YouTube Transcript:
WaveForm Unhinged: Episode 1: Erin & I Spill the Truth About References – Not All of Them Are Good!

No, no, no. Okay. All right. I mean, it
won't be really edited, but it's it
unless really stupid. I just didn't know
if it was being done now. Okay, I'll
quit talking. You're good. Hey, Aaron.
Welcome to the new podcast that I am
starting called Waveform Unhinged. How
you doing, dude? I'm good, man. I'm
happy to uh I'm happy to join you.
Thanks. I appreciate it. As you can tell
with the way I'm holding this mic, it's
a very nonchalant just like two bros
talking kind of podcast. And with this,
I guess particular podcast, I want to
talk about
references and kind of what I've been
hearing around the audio community on
like what a reference is and what people
consider a good or bad reference. And
I'm going to start with this. So, oh
yeah, and this could be very
controversial. So, let's just have fun
with it. Look, I'm engaging
controversial mood or mode right now.
So, I was at the Florida Expo, okay? And
everyone was very excited to go see
these very expensive speakers and rooms
and whatnot. And I want to talk about
one particular room where they had these
like several
hundred,000 speakers, right? Apparently
they're made out of granite, so they're
very heavy, right? Mhm. And it was a
very large room. Uh minimum 20 by 20
minimum, if not 30. It was a very large
room. Yeah. And these
for your international audience feet.
Yeah. Yeah. You'll get that. You'll have
somebody in the comments say, "Give it
to me a metric." So, I'm just letting
you know. Yeah. Okay. You'll learn. I'll
learn at some point. You'll figure it
out. I'll have Google set up on the
other side to like Yeah. No, you got to
Sometimes I even just say, you're gonna
have to Google that because I don't have
time, but you'll have people ask. All
right. Well, the comments I will fix it
whenever. Just delete. Yeah. Yeah.
So they were probably 13 feet apart,
left to right. Like that's how far these
speakers were, if not further apart,
okay? And in the middle you had
these that thick speaker wire with
speaker stands and Macintosh amps and
all that fun stuff. Okay? And they had a
whole bunch of chairs, but they had one
in particular maybe 2 feet away from
where their speaker was. And that was
their sweet spot. And people were
sitting there. And I'm like, "Oh my
gosh, the imaging is so wide and oh,
it's so pinpoint and all these buzz
terms." And I was just so confused and I
was like, "How?" One, it didn't sound
that good. You can definitely tell the
room was not in any way good. Um, but it
was just interesting how people were
like convincing themselves because these
speakers were expensive that that's the
way it should have sounded. So, I just
kind of want your opinion on
like why do people think that the value
of a
system correlates to how good it is
because I mean you review a lot of
speakers from budget all the way up to I
mean I know you've done the the blades
and other kind. So talk to Yeah. Yeah.
Um you know I think people just want to
believe man like Yeah. in everyday life
most of the time with the things that
you use on a daily life not commodity
things but things you actually use uh
typically you do get what you pay for so
I think people expect that uh but then
again it's like you shouldn't expect
that because you should know better from
from electronics and things of that
nature you should know better you know I
don't know man I think people just want
to believe I think that's really what it
boils down to what you typically will
run into is there's there's segments of
price and performance
And you've got to throw in the aesthetic
in there, too. Because if it's always
just raw price versus raw performance,
Yeah. and the overall aesthetic isn't
factored in, then it can go any number
of different ways. But what I've tend to
find is that, you know, for example, and
I say this a lot, a bookshelf speaker
around 800 to a,000 bucks is kind of
like the sweet spot for the best
performance that you're going to get for
like a standard bookshelf speaker as far
as value goes, right? certainly do
better if you spend more, but that's
kind of that sweet spot for value. And
then when you get above that, then you
get to the point where you're maybe
getting incremental gains, you know,
like in car audio where we go from a
vifa tweeter to a scanse tweeter and it
the scans speak is so much better, but
is it 200 times better in our car?
Right? Like those are questions you have
to justify. Yeah. So, when you get up to
that price point, then you either
actually do better, but it's just a lot
more expensive, or now we're introducing
the looks and you get a really nice
looking speaker, but the performance is
set back to one that's maybe like $500.
So, there's always that, you know, that
rolling kind of where are you coming in
from and what do you plan on buying?
What do you plan on getting? Uh, I'm
just more surprised if you're saying
that they were two feet away
from the the speaker like the the line
between the speakers. Yeah, the line the
line. That's dumb. Oh. Oh. Oh, I know.
That's not even remotely how it should
be. I know. I was like even just like
the just perfect triangle. Just the
easiest thing you do like just figure
out how put yourself in there and call
it a day. Done. And I know I know you
talk about this constantly in your
channel. Um, but it's just like it it
baffled me how like people were like
sitting there and they were like getting
emotional and I'm like what is happening
here? And it it just it just surprised
me. And like even people in the like car
community were like dude I s that room
and it was just life-changing or like
whatever you know whatever buzz word you
want to put. I was just like you know
and when I was hearing that I'm like
okay I have to hear this room like
what's so special about it? And then
luckily they were kind enough to play
one of my favorite songs which is it
takes three to tango which is full
instrumental and it has a clarinet bass
clarinet um in the very first 30 seconds
has a killer 100 hertz note in 315 that
will just excite any car or room
instantly and the very first thing it
did was just like completely lose itself
the second that note comes in. And funny
enough, Bri was there and the dude that
was like, you know, showing off this he
was like, "So, what you think?" And Bri
was like, "Not good." And the dude was
just like set back. He was like,
"Really?" She was like, "Yeah, it's it's
not good." And like, you know, I mean,
it's just the truth. I mean, I feel like
people really want to hear, "Oh, it's
the best thing ever." There's a lot of
ego in home audio, just like there is
car audio. And uh in car audio, to to
really have a good system, you have to
be humbled a few times. Yeah. So I I
still I have some instances early on
where I was really humbled and I still
get humbled. Um yeah, I'm just really
surprised that they were listening that
close. It just says a lot. And there the
other thing about those shows that I've
noticed is that
when you go All right. So as a
reviewer, I see other reviewers put out
their content. Yeah. And it'll be
magazines or online websites or YouTube
kind of guys. and they'll put out online
content
and I'll see them at the shows and I'll
talk with most of them because you know
I'm at least friends friend friendly
with most of them and I'll see where
they're listening from and all this
stuff and I'm kind of like oh that's all
right well okay maybe you get a better
seat later on and then they wrote
something up and they're like yeah I was
sitting off to the side and it sounded
all these ways and I was like dude what
like you're supposed to be like this
genius reviewer who's been doing this
for 30 years and you still don't know
that you got to sit in the sweet spot
like h so there's There's a lot of
weirdness that goes on at those shows. I
just don't get it, man. Well, true. And
then, you know, and even at those shows,
and we'll kind of move away from talk
about, you know, decentiz speakers, but
yeah, it's funny how you have this room
that's not treated at all.
And anyone who watches your channels
knows you don't need a treated room with
certain speakers. You know, that's why
you have certain characteristics. Reason
why I bought my first JBL synthesis was
because of your channel. and you're
like, "These are dispersion patterns,
offaxis, on axis, directivity index, and
how EQable it is." And I was like, "I'm
not going to go. I'm not going to have a
treated room. Let me buy speakers that
work in an untreated room." Um, and then
I upgraded to the Rebels um after seeing
your review on the 226. And then I got
the 8 in versions of those. And guess
what? Untreated room. They work great.
Yeah. Um, I personally for the towers, I
went for the 208 versus the 228s. I like
the silk tweeter a little bit better.
Yeah, that's just my personal
preference.
Um, but these rooms that are in these
like hotels, they have like one seat
which is a sweet spot if you will and
then you have like these huge like other
seats and rows and people are just
talking and walking. I'm you guys aren't
actually getting any viable information
on how good the speaker actually is.
Yeah. Um, I think you were the one who
mentioned it in your channel. you were
like, "It's really cool seeing like SVS
or other speaker manufacturers like
here, we'll send it to you to your home.
Try it and if you don't like it, return
it back, right?" Um, you know, I think
that's something that more people should
adopt because you don't know what it
sounds like until it's in your room.
Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Um, I I think that
the main benefit of these shows is if
you're kind of interested in something,
you get to see it in real life. I mean,
and maybe you listen to it in that hotel
room, but the problem is that a good
speaker is going to sound pretty much
the same in most rooms. Yeah, a bad
speaker is not. And you don't know if
it's a good speaker or a bad speaker by
just seeing it in that room. You don't
and you really ideally you have
measurements to make that objective
determination. Is this objectively a
good speaker? What's the radiation off
axis? Does it match the on- axis tamber
and all these kind of things? And if it
does, then you know it's probably going
to perform well in a variety of
different rooms. And if it doesn't, then
it's going to be very room dependent.
It's going to be very aim dependent,
position dependent, and all those other
things, too. So, I I think and I hope I
guess that most of the people who are
going to these shows are going to maybe
just get hands-on, maybe to kind of
check some of the stuff out in person,
maybe get a little bit of a demo, but
then also meet other audio people, too.
Enthusiast. Yeah. And then what you do
is, hey, I've settled down. These
speakers look really cool. I've got
maybe a handful of these. I'm going to
find a local dealer who I can work with
or, you know, I'll order them from a
place that has a a good return policy
and then I'll send them back and pay. I
think it's worth like Crutchville, you
know, has maybe a restocking fee and
it's not too much. I think when you're
spending considerable money on maybe
speakers that you plan to last you for a
long time, take a hit on that 75 bucks
or whatever it is on that restocking
fee. Try them out in your home for sure.
But yeah, so I know you're talking about
the Accora speakers because those are
the ones I can think of that are
granite. Yeah. What are those? I'm
interested in those. The last ones I saw
were their bookshell speakers. And I'm
like, those are Scanspeak drivers. Yep.
And that's a Scanspe Twitter and that's
a Scansspeak illuminator. The first
thing I said I was like, those are
scans. Yeah. And it's it's crazy, too.
That's like, man, I really am so blessed
to have been part of the car audio
community and and still am, I hope. Um.
Yeah. Because I've learned. You're
always welcomed. Yeah. Well, I
appreciate that. I've learned so much,
man, by doing and building and listening
and talking to all these people and and
the DIY aspect that now when I see these
uber expensive speakers and they're
using I mean granted some of them were
using Scan Speak illuminators, they're
like $300, $400 a pop. Yeah. But they're
charging60 or $70,000 for the pair of
speakers. You're like, well, I think
these were $250,000 or 300,000. Jeez,
that's insane, dude. And I that's the
part that I didn't understand. I'm like,
where is this money coming from? I get
it. Grant's not cheap. Cool. But like
you're just ship. Yeah, 100%. I'm like
but you're just using the material to
say using the material at that point in
time. I think so too. I don't think
you're gaining any benefit. I think
there can be benefits in just you know
how how dead it really is but
realistically you know a well- bracraced
well damped speaker box and enclosure
can do that too. Um I don't think people
can some of those attributes they assign
to them I don't think are realistic to
be able to hear. Well a lot of it's just
marketing. you know, they'll they'll
figure out how to market in some way
that they're the only person doing this
and our technology is superior. I mean,
I all the time I seriously could make a
killing in audio if I wanted to. And
like I seriously, man, because I've got
the resources behind me. I've got people
that would back me. I know enough about
what people are willing to buy. Yeah.
That I can make a killing doing this
stuff, man. Just have I could farm it
out, have somebody else build everything
for me and still make a killing. Yeah.
Yeah. Well, especially with the
knowledge you know and the tools you
have, like you said, like you can start
making stuff. Yeah. And have your name
behind it and have the data to prove it
because most companies don't have the
data like you'll be able to show and do
like it'll it'll just be next level. But
yeah, but you mean you got you got to
feel good about charging way too much
money, you know, like these guys that
are charging 10,000 15,000 whatever
crazy amount of money for some speaker
wire. It's like all right, at some point
it feels like you're just creating
robbery. like but people are paying this
so whose fault is it? Perfect. All
right, let's just transition to that
because that's one question I have for
you. All right, so I am in
the crowd. Let's use that word. Oh,
okay. That as long as it's good OFC.
Mhm. It doesn't have any type of like
corrosion or any of that nonsense.
Cable's a cable. And I've taken apart
the Rebels in terms of the speakers and
I'm like I wonder what kind of speaker
wire do they have back here because I
see people I don't have huge huge shout
out to John Centers. He gave me some
pretty expensive speaker cables. He was
just like here I have no use for these.
You can use them. Very nice. Nice
braided. I mean they're about I don't
know 2 in round maybe 3 in. But hey,
when I took out that tweeter, it had
very cheap cables in there, right? And
with nothing crazy. And because you
know, you understood that the money was
spent on the cabinets and the crossover
network. Like that's where the money's
at. All the R&D that went into it
before. Yeah. The stuff you don't see.
Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And I know Dr.
Floyd Tulle mentioned this. He was like,
why you people spending so much money on
cabling? Doesn't matter. But that's just
my observation. And you know, dude, I've
I've tried expensive cables, especially
in car audio. You know, everyone does
it. for sure. And I' I've noticed zero
difference. What's your input on that?
Uh I tend to say get whatever cable
works that won't corrode like you said
in car because I've I've had some that
has corroded when I've gone and do a new
build three or four months later. Um
it's it's green, dude. It's literally
oxidized rust. It's like what the heck?
It was actually monoprice wire that I
used back then. Um I've used alligator
clips. Yeah. Yeah, I've used alligator
clips. Uh Kelly, one of my friends who
competes, he from Tennessee, he came
over to help me with an install one day
and he was underneath the car and he was
doing something. I can't remember now.
And he gets out, he comes over and he's
like, "What is this?" I got like a 18
gauge little alligator clip and that's
how I have my amp connected to my
tweeter up underneath the dash. And I
was like, "You see what it is?" Like
I've been competing like like, "Dude, it
works." Buts. Yeah, I definitely agree
that you just get the cable that makes
the most sense. I don't know for sure
that you couldn't tell the difference in
maybe like a really really thin gauge
cable and a really really thick cable.
But that's the only case that I can just
logically think of because I've played
around with different cables and things
like that my own and I'm actually
working on organizing a true blind
testing event. Oh, ABX testing. Yeah.
Yeah. locally with cables and then amps
and things of that nature because I want
to do some of this stuff and put out the
information online. Um, basically just
reinvent the wheel. But yeah, man, I
think if you're worried about cable,
then that means that everything else is
locked up. Yeah. And ready to go. And
most likely it's probably not. You
probably got other things you can focus
on in a home or especially in a car.
Yeah. You know, and to me personally,
like the way I kind of I'm a very like
objective kind of person. Um, and the
very first thing I noticed that for just
OEM use, like car, like car use, not car
audio, just car. Yeah. The wires that
they use to transfer data and all that
to the car is not it's not thick. It's
very thin wires. And it's like, if this
is like OE grade and it works for 20, 30
years in a Honda, doesn't corrode, has
no issues, right? Why are we worrying
about cables when
your deadening isn't even right. Like
you have a million rattles and you're
trying to You're over you're telling me
like, "Dude, like the width got so much
better because I had this one brand new
USB cable with a wooden box in between
it and blah blah blah." I'm just like,
"What? What? What are you guys talking
about?" Maybe if there's some kind of
like phase rotation device in the signal
path of that cable, maybe. But maybe,
you know, I really and truly people hear
what they want to hear, man. Yeah, I
mean I've seen
I guarantee you that at least half of
the people who are going to watch this
video, if they've been doing car audio
for any number of years, they can
probably think of at least one occasion
where they thought they made a change in
their DSP and they heard that change and
then later they found out they didn't
hear that change. Yep. I I I mean this
happened to me many times. Happens to
me, too. Yeah. And the the best part I
love is when people like make a small
change or hold up. You know what I
really love doing? And I'm going to like
I'm going to tell everybody whoever
watches this. I love it when like
someone's like, "Oh, dude, I feel like I
hear something." I'm like, "Cool." And I
take out the laptop. I'm like, "Try to
fix this." And I just like tap the
keyboard, make no change. And like, "Oh,
dude, it got so much better." I'm like,
"Oh, awesome." Yeah, that's cool, man.
Nothing changed. Nothing changed. I
adjusted 250 plus 3dB and now it's more
warm. Oh, dude. I love when people say
quarter dB or like a 0.1. Yeah, that
that's the one where I'm
like a half. Okay. A dB. Sure. Oh, for
sure. You know, um when you start
getting into quarters, yeah, your
threshold of hearing, I'm just like I
think if you just tap the keyboard, like
you said, that probably be enough to
make you think you heard the difference.
Exactly. Exactly. I just I really think
that and I and I say this because
there's absolutely people watching this
are going to listen to it and going to
say, "Oh, I disagree." But I think if
they were honest with themselves and
they actually did true blind testing
Yeah. on some of these little itty bitty
things, they wouldn't notice a
difference at all and they could easily
be tricked into thinking they did. Oh,
100%. And that's kind of why I'm I c,
you know, created waveform on hinge to
talk about these topics with experts
like yourself, you know, to like shine
the light, especially to like new people
coming into this. dude. Like, hey guys,
like I know there's a lot of stuff on
the internet people say, but that's not
the foundation. Yeah. And money should
not be spent on $5,000 RCAs when you
don't even have proper dentening or even
crossover's wrong. Like, you've got too
low of a crossover. Like, I don't care.
I don't care that your cable cost you
$5,000 when you're running your
mid-range down to 100 and it should have
been crossed at 300. And all I'm hearing
is just distortion. Distortion. or hey,
let's run a midbase all the way down to
40 hertz. That's a midbase driver. Let's
play midbase out of it. Yeah. You know,
and any appreciable volume at least, you
know, low volume, sure. But if I turn it
up because I want to listen to it, and
the majority of us came from being bass
heads, yeah, we're going to crank it.
So, 100%. It has 10 out of 10 times has
yet to prove me wrong. I've had so many
customers tell me, I don't listen loud,
then I tune it and they love it. What's
the first thing they do? Start clamping
on it. Because that's what you do. like
when whenever it sounds correct, you're
going to start enjoying it. I mean, the
very I think in the first 30 seconds of
when I tuned your Tesla, you went full
tilt. And that was actually by accident
because you I think the steering wheel
was turning. You were trying to go down,
you went up. Yeah. And you just launched
it. I was like, Yeah. Cuz I remember
looking at you and being like, let's
just see what it can do. Turn it up, you
know, cuz I want to know like I want to
know, can I break this? Can anybody else
break this? I mean, that's when I first
started into this, it was all about, you
know, all about the bass and no treble.
Um, but every system that I ever built
was with the mindset that if I toss
somebody the keys to my car and I don't
hang around and babysit them while they
demo it, are they going to break it?
Because, you know, that's the other
thing, too, is when I first got into it,
people would sit in next to you. You'd
be demoing their car and they sit right
next to you. And I'm like, I can't
listen because I feel weird because
you're sitting there staring at me
waiting for you to say or wait for me to
say something to you about how awesome.
So, it got to the point where I was
like, "Well, I'm not going to do that.
Here's my keys. I'll be over there
somewhere. Just come get me when you're
done." Yeah. Uh, but in order to do
that, you have to be able to let your
car take a beating. Um, yeah. Yeah.
Like, I think it's an interesting topic
and you can stop me if you think it's
not, but
kind of in the same vein about making
changes to somebody not knowing. Yeah. I
cannot tell you the number of times that
when I was really heavy on the forums on
DIY mobile audio and a lot of us
competitors were, we would purposely
before a show or a get together meet, we
would
purposely say something in our build log
or post a picture in our build log that
wasn't really the truth because we
wanted to get people thinking that we
were making this change. Um,
interesting. And then like it goes back
decades now and Clifton who was
listening, I'm sure, can jump in on
this. People
would just the easiest one is they would
put a tweeter in the pillar, you know,
or put a tweeter on the sale panel and
it wouldn't even be active. It was just
there for looks and a judge would get
on, oh, it sounds really wide and it's
like everything's buried in the dash
pointers. Yeah. So, it's super easy to
trick somebody. I think if you want
certain effects out of your system
because a judge and you get continuous
feedback that this is the case. Yeah.
That a judge wants X, Y, or Z. Before
you try to do anything crazy, just stick
a fake tweeter there. I mean, you can
buy blown tweeters at at online or eBay
or parts express tweeters all day long
for nothing. Just put it there or put
some put some grill cloth in its place
to make think somebody think that you
got something there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
No, I can't agree more. I feel like a
lot unless you start really like
training your ears. Yeah. Most of it is
just in your head. And I I I tell this
constantly to people because I find it
funny. It kind of relates back to
references in a car, especially when we
think about bass up front or width being
out or depth. That's all in our head
because that's what's actually
happening. Like the sub is in the back
or up front or your mids are in the
dash, right? In just in my car, in your
car. That's objectively where it's at.
That's it. Everything else that we're
hearing is just the way our ears are
telling our brain how to interp what our
ears are hearing and interpreting. So
it's all kind of an illusion. So it's
very easy to trick people if from the
beginning objectively things aren't even
happening there and it's just subjective
listening. Yeah. Well, stereo itself is
an illusion. Yes. That's what it's
designed to be. And then the recording,
you know, like what we hear depends so
much on the recording. When your
system's done, it's done. You're not
you're not getting crazy stuff out of
your system um just because. Right. So
the the very interesting thing is you
can take different masterings and play
them and you'll get different sounds and
you can take different mixes and play
them and you'll get different sounds and
and I give this example a lot and I know
a lot of people don't care but uh
there's a processing of mastering called
Q sound and one of my favorite albums is
the Madonna right Immaculate Collection
and I remember the first time I listened
to it I was like whoa this sounds like
it's coming from all around me and I
thought oh my stereo is rocking and then
at some point down the line I heard
one of those songs again, but it wasn't
from that same album. It was from one of
her original albums, right? So, it
wasn't done in the same way. And I was
like, "Oh, it doesn't sound as wide."
So, I'm here I am just trying to figure
out like playing with the laptop, making
all these adjustments and trying to
figure it out. And I don't know how long
it took me until I realized that it was
done in a different format. You know, it
was all in the recording. It was baked
in. So, I say that to say that if you go
to a show and you hear somebody's car
and it's playing this song and it sounds
this way, make sure to ask them what
they're streaming off of, what the CD
master is, etc., and then listen back to
your system with that exact same version
before you try to go chasing your tail
to make a change that you probably don't
even need to make a change for. Yeah.
Yeah. No, I could not agree more. I was
actually just playing Vogle the way up
to uh Ohio. Oh. And I was like, you
know, I haven't heard in a long time.
And I was just like, I want to see how
it sounds. And the very first thing like
with the intro, we like, what are you
looking at? And it was just like
everywhere. I'm like, what is happening?
Like, this is so cool. And then the bass
comes, it's like just just on the dash.
It's like doing thing. I'm like, some
it's some good reference music. It
really This is some cool track. I get
slaughtered from the home audio guys
because they're like, "Man, you need to
start listening to jazz or elevator
music." I'm like, "Dude, that stuff
sucks." Yeah, I would never listen to
that. If I'm enjoying a system, I'm
going to listen to what I want to listen
to. I don't care if it's Rat, Dawan,
Madonna, Raising his Machine, Jim
Croachi. Like, I don't care. If I like
the song, I'm going to listen to it. I'm
not gonna That's because we're music.
Exactly. Music. Yeah. Yeah. That's You
don't get me on a rant here. But yeah.
No, I hear you, man. I I'm with you.
Like, I started car audio along I mean,
I've always been into audio since I was
a kid. Like, quick story about Miguel. I
remember being in Puerto Rico when I was
like three. Yeah. My memory goes back
that far. And I had like a little
tricycle with a little boom box on it
like just like duct taped to it and like
I remember that clear as day. Like I've
always been into audio now just as an
adult. Yeah. My car is that tricycle,
you know? And I just like I I love
enjoying music. Every part of my
existence. I always have something
playing. That's just who I am. I think
the the vast majority of us in this
hobby are probably that way on the car
audio side. I've noticed in the home
audio side, there's a lot more like if
you take it in ratios, right? There's a
lot more people on the home audio side
who are just going after the the audio
jewelry, right? They're not really music
first. It really is the object first.
Car audio isn't really like that
because, you know, you really don't get
to see it in car. You don't get to drive
from the back of your trunk unless
you're, I don't know, somebody like
Brian Mitchell or something like that
where you get to see everything in front
of you or Chris Payton in his Civic, you
know, where you got everything up front.
But yeah, I mean, so the jewelry stuff
is like the extra stuff in car audio,
the jewelry stuff in home audio, it is
the extra stuff, but you see it. So
people go after that more directly than
they do after the the replay and the
music playback. It's more of a furniture
piece and Yeah. I mean, a lot of it too
is architectural. I mean, really. Yeah.
So, you run into a lot of people who are
really kind of uppy about what they
because they've been trained, oh, audio
files have to listen to this, so to be
an audio file, I also have to listen to
this. It's like, no, dude, music first.
You know, you talked about you. I've got
a picture of me when I was like two or
three dancing on my coffee table to uh
Michael Michael Jackson's Thriller. And
then I have really fond memories, and
I'm going say this because I'm curious
if anybody listening also remembers this
when I was about eight or nine. So this
is like way before your time is probably
like 189 1989. You wait 18. Hold up. How
old are you, bro? Hey, look. I age well.
What can I say? Probably 89 or 90. They
had these things called pocket rockers
and it was like a little miniature
cassette tape like probably like that
big, you know, and it had one song on
one side and another song on the other
side. So I had two that I can remember.
I had uh the Bengals and uh like Walk
Like an Egyptian. I can't remember what
the other song was. And then I had Huie
Lewis in the news. um hit to be square
and I remember just riding up and down
my street on my bike just listening to
that over and over. Yeah, dude. Just
over and over like get down to the other
end, flip it around, ride to the other
end, you know? So, yeah, dude. It's
music first for sure. Music's always
first, you know, and I've gotten an
appreciation for like good masterings
and like, you know, because the circle
confusion exists, you know, whoever's
read Dr. Floyd Tool's book, it's very
apparent. Long story short, for people,
the listeners and watchers that don't
know, essentially the recording studio
has their own setup that they have and
how they tune to for their speakers and
then that gets reproduced to your send
and then yours has a completely
different like coloration or
characteristics to that and then it's
just continuous loop of no one actually
knows what the artist like intended
because the artist isn't there. Yeah.
Even the artist doesn't know sometimes
because I mean what they what they got
is different than what the producer came
up with, you know? No, 100%. And just
like you said with like the Q sound, I'm
pretty sure Madonna didn't want what are
you looking at to come from like
everywhere in your car, but it was cool.
She probably gave it her blessing at
some point, but the original album
wasn't like that, you know, so they go
and change it completely to get
something else. No, 100%. But music is
fun and that's why we do this for um for
sure. But let's talk
about All right, this is going to be a
fun one. Okay,
so do bigger drivers, yes, produce a
bigger sound stage? No. Okay, cool. I
know that. But a lot of people think No,
that the only way to have a big sound is
to have a 5 in or 6 inch mid-range. And
that if you take a bookshelf and you
take a tower, well, the tower is going
to have a much bigger end. You know, I
know
that I'm trying to figure out if I
should say this or not. I feel like I
should just should. If you're gonna say
a name, maybe not, but not a name. Okay.
A brand. No. A car audio company that
makes money. There are classes out
there, okay, that have several different
references
with different size drivers that
apparently produce different size
images. I'm going leave it as that. The
people who know
know different size drivers inside a an
an enclosure a home for a home will
produce or can produce a different image
in terms of size.
Yeah. So I know that that that's not
correct from honestly from you. It was a
video you produced years ago. Yeah. And
you literally you know we you talked
about this and I was like that makes so
much sense. But I feel like a lot of
people just kind of like don't pay
attention sometimes, you know, to that
because it makes too much sense and
they're like, "Aaron can't be right." So
I'm bringing it up now again because
you're spot on on that. So why why is it
that it doesn't produce a bigger sound
stage or bigger image? Well, like so the
first thing you got to think about is
you have to be you have to establish the
difference between nearfield and
farfield. And and there's two different
ways that the term nearfield is used.
One is for you're close enough to where
the reflections in the room don't
matter. And near field is typically
going to be like desktop speakers or if
you're an engineer, you're in a studio
and you're mixing and mastering and
you've got them so close to you that the
reflections off the wall are so far
delayed. They're so low in level
compared to the direct sound that you're
basically only listening to the direct
sound. That's one term for nearfield.
Um, the other term that we use in home
audio is, or the other way we use it for
home audio is you're far enough away
where all the drivers match. You know,
they they blend together. So, your
tweeter and your mid-range blend
together as one cohesive unit. Uh, you
know, if you were really really close,
then you could be between the NLES,
right? Because they they depending on
the crossover, they might cancel out at
certain frequencies, but if you're far
enough away, then they should be blended
pretty well together. So, I say that
because I want to focus on the latter
one. Okay? If you have your face right
up next to a big 15inch woofer and it's
playing mid-range duty, it's going to
sound bigger than your face because the
whole surface area that thing is playing
and your face isn't 15 inches around.
Okay. Yep. But we're taking that out of
the equation. We're talking about if
you're listening at a farfield distance
where all the drivers have combined.
What's farfield? Give me farfield. Well,
so it depends. Um, and it really does
depend on the speaker, but if you kind
of want to give it a rule of thumb, I've
seen people use anywhere from three to
five times the largest dimension of the
speaker itself. Uh, but really, you
know, if you picture a standard
mid-range and a tweeter, you like a
midwuffer and a tweeter. So, a six and a
half inch and a oneinch dome tweeter on
like a bookshelf type size speaker, you
know, a meter typically is adequate to
be in the far field because the tweeter
and the mid-range have aligned
themselves in propagation. So they
create one cohesive wavefront. Um, for
very large speakers, dude, you could be
talking meters away. And I've just I've
got a review of a tower speaker coming
up soon that's about 52 or 53 inches
tallow. And the manual for the
manufacturer says that you need to be 4
meters or more.
They say you can be 3 meters, but
ideally you're four meters or more.
Yeah. So you're telling me that you
don't always want to buy the biggest
tower and put in a small room? In a
small room. Yeah. Yeah. Crazy. true as
well. Uh, so with all of that said, and
hopefully everybody followed me because
I tend to go off on tangents sometimes.
No, you're good. I think the easiest way
to think
about a small speaker sounding big or
vice versa or the sound of the stage
being large depending on the size of the
speaker is you've got 3-in mid-ranges
pillars. They're time aligned, they're
phase aligned, everything's EQ, all that
stuff. Everything sounds great. Nice
solid center image. Uh maybe it's like
this big around, you know, whatever.
Yeah. The stage is, you know, reasonably
large or whatever. Yeah. Take one of
those mid-ranges, flip it out of phase.
What happens to your image? Blows out.
Right now, there's no focus. Yeah. And
if there is, then something's wrong. Uh
but it's huge, right? So, you would say
that's a big sounding speaker, right?
Well, it's because it's wrong. Yeah. And
what I've run into is most of the time
that people say big speakers sound large
is because the crossover between the
different drivers are not done well to
where the different drivers integrate.
So you're left with all these little
weird phase anomalies where things just
don't integrate well. And now the
speaker sounds instead of like one point
source, one cohesive wavefront coming at
your head, you've got this really large
sound that's scattering from the
speaker. Um even line arrays don't work
like that. line arrays spread sound
evenly, but it's designed to where you
can be in different places and have
essentially the same sound. But those
are kind of a an anomaly in the home
audio and car audio world. So, yeah, I
would say that if you are under the
notion that just because a speaker is
large means it's going to sound big, uh,
that notion is probably because you've
listened to some really poorly designed
speakers. As simple as that. Which
brings me to my next point, which is
well, two points on this. Let's start
with two points.
Two chains. No, there you go. All right.
Yeah, I I had you, dude. I had you.
Yeah, I had you, bro.
So, let's go back to expensive speakers
and just talk about speakers in general.
Yeah. The very first thing that you
taught me because of your channel is,
hey, objective measurements make a huge
impact. Yeah. Um, and when you have
these objective measurements, you can
kind of understand and pick apart what's
just you paying for the brand name and
what's actually a really good speaker.
And you start realizing, like you said,
there's a beautiful sweet spot that
exists where like speaker's really,
really, really good, right? Anything
more than that, you're buying furniture.
Mhm. and or the opposite end where you
are now getting a less a worse
performing product. Okay. Um so let's
take a the Rebels that I have the F208s,
right? Those actually you haven't
mentioned those. Uh let's use We can
start with those. That's fine. Let's use
the 226Bs. Okay. Um because those are
they're very similar. They have pretty
good directivity index. Pretty good on
and off axis response. Yeah. very decent
dispersion in terms of um horizontal and
vertical. Not too bad. You always have
the issue because the tweeter separate
from the mid-range noticed driver,
right? But if it did like the caps do
and we'll talk about the caps later on.
Um but for the most part, that speaker
is a very well-designed speaker. Um and
you can pretty much put it anywhere like
you said and it's going to sound
correct. Now, the room's going to play
an effect on it below the shorter
effect. So, below 500 hertz, the room's
going to play a much bigger impact. But
below, well, excuse me, above 500, that
speaker's engineered. Yeah. Um, to sound
the way whoever designed it should have
been, right? Um, and I'm specifically
talking about the 226B in this scenario.
Now, let's take another speaker that I
know does not measure well, the clips.
Okay. um the heresy for that's a
different yes the heresy force where a
lot of people especially
[Music]
I won't say the older community the
people who have a lot yeah I knew what
you were trying to do yeah let's just be
real I mean it is what it is yeah yeah
um they hold that speaker in very high
regard they do but it is not a good
speaker objectively and people who care
about sound subjectively also not good
either yeah I'm not fond of it either at
least to me um
And another one that I personally don't
care for are like the Bowers. I I don't
think they sound good. I I I've never
have and I know I've looked at
measurements before and they don't
measure all that well either. Mhm. Um,
why is it
that these companies are can just like
blatantly just like say whatever they
want to say on marketing and just like
go off their name? Because I mean you
reviewed so many speakers like you I
feel like you have had to see a pattern
continuously from speakers.
[Music]
Um, honestly man that's kind of tough. I
mean sometimes I wonder like are there
not laws preventing this? you know, the
specs may say a frequency range, let's
say like plus or minus three dB between
this frequency and that frequency. And
then I get it and I'm just like, whoa,
that's not even close, right? Like
that's not even close. So, okay. And
then then a lot of just marketing lingo,
you know, just something to capture
people's attention. And I run into this
even with YouTube, man. And I mean,
like, I try really hard to not do
clickbaity
titles.
And this is this one's kind of tough for
me. It hits it hits close to home. And
so, I'm trying to be careful of how I
word this, not to piss anybody else off.
Um, I could go fullboard clickbait and
get more views. I don't know if it would
like blow my channel up or anything like
that, but it would definitely make a
difference in the amount of views that I
get for sure. Yeah. Um, but I try to
also be reasonable with it. So, I'm
trying personally to find this fine line
between, all right, well, what's going
to gather people's attention and what's
full-blown like just a BS title or a BS,
right? Yeah. So, and and for me, because
I'm trying to do something a little bit
different and not just make money off of
it, like I'm trying to also provide some
education and some actual information.
Um, I really do want to get people's
attention, right? Like I want people to
come in and click it and then like watch
a few videos and say, "Oh, there's
actually something to having these kind
of measurements." I'm not trying to say
I'm trying to convert, you know, anybody
over to thinking that measurements are
the end all because even I don't believe
that. No. But I want people to
understand that objective metrics
definitely are helpful when you're
trying to make these kind of decisions.
So with that
said, I don't really fault manufacturers
for saying some of the things that they
do, but then other things that I read,
I'm just like, who cares, right? Like,
and then are people really that
gullible? And then are are do people
really think that that thing is what
matters? And a lot of times they do. uh
the ones that I find that really push
these
weird advertisements and these weird
sayings and slogans and whatnot are the
ones their customers are the ones who
really don't like when you say anything
bad about their brand. So, it's really
it's really kind of a a weird a weird
thing overall.
So, kind of going back to the clips
thing, what I will tell you in doing
this for a number of years, and Clips
isn't the only brand. They make certain
products that do well, that sound good,
that objectively perform well, and I
also think they sound good. Um, and then
they make other products that
objectively are very poor performers,
and I also just don't care for the sound
of Yeah. But you're talking about, you
know, the older
generation. There's legitimacy to that.
I've talked to a few different dealers
who carry that brand and they said,
"Hey, we saw your review of this thing
and yeah, but you know the people that
do come in and buy it, they're buying it
because when they were kids in the 70s
or 80s, yeah, their their dad had this
system and they want to recreate what
their dad had." And it's very very much
nostalgic and even those guys who own
the shops are just like, "Yeah, they're
they're really not that great sounding,
but people still want to buy them." And
most of the time it's for the nostalgic
factor. So there's there's that, too. I
mean me, I've just got some Macintosh
amps and a lot of that is because of
nostalgic reasons. Luckily, they sound
really good and and they do what they're
supposed to do. But would I spend that
much money because I think they sound so
much better than anything else? No.
Absolutely not. Yeah. So, there's
definitely a line between, you know,
personal preference, personal feeling,
and then actual raw performance. And I'm
hoping that people understand that
there's a way
to discern what good is objectively
versus bad. And if you still want to get
the thing that objectively isn't that
great, go right ahead. That's fine.
Yeah. Well, the reason, and this is all
like kind of leading up to this last
point, which
is I I I find it interesting how people
will throw out a name brand, you know,
or an amount of money. People be like,
"Well, I only listen to a room that's
$500,000 for my reference." Like, that's
it. Like, if if it's not that, then it's
just not good. Okay. And I've been Yeah.
Well, I've said in million-dollar rooms,
and I'm just like, "This is not good.
This is just terrible." Um, you know,
and or on the opposite crowd, which is
like, well, I only go to live
performances and that's how I have my
reference and that's it. Okay. And I
think in what at least what I do in car
audio and home audio as well, I think we
lose the part is that like there is no
one reference and it's impossible to the
reference should be getting the artist
and be like, "Hey, does this sound the
way you wanted it to?" Right? But that's
near next to impossible at least for me.
I don't have those connections to be
like, "Hey, the Dire Straits crew, come
here. I really want to see if my rebels
sound the way you wanted it to, right?
You know, it's just not going to happen.
Yeah. So, when I hear people like, "Oh,
well, I want this song." Like, for
instance, I had someone hop in my car
and they're never has have they heard
this song before. And I asked them and
they're like, "Dude, I don't know. Like,
that guitar just didn't have enough life
to me." That's what he said. And I asked
him, he like he said that I was like,
"Hey, all right, cool. Thanks for the
feedback. Quick question. Have you ever
listened to a song before?" He said,
"No." And I was like, "Internesting."
And I just left it as that. I'm just
like, how do you know that's not the way
things are supposed to be? Yeah. And you
know, there is that that's another just
level to a circle confusion, which is
like everyone has their own
interpretation of what things supposed
to sound like, right? But that doesn't
mean that the artist or the mixer
produced it that way. So if a trumpet
doesn't sound as lively as you're used
to because you're a trumpet player,
guess what? Maybe it wasn't mastered
that way. Yeah. The recording. Yeah. So
that's why when it comes to going back
to the objective measurements of finding
a speaker that
objectively is good will get you closer
to a good reference to understand what
that song was supposed to sound like
because it doesn't have all these weird
anomalies coloring to sound like crazy.
And to me my endgame speaker which knock
on wood Bri will let me buy um are the
KEF blades. I have heard those things
many times before and I actually put
them once again, thanks Sean centers
right next to the F208 like 208 blades
and I had actually had the um I had my
old JBL synthesis Revel 208 and Blades
and I was able to like compare each one
and the more money you spent at least in
this comparison it did get better. Was
the jump from the 208 to the blades
five times the amount of money? No, it
was not. Or was it eight times?
Whatever. Right. Yeah. But at least to
me, one, I love the way they look. I
love the dispersion patterns of a
concentric driver. Yeah. And I think
that KEF is probably, at least in my
opinion, one of, if not the only brand
that knows how to really make a
concentric driver. Yeah. That the
mid-range doesn't affect the tweeter
dispersion when the mid-range is moving
in and out. Right. Gench. Gench is
another one. Oh, yeah. Thank you. Yes.
Andrew Jones at Mofi does a really good
job with that, too. Yeah. Yep. Yep. And
Andrew Jones, he also did it with the
Elac Novice as well. Yeah. Um Yeah.
Andrew Jones. Yeah. I've actually spoke
to Andrew Jones several times on the
phone. He's a smart dude. He's super
nice. Yeah. Yeah. He's super nice. Super
nice. Um but it's
like objectively these speakers measure
really good. All all three of them do.
And the more money you spend the better
they are. But it was like with these KEF
blades, I don't see how you're getting
better. And then funny enough, you did
your measurements and you pretty much
said the words out my mouth. You're
like, I don't know how you really gonna
get much better than what these blades
are doing. Yeah, it's tough. I mean,
there are certain things about them that
I personally would want different,
right? Like the
their radiation windows about plus or -
50. I would personally want it about
plus or minus 60 because it seems like
every time that I really just enjoy a
speaker and feel like that nice
spaciousness. Yeah. And then I go and
measure it and I look at the data, most
of the time it's like around 60, maybe
plus or minus five within that, but it's
around 60, you know, 60 or 70. And
that's something I look for in a
speaker. And that's just another thing
about the data, you know, like do I like
narrow dispersion or do I like wider? If
if I like something below 50 degrees
wide, plus or minus 50 degrees, then I'm
gonna look at that. If I want something
wider, then I'm gonna look at these
options. Yeah. Um but yeah, no, I agree
with you. So, with the cast, the thing
that because I'm I'm I don't know that
I'd say I'm a fanboy. They've got some
designs that, you know, aren't
fantastic, but the Blade 2 Meta that
I've heard in my room was like freaking
amazing, dude. It's still the best
speaker that I've heard to date. Really.
Um, the thing that I liked about it was
everything came from a true so source
point, right? They didn't have the
woofers below it or above it or anything
like it was all up here. And I've never
heard a speaker do the things that that
speaker did. And that's why I said I
don't know that I don't know what else
you do to get better than that. I really
don't. Now, having said that, would I
consider other options for other
reasons? Yeah, sure. I mean, definitely.
But I still think it's a fantastic
sounding speaker. Yeah, because those
aren't output monsters. No, they're not.
Yeah. Yeah, they're not like And that's
another thing to consider is like, are
you They get low and and they get loud
enough for most rooms, but if you have a
large room, you might still want to
complement them with a subwoofer. Yeah.
Well, just in general, because I know I
mean Bri and I are thinking about like
creating like a movie room. And it's
like, could I use these for like theater
use? And then that's kind of Yeah. dual
purpose.
You could. Yeah. But, you know, like
right now, like my re when I went from
the um this JBL synthesis with the with
the horn to the Rebels, I saw a pretty
big difference just in terms of like how
loud I'm willing to push this thing
during movies. I was a lot more dumb
with the synthesis because I knew the
tweeter was not going to blow on me,
right? And funny enough, I actually blew
a tweeter on the Revel. I did, you know,
and they sent me a new one. All right.
Um I think it was just something weird
happened. I was I wasn't even listening
loud. I was in like 95 dB. That's loud,
man. That's loud. Not too loud. That's
That's pretty loud. I was getting loud.
Uh but it it was like I was like well
into the hundreds. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But
like and yeah, out of nowhere it just
like one side just sounded like it just
lost everything and it was the right
side. Yeah. That always sucks. I hate
when And I'm like, "What just happened?"
And I go there and I just smell it. I'm
like, "Well, there goes the tweeter."
And I was like, "Man, that tweeter's
doing a lot of work." Cuz it almost
seemed like that whole tower just like
went away. Yeah. Oh, it's it's wild when
you lose a drive and you're like, "Yeah,
that doesn't make any sense. What
happened?" It was only playing this
band. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. At least
with home audio speakers, when something
like that happens, it's easy to replace.
With a car, you got to pretty much get
everything gutted from the car to get to
that speaker. You got to go underneath
the dash, rerun the wires, and all this
stuff. Yeah. So, I've dove into because
I really want to talk about references,
which we are. Okay. Yes.
I've been diving into headphones lately,
okay? Um because I think it was Harry
who was
like you can't really use headphones as
a good reference. I'm like, I don't
think that's true because I feel like
when you get a headphone that's made
well um in terms of like its sound
signature and just like car audio and
just like home audio, there are people
that nerd out on headphones and they
have honestly it's I have been doing
crazy research. I've learned a lot about
how like the ear works and ear gain and
all this stuff because of headphone
research. Mhm. And they have rigs and
everything that tests just like you do.
Yeah. Headphones. And the one that I end
up going with are the Focal Clear MG
Pros. Um and they're open back and I
have a Fio M17 whatever. Whatever this
huge brick. How much are they paying you
to say this? Uh zero. I wish they were
paying me. I wouldn't be living here.
Yeah. got to talk to somebody about
that.
But of course, I only use a DAP for
headphones because they don't belong in
a car. Everybody dabs don't belong in a
car. Okay, I'm done with that. Um, yeah,
I've run into that myself.
So I've in my car what I've been able to
do because I started realizing my brain
forgets what I heard from going from my
living room to my car and those small
nuances which I'm trying to dial in and
figure out how to do it so I can repeat
it to other customers. I'd lose it by
that quick like 15 second walk or 20
second walk. I lose what I heard and I'm
like, "Oh wait, was that right?" And I'm
going back and forth. So I got these
headphones. like put them on, take them
off, second later I click play, I can
hear it. Yeah. And a lot of people are
like, "Oh, well, like headphones don't
stage." Yes, they don't stage in front
of you, but like if you figure that your
head is the stage, then you can quickly
start placing things on where they're
supposed to be. Just imagine it out out
in front of you. Yeah. Yeah. Within
reason. Sure. Yeah. Within reason. The
first thing I noticed was just like
headphones are great on knowing how bass
is supposed to sound. Yeah. Because the
room isn't there. you take away the room
and if it's a good design headphone,
you're going to have all the attack and
bass. And the one thing I I've been
realizing in the past like six months is
like
car audio people are constantly wanting
more and more bass. I don't know why
relative to like a home or headphones.
Yeah. Like it with my Rebels when I
first started or with my JBL's, I
noticed that the bass was always like
light and airy but still had all the
impact. But in my car, I wanted it to be
like by the time I hit 20, like plus 30
dB. I'm I'm definitely exaggerating.
Yeah. Yeah. No, you know, like you want
so much more like you want it to just
like hurt you and how much bass you
have. It's like if you start taking away
bass, then it almost seems like you have
more impact and attack. You do. No.
Yeah. Because the the impact and attack
are in the mid-range.
And that's where that's where that
definition Yeah. And the tweeter, too.
Lower tweeter especially. Like that's
where that definition is, you know? So,
um, but upper mid-range. Yeah. Like a
lot of it lies even like 6 to 800 where
the snare is, man. You you add a couple
little dB like somewhere in that right
region and it makes all the difference
in telling like the you can like the
skin effect, right, of hitting a snare.
So, but the other thing that I've
noticed, I mean, it goes in tandem with
what you're saying is car audio people
want more bass. Yeah. I've noticed that
to be true, but what I've tend to find
is that it's because there's something
not aligned correctly between their
midbase and their sub. So, they're
trying to make up for it in overall gain
and then it just washes out that lower
midbase, lower mid-range area where that
detail kind of lies and it gets muddied
up. And so, so then it's just like
you're running back and forth trying to
fix this thing and try to fix this
thing, but your problem is over here,
right? Yeah. No, no. I I cannot agree
more with you. And the one thing that
I'm trying to make people like stop
doing is immediately cutting 2K down.
I'm like, guys, that's your like that's
like your upper mid-range. Like that's a
lot of where your I call your attack and
details coming from. And the second you
scoop that out, you lose it, right? And
you know, of course, it's a balance
between the ear gain and how your ears
and everyone is going to interpret 2K to
4K slightly different by the shape of
our ears and whatnot and how big your
head is. But don't just immediately like
bake into your curve, hey, I'm going to
scoop out 2 to 4K because I just don't
like it. Like you don't know what you
don't like. just tune it flat and then
just go through bay limit or pink noise
and then when you hit it you you will
know when the ear gain ear gain region
happens because your ears are going to
start like hey this isn't comfortable.
Yeah. Um and then you can start like
tailoring that a little bit and it's
also the recording too, right? So
there's always that um
that's that's a tough factor too. Going
back to the headphones thing, I think
it's great. You've got to have a known
good reference, right? So, you've got to
have some kind of measurements for
something like that because you need to
know what those what those headphones
look like. If you go on to strap some
any old headphones on, they're going to
impart their own coloration and then
you're then that's a circle confusion
too, right? Because then you're trying
to tune to that headphone curve and that
headphone curve is not good. No. But
yeah, I mean I've done the same thing. I
remember when I used to sit there with
my iPod and then I would have my iPod I
would have two iPods, right? I had one
iPod in the glove box and the other iPod
in my hand and I would have the
headphones plugged in and then I would
listen to the song through my stereo in
the car and then I'd put my headphones
on and I did that back and forth. And I
know a few guys who have done setups in
their own car where their headphones go
like John Kaiser. I don't know if you
remember John um because I don't know if
he's still competing and I don't think
he is but at one point he had it set up
to where he had I think it was an RME
I don't know if he had the whole DACK in
there but basically like he had a setup
where he could plug right into that and
with headphones and listen to it and
then take those off unplug. Yeah. Yeah.
and he tuned that way. Like he would he
would tune, you know, via DSP computer,
but then he would go doing his
finetuning by ear to try to match what
those headphones what his reference was
like. And I think headphones for a tonal
balance reference is kind of a
no-brainer on it just makes everything
agree more. Takes it takes everything
out of the equation, but you have to
trust or know that your headphone is a
good reference. Yes. And one, just like
we just spoke about home audio, just
because you have a brand name next to
them does not mean they're good. There
are many Focal headphones. I'm going to
know the Stellios close back suck.
They're not good. And objectively, you
look at the measurements, they're not
good. Yeah. But these Focal Clear MG
Pros, the MG Pros, the red ones, you
look at the rig that they measure it
with, and guess what? It measures
really, really well. Okay. Um, and then
you put them on and because these are
open back, you get a little bit a lot
more, not a little bit, a lot more
spaciousness than some of the closedback
headphones, you don't get that bottom
end grunt that, you know, the closbacks
give you, but you can at least for the
most part understand, I call it 40 Hz
and above what the bass should sound
like. Um, I think it's just a a good way
for car audio people to like realign
themselves cuz I feel like a lot of
people go from being a bass head and
then like I want to do SQ and at least
for me when I first started I struggled
with that and I always ask like oh how
do I get bass up front and then you know
when everyone tells you like turn down
your subbase I'm like this isn't even
enough now that doesn't make any sense
what are you talking about I need 315s
back there to the thing yeah to make up
for all the the phase cancellations that
are going on because I don't know any
better. That's the real truth. And as
I've learned and grown throughout the
years, I mean, dude, I remember what,
six, seven years ago now. I used to hit
you up while messing like, "Hey, dude. I
know you don't know me, but like Oh,
yeah. Yeah. You know, I just like asking
you questions because I started watching
Aaron's Audio Corner and I was like,
"Dude, you know a lot. I know nothing.
Teach me." Yeah. Well, I still don't
know as much as I would like to know,
but I've learned a lot through trial and
error and making pretty big mistakes.
Oh, dude, I failed so much it's not even
funny. You got to fail uh in order to
Well, at least unfortunately I do. I
have to fail to learn. Yeah. So, but
yeah, I remember meeting you at the
Texas show for the first time. You were
driving. Was it a Mini Cooper or
something like that? No, it was a Black
Mazda. Was that what it was? I don't
know why. I thought it was black. You
had audio frog stuff in there. Yeah. And
it sounded so bad, dude. It was so bad.
I No, you're right. It sounded terrible,
dude. It sounded so bad. I really don't
I don't know if I ever actually heard it
that you didn't. Thank god you didn't
because I tuned it flat. And when I mean
flat, I literally flat flat. Flat flat
because I read it on a Reddit post. I
said that's what they wanted. So, I
turned it flat. Flat room. Flat in ear,
flat in car. Terrible. Terrible.
Terrible. You do not You only want flat
and a coat when there's nothing around
the room. There's no reflections. You
just want what's coming directly out of
this thing. Yeah, that's flat. Anything
else, you don't want flat. Not flat. Oh,
on that standpoint also, everybody, if
you're trying to EQ speakers, one, if
they have measurements, get them. See
what the DI is because it'll tell you if
it's going to be good or bad eqing that
region where you don't like. Yeah. But
two, don't EQ about 500 hertz. Yeah.
Typically, no. I mean, typically. Yeah.
So there the caveat to that is and when
we say 500 hertz just like for those who
don't know basically there's a breaking
point in the room and it's a transition
range. It's not I say four to 600 hertz
for most rooms is kind of where that
region is. Um but it depends on the size
of your room and essentially what it
does is it turns from where the speaker
is the dominant source of what you're
hearing to in lower frequencies the room
is the dominant source for what you're
hearing. And so when Miguel says 500
hertz, you know, it's it's a region and
Yeah. Yeah. It's Yeah. And it's not
because I've made this mistake too of
saying 500 hertz and and I've gotten
people say, "What happens at 500 what's
like?" Well, it's a transition. It
basically goes from speaker speaker
room, right? Like it's more and more
important in the room. Um but yeah,
don't don't tune for flat in a room. No,
for sure. I've done that plenty of
times. Direct live 20 to 20, baby.
car audio was just like, you know,
everybody. So, the problem is the RTA
competitions when I was started
competing, which was around 2007, I
think, was my first competition. So, I
did car audio before that, but I didn't
go to my first comp until 2007, I think.
Um, I saw the RTA stuff that people were
competing in. And in RTA, you competed
to where all the little dots were flat,
right? And the more flat it was at the
higher SPL, the better score you got for
RTA. But what I didn't realize was that
RTA had nothing to do with how good the
car sounded, right? You did not want
flat from 20 to 20 in a car or home or
again a headphone. So, you got to keep
that in mind. Going back to not tuning
or EQing a speaker and for home audio
above, you know, that transition range.
Um, I I tend to agree because the idea
is that you've bought whatever speaker
you like the sound of and you don't
really want to go messing with it. You
definitely don't want to let Direct or
Odyssey or anything like that just go
and do its own thing all all
willy-nilly. I think if you have a good
idea about what that speaker is already
doing and you're kind of looking at it
from a budget perspective saying, "Well,
this speaker may not be very linear, but
it's in a range where I can still EQ it
and the reflections match the direct
sound, so it it'll do what I need to do
tonally, then yeah, go ahead. Save you a
thousand bucks. get you the one that's
EQable and then EQ that to a more linear
response anooic and then put it into
your room. But without that anooic data
and objective measurements, you don't
really know. So you need that
information, which is the point I was
just going to make. I'm like, but how do
you know? And and if people don't
understand what the data is telling you,
which I think is a lot of the issues,
not only in car audio and home audio as
well. was like there's the camp that
only objective manners which is I don't
agree with and there's the camp that
only subjective manners which also
doesn't agree with and I feel like with
those two there's always the uh they
think they know what the data is telling
them and I feel like they don't. Yeah.
and the data you can almost measure
anything it seems like and I'm not smart
enough to know how to measure everything
but for the most part you can really
understand what a speaker is doing
um before your ears even you know listen
to it or hear it but you have to
understand what the data is telling you
and you were the first one who
introduced me to that like there's an
onaxis and then there's the reflection
which is the offaxis and those two when
they hit you because they will
eventually hit you at the same time if
they're
that's not going to work and that's when
you're going to have those different
anomalies or hey this this uh speaker
has to be in a treated room
or it doesn't sound good at all. Right.
No, that there's a lot of truth to that.
I mean there are some speakers that
really need sidewall treatment. Yeah.
You know, because otherwise you're going
to get a very bright imbalanced speaker.
Yeah. And some people may like that, but
I don't. And if you're looking for
closer to accuracy, you want an overall
more linear speaker. And and the slope
rate of that in room response. I mean,
okay, ideally it's kind of linear,
right? But the rate at which it starts
narrowing up. Yeah. Yeah. That can
certainly be preference. Like you may
want a wider radiating speaker, you may
want a more narrow radiating speaker for
one reason or another, right? So that's
certainly preference. But it helps to
know what you're looking at.
And that's one thing too about my
reviews
is sometimes I have to kind of reset my
own reviews because I realize like now
that I've got more people watching, I
kind of need to explain to them what
this stuff is. And I've got a whole
playlist of what the data means, but
every once in a while I'll kind of step
back from that and reexplain a specific
uh attribute to a set of measurements
that I've got because it's necessary.
No, 100%. You know, it's also a good
refresher for me. That's why I'm always
watching your videos. I'm like, is Aaron
gonna throw a little nugget out there
that I didn't know? And you know, and
well, what's cool to me about this stuff
is that I'm still learning. And there
are other things where I I will kind of
get into the habit of these are the
datas that I'm presenting and then I'll
come across well like what's going on
with this speaker? Why is it doing this
thing? And so I'll dig into a little bit
more and I'll maybe do some extra tests
that I rarely ever do, you know, and
that'll kind of take me down a trail of,
you know, take the speaker apart, look
at it, try to figure out, well, okay,
maybe the baskets, maybe the cutout
isn't notched enough on the backside, so
there's some kind of resonance creating
an issue for the mid-range, right? And
just little things like that or or like
the magnet pans, we have to put them
outside and measure them. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, well, that was for the for
the people who said you can't measure
them properly and clip them. Like, no,
yeah, you can. Let me show you. Yeah,
you can. I can show you. But yeah, it's
stuff like that. It's just it's fun. It
still is fun. It I won't I can't
complain. I really I mean I could, but
people like, "Shut up." So, I'm not
What's the point? No, dude. I think
honestly that's a great thing to hear
because I tell this constantly to
people. I'm like, when I tune your car,
I'm hoping at that point in time, I'm
gonna give you everything I got. Yeah.
In two years, if I retune it, if I can
only give you the exact same thing, I
haven't done my job. That means I'm not
learning. I'm not getting better. My
goal is every single time I go retune a
car or even my own car, I'm want to make
it better. Yeah. You know, um% man, you
know, I'm there's so much to audio,
which is why I love it, you know,
because like there's just so much to it.
It's it it can be as hard or as simple
as you want it to be, you know?
Absolutely. No, I I've said that a few
times myself. I mean, we we call some
people an audio checkbook competitors,
right? where um they get a car, they
take it somewhere and have it built and
they have somebody tune it. I've never
been one until this last car. And I was
like, I ain't got time to build this
stuff. I'm gonna call up Mike, you know,
up at Sound Factory in Knoxville and
take it to them, had them build it. And
then I had it for months and I never
tuned it. And I was like, I'm gonna give
him Gail a shout because he'd be he'd be
tuning stuff. I'll see if he wants to
come up here and help me with this,
right? So I gave you a shout. I got a
good tune out of that thing. And then
before I went to finals, I was like,
I've got to do something because I can't
just show up with a complete checkbook
tune, you know? So, I've got to do
stuff. So, then I worked on a little
bit. But it was it's it's also kind of
good for me to do those shows. And
the same in the same vein also go to
these audio shows, the home audio shows,
is because when I do the car audio shows
and the home audio shows, there may be
something that I haven't paid attention
to in a while where my own preference
has kind of gotten out of alignment with
what it was before. Yeah. And sometimes
that's fine, but other times if I get
too far out of whack, then that affects
how I'm viewing things in the data, how
I'm analyzing things subjectively when I
listen. Right. So, I went to finals with
the Tesla and yeah, got judged and the
first judge gets out and he's like, you
know, overall it was it was good.
Everything was fine, but he's just got a
little bit too much bass. I'm like, oh,
okay. Well, I like a little bit too much
bass. So, that's Yeah. Yeah. That was
like the first thing I noticed when I
hopped in. I was like, dude, did you
turn up the midbase? And you're like,
yeah, I had fun. I was like, "Okay." I
was like, "I don't remember it being
this way." Normally what I do is I boost
between like 100 to 120, right? Like
give it a little kick up. Just give me a
little bit more thump in that region.
Um, but I think it was Howard or
somebody else had gotten in there. It
could have been you who kind of said,
"Hey, yeah, everything sounds good, but
that bass bit hot." So I went listen to
a couple other competitors cars. I
listened to your car, I remember, and I
was like, "Oh, yeah, yeah, okay. I've
gotten too far. Let me go." So, I went
over there, brought like 40, 50 Hz down
a little bit and kind of smoothed out
that that lower bass region. Yeah. And
I'm like, "Oh, yeah. This does sound
better." And then I got other judges in
and they were like, "Yeah, yeah, this is
all good." And I was like, "All right,
cool." So, every once in a while, you
got to recalibrate yourself. That's
where headphones would be useful to come
in because you're not having to worry
about what's what else is going on in
the stereo is what the room why is the
room doing this? Yeah. No, dude. 100%.
And yeah, anyone, especially the car
audio community, I mean, people spent
because these these headphones are only
1,500 bucks. They're not expensive. I
mean, okay, in the relative we just
talked about 30 or $60,000 blades. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. These are how good
they sound. No, I hear you. Um, and
certainly for some of the car audio and
home auto community, they got money to
burn. Yeah. Um, but yeah, maybe you
should uh look into alternates that you
could recommend on future episodes. You
know, say, "Hey, there's these $200 ones
that are pretty good." Because I used to
had this deal with German Maestro. I
don't know if they still do, but Travis,
maybe if he winds up watching this, he
could answer it in the comments. Uh,
they used to have some German Maestro
headphones that they said they tuned or
not tuned by, they judged by. That was
their reference. So, interesting. The
majority of the people, this is like
2015 when I first bought those. Yeah,
the majority of the people who were
competing in IASA also had those
headphones. And the deal was that if you
use these headphones as your reference
to help you tune your car stereo, then
you should do well at least in the total
portion of of car audio in the judging.
So, you know, I think it would be
helpful if if there was some sort of
streamlined reference. Yeah. But you
can't do it for home audio, right? I
mean, no. Yeah. Let me back that up. For
car audio, you can't have a reference
home audio system because the room is
always going to change below, you know,
three, four, 500, 600 hertz or whatever.
U, but you can at least have headphones
as a recommendation and you can say,
"Hey, these are 200 bucks. If you're
really serious about trying to do well,
you know, and you want the extra leg up,
yeah, check these out." Right.
personally. And the reason why I'm I
hear what you're saying, but I think I'm
gonna still settle for just get these
focals. Dude, I've
I have tried so many so many. If you've
got the money, I think that's Let me put
it this
way. Finals alone, I spent $2500 to
attend those. Yeah. Two days. Yeah.
people in the car audio
community. My Bra ML10 front sub was
1,500 bucks and that's for one speaker
in my car. And I know there's a lot of
other people out there that have Acutens
and Micro Precision this and AB this and
blah blah blah blah. Keep going. $5,000
Kimber cables because hey, whatever,
right? Yeah. I personally think if
you're serious about audio and really
want to know like, hey, like how far can
I push my car? Like is my car right or
wrong? I think a $1,500 investment that
can easily train your ears and you can
know what's right or wrong. I mean, most
people have dabs anyway because for some
reason it was a DAP craze. So, perfect.
You don't even have to buy anything
extra. Just buy the headphone, right?
And you have a great, you know, I I
mean, I can't even think of I know there
are some Sennheisers out there that are
pretty decent. Um, but I know like the
Bowers and the Bowers and Wilkins, I
don't remember. I remember the name. Are
they actually any good? I mean, no,
they're terrible. Like, their heads I
don't know that thing good. Okay. Yeah,
they were. So, I mean, it it wasn't even
funny how bad they were. I think that
there's a a fair amount of more budget
friendly like M. That seems to be 100%.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That seems to be
So, I think that
All right. So, let's back this up. Yeah.
in the at finals, I
noticed
that the vast majority of the cars that
were there had a lot of money into them.
A lot of money into them. Yeah. Um but
man, when I started, dude, I was still
in college. I was working two part-time
jobs, you know, kind of scraping by. And
any money that I made, I I remember when
$80 on a pair of Seos midwiffers was a
huge deal, right? Really? Yeah. And that
was when I first started competing. I
mean, I think my first competition was
with uh Tang Band three or 4 inch
drivers and some cheap little 3/4 inch
dome tweeters. And I don't even remember
what the midbase drivers were, but they
were something, right? And then I
remember stepping up to some seas excel
seos nexttail then eventually some scans
speak and then you know going up from
there and then kind of coming back down
sometimes too. But I would just
encourage you as a friend to maybe hey
these are the golden reference but these
other $200 ones if you're if you're kind
of in the budget range and you could
swing it check these out too. And I I
think that that brings in a little bit
more affordability to these guys who
don't, you know, because you got to
start somewhere. You of course not many
But that's the weird thing too is and I
would lean on you to tell me. Yeah.
Because my observation is just from what
I saw. Okay. When I first start when I
first started into sound quality car
audio competition, the DIY community was
huge. like everybody I would say that
and this is just kind of an anecdotal
number but I would say that 75% of the
people who were active on the forums and
active at shows were DIY people. Okay.
And 25% obviously then were like shop
people and people who were professionals
or whatever. Now, as time went on, it
was that divide started growing and it
and it kind of it became more and more
shop owners and and I don't know what
the number is now, but it looks like
there's people that have more disposable
income to spend on car audio. Yeah, at
least in
[Music]
the sound quality community and just
cause that from what I've noticed and
maybe because of my price range, I've
kind of alienated some of the, you know,
people that can't afford um my my
services. But even just in general, like
going to shows or whatnot, well, I've
seen most people, they don't even build
their own stuff anymore. Yeah. Um, and
it's it's always, oh, this shop did that
or this shop did this or this person
tuned it and then I had this person tune
it and this person tune it and you just
keep on seeing dollar signs. Um, and
then there is the I think a lot of that
has to do with the internet if I'm being
honest honest with you with like social
media. Um, everyone can now share their
opinion on the internet. Funny enough,
we're doing the same thing right now.
But like and especially like you know I
remember seeing when the distortion
uh factory group came out on Facebook
and they started measuring like the
Zapos and they're like instantly they're
like yeah these apps go suck. Oh yeah.
And like the Moscone Pros on like a
crazy amount of like distortion to them
and whatnot. And then like you just saw
people like jumping off of them like all
of a sudden it was like an influx of
like Zapos for sale
and Yeah. you know, and it was just one
of those things where I feel like
because of social media, people want to
show off more. Yeah. And they don't mind
spending the money. And I mean, Resin
Next is another brand that I know has
kind of and and myself, but I'll first
talk about Resin, like before Nick
started that, spending it like a crazy
amount of money on sound denning was
like taboo. Like no, you're just going
to use a little bit of clay, a little
bit of Dynamat, call it a day. Yeah. And
now he has a package of
$8,000 for two sound dead in your car.
And guess what? I know people that are
going to buy it. Yeah. I have two
customers lined up right now because
they want their car to be that good.
Yeah. There you go. And now, you know,
you tell someone, "Hey, spend a grand on
sound dending." Someone's like, "Oh,
that's it. Oh, that's great." Oh, yeah.
Yeah. You know, and I know like when I
first started Waveform and I put 1250,
people were like, "Wow, that's a lot of
money." You know, and I talked to some
friends beforehand. I was thinking I was
like I have to travel call so I don't
make it much. Like I I can't be in the
negative all the time, right? Um and
that's what my prices is. But nowadays,
dude, honestly, I I actually had one
dude I'm actually going to tune
tomorrow. I wasn't supposed to, but he
wanted me out there like next day. And I
I named the price, you know, just the
the the amount. And he was like, "Oh,
that's it." I was like, you were like,
"I should have asked for more." And I
was like, "Okay." you know, and it's
just like I think there's
a once other people start doing it, then
it just starts become the norm, if you
will. Maybe just inflation starts
coming. That's how inflation starts.
Yeah. You know, but I mean, I think the
new Supreo line supposed to be well into
the thousands from Morell, like well
into it. Yeah. And it's like, are you
really noticing that big of a difference
between the Elite Carbon Pro and that
new Supreo line? Maybe. I don't know.
But it's like I've I have heard many
people like, "Oh, I can't wait to get
them." And I've heard it's like well
above 5,000 for this for this three-way.
I'm like, "Yeah, that's
um yeah, it's just like it's it's
interesting to me. I wonder why that
is." I mean, like you're saying, you
think it has something to do with social
media. Um I'm just surprised that that
number of people can afford that. But
yeah, you know, and I also kind of
wonder if if the death because Okay, so
DIY mobile audio was social media. Yeah.
And that was before like Facebook really
took off and and DIY mobile audio stayed
around for I mean it's still there,
right? But yeah, I mean around like
2012, 2013, 14 it really started dying
off and I was like a moderator there for
a while so I definitely know. Yeah. Um,
but even up until that point, you know,
a lot of people were still trying to go
the budget route. So, it's just it's
interesting to me because I've been on
the outside of car audio for the last
five, six, seven years. Yeah. I mean,
I'm still doing it, but I'm on the
outside of it, right? So, it's
interesting to me when I go to these
shows and everybody's running big rig
systems and I'm like, damn, it wasn't
like this, you know, 10 years ago. It
was a lot of people with more budget
friendly systems. And even back then,
people were bragging more on look how
little I spent. I tuned it myself. I
built everything myself. And I was like
that for the longest time. Like I was
really proud of the really shitty work
that I was doing. I remember showing up
to finals in 2010 after I had built new
A-pillars. Yeah. And I had Steve Cook
come over. And Steve had only been
competing for like maybe a year. I don't
even know if he started competing yet,
but I knew who Steve was because he was
around at local events. So I had him
come over and look at it. And he goes,
"Oh, you got to bring this by the shop."
Like, it was so bad. He was just
disappointed in me. And I was like, "Oh,
man." Did question. Did Did Cook have
that monotone face and voice that he
always does like, "Bring it to the
shop." Yeah. Yeah. If anyone knows Cook,
he has like no expression until like a
random smile he'll throw out. To this
day, and I hope they watch this and I
hope they hear me see this. To this day,
I pride myself on making two people
laugh and smile. It would be Mick
Wallace and Steve Cook. If I can make
either one of them like laugh and smile,
then I'm like, "Oh god, I'm good." Like,
I'm good for a month. Dude, Nick is
hilarious. Mick, he's so dry. He's so
dry. But if you pay attention to what
he's saying, like that's one funny dude.
Yeah. Very, very dead pan. Yeah. Yeah.
No, Mick is good. He's a good guy,
though. Um, at finals, I actually got a
hug from Cook and he said he was proud
of me. I was like, man. Yeah, that's
awesome, man. No, it it was cool. Like
Cook is great people. And same thing
with Kevin Keane and all of those guys.
Yeah, man. There's so many just so good
people. That's what I try to I tried.
Okay, so around like 2007 through about
2011, I would have one or two
gettogethers at my house every year. Oh,
that's cool. And you know, went from
having like 10 people to as many as 40
people. And then my daughter was getting
a little bit older and I was like, I
don't know about having all these random
people over my house. Maybe we won't do
this anymore. And then Jason Bartholomew
had started having his gettogethers in
North Carolina, maybe a little bit
before that, but you know, that was when
I started going to those. And I man, I
miss going to those.
If there's any event that I could go to
in the year, it would be Jason's Meet.
Honest to goodness, man, I miss going to
those. The camaraderie in Car audio is
like nothing I've ever experienced
before. It's fantastic. Um, but how much
you going to try to make it to that
show? I can't, man. I'm taking my
daughter to um these these YouTube kids
are doing. It's so weird. There's these
like kids on YouTube who she's going to
go see and I bought her tickets to go
see those kids in Nashville. But I'm
just like taking you see YouTube people.
I'm like well I don't know. I got a
YouTube channel and people watching so I
guess I can't judge. But anyway, long
story short is I miss having that
camaraderie from car audio and I'm
trying to do that home audio. So, I I
teamed up with a local shop here in
Huntsville in January, and we had like
40 people show up to it, man. It was
just it was just people coming out,
hanging out, talking, listening to some
home audio systems, and we're already
plan on doing it in the middle of June,
I think. I got to get the date settled.
So, hopefully it'll be like a a twice a
year kind of thing, dude. That'd be
sick. Yeah, that'd be awesome. Yeah, I
love those Dimma meets. I was exposed
last year to it in February of the one
in Virginia. Oh, yeah. Ian. And uh it
actually wasn't Ian's, it was it was in
February. I think Ian's was later. Um
and it was the very first time. And I
just had the most fun ever because there
were no judges. There was there was none
of this like, "Oh, well, did you hear
this one triangle that's like 2 in from
the singer that their head they
scratched this certain way? Do you not
hear that in that recording?" I'm like,
"Nope, I don't. Shut up. I don't care."
Just how does your car sound? Like does
it sound good? It was just like a whole
bunch of people having fun. And me and
Mike Myers were there. Mhm. And him and
I just looked at each other like, "We're
going to help people." And we did. We
just took our laptops out and just
started like helping everyone around.
And everyone was like, "Oh, dude, thanks
so much for like making my car better."
I was like, "Yeah, how much I owe you?"
I'm like, "Nothing." Like I didn't do
much. I was just making small little
tweaks that I know could help you out.
That was like very apparent to me. It
took me half a second. And it was just
fun. Like me and Mike just like going
back and forth and just doing that. It
was just It was just a lot of fun. I I
missed that aspect of being able to sit
in the passenger seat with somebody in
their own car. Yeah. And with my laptop,
you know, like say, "Okay, this is a
thing that I heard when I was listening.
I want you to listen for this specific
thing. Do you hear that?" Of course,
you're guiding them into hearing it. But
when they're new, they don't know what
to listen for. Right. So, you're walk,
okay, let me time delay this thing. Do
you hear those changes? Can you can you
kind of see quote unquote the stage
moving across? Yeah. Um, does does the
vocal get fuller as I do this this
sweep, you know, and and make these
changes in real time and help people
learn? Like that's one of the things
that I miss the most about going to
those meets is meeting new people,
helping them out, helping them
understand. I remember Gerald showed up
to
meet Yeah. He showed up to Jason meet
that big old van thing. I think this is
like around 2015 or so. Yeah. Yeah. And
he was asking for some feedback and I
was like, "Yeah, stuff doesn't sound
right, man." And uh I said, "You got
time alignment in this thing?" And he
was like, "Yeah, it was on an old Alpine
deck, like a
983 or 33 or something." Anyway, so I
was like, "Cool. I remember how to use
this thing." So I started making
adjustments and he would sat back in the
seat and he's like, "Oh my gosh." Yeah.
Yeah. I don't know if sound like that.
I'm like, "Dude, this is time delay."
Like now here you go. This is how There
you go, Gerald. Yeah. I remember when I
tuned Gerald's van, he said he was like
he's like almost started crying. He's
like, "I didn't know it could be this
good." And I was like, "Yeah, dude." It
was just it was Gerald's a hoot. If
anyone hasn't met Gerald, I love Gerald.
He's so funny. Did you wind up telling
them like, "Yeah, dude." And you'd have
to pay $5,000 for cables that were
different lengths. Don't get me started
with cables and Gerald. Don't get me
started. Gerald is great. I I I love
Gerald. His cable obsession is insane. I
think he is salt of the earth. He's a
really good dude. He says the most
insane stuff. He'll reply to my videos
sometimes and I'm like I if I didn't
know that it was Gerald, I would just be
like, "This guy's insane." But I know
it's Gerald and I'm like, "All right."
Like, I'm I'm listening. Like, you got
my attention. I'm gonna pay attention to
you. Gerald, I love you. You are insane.
But I love you for it. But to recap,
any any speaker that just out there for
home audio does not mean it's a good
speaker and does not mean it's a good
reference. Maybe using a high quality
pair of headphones might be a better
reference because it eliminates the room
and you get to A and B something in a
much quicker form. And also it's it's
portable. You can take it with you,
right? For sure. Um, the last question I
have for you and then I will do my
homework on this so I can recommend it.
What's a good budget spare, excuse me,
budget pair of speakers that you can
recommend, okay, that people can just
set up maybe on their desk or whatever
that can be good. Oh, hold on.
Yeah, I know they're there. Ah, okay.
This this little Atom. I just got
through testing these. They're 299
bucks. Desktop speakers. And yeah, this
is the main one. So, they've got all
sorts of little switches. I'm going to
hide my face. Okay, cool. All sorts of
little switches for desk and
freestanding and the USBC input. Uh,
like I said, $2.99 a pair and they're
really small. I've also got a pair I've
got two pair sitting on my desk uh
because I got two different computers.
One is for my editing and one is for my
all my data analysis. Uh, but I use the
Cali Audio
KI. Uh, it's the LP hyphen UNF. Okay.
And they're $299 a pair. They're a
little bit bigger. The difference really
is that the Cali has a little bit more
SPL capability than this guy. Uh, I
think maybe there's a little bit Oh,
this one's actually a little bit more
linear. So, for a desktop setup that's
affordable and won't take up a lot of
space, these. And you don't need them to
get really loud. Like these get down
flat to 50 Hz. Flat. flat down to 50 Hz
and they're a great option if you're
talking for home
audio. Um, it's been a little while
since I've kind of looked, so I would I
would have to probably look again. Pulk
Audio makes a budget friendly speaker.
It's the
XT20. It has fantastic directivity. I
think it's a little bit bright on the
top end that you may want to kind of
make some adjustments for uh maybe by
towing out a little bit more, facing
away from you. But that's a really good
speaker. And if you have EQ and you want
to go back, I've got a video on this uh
where I recommend it and I show people
how to set it up, what EQ bands to use.
If you want to watch that, you can. I
think they're maybe like 250, 299 a
pair. They may be a little bit cheaper
here and there depending on when they go
on sale. And then that paired up with
something like the Whim
WIM Amp Pro, which is has like all this
stuff built into it. It's a it's a
combined streamer and amplifier in one.
HDMI input, HDMI ARC on it. Plug it in
your TV. You got enough power for a
little pair of bookshelf speakers. There
you go. You know, and then if you want
to add a sub, that's added
complications. As we know, car audio
doesn't make any phase matters in the
home, too. Yeah. And it matters in the
home, too. So, but yeah, I honestly
think that I would say for if if you
have a computer, just buy something like
these and call it a day. If you want
lower bass extension, then you're gonna
have to pay more money out of a pair of
speakers. That's just the ones that come
to mind for me, and I can't remember the
price or the actual name, but they were
Elax. Yeah. And Andrew Jones made them.
And they they were mid tier. They were
they weren't crazy expensive, and I
can't remember the name of them. Saved
my life. Um,
so let me think here. The Are they the
Oh my god. I know.
UBR62. I I think so. I think that's
their I think they're like 1,200 bucks.
But there's that's the concentric one,
right? But then there's another one
that's a step down from that that I
recommend often. It's the DBR62. And
that's a bookshelf speaker. And that's a
good bookshelf speaker. A little bit
little bit bright on the top end. Yeah.
But that's a good bookshelf speaker. Um
Yeah. There's a lot of different
options. You know, when you're talking
budget, it I'm like, well, what is
budget? Right. Yeah. Of course. Some
people budget is 200 bucks and other
people budget is 10,000. Yeah. Yeah. No,
of course. I've got some dude out in
Beverly Hills that's been sending me
speakers and it's just like, "Yeah, I'm
gonna send you this $10,000 speaker."
I'm like, "Oh, okay, cool." Like, I'll
review. I got no problem doing that. I
got it. Yeah. Yeah. To me, budget is, at
least for speakers, anything below like
800 bucks and I can just like throw in
and it sounds great. I'm cool spending
800 bucks, no problem at all. Um,
without even like crying. It's just like
cool, these work. I'm happy. And if
they're not perfect, I'm not going to
like cry about them. Like they were just
800 bucks. No big deal. I hear you.
Just, you know, you're getting the
driver, the enclosure, the R&D. You're
getting so much, you know, and you got
to think about how much work went into
even this cheaper speaker. So, finding a
$200 one that's still giving you all of
that and place that 250, it's pretty
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, $299 a pair is is
really good for those. I mean, and then
if you stay want if you still want to
stay in the
um computer audio or powered speed
because you know realistically you don't
have to use these for computer audio as
long as you got a source that has RCA
XLR etc out. You just buy the right
converter cables for these. Yeah, you
could always use power cable powered
speakers. But the Cali
L in 8 V2 is 8 inch but it's a then they
have a 4 inch or so coaxial above that.
That's a fantastic speaker. the IN5 V2
also a fantastic speaker and Miguel I
would tell you this. Yeah. Um if you're
going to be providing recommendations to
people. Yeah. Set you up an Amazon
affiliate account because it doesn't
make you a shield if it's stuff you
actually use and recommend and then you
can say hey and if you're interested in
trying this out, click the affiliate
link. It earns me 3 to 4% on any sale
and you know it doesn't make a lot of
money, dude, but it'll help offset some
of this stuff over time. So do that.
That's my advice to you is to do that.
And if anybody's got a problem with it,
tell them to piss off. Thanks, Aaron.
You know me and anyone who knows me that
has had a tune for me, I don't care
about the money. No, I hear you. I just
love this stuff. I hear you, dude. I
mean, this has been my life for the last
five or six years and even well before
that. So, it's never really been about
the money, but I've learned that when
you're good at something, people are
like cool with helping you out. So, when
I provide those links, you know, if it's
something I really care about, then
yeah, sure. Don't go buy that thing and
use that link. Lately, I just use
generic links. I'm like, I don't Doesn't
matter what it is. If you need to get
toilet paper from Amazon or you want to
get a television from Crutchfield, but
link. Yeah. Yeah. No, thanks, dude. I
appreciate it. Anything else you want to
leave the viewers or listeners about
references? Um, you know, I I I'll kind
of recap by saying that I think the
recommendation for headphones is a
really good one. I'm glad you asked
about speakers for references because
these ones I just pointed at for desk
speakers or maybe a smaller room, you
can sit right in front of them and
eliminate the room and then you've got
them and they stage and do all that
stuff. That that's a really good option
to have. Outside of that, I would just
say don't stop learning. Yeah. Uh, also
be careful what you read on the internet
because everybody's an expert. Probably
only trust people whose stereos that
you've heard. And that goes for me, you
know, if you haven't heard my stereo,
maybe take me with a grain of salt.
Um, it's just tough, man. And then also
do not play the game of trying to keep
up with the next guy because you're
never going to win. You're never Don't
keep up with the Joneses. Yeah. No,
you're never going to win. Not only like
in terms of just commercial wins and
things like that, you know, or winning
in a judge's score sheet. You're never
going to win from within, right? Like
not to get sappy, but there's a lot of
truth in that. And you're not going to
feel complete. Do what makes you happy
because this is a hobby after all for
the majority of us. This isn't something
we make a living at. This is not my day
job. This is not Miguel's day job. We we
love this. I was going to cuss. We
really love this stuff. We're very
passionate about it. And we still got to
have fun with it. So, if you're a
hobbyist and you're trying to enjoy the
hobby, enjoy it. Yeah. Take the time to
try to learn. Reach out. Ask people. Go
to shows. Go to events. Ask questions.
Ask people for feedback on your own
system and try to learn. But yeah,
number one, don't be afraid to ask
questions when you go to these shows.
True. People love to help out, man.
Yeah. Or not help out. It depends on if
they're saying is true or not true, but
you at least get some information. You
get some information. Yeah, I agree. I
think the No, go ahead. I'm sorry. Kind
of going back to the reference thing too
for from the perspective of home audio
because I never really used headphones
as a reference until I I as Yeah. Um
because I just don't like the way they
don't stage well, right?
I like a speaker out in front of me. I
don't like it from within. That's a me
thing. Okay.
What I tend to find is that the more
experience you can get with different
speakers, at some point you'll kind of
lock into a sound that does make sense
as a reference. And and if you only hear
crappy speakers, unfortunately, that's
probably going to wind up being what you
think is a reference. But if you listen
to enough good ones, at some point
you'll have a better feel for, you know,
what a what a good system sounds like.
Trust the data. Ask questions about the
data if it's available. And again, ask
don't be afraid to ask people at these
shows because getting hands-on time is
really helpful. You'll learn so much
more than reading tons of information on
the internet. No, 100%. And you know,
the last thing I'm going to leave to the
viewers and listeners is at the end of
the day, this is supposed to be fun. And
competition is not always fun because
it's you you start doing the competition
thing where it's like, oh, I have to
win. I have to win. And you forget to
just enjoy the thing that you've built
for yourself. Don't build a vehicle for
competition. Just build it for yourself.
And if your car is good, it will also do
well in competition. That's the way it
should be. But don't just build it like,
oh, well, like I was I have to build
this car for I ask an amateur and I it
cannot deviate from that. And I tell
people constantly, my car, I built it
for me. When it was getting built, not a
single moment did I ever look up any of
the orgs or nothing. Like I do not care.
And then when my very first show, people
like what? You know, I think people
forget I'm a new competitor. I haven't
been doing this a long time. Very very
short. Like 2023 was my first like
official like season. And I started that
in August. Mh.
Um. Yeah. They were like, "So, what what
class you in?" And I'm like, "I have no
clue. You going to have to tell me. I
have no clue what class." And they're
like, "What you have?" I'm like, "This
is what I have." They're like, "You're
in I I was in ML. They were like,
"You're ex limited." I'm like, "Don't
even know what that means." They were
like, "Second highest class. Cool. put
me in there. I don't care. Like I I
built it for me. Um and the last thing
is
expensive equipment does not mean better
sound. Yeah. And I learned that very
quickly when I started learning about
home audio, which is like, hey, like
these really good sounding speakers are
using very cheap drivers. Um, and
they're putting a lot of effort into the
crossover and make sure things are in
phase with each other and the radiation
makes sense and um, tonality and hey,
when you knock on this speaker, it's
dead. And that's how I started realizing
like, oh, that's why I need to make my
car. My car is becoming resonance. I
need to make it as dead as possible in
terms of, you know, sound deadening. Um,
so yeah, that's what I'll leave with the
viewers. I agree. design mean better.
I'm going to jump in with you on those
two and keep this going just a little
bit longer. 100% uh build the car that
you want to the way that you want to
build it for what your needs are. Yeah.
And then just see where you land. When I
started competing, I had no idea what I
needed to do. I built it because I knew
I wanted to do X, Y, or Z. And then like
you, I went to a show and they said,
"All right, this is class you're in." I
said, "Okay." And it was like second
from the top. I think it was extreme for
Mecca was the first class. Yeah. So I
and then I never went down. I stayed in
mecha extreme after that even though I
built new builds and all that stuff and
I could have stepped down to lower
classes. I was like
why you know so but then also yes more
money absolutely does not guarantee
better results. Nope. And a lot I'm
going to leave with one very last thing.
Okay, which is if you get a good
reference and you understand what things
are supposed to sound like, then another
person, that being a judge or a friend
or a pal, can't tell you, "Hey, you need
to fix this and this." You already know
how how your car sounds like. You know
what a reference is. So that's why a lot
of times when people are like, "Oh, well
this judge said this and this." I'm
like, "Okay, well what do you think?"
And they're like, "Well, I don't agree."
Okay. Then then like why you why you
listen to someone else? Like if it's
easier to be better at competition.
We're talking about competition. Yeah.
Yeah. It's you you'll be a better
competitor to know what that should have
sounded like. And there have been
moments when I've actually been able to,
for a lack of better words, educate a
judge and be like, "Hey dude, no,
actually it's not supposed to sound like
that." Um, and I luckily I have my
headphones with me and I'm like, "Put
these on." And they're like, "Oh." And
like they actually thank me like,
"Thanks, dude." Like I didn't know. I
was like, "You're good." you know, and
and it's cool because everyone can
learn, you know, and every day I'm
asking people questions. I've Dude, how
many times have I hit you up on
Messenger recently? Hey, dude, like I
don't understand this. And you'll be
like, oh yeah, I don't get it either.
The last one was like my like last one
was like my midbase. I'm like, dude,
there's something going on. I don't
You're like, I have no clue. I'm like,
cool. Me either. I just wanted to know.
Just make sure I'm saying. Yeah. Yeah.
Just make sure I'm cool. But yeah. Yeah.
Well, I have uh one of I don't want to
mention his name here, but somebody we
know very well. He every once in a while
he'll message messages me with some
graphs from REW and he'll say, "Hey,
what do you think about this?" And I'm
like, "Well, this region looks a little
bit odd. You may want to check." Okay.
Yeah. I'll go out to my car at lunch. Uh
he knows who he is, too. But like,
that's cool. And then sometimes I'm like
I'll just be like, "Dude, how's it
sound?" Because it looks all right to
me. He's like, "Yeah, it sounds all
right." I'm like, "Yeah, I wouldn't
touch it then." Yeah, 100%. And like Oh,
yeah. You uh Oh, sorry. Go ahead. No,
no, go, please. Uh, one one idea in the
future might just be a
um like a telling stories of how many
times we've done something wrong because
somebody told us to do it this way like
or I still remember Steve McIntyre and
and he was a competitor a while back and
he was telling us one weekend that he
went to a show on Saturday and got some
feedback and then went to a show the
next day because this was on a Sunday up
in um Murphers. Bro, Tennessee at the at
the Vinnie, I think it was. And same
judge, same car, no difference in the
tune. Gave him five five point different
score. Wow. And he was just like, "Dude,
I don't know." And he said like the
judge got out and like, "Well, this
thing needs" and he's like, "I didn't
change anything, you know, like." So, it
happens. Yeah. There you go, man. Power
of persuasion. I guess I Where are we
at? Minute an hour 40. Let's just keep
it going. We're just talking. Yeah.
Don't change. If you're in competition,
you're trying to learn and get better.
Please do not change the tune during the
show. Oh, no. You're not getting any
valuable feedback because you're
changing it. And then you're like, "Oh."
And then I I love when people complain
about it on like, "No, these judges were
correct." Like, "They're all wrong." I
was like, "Did you change the tune?"
Like, "Well, yeah, cuz this one you
said." I'm like, "There you go, dude.
You can't help yourself." Yeah. To get
better if you're constantly just
changing it middle of the show. Like,
stop doing that. Just agree. I agree.
It's tough, man, because
when you tune
yourself, you you probably doubt
yourself a lot, too. Especially at when
you're new to it, you're doubting
yourself constantly. Oh, well, you know,
what am I going to get? So, the judge
gets out at a big show and he says X, Y,
or Z, and you're like, "Oh, I'm gonna go
make those changes." Well, what if the
other judge didn't feel that way? And
then, like, you don't know what to do,
right? So, you just lost. I think I
think what you have to do when you start
out is you just have to kind of expect
to take the lumps. Go into it with them
with the factor of already knowing that
judges can be inconsistent. As as much
as it's tried
to be objective over the what like
decades at this point, it's still
subjective. Like these score sheets have
place markers and things like that for
stage width and depth and these things,
but it still is subjective. I mean, the
easiest way to talk about it is you get
into a car at 8 a.m. and you got all day
to judge. Like, you're judging all day.
You got 20, 30 different cars. By the
time 3:00 rolls around, your ears are
shot and you have to maybe maybe you
take the time to go get a a re-reference
in a stereo system somewhere or
headphones or something like that, but
you can guarantee that the score that
you gave at 3 p.m. is going to be
different than the score you would give
at 8 a.m. Like, that's just a human
factor. Okay. And and good or bad. Good
or bad. Yeah, the score is going to
change, right? I mean, a quarter point
here, a whole point here, whatever, it's
going to be different. You could roll
the dice and and get get different
results because there is some subjective
analysis to it. Um, so if you if you
don't allow yourself the learning
opportunity for some period of time,
maybe like your first six months or so,
I whatever is reasonable to the person I
guess listening, then you're not going
to learn. And you need to get as much
feedback as you can. And if you really
want to be a true competitor in the
sense of I want to do well on a judge a
score sheet, then you're gonna have to
go about it with a different mindset.
Like yeah, I never went after that and
I'm I'm not I had no problem with those
who really want to go out with the
competitive mindset, but I always just
went to shows and was like, we'll see
how it does. I like it, you know, and if
I would get feedback that would help me
improve it that I that I thought was
useful, I would make those changes.
Yeah. But if you really want to be a
judge or you really want to get scored
well, you got to play the game. And and
that goes back into telling a judge that
you made a change or yeah, potentially,
you know, putting a booster seat for a
certain judge. Um maybe a different tune
for a different judge if you've been
doing it long enough to know. But those
are things that you try to do later.
Your initial phase is data gathering,
right? getting all this information from
all these different sources and you're
saying all right well 80% of the people
are saying this thing so that's what I'm
going to do and the other stuff I'm not
going to worry about just ignore it
until you get more judges you get more
judges right and it's a fine tuning
process hear me out here crazy thought
or you have a good reference and you
know so then you could just reference
then you just tell everybody like hey
you know it's all but at least you know
then right and then you can maybe you go
oh maybe my reference isn't what it
needs to be. Yeah. Yeah. You know, or
maybe like, hey, what is your reference?
It'll be like XYZ, and you're like, oh,
is that better or worse? And there's
data on the internet that you can figure
out like, hey, was my reference not good
or blah blah blah. You know, and the
other thing is, and I I know you know
this just as well as I do because of our
backgrounds.
Biases exist unconsciously. Oh, yeah.
And because of that, no human human
point blank can have just an objective
get in the car and have zero bias. It's
just impossible. They might see this one
thing and unconscious is going to be a
bias. Like, oh, like for me, if I see a
mid-range and a pillar, I already
automatically have a bias against it.
Even though I try to be objective, I'm
like, oh, like the image is not going to
be the way I want it because I'm having
all these different different
reflections. Yeah. Is what it is. I know
it's true, you know, and that's why I I
I don't say I won't ever be a judge, but
like people have asked me, I'm like,
"No, I rather Yeah. You know, being a
judge is hard. Oh, dude. so hard. It's
super stressful, too. Like the guys that
do it at these big shows. I've never
done a big show. I've always done like
the local shows, but man, the guys who
do it at the big shows. Props to those
guys. I don't know. And then they had to
deal with the people like us who are
complaining about their their
assessments, you know, and their judge
sheet. So, dude, for the most part, I
try not to complain. I'm just like
whatever. Especially during it, dude.
I've seen people like get mad at Bro,
chill out, dude. It's just two channel
audio. Yeah. No, that's not the time to
do it. I get that some people have stuff
on the line like shop people who have
shops, they have something on the line
for it. Yeah. But, you know, if you're a
if you're a hobbyist and you're trying
to do this from the perspective of like
just hanging out, having fun, improving
your stereo, it shouldn't it shouldn't
be that serious because at the end of
the day, you know, here's what I
remember looking back on all the years I
went to finals and everything. Yeah, the
stuff I remember uh that stands out are
after the after the event hanging out
with my friends, talking, saying our
goodbyes. But as far as like who got
what the stuff that I remember are the
people who bitched that straight up,
dude. I can I as soon as I start talking
about that, there's at least there's two
very specific instances where I remember
a team acting very bad. Um Clifton might
know what I'm talking about. acting very
bad at a couple finals and it was like,
yo. Um, so yeah, that's probably what
you'll be remembered for. So, don't do
that. Yeah, don't be that person. Yeah,
don't be that person. It's fine. It's
We're It's It's two channel audio and
that in a car. Yeah, it's fine, guys.
It's fine. It's just music at the end of
the day. It's supposed to be fun. It'll
always be fun. Definitely be stressful,
but you know, talking about objective uh
or subjective bias just from seeing the
cars. I mean, I went
through, man, that's probably 15
different builds in a car that was 13
years old. And sometimes I would hide
the speakers just because when I got in
my own car, if I saw the speakers, there
was something about the sound stage that
I was already expecting to hear. Yeah.
So, I, you know, and then when I hit
them, it was like seeing the speakers,
the sound stage is where the speakers
are. when I don't see the speakers.
Boom. Your your imagination can just go
wild. Yeah, for sure. No, dude. I I I
agree completely with you. Maybe we'll
have another podcast talking about that,
but I think worth it. Yeah, I think for
now I don't have anything else. Me
either, man. I'm gonna go get some
cookies and some chocolate milk. Nice.
Thank you for being our first guest on
Way for Yeah, dude. I'm happy to do it,
man. Dude, I appreciate it. You've been
a long long friend of mine. I was like,
who's the first person I want on here?
And I thought about I thought about
Clifton, but I don't like him that much,
you know? I was like, I don't like him.
I was like, Aaron has to be the man.
Also, big shout out to Clifton. Thanks,
dude, for doing this because I don't
know how to do it. He was like, I'll
take care of it, dude. You just Oh,
that's awesome. You You and Aaron just
hang out. So, thanks, Clifton, for doing
the background. I will learn myself here
shortly on how to do this, but thank you
ahead of time. Are you still there,
Clifton? Let me see. He's still here.
Hey. Hey, dude. Thank you. We love you
Clifton. Love you. Much love, dude.
Aaron, thanks, dude. Yeah. Catch you
guys later. Yes, sir. Don't go any Don't
go anywhere. Got stay where you are.