung blankets in my bedroom and that was perfectly fine. Obviously that's not the most professional look, but there wasn't a pile of ambient noise to deal with and the directional mics do a good job focusing on your voice. You can build sound dampening walls with plywood, insulation, and fabric if you really want. It takes a staple gun, some screws, and about an hour per panel.

Assuming you have the time, an okay computer, and about $300, you could really build yourself a nice studio. If this is a one off kind of thing, it's definitely not worth it. My buddy's place is called, The Petting Zoo and I'd be more than willing to ask him details if you want.

Either way, good luck!

u/The_Dirty_Carl · 3 pointsr/TwinCities

They're upselling you, hard. Keep in mind that they make a commission off of sales.

A $400-$800 bike will last you as long as you could possibly want, and if you're a beginner you won't be able to tell the difference between the parts on that and the parts on a $1500 bike. Hell, I spent three summers building bikes in a bike shop, and the only ones that stood out to me as significantly different were the Electras, which were garbage (you're paying for the paint job with those).

The guys at that shop aren't lying to you about the quality of the parts and smoothness, but the function of a $1500 bike will not be twice as good as $750 bike. The difference will be much less pronounced. They are misleading you about the frequency of maintenance, though. That will not be meaningfully different. Getting the brakes and derailleurs back in "whack" is also not terribly difficult, and is something you can do yourself with the help of Youtube.

My advice is to test ride a bunch of bikes under $800 and buy the one that feels best. Use thirty bucks of that savings to buy needle-nose pliers, a three way, and whatever other wrenches fit your bike. Go on Youtube and look up brake adjustments and derailleur adjustments. I just noticed you're looking for hydraulic disk brakes, and the good news is that those are the easiest sorts of brakes to tune - they're pretty much golden out-of-the-box, and there's no cable to stretch over time. If you ever drop the wheels out, make sure to put a shim between the brake pads, as they'll work themselves together over time and that is no fun.

Also, don't forget about the used market. These bikes aren't changing a whole lot from year-to-year, despite what the sales folks may tell you. You can save a lot by getting a bike from someone compulsively upgrading or someone who bought a mountain bike only to discover they actually wanted a hybrid or road bike.

If you want to buy new (and I certainly understand the appeal!), shops will have sales at the end of the summer where they're trying to clear out this year's inventory. They'll also have leftover stock of this year's models when the season starts next year, and they will really want to get rid of those.

u/Tacklebill · 6 pointsr/TwinCities

It has been said by others, but let me repeat for emphasis: Layers. I know lots of people that bitch about the cold but only wear a coat over a T-shirt. Come winter, I'm wearing some kind of undershirt/thermal, a flannel/chamois/wool shirt, a vest and then a coat. Merino wool socks are awesome. Smartwool is the name brand, but you can find store brands that are much cheaper. I would suggest some kind of waterproof shoe or boot for the snow.

Get several pairs of gloves. You will lose them and going to the store with one glove sucks. I personally think glommits are the bee's knees. Warmth+dexterity when needed. Embrace the hat and have fun with it.

People have talked about a winter kit for your car, which is a good idea, but how about your house? If you have newer, quality windows (double pane Low E glass) you probably don't need to do anything, but if you live in an older house with old, drafty windows getting window film might be a good idea. If you have a drafty door, there are many adhesive-backed foam strip products to help seal those up.

Bundle up and try to enjoy winter. To me there are few things as beautiful as a crisp sunny day after a fresh snow, where everything sparkles and glimmers. So long as you're inside and drinking a cup of coffee that is.

EDIT: spaces after links.

u/Kichigai · 5 pointsr/TwinCities

Probably because it's expensive.

The cameras that are being trialed right now cost like $600 apiece. That gets you hardware that's unintrusive, but only has about five hours of battery life at SD, and three hours in HD; plus it only has enough storage for six hours of HD video (source). Bumping that up adds cost and bulk to an already expensive device. But let's say someone does this, and it's $700 (probably $800, but let's be conservative). That's a cool half million just for one camera per officer. Of course, you're going to need more than that; gotta have spares on hand in case one breaks, malfunctions, gets damaged, wears out, whatever. So we'll round that up to $600,000 for cameras (which is also conservative, IMHO).

Then you have to find a way to store and log all that footage. So now you need additional storage space for all the data where nothing of note happens. So 800 officers times, let's say five hours a day (one hour to arrive, get briefed and orders, and get ready, one hour to get back and check in, and one hour for paperwork) times five days a week. At roughly 6MbPS that's 54 Terabytes of data per week. Now, I don't know about you, but to me 54TB seems like kind of a lot. I work in a video production facility and not that long ago we purchased a 48TB SAN that set us back like $56,000 (note: we were getting a discount because we were trading in some old gear, but let's stick with this number). Let's say that unless otherwise needed this stuff only gets stored "online" for three months, and is stored "offline" for three years (minimally; likely it'd be longer). So we need ~650TB of online storage, and at ~$56k per 48TB, we would need 14 units costing almost $800,000. Offline storage would likely be LTO, we'll assume it's LTO-7, which stores 6.4TB of data per tape, so we'd need 1,210 over three years. Now, LTO-7 hasn't been released yet, so all prices from here on out are for LTO-6, just as an FYI. A single LTO-6 tape costs ~$40, so 1,210 of them would cost close to $50,000. The cheapest LTO-6 drive is bout $2,300 and moves 1.45TB per hour. Moving a month's worth of video (we're not even talking about the ancillary data that would need to be attached to this stuff to make any sense) would take over six days.

So $600,000 for cameras, $800,000 for online storage, $52,300 for offline storage, and we haven't even gotten into the infrastructure to support all this. You can probably chalk up another $100,000 worth of networking and cooling gear (this stuff gets hot).

And this isn't insignificant IT stuff. You're going to have to hire someone to handle all this ingest. And someone's going to have to go through all five hours of footage generated each day and log the stuff. So we have to expand the payroll so we don't end up with unmanageable backlogs. I don't even know where that'll come in, but over the course of three years it'll probably cost more than the equipment.

u/706 · 7 pointsr/TwinCities

I work in the mental health field in the twin cities, and there are a ton of factors into what you will be getting from a therapist.

Its really important to remember that therapists aren't like doctor's. There is no 'skill set' for working with a disorder in the way a doctor can specialize in orthopedics or something. Therapists who say otherwise are either evangelists for what they think is the only/best type, or they are trying to sell you something.

Research on the effectiveness of therapists shows that about 70-80% of whether or not you will make progress through the process is based on your relationship with the therapist. The techniques a therapist specifically use to help someone is very tangential to helping clients. While its a bit dated at this point, you can read all about this in The Heroic Client by Barry L Duncan, Scott Miller, and Jacqueline Sparks.

What I would recommend looking for is someone that feels right. If you meet with a therapist and they don't feel right, find someone else. Finding the right therapist isn't the same as finding a friend though. 'Feels right' can mean whatever it needs to for you and your situation. I personally find therapists with a Cognitive Behavioral style to be so ineffective with many of my clients that they might as well have not gone to see a therapist. On the same token, I have a friend whose client's would most likely consider the same of me. Any therapist worth their salt knows that they don't work well with everyone, so don't be afraid to advocate for yourself and find someone else.

If you are going with insurance based services, you will need to be diagnosed with something. If you don't want to be diagnosed with something, you need to find a therapist who works without diagnoses, and takes cash. Something that just occurred to me, is that many private therapists I know will still give a client a diagnosis, so you may have better luck looking for a life coach or something similar if you don't want a diagnosis.

If you are just looking for chemical abuse knowledge, Licensed Drug and Alcohol Counselor's (LADC) specialize in that. To throw my two cents in about LADC's however, you get a really mixed bag. Some of them are just hard core anti drug warriors, and treat drugs as dangerous chemicals that you need to be saved from. Some of them focus on harm reduction. A rare few actually understand that drug use is not a sign of horribleness out of principle, and just want to help you with having a better life.

Another issue is price. You could be throwing down anything from about $50 an hour to $300. If you are willing to pay cash, many clinics provide a sliding scale based on your income.

Feel free to ask any other questions if you think of any.




u/phenger · 6 pointsr/TwinCities

I have a 12 yr old cat that started doing the same thing. There can be many issues that are leading up to this. I'll post more after I'm done eating dinner. Just know that it's absolutely possible (and quite likely) to fix this situation!

Edit:
Ok, so given what you're saying, this sounds like it's stress based behavior. The first thing that any vet is going to say is:

  • Have at least 1 more litter box than you have cats. If you have one cat, have 2 boxes. If you have 2 cats, have 3 boxes, etc.
  • Try different litter in different boxes. Cats can just up and decide that they don't like a litter if they're stressed (little pricks). Plus, a different litter can be "interesting" to them and help encourage them to use it. It's expensive, but have her give Cat Attract a try.
  • Have litter boxes in different locations in the house. If there's one spot in particular where the cat's going to the bathroom inappropriately, put a litter box there. On a side note, don't go out and purchase an expensive litter box for this test. Go to Target and pick up one of those wide and shallow Rubbermaid storage containers (like this, but a tad shorter) and use that as a litter box.
  • Try both hooded and un-hooded litter boxes. Some cats can decide they want privacy for doing their business (so, hoods are a good thing) while others can feel like they're trapped (hoods = bad) because any animal is vulnerable while they're using the bathroom. Given that this cat is more stressed now, this might be part of the problem.
  • If possible try to designate one spot in the house as "the cat's spot". This was the root of helping our cat get over part of her issues (the other was related to a medical condition). We have a spare bathroom in our apartment, so we made this her room. We put 2 baby gates up at night to confine her there, but give her free run of the house during the day. This helped her feel safe, and the other cat knows to stay away. In your friend's situation, she should keep the baby as far away from this "safe spot" as possible.
  • She may consider looking into a Feliway product to help reduce stress. They haven't worked for us, but I've heard of plenty of people that this worked for.

    I know that she's already spent a lot of mental energy (and at least some money) on this situation, but it will take patience for her to figure out what can change to help her cat cope with this. Cats are very social creatures, and in your friend's case she has a 15 year bond with this cat. She has been this cats only friend and social companion for its entire life, so of course bringing a baby into the mix (who she now has to focus her attention on, and who all home routines now revolve around) stresses the cat out.

    If your friend would like to talk, or if she has any specific questions, shoot me a message. If she wants to talk over the phone, I'd be happy to help Q&A there too. I'm not a vet, I'm not even a crazy cat lady (for one, I'm a guy). I'm just an IT guy with 2 old cats who went through a lot to figure out what was wrong with them.
u/demoux · 1 pointr/TwinCities

I don't have one, but it looks like at least the Best Buy in Inver Grove Heights might. Though it says there are 3 in stock, so you might want to order online and choose in-store pick up.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/microsoft-wall-charger-for-microsoft-surface-pro-3-and-4-and-microsoft-surface-book-black/4610900.p?id=1219776964093&skuId=4610900

If you price match them to Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Surface-Power-Supply-65W/dp/B01698T1TC (or at least try to) you can save a few bucks.

I only have a Surface RT, which has a totally different charger. Sorry, man, wish I could help.

u/BMXTKD · 2 pointsr/TwinCities

You will die in those jackets. Literally.

Here's my winter setup.....

  1. Jeep cap. Keeps the sun out of your eyes and it keeps you warm. You can get them at Ragstock for 5$
  2. A pair of good winter gloves, and a pair of those cheap stretchy winter gloves. Wear the stretchy winter gloves underneath the thick winter gloves. A good tip on whether a pair of gloves are going to be warm, is if you hold a McDonald's cup of ice water tightly against them. If you can feel the cold cup, then they're no good. If you can't, then stay with them.
  3. Your legs will get cold too, so buy a pair of base layer pants. Maybe double up. Wear them underneath your regular pants.
  4. Get a good pair of snowpants to go over your regular pants. Again, McDonald's cup of ice water trick.
  5. Get a base layer shirt to go underneath your regular shirt.
  6. Get a good, thick jacket. Do the ice water thing for the jacket too. My personal favorite kind of jacket is an ice fishing jacket.
  7. Ski goggles. Sounds weird, but your eyes will get cold too.
  8. [A neoprene mask] (https://www.amazon.com/ZANheadgear-WNFM114H-Black-Neoprene-Half/dp/B000LVZVNE/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=neoprene+mask&qid=1573108443&sr=8-1) . They keep your face warm.
  9. 2 good pairs of wool socks. Yes, 2. It gets that cold.
  10. A thick pair of high top skateboard shoes, if you're going to avoid getting winter boots. High top Osiris shoes are good alternatives to winter boots. But you're going to have to get them waterproofed. They're naturally thick.
  11. Ice cleats.
u/NeilOld · 1 pointr/TwinCities

If you end up remaining outside (which, unless you've got the money, doesn't sound like a bad idea) you might want to snag a brass-bladed ice scraper like so. The brass is harder than ice and softer than glass and speeds up the cleaning of the windows pretty well.

u/bushidonixon · 1 pointr/TwinCities

If you want to be fancy with your car scraping, get a regular scraper w/ brush AND one of these units. Nothing clears ice on glass like bronze.

u/jaogiz · 3 pointsr/TwinCities

I have this digital TV box here:
Mediasonic Homeworx HW180STB 3 / 4 Channel HDTV Digital Converter Box with Recording and Media Player

And a simple antenna like this.

I get around 30 channels, maybe even more (most I do not watch). The digital TV box can record like a DVR to a USB hard drive and I use that frequently. The digital signals all carry a 'guide' for each channel that goes about 2-3 days out so you can pick stuff to record in the future.

AntennaWeb.org can tell you which channels should be available in your area.

u/ihadisr · 1 pointr/TwinCities

This scraper is how I survive winter. It makes butter out of frost and ice. The brass blade is magic.