Crutchfield: The Podcast Ep. 45

Welcome back to Crutchfield, the podcast. I am your host, Jr thank you so much for listening and for joining us. We've got a hot one for you today. We've got a guy that works here at Crutchfield named norm. Norm has been with Crutchfield for many years. He was with us for a while, he left for a while. He came back to Crutchfield. He's what we call a re tread and he's got like a pretty special position at Crutchfield based on his life experience. We're gonna get into all of that here because we interviewed Norm on Crutchfield Live. These are Crutchfield Live is our Youtube videos that are live in studio. We take questions from viewers and we, we tap into the minds of some of the brilliant and fun people that work here at Crutchfield, norm has a ton of experience installing stuff in actual homes, you know, running wires through walls hanging TVs on the wall in wall, speakers, multi zone audio systems, complete home theaters. He knows how to put all that stuff in actual houses. And he uses that experience to help our customers with system designs and knowing what to purchase to make their home audio and video system come to life. Norm knows more about this than just about anybody. And we thought it would be great to have norm on Crutchfield live where we could take questions from actual viewers and uh, and let norm, you know, display his expertise. And then we thought, hey, wouldn't that make a great episode of Crutchfield the podcast. Yes, yes, it would. That's what you're about to hear is norm And me on Crutchfield live interacting with our viewers and just having a good time talking about norm's life experiences, what he does as well as a bunch of installation tips where he answers some questions. So here you go, it's norm. And Jr on Crutchfield live right here on Crutchfield, the podcast, This is norm. Everybody welcome to the show, everybody. Uh, norm is one of our residential account managers. That's your time. I looked it up in our employee database residential account manager. I feel like that doesn't fully capture what you do, but it's a it's a good seg. What I do is I support nine designers that uh when somebody customer calls and says, hey, I'm building a new house, I've got, I'm renovating a house, whatever and they say, I want to put speakers in A B C. D. Rooms, whatever like that. And our regular sales advisors go, it's a little much for me to do. They'll kick it to the A. V. Design group and they'll take care of it. If one of those designers has a question, then they'll kick it to me and I have almost three decades of actual installation, physical installs and stuff like that. I've been doing it a long time and my job is to make my designers support them so that the customer gets exactly what they want. Got it. So now, you know what norm does norm is here to talk to you. If you have questions for somebody with norms expertise, we would love to hear from you about it. And norm would love to answer your questions. We think there's probably plenty of questions out there in the world of mounting TVs and projectors and screens. You have some experience doing that locations, Like a lot of the questions we get fairly often is where do I put my speakers in my home theater room or my media room? Like here's my sofa, how where, how, where do I, where do I put this stuff? And what kind of speakers like in ceiling and wall, blah, blah blah like that. My job is to steer people in the right direction in a way that they go, oh well that makes sense. Let me give you an idea of how expert norm is because norm has been in a ton of our Youtube videos and uh I just want to show you, can you switch over to my laptop there, Landon, thank you so much. Uh if you go to our Youtube page and search for norm, that's all you gotta type, search for norm, you're gonna see some pretty in depth, very good videos about how to install in wall speakers, how to install speakers in a drop ceiling panel. Uh Let's see this is that today, how to install speakers to an in wall volume control, how to mount your tv, that's, we have already started tapping into the expertise of norm uh, in our Youtube channel. And uh, so we're just extrapolating on that and doing even more with norm here today. We thought it'd be kind of cool to be able to answer your questions live if you don't have questions. I got a page of questions that I'm gonna ask norm, but I see some stuff coming in here. Ramsey Edward, we want some discussion about drivers, full range versus crossover ones. Excellent question. And what happened. And I'm assuming this is for home media situation or stereo at home, you're generally much better off getting two drivers will for tweeter with a crossover because you end up getting a much wider range of response, much wider range of frequency response. You generally get better clarity. And typically what happens when you have a full range driver, one speaker doing the highs and the lows, they tend to roll off the highs so that you lose some christmas, you lose some clarity. The biggest difference for most people is that they lose the ability to understand the dialogue of the conversation. So if you can, you're much better off getting a speaker with tweeter will for, you know, with a crossover to separate which one goes where yeah inside every home speaker, right in those, in those bookshelf floor standing speakers stealing. They all have a crossover whose job is to send the high to the twitter the lows to the wolf for if there's a mid range, it sends the mid range frequencies there. The quality of that crossover huge, huge. It's a big part of why a home speaker sounds good. And so that's important. This person Ramsey added to that myths regarding drivers meaning fair right, magnet size and quality drivers. I think I'm extrapolating from that there. I've always heard people thought I used to think bigger magnet on a speaker means it's a better speaker. That used to be true. But as more uh magnet sounds like, we would say magnet technology, but what they found is that they now have uh neodymium magnets and there's some other and ceramic stuff like that. It's not the size of the magnet, it's the strength of the field, that how strong the magnet is. And it used to be, the bigger the magnet the more more the field it's true. But now you've got speakers that have much seemingly smaller magnets. But because of the technology they actually have inside of, especially for a while for they'll have a voice coil that can now stay within the entire field which gives the speaker control better control over the sound. So it's not a given anymore that the size of the magnet makes for a better speaker. Just as I was gonna ask you one of mine, we've got a question coming in from uh drug kit. I've got an entry level den in a v receiver, a basic subwoofer and two bookshelf speakers are also entry level? Should I get a center speaker to upgrade for dialogue or just get a sound bar instead? If the subwoofer, sorry, if the receiver is physically along the same wall as the T. V. And you're left right speakers, which I'm assuming are on either side of the T. V. Uh definitely get the center channel, not the sound bar and the, because you've got almost everything you need to just now, you need some speaker wire and and whatever center channel speaker things keep in mind is whatever brand of left right speaker, you've got whatever it is, try to match the center channel being the same brand, then that's gonna be the same family, but should be the same brand. And the reason why that's important is that there's something called voicing which is uh you ever knows, you may not know this, but clip speakers tend to have a lot of high end, a lot of crisp clarity polk speakers and there's no right or wrong. It's just what sounds good to you, poke speakers are much smoother. So you would never match a clip center with poke left, right or vice versa. You're much better off, cannot get these glasses to stay right. It's like it's like I looked down at this, I don't need that. Get rid of that. Okay, so I take them off. Okay, thank you, thank you very much. So, so what's the point I was getting at about the center channel speaker. Is that the center channel speaker will do a really cool thing for you. Is that without the center channel speaker when somebody's on screen and they're talking, what happens is is that their voices coming out of both the left and the right speaker. And if somebody is sitting directly in front of the T. V. The voice sound centered like their voices coming from the image on tv and all that. But if you got somebody sitting to the right or to the left of you the more they sit to the right or to the left of you, the more the image or more the sound is coming from that right or left speaker not from the center. So when you add a center channel speaker now, no matter where you're sitting in the room standing up, sitting down left, right laying on the floor. You the voice and the the the guy's lips moving or whatever, they always come from the same place. So for your particular thing because you've already got the the uh receiver, you've already got the left right speakers all that you're much better off just buying the center channel just make sure it's the same family, same brand as the one you've already got. Now the questions are indeed coming in. I'm so excited. Isaac on facebook says polk audio R. 700 or versus the K. F. 9 50 if you're unfamiliar or if you can't picture those immediately. I've got them here. I pull them up on my computer and so this is the poke our 700 floor standing speaker. Uh So they're gonna go for about 17 $1800 a pair, right? Looks like a big three way speaker and we're talking 28 inch long throw woofers, a 6.5 inch turbine cone midrange and a one inch pinnacle ring radiator tweeter. It's a pretty nice poke speaker. It's kind of a beast. It's big it's powerful it's getting five out of five stars from the 27 customers comparing that. He wants to know your opinion on that versus this. The K. F. Q nine fit. The difference is being that it's got 28 inch aluminum passive radiators, dual eight inch aluminum wolfers and a 1.5 inch vented aluminum dome tweeter with a wave guide. So it's a kev speaker a little bit more expensive than the Pope but certainly in the same ballpark. Getting similar reviews from customers. Do you have an opinion on it? Have you heard them? I've not I've heard the poke. I've not heard the calf and I like kept speakers in general but I've been using the small bookshelf ones and great detail that I have absolutely no bite at all. There's no shrill or anything. I don't know about these. You know how uh what they sound. I would imagine they sound the same. It's pretty much a toss up if I had to choose between the two, I like poke. I have poked myself and I like the smoothest and the clean nous of the sound, but it's either way 61 half dozen of the other. This is a customer review picture of the calf just in case you're wondering. Uh, and I was just looking through the reviews. They've got 11 5 star and 14 star reviews. People are saying, you know, this person didn't look like the way the cabinets look, but everybody else seems to dig them. These sound amazing. Uh what else we got here? They added a subwoofer to, it seems like people like them. Uh so great speakers. Either way you can't go wrong and with speakers, things like that can Very subjective just because norm might like one or the other better or I might like one of the other better doesn't mean you will, which is one of the reasons you get 60 days when you buy stuff from Crutchfield. Actually like it. I gotta get to some more questions for this coming in. I'm gonna do an easy one. You can answer while I look through the rest of these Steven Holbrook on a crutch on YouTube says, is there such a thing as too big for a center channel. It depends on how far back you're sitting from it. Um, If you're sitting like 8 10 11 12 ft, you, it's pretty tough to get too big, but if you're sitting uh you know, six ft away, what happens is is that you still have a really big center Channel speaker, but you're wasting a lot of its ability and there's no point in spending the money. The other thing about a big Center Channel speaker is typically they're fairly tall and they're fairly deep. So if you're sitting 10 12 ft back, totally cool to do. But the but you gotta remember ideally this is ideal. You want the center Channel speaker to be when you're sitting down, you want the center Channel speaker to be roughly at your ear level. And the reason for doing that is that the way our ears are made in design, you know, whoever did it uh is that it's the easiest for us to understand dialogue, conversation, stuff like that when the source of the sound is at our ear level, which and a great real world example is is that when you um are talking to a small child, one of the things you do is you tend to get down on your hands and knees here face to face because easier to understand them. Same idea. You want the center channel speaker to be roughly at your level when you're sitting, It'll make understanding dialogue conversations a lot easier, but you'll also start hearing more nuances in the background. And a really good example of this is that there was a video like 10 years ago the movie did not do very well. It was master and commander of the far side of the world. And I had done an upgrade for the installation for a customer and we went to, I don't remember the speakers now but uh but we positioned the speakers correctly, had him sitting down too low firing up at him and he loved this movie and he put on the DVD and and and we're doing it and he realized we were hearing the creaking of the timbers. There was a shot of inside the boat and they were doing it. But you could hear during the positive dialogue you could hear the timbers creaking that he just never heard before one because the speaker wasn't positioned correctly to be gotten to speak better. But the center channel speaker position correctly. Well makes a big difference in how well you enjoy it. Awesome. I got another good question here. I am ready for it. Had to do some research uh, for you to answer this question. So this is from sean on facebook, can the clips, the fives be incorporated into a whole house system. Are you familiar with the clips? Yeah. So let me show you, I got them here. If you can pull them up on the screen. That'd be great. We don't technically sell this model of clay speaker any longer. Right. So it's a discontinued model. It's been replaced by the Sixes which I'll show you here in a pair of speakers powered. These are powered speakers right? So they have Bluetooth, they have a built in deck, they have a bunch of different inputs on them. I'm about to do that. You got it. Uh Oops didn't mean to do that. Here we go. There's the back of the speakers so we've got analog inputs that can be phono or line. You can plug a turntable or a regular set of audio analog cables from like a cd player. There's an optical digital and USB from a computer. It's even got an H. D. M. I. So you can make these your T tv speakers if you want to. The question I'll remind you can these speakers be incorporated into a whole house system before you answer? I think this answer will also apply to the current model speakers that have replaced them. The six? Is there the same thing? Only bigger? Uh So what's the answer? So here's the deal. When you want to use a set of powered speakers like the eclipses or something similar. Of course you need a surround sound receiver in order to grab the video and audio and the receiver passes the video onto the T. V. And it pulls all the audio out. The key is you need a receiver that has pre amp outputs not inputs but outputs. And you would feed an R. C. A cable from the the left preempt output to one of the power speakers into the other one. And then you would get a non powered clips center. And for a part of the whole house system if you're using helios or you're using uh so you're using Heroes which is which makes really good uh whole house sound system you would use a Helios whole house surround sound receiver that has pre amp outputs that allows you to have both the whole house ability where on your phone you can say I want to listen to blah blah blah blah and like on the deck or whatever but you can also incorporate that into the surround sound room. But the key is a surround sound receiver that has pre amp outputs or like left center right like that. So you could also use some other ways to write. Like if you wanted to put just a pair of the five or the six is in a completely different room from your home theater and you had like a helios or or music cast right? You could you could use something like a so no support or a blue sound node. You can put those right next to your fives or your sixes, plug an audio cable from those directly into the bay powered speakers and now they become a zone of a multi room music system. 100% can not with just what's built in right there. No no wifi Built in, no whole whole home music system. Also, I've been corrected by somebody on Youtube. The sixes are not the new replacement to the fives. They're actually older than the fives. We have sold out of the five. We have not yet sold out of the six is uh, let's see what else we've got, john on facebook says looking to replace my Marantz, S R 7005 with either the S. R 7015 or the Den on X 6700 advantage of one over the other. Do you know those models you need me to pull like I can't answer the question. In general, the Marantz and Dennis are actually owned by the same company and a lot of the stuff is made in the same factories. The difference between Marantz and they share a lot of common technology. The difference between the two is that Marantz tends to use uh what's a good way of saying it better, higher quality capacitors, which gives you better clarity in your sound. And they also come with a longer warranty and they tend to have chip sets. Like the Dac digital analog converters tend to be at least one, usually two or three steps up in their ability to like process separate streams and stuff like that. So if you, if you're already comfortable with the Marantz, I would stay in the Moran side of it and just step up now between the differences between those two models, I don't know. Um, I think that's a pretty good general answer because and typically the Marantz is known for just being warmer and more musical. But in many other ways very similar to the Den on. But that's sort of Marantz has retained what makes Moran special even though they are owned by the same company. Sound United owns both of them. Uh And uh oh they also make heroes, by the way, is in both Denon and Marantz receivers. Uh So Daniel on Youtube says what is the ideal Dac for playing cds? I happen to know who Daniel is? So I'm gonna expand on his question a little bit when when you see things that have a D. To a converter or digital to analog converter. Sometimes there's like they're bragging about which one they put in there, right? Like you might buy a home C. D. Player that has a Wolfson or an E. S. S. Saber or burr brown, things like that. And I think Daniel's asking. And he specifically said for non high res, so Jeff, you're just playing Spotify playing a C. D. Right? Not hi res music but just regular music, do you have a recommended Dak, do you have a preference of one over the other? Uh And I know that there are people that do, but you may not. Yeah, I don't know the reason why I don't is that most of the time now if you're buying a good name, Brand, middle grade or higher, the deck is already probably rated for hi rez and it'll be just fine for cd quality stuff. Yeah, that's totally true. Uh, Miguel on facebook. Miguel on facebook says we rarely see speaker designs with asymmetrically arranged drivers. Most manufacturers now arrange them vertically exactly in line symmetrical. Is there an advantage to this design? Like I guess in other words, why don't they put speakers? Little left, little right, little f little right. Why are they always straight up and down? Well actually there are still speakers made tower speakers that made that the uh, there's usually three ways where they got the tweeter and then the mid is to the right if it's the right speaker to the left on the left side and then the wolf down below. But the reason why they're getting away from that is that the sonic advantages are fairly slight compared to the additional manufacturing costs and the technology stuff like that. What they are doing more and more of is that the cabinet that the speakers are in. Especially the tower speakers, a fair amount of bookshelves. Is that inside there much more rounded so that the reflections from the backside don't bounce back and they baffle, which is what all the speakers like here's the front of the speaker and you take out the grill, there's the wolf and there's the tweeter is that now the baffle is actually angled a little bit so that the Wolfers coil and the tweeter coil are lined up. So when there's a big explosion, like boom, the sound from both are going out at the same instant. And uh and that makes a big difference. I would imagine that from a style standpoint at one time it made a difference. But I don't know enough because I'm not a speaker designer. I don't know enough about why my thought on it. Is that a lot of the speakers these days are more slender, right? They use thinner, smaller drivers, 6.5 instead of tens and 12. Uh, you know, back in, my dad brought speakers home from the pacific, back in the, in the sixties, seventies. Right? And those were short fat speakers with a 12 inch wolf fur and a mid range like a five way speaker. They were all over the place, You don't see that much anymore. Most speakers are taller, thinner and if you're thinner there's not really room to put speakers off kind of in a straight, I think it's a lot of the aesthetics, the aesthetics. Yeah, they look a little nicer. They're a little bit more palatable. They can blend in with the decor in more rooms, things like that. The other way of saying that the spousal approval rating tends to go up a lot. The slimmer, the speaker is totally uh, I've got another one here. Best skirt on facebook says can a more advanced sealed sub. The he is talking home subs can a more advanced sealed sub give you a deeper impact than a lower model ported sub. And he's given two examples SVS sp 3000 sealed box sealed subway for 3000 compared to their technically lower line. Right? The PB ported box 2000. So, so the way did you answer the question is you if you tend to watch mostly action adventure movies you tend to watch uh or you tend not to watch as many uh music, concert videos if you tend to watch more action Venture, just general movies like Top Gun, maverick, stuff like that. The uh you want the ported speaker because you get more impact, you get more than boom, like when the jet flies overhead you go, whoa, okay, that's pretty good. So if you tend to uh watch a lot of music dvds, a lot of concerts, stuff like that, like old Zeppelin movies and stuff just listening to music. Yes, perfect. You want a sealed speaker, A sealed speakers advantage is that it's completely controlled in and out again, you still need plenty of power to do it like 500 watts or something like that. But it's sealed speaker is much more accurate. So when someone's playing like an upright bass and they're they're doing a finger run all the way up or down, you can actually hear the guy's fingers on the fret board and it's just cleaner more accurate and it's much more musical and that you cover the range, not as loud but cleaner and more accurate. I completely concur more power on a sealed enclosure, better for music ported, you will typically do a great job with, with movies, won't maybe be as accurate and musical as a sealed box. And the key point there is about the ported speaker is if, if it's a like an SVS brand, which I love, it's what I use myself if using SVS and it's a 12 inch ported or a 12 inch sealed, they're both pretty good and you, you get a little bit more bang, but you still get because of the way they designed the enclosures and the speakers, they still sound musically sound pretty good. And the uh but if you can go uh if you're using a 10 inch and you like music, try to just go with the sealed, you don't get as much bang, but it sounds better. This is the perfect norm question, Philip on facebook says at what height should in wall speakers, B is 48 inches too high. So it's an excellent question. And if it is a uh and I get asked this a lot if it's a dedicated home theater where you're sitting down and you're watching movies sometimes for music, but most time it's just for watching, remember earlier I was saying the center channel speaker should be about your ear level, ideally the left and right speakers should be at that same year level can be as much as 12 inches higher, but not definitely not lower. If it's a mixed use, like a media room where you're you're doing just music and you're you're also watching movies, stuff like that. A good rule of thumb is still have the center channel speaker at your level, but put the left, right front speakers about 24 inches higher. And the reason for doing that is if you're listening to just the music and people are in the background doing other things like you're in the kitchen or whatever, the sound is more at your ear level when you're standing and it makes you reach out and fills out the room for when you're doing the surround speakers, the speakers that are going behind you and they're in wall, ideally they should be the same height, that's the front fairly often because of the rear wall, whatever is there, you can't do that because either just one or something like that. So if you can put them about seven ft up, still firing forward, you're you're doing really well. One question he did not ask, but for at most speakers which are the speakers that are directly above you, wherever you're sitting, you want one set of speakers that can be ideally directly above you and you want them like that, the left, right front speakers are 10 ft apart from each other and how you know how far apart, put them, if you're so for seating area is about 10 ft, however far back you're sitting areas, which is around 8 10 11 ft. You want the left right to be about the same. So it forms an equal sided triangle. If you're sitting back 12, 13, 14, 15 ft, which happens a lot, you still want the left, right front speakers to still be about 10 ft apart. The reason for doing that is that when the producers and directors are mixing the soundtrack for a movie or even for CD or DVD in the mixing studios, the speakers when they're playing it back and listening to them, guess how far apart they are 10 ft. And that's, that's kind of a standard. So if you can be, can be nine ft or 11 ft, but ideally ear level or within 24 inches rear ones, seven ft. If you can try to do uh ear level but higher and then at most speakers directly above you and it could be 12 inches behind 12 inch four. But ideally somewhere in that range, like with so many things it has to do with application, right? Like it's for background music. If it's for direct music listening, if it's for home theater, the answer might not be the same at the same height. Also there are articles on crutchfield dot com uh, specifically in wall and seal speaker placement and installation articles, I bet you had something to do with that at some uh, and there's more, hopefully somebody's gonna put a link to those in the, in the chats in the comments. Thank you for doing that. But yeah, so a ton more information there. Corey asks, and I'm gonna tweak this question a little bit is down firing home speakers better than front firing home speakers or does it matter? I think we're talking subwoofers right down firing speakers that are not subs wouldn't make much sense. That's not really a thing. Down firing subwoofers though is definitely a thing where the drivers on the bottom of the sub facing the floor or a front firing subwoofer with the driver facing out like directly at you in your couch, what's better front or down? So if the subwoofer is gonna be, if you can, this is ideal. If you're only gonna have one subwoofer, ideally try to have it along the same wall as your center speaker, left, right on your tv and stuff like that. The reason for doing that is that remember how James Earl jones has got this really great deep bass voice luke. I am your father, you know that? Yeah, I think so. So part of his voice is actually gonna come out of the subwoofer. So if you have the subway for along the same wall has got the rest of it, it'll all just sounds like it's coming from the center channel speaker if you put it behind you or on the side it tends to blur a little bit, you can still get away with it, but it's not ideal. So I lost track of what I was answering. So yeah, down first. So if it's front, if you if the speaker is gonna be the subwoofer is gonna be on the wall or you know, same wall having front firing. And the reason for doing that is that when there's an explosion or you know, whatever, the wave comes directly at you and you can actually feel it in your chest and it's a pretty big boom. Okay, it's cool. The down firing, The reason for doing that is that uh allows usually it's a good way of saying it down firing allows for much more placement locations in the room. The disadvantage of a down firing is that you typically find it in smaller speakers like comes with a sound bar or something like that. Is that the down firing the base hits and goes off in all directions. Also bounced off the wall and comes back and stuff like that and it blurs the base. So you hear a lot of bass but you don't get the cleanest or the accuracy or the impact because a lot of the energy bounced away from you and then coming at you and it slows it down a little bit. What about the difference in flooring material? I mean, I'm just looking at our floor here, Part of our floor has a we have a center rug and then the outside edges has hardwood floors. So put it down, firing sub over a hardwood floor versus over thick carpeting. I imagine that would change your base. It does, it does mute it a little bit, but surprisingly it's not as much as people would think it does does have some impact but it's not like you'd almost have to a be it to here like Yeah, I can hear it but it's not it's not a big difference, it's noticeable but it's not huge. Cool. I've got more questions coming in. Let's see here, do you have a go to Oh do you have a go to projector? Yes The it depends on there's there's two different main kinds of projectors now. The one typically everybody sees that the big one goes up in the ceiling and and mounts, you know, shoot forward stuff like that. The other one which is much becoming much more popular is what they call an ultra short throw and literally they can only be, they can be up to like 12" away from the screen and the and the there is the light goes up and bounces towards you like this. The advantage of an ultra short throw is much simpler installation, plug it into power, set it up, put the screen in and a lot not all, but a lot of short throw projectors have speakers built in so for a quick and dirty. Does a great job the um so in general like as far as not the style whether overhead or an ultra short throw but the technology, the light technology, I prefer laser. They cost more money, but the advantage is that the colors are clear and cleaner. The crisper and the bulbs can last up to 20,000 hours for typical household. That's like 10 years. Most projectors whether the they're the ultra short throw or the overhead that replaceable bulbs that typically you're like 6000 hours. So usually during a 10 year lifetime with those, you're typically replacing the bulb at least twice for a total of three. The original plus two. Uh you end up spending more money for the laser but you get better clarity, you get better reliability. And unlike the bulbs, the regular replaceable bulbs, they tend to fade over time where at the end of like 2000 hours they're not nearly as bright as a later, later stays the same brightness all the way through to the end or pretty close. So two years ago we had zero short throw projectors. It was not a thing at crutchfield, it was becoming a thing in the rest of the world and we wanted to wait a little bit, we have now have 10 different short throw. Uh and they seem to be quite popular because it's easier to install, easier to get them set up? Uh and uh you have a go to. Did you have a particular short throw that you find recommending more often than others? Or just throw is generally like general, generally short throws are generally pretty good. They're one of the things that keep in mind about short throws. They also had these little tiny pocket sized ones that are only like 7 20 P. And uh which is the resolution level and they're good for kids room, stuff like that. But what I owe also for short and I hadn't thought about that is I want to make sure that the short throw projector can accept a four K. Six. Excuse me. And um a lot of the the more entry level short throws, they'll use some technology called pixel shifting where the native is only 10 80 resolution but it actually shifted just a little over like half the pixels with. So you get closer to a four K. Signal but you're spending way less money than a true native four K. So for a lot of people and epson or a high sense uh projector. Ultra short throw is a really good way of getting crisp clear images on a relatively pocket saving money saving, you know, way of going about it. So I'm looking at our website now norm I've filtered out all of our projectors. So all we're seeing here is ultra short throw. And based on this on the resolution you can either get uh we have two that are 10 80 p done or the other eight of them have four K. Via pixel shifting. That's what you want. You want the four K. Pixel shifting. And because that doesn't take you through to to all the way up to four K. But it looks way better than a 10 80. Um Casey asks on Youtube how would you put a sub in the wall without starting a fire? So it's a great question and I typically steer people away from doing that because it from an installation standpoint, it's a lot of work. One of the things you got to keep in mind is that a subwoofer that's going in a wall typically is people are trying for they're more concerned about aesthetics than they are about performance. So an in wall subwoofer can round out the sound and but you gotta keep in mind in wall subwoofers. Um they typically the grills about like this, but that's why it's got to fit in between, you know, well you may not know this but studs are 16 on center, there's 14.5 inches of air gap between them. So the sub's got to fit in there. The other thing is is that if it's an interior wall, typically there are only two by fours so you might have only four inches of depth. So you might get a 10 in speaker in there and you can hear the sound. The other thing is that you've got to run speaker wire from wherever that subway for location is gonna be involved sub over to wherever you're gonna put the amp and I think we're getting to the crux of the question here, right? You can't just take a regular powered sub which has a buffer and an amp in a box and put it in your wall. That's not how it's not designed to do that. But you can do that. Yeah, correct. You can, there's no law saying you can't other than uh it's like against building codes and stuff like that. Actually you're gonna, there is there is an answer to that and you could build like an opening in your wall and set it in there and what you use that. You know how you got to return immigrant or grills. So you build an enclosure inside, you set the subwoofer inside there, put the grill on top and but you gotta remember you've got to have power there and you have to then get a source of signals either wirelessly or wired. So the other drawback to it is this is that the sub over has to be front firing because it's got a fire straight out. And if it's ported the ports also be on the front firing straight out. You don't want to down firing. You don't want support in the rear because it'll just sound. Bumi that I've done this four or five times. And it was designed to the one part of the spouse wanted the performance, the other half of the spouse or the couple wanted didn't want to see it. So we came up with this, we actually built an enclosure on the backside that's just set in there. So it's kind of in the wall because you can't see it once it's installed but you've actually built a wall box that you have power in and the sub needs to be front firing. We also sell in wall subs that are actually designed to literally be installed inside the wall. And the key difference here is that those don't have amplifiers in the enclosure. Yes, you don't need to run power to them. But you got to run the speaker wire to him and speaker wire gets run in the wall all the time. You've done a video about how to do that. Right? So that you're just running speaker wire from an external amp that's probably mounted somewhere near your home theater receiver. Yes, I typically do not recommend people putting powered subwoofers in the wall unless they're pretty comfortable fabricating. Because one of the things you have to do is you have to build a platform to raise the subwoofer up because you've got the baseboard and the subway has got to be higher than the baseboard. You need a really good person. You need to do that. So I would strongly recommend that that very discouraging people trying to put a powered subwoofer in a wall, definitely doable. I've done it, but it's not something for the typical homeowner. Uh this is a question that might be best answered by someone off camera. Now this questions come up on more than one Crutchfield live Philip, are the soundproof acoustic, are those soundproof acoustic dampener is on the wall behind you guys? People are always curious about what these panels are behind us here and uh Phillip, our video producer guy, I was the one who ordered these, um what are they and why are they there? And what tell us about them. So those are combo probably grab one actually. Oh you're getting a close up view here combo absorbers and diffusers. So there's absorption material in here, I think they're two inches thick. But then this is sort of a diffuser design. So typically you're trying to get rid of reflections and unwanted sound waves either by absorbing them or scattering them. These are kind of combo, they do both. They also sort of look like an interesting design. This is a video set. That's why we have them to the left, right and straight above. We have absorption material just to to pick up any frequency absorption material coming in. So these are just big, large alpha sort is the is the type of panels from acoustical solutions we sell these and other uh acoustical um items from them. But this is a big absorption panel. They do a great job in a studio environment or a set while I'm here. I don't want to hijack the show, but I saw another question that I wanted to answer just cause I love it. I have it at home. It was a question from, I think Dean something on youtube. He's asking about the blue sound node and an external dac. Um, I use the blue sound note at home. I use it as like the digital side of my system and I like it a lot. I use it as a deck and everything I think for the price and for the size and for the features, it's really, really good, but he's talking about a pretty high end, it's a multi bit balanced deck from a company called shit audio that we don't carry. Um what did you just say that? Um, but it's it's a good external deck in a case like that. He asked about USB versus optical. The blue sound node has a USB in USB input for like a mass storage device. It's not a USB output. So you'd use the optical output from the blue sound node into your external dac. Uh and he asked about resolution to it might depend on which version of the blue sound node, but the current one is like 32 bit 3 84 K Um optical, I'm not sure it would support that. I don't know. I don't think I was looking at the details real quick to see what the optical support if it was just PCM or or how far it went. Um pretty pretty likely that the optical out is PCM only, which is like 48. You would be losing the advantage of trying to gain. I don't know that, but probably would for high rise. That said it's a great streamer depending on streaming service you're trying to bring in. Certainly that external deck would be an upgrade as a digital to analog converter in that case and you get balanced um, depending on what your, your next devices in the chain. So anyway, yeah, mentioned the ship I went for it. I went for it. I'm not afraid. Uh, there's another question here. How do you add he owes to a beloved two channel system. I'll do it. We don't need norm for this question. I got it. I got it. Uh, let's see here, we've got a lot of those products powered speakers, Sound bars, subwoofers, home theater receivers. One of the things you can get from Helios is called the Helios link and it is on my screen now, it'll be on your screen shortly. Uh, as soon as we get it switched over. There we go. It's the Helios link and uh, it is simply a zone of your heroes. Multi room music system. Uh, it doesn't have any speakers. Doesn't have any amplifier built in all it has on the back are audio outputs that you can connect to your beloved two channel audio system, as long as you have a set of analog Garcia inputs or an optical digital or coaxial digital input on your system, you connect this hero's link to your system and now you've turned any system, even if it's 50 years old, as long as it has those inputs on it, you can pipe in whatever you're streaming on your Heroes system and it becomes a zone and it's pretty great. Um so it seems like these acoustic panels have come up a couple of times. I've seen, we've put links into the comments here on youtube, uh sort of people to check out the acoustic panels we sell. I want to just ask you, is this a thing that you find yourself recommending? I mean you're doing resident, you're the you're the residential account, whatever you sell acoustic panels. So typically I don't normally in my day in, day out job supporting the designers. I verily like I've only in the last year had two times I've had questions about the panels because typically that involves someone who is trying to tweak the system and they're trying to get rid of a problem and usually uh but that doesn't occur until everything's all set up and I've been using it for a while and sometimes I'll call back in, but most of the time, the designer will take care of or even a regular Sales advisor. So the sound, the panels can make a big difference, like you can't see it, but right now we have another uh sound absorbing panel on the back side of the microphone in order to make sure that my voice sounds clear and clean JR S and we're not getting a reflection back, which tends to blur the sound robert on facebook says question given that home and car audio are two separate beasts. Are there manufacturers that still make a home sub with speaker inputs and outputs with a high or low pass crossover to sink whatever speakers in line with the sub. This was more of a thing when I started in 96 we had more subs than where people would hook them up this way uh, correct me if I'm wrong. What out of your say a stereo receiver, you might go speaker wire to your powered sub and then out of your powered sub to your speakers so that the powered sub could grab the base low pass crossover, It amplifies the deep bass sounds and it allows the rest of the sound to go onto your speakers. Is this still a thing? It's still a thing. And the what's been interesting is people uh album sales, just regular vinyl is the fastest growing music category. Sales outside of streaming because the members doing that. But physical media and one of things that's happening is there's been more and more people buying or starting to use their old equipment but want more kick. So we if you want to show them filters and how you can filter for uh subwoofers that have that, that's a good call. I probably should have done that while you were talking but he's new at this. I'll have it here shortly. I'm looking maybe here now I'm at powered subs. Got a ton of them, we sell hundreds 57 powered subs. How many of them have speaker level inputs? Is this a filter? I'm testing you here under general under general features, speaker level inputs and speaker level output. You need to filter for both. You can probably just speaker speak. You can probably just filter for speaker level outputs. And I'm guessing that all eight of those have both. So what's interesting is that we sell 100 and 40 some subwoofers, What's really interesting is only 25% have any kind of speaker inputs or outputs. And of the ones that I've output, that's only eight. So it's not a whole lot that has it. If then this is where you, when I'm listening to somebody, what they're trying to do, I'll ask them where they're going to physically put the subwoofer. If it's gonna be ideally it should be along the same wall as the receiver and where they're left right speakers are and ideally if you can try to put the subwoofer somewhere between the left right speakers. One of the things that's interesting is is that if you have a powered subwoofer and this is for home theater or for stereo and you have the subwoofer in a corner whether like the right front or the left front. You get the most bass output, but it's the least accurate if you take the exact same subway for you don't unhook anything and you just slide it along the wall so it's still up against the wall. The base output drops some, but it becomes more accurate if you bring the same symbol for this now centered in, but you bring it more out into the room, like 25 30 inches away from the wall, then the base is the most accurate but the least loud. So there's there's no right or wrong. A lot of people will put it in the corner because they wanna hear the boom. But if you tend to be more music oriented, you'll slide along, try it or you may bring it out a little bit and there's no right or wrong. It's just what sounds good to your ear. You know how uh if you're doing the stereo and you have your left right speakers there 10 ft apart from each other. One of the things that you read a lot about is that they'll say tow them in, which all that means is to have the tweeter aimed directly at wherever you're sitting. And ideally you want to be roughly about 10 ft from the speaker. So it's 10 ft left to right, 10 ft from here to here and back to the other speaker. And if you can have the subway for somewhere in between, that will give you the most accurate sound. And the uh the other thing is is that if you get a subwoofer for music, this is for stereo, try to get one that's sealed with no support that will give you the most accurate sound. Cool. We have another question about subs this one should be a quick one. Do you sell bass traps? That's another type of acoustic treatment that will, you know, a lot of bass will gather in the corner of your room and it'll muddy up your base. And if you have a bass trap, it sort of cleans up the sound a little bit. Uh do we play bass traps placement is critical and it's uh, if you're a type a personality where you got to get stuff done, I need done. Now you're not the person if you want to hire somebody or get somebody that's comfortable playing, listening, movement, playing listening movement totally cool to do. But it's not a simple bass traps. Sound treatment, stuff like that are not one solution, It's literally sit down and take your time and do it and it's a tube. Um, I haven't seen that in a while. Let's see these are these are the office door panels, basically what we brought out earlier. We should have a bass trap in there. I don't see it listed as an accessory here. Let me dive a little deeper and go to acoustic panels and treatments and see if any of these look like base traps. I have one of those. The Orleck subdued is great. Put it under your subwoofer and your windows will stop rattling. That's what happened in my house. None of these. Uh so I'd say the answer is no. Uh so I apologize for that. The answer is no shout out from David says I'm 44 now been shopping your catalog since 92 when people come to my house. It's like they are listening to music for the first time. I love that heck yeah. Also on facebook john asks, can you talk about Arc versus E. Arc basically how to set up the tv and receiver to use it audio return channel versus enhanced audio return channel. The setup is basically the same. What what what do people need to know about that? So in order to Z. Arc, you've got to have both the TVs gotta say Iarc and on the back of most TVs will have 234 H. D. My inputs but only one of them will be labeled E arc or just arc but the receiver also has to say Iarc both have to have their in order to take advantage of it. If one's got another it'll still work just fine. But you're not taking advantage of the enhanced audio return channel and that's what the E stands for is enhanced. And advantages is that it allows you to do uh at most the object sound where you can actually hear sounds over your head, left, right, there's a lot of advantages to doing it, but you got to have both the receiver and the T. V. A lot of what would happen a lot of times is people will have the tv, the new tv, the receivers not new enough to have it and it's not a receiver cannot be firmware updated because it just physically hardware just isn't there? So you need to I mean for the most part it's incredibly simple because of H D M I with ce Ce or consumer electronics control. That's a part of what makes our quirk so well you plug it into the right input on your tv, the right input on, say, your home theater receiver and your tv will just recognize that you've done that and you might need to go into the settings to tweak a thing or two, but probably won't even have to do that sometimes you gotta tweak it. But a lot of times it's just basically plug and play, but not always. Oh my gosh, don't let the tech support department I sorry. Uh No, that's great, Bruce on youtube says, is it better to have subwoofers facing you from the front or placed behind the viewer or listener, like behind the sofa with the sub pushing base into the sofa. So it depends I personally much prefer by a big margin having the subwoofer in front of me firing towards me because the wave comes directly at me and you get more kick, you get more of the real world, you know, feel it in your body, you can hear bass really well, but it there's another whole jump and enjoyment in the movie. If you can also feel it hitting in your chest, so front firing directly at you. The wave awesome. If you're gonna add a second subwoofer. One of the things that's really cool is to take and have um say you've got the front subwoofer in the, like the walls, 10 ft in the right corner of the wall have the second subwoofer behind you on the diagonal wall. So it's on the rear wall, but to the left that will not give you more bass in the sense of like loud or anything like that, but it spreads it much more evenly throughout the room so that you end up getting much like if you're sitting in the sweet spot or you're sitting to the left or to the right or the next row behind you, Everybody can enjoy more of the bass and the kick and stuff like that. But ideally if you only have one suitable for front wall firing directly towards you that that's usually the, it's a good, very safe way of starting Hunter on Youtube. I'm gonna simplify his first question. Uh he's asking about uh if you have an OAP in a room where a side surround would go, is it okay to equally move both sides forward or back? So the surround side speakers, do they need to be right there equal to your listening position or can you move them forward or back to fix a problem with your room? Like a door window being in the way. So it's tricky. And the and here's the generic general answer is that ideally and it sounds like you're in a situation where you can do one correctly in the other one, you can't ideally they should be lined up with your ears. So like if you looked immediately to this or that you're looking directly at the speakers and they should be up about six ft or so off the ground if it's a mixed use room, which most of them are. Um but if you can't do that at least have one done accurately. And this, this is this is not the answer is just one of a couple of ways of doing it and have the other one move forward or backwards, What happens is is that um remember in indiana jones, the one that had Sean Connery is Indy's father, there's there's yeah, there's a scene in there where they're getting chased by the biplane and and the the Indy runs off the road and his father says, nice driving junior. And the plane is circling around and what happens is you can hear, say, this speakers mounted correctly and this one's forward or back. The sound sounds right coming around the room and hear the plane going around but then it'll sound like it jumps a little bit and the uh because you've got a bigger gap between the rear speaker in the front, on the side. So in as much as possible you try to get them lined up and if you've got a choice where you can take the speaker higher to get them lined up, try that and just aim the tweeter down. Hunter also asks, have you heard of an acoustically transparent? Drop down screen, you know, for a projector? I have limited space and that would be cool. Yes, they do make them, they're expensive and but they do make them and if it's gonna be a drop drop down screen, that's acoustically transparent, Very cool thing to do One of the things. And this is a little geeky little Tuckey most screens when they roll off the roller they roll off off the back of the roller, closer to the wall. If you've got equipment and stuff like that and you want the screen to be in front of the speakers ask for what they call a reverse role, which is where the screen comes off the front of the role and comes down and it will give you more air gap front to rear and the and this usually works pretty well. It's a custom order but it can make the difference between having to move the entire mounting further out into the room to get it to work. Right? So usually call one of the A. V. Advisers and the and we can step you through it for shorten it and we can actually do it real time on your we can show you step you through on the screen how you do it. Yeah we have a ton of screens to choose from. I'm curious. I don't know that we have over 8000 screens. We have we have acoustically transparent screens ready to go that we stop or drop ship. Uh Do any of those front roll or are they all? But it's not that you can't just buy one off the shelf basically. No we have them available but it's a custom order and it takes I don't know what the turn, I don't I can't tell you the lead time. Now the custom ordering of this but it's very and it ships directly to you. It's dropped shipped. Yeah. Not cheap though. Are they not very very cool but not cheap. Alright awesome thank you for answering both questions. That's from Hunter. He's still watching awesome. Thank you Hunter. Who see we got here Christie been a customer of Crutchfield since the nineties awesome. Have a question when the tv oh and audio are out of sync, how can that be fixed? As you can imagine? It's extremely frustrating, thanks in advance. Yes. So um there's two ways of doing it. Most TVs and most receivers have something called audio delay and it goes from like 0 to 100 milliseconds to 250 milliseconds. And you can uh adjust the delay to get the voice sync back up with the audio, I'm sorry but the video, what happens is is that Probably 95% of time, that's all it takes to do it. However sometimes on some streaming services, Netflix used to do it a lot but they they've long since taken care of it HBO still happens every once in a while and on discover it happens every once in a while. What will happen is that that movie streams, find another movie starts and then it's out of sync. So you've either either it's gotta stop, start the movie again and usually take care of it or you got to go into the tv settings, audio settings and get sync back up and it's annoying, it's much better than it used to be but it's not just that I haven't experienced in a long time right? But it does happen but the other thing that that can make a difference is if your internet speeds this is when you're streaming? If internet speeds are fairly low like 25 megabytes a second or something like that, which is the recommended minimum for watching a four K movie. What happens is that for some reason and I don't know exactly why, but it happens a little more often if you got like 100 megabytes, like I have 600 megabytes it, I haven't had that happen and I can tell you, hey, you're gonna be impressed. I have 20 megabits of download speed. I never have lip sync, audio, video sync issues. So I used to have DSL, I live out in the so steven on facebook says I have an original pair of boston acoustics, a 1 50 speakers in need of new Wolfers because the foam surrounds dissolved over time, boston acoustics has been sold to another company and no longer sells the original replacement wolfers. Where can I find suitable replacements? Let's apply this question to the general idea of, can you replace the wool for in home speakers? Uh, if the manufacturer makes one, obviously you can write that's pretty rare for some speakers. We've had them for infinities and pokes over the years. I think I remember us having them from boston acoustics at some point, but not really, that's not a common thing. We're not in the business of selling replacement drivers, we have them for people that need them. Uh, if the manufacturer doesn't make one or isn't available anymore. I think you have solutions. There is a couple of guys and these are guys, these are not companies. These are just guys that like doing this, they sell reforming kits or re surround kits or the phones around kits and they're depending which company you have to do a google search for it. Uh you can either send the speakers to them and they'll just the driver, not the entire speaker, just the driver and they'll re uh put the noose around and send it back to you or they can send you the kit. The key is it is technique dependent on how well the job last. So if you're not techie, you're not oriented and stuff like that, let them take care of it. But but there are there are a couple of guys. I've had good results from one he's in, this is a couple of years ago Missouri I think that my customer told me that it took them about 68 weeks but they've been working fine. So this is one guy that told me so we don't recommend and we don't know anything about him. But it's just there are people out there that like doing it. I see three more questions that we've got already in the system and there's a pretty gonna be fairly quick answers for these uh no gee I think that's how you say it. Do you prefer a belt driven turntable or a direct drive turntable. I prefer belt drive myself and the because it's better more more vibration uh disadvantages is that over time the belt needs to be replaced. But the technology has gotten so last a pretty long time. The technology in general for direct drive and the belt drive, they both have gotten really good. So it's unless you're getting really nuanced, it's sort of hard to go wrong either way. But just personal preference, I like belt dr. Tyrone on facebook says can one get an entire basic system for under $1500. Are you talking stereo or surround sound? Yeah. We don't know if you're still watching Tyrone. Feel free to tell us more about what you want, your basic system to have. Uh, if you're looking to get a tv as part of that, that's gonna push your budget a little bit. Uh, if you're just looking for an audio system, the two channel system, turntable CD player, tape deck and you can do all of that and a pair of speakers, maybe even a sub. The answer is yes. I mean we can get you a basic system. We don't know yet what all you need, your basic system to do. If you can tell us that we can maybe answer your question even better. Also this show is going to be over in a few minutes. We may not get a chance to answer your question. However, you can just call an advisor. I trained them all. I'm one of the people that trained them all. I trained him. That's funny, isn't that funny? It's true. You were actually one, I think I was your first person who actually trained your. Yeah, I had just finished my first training class and then you came back to Crutchfield. He left for a little while a long while and then came back to Crutchfield. And that's when I trained him. I learned more from him, training him than he learned from me. I can guarantee it. But, but yeah, all of our advisors have been through a pretty rigorous training. They can certainly hook you up with a system that will probably suit your needs for, for within your budget. They can definitely do that. Uh, and whether it does everything you want or you have to make compromises. I can't tell you until I know more. Uh, we're close to the end here, phillips says finishing my basement and ran 14 2 wire for home theater, 14 gauge two conductor plan on 5.2 point four. So five speakers surrounding two subs, four at most speakers. Thinking poke in wall speakers with golden ear subs. And I'm now realizing that's not a question. That was it. That's what he said. How does that sound? Does that sound like a good system? Yes. One of the things to keep in mind is that location of the speaker in relation to where you're sitting has a huge impact on the quality of the sound you get. So when you're designing the system, One of the first things you want to do is make sure you know where you're gonna sit because everything from that location determines your viewing distance, the height, the speaker, the locations of the speaker surround all the stuff like that. It, but make sure you dial uh, no, pretty much where you're gonna sit if you have a significant other that likes rearranging the room from time to time. Like push the sofa back, whatever like that, take the rear surrounds and push them back another two or three ft. So you've got some leeway in order to uh, allow for the furniture to be moved every time you move furniture, rerun the sound microphone test to get the speakers re equalized to the new. Uh tell me the truth, are you the significant other that moves the furniture around a lot? No Christie on Youtube says thanks guys for the great info. One last question back in the day, Dennen made some of the hottest receivers. I still have one, but the model is escaping me that said, are they still just as good? Yes, very, very much so. One of the things that's happened though, and this is just in general, this is across the industry is that until you get up to the high end higher and more and stuff like that is that there's so much more technology mounted in the equipment at most. Technology sort of surround town in general, Bluetooth, wifi capability and stuff like that. Is that in order to get all the stuff in there and to pay all the fees and license. You need to do that. The thing that has taken a step back has been the quality of the power supply and the power supply has gotten smaller in order to stay within certain price point, stuff like that. So typically if your receiver is, uh, I don't know which one you've got to say it's 100 watts per channel. Right? So you want to stay, go up then and still makes great stuff and, but you probably want to stay step up to the Marantz in order to get the same performance as what you've got right now, if you want to look for that, you still get all the other modern stuff and the um, den, it works really well. If you didn't know, you probably wouldn't miss it. But I like Marantz, I do a lot with Marantz. Gregory said uh, in going back a few questions regarding the replacing of the foam surround on speakers. I had this re foaming done on my towers and they work great. So yeah, but he had it done the success of the surrounds. It's definitely technique, uh, based in order to get good performance out of it. It's not something you take out of the box and open. It doesn't work that way. So let's, uh, let's fill in everybody on, we mentioned you were a re tread, uh, you worked at Crutchfield, then you left Crutchfield? Then you came back to Crutchfield. What did you do when you were not at Crutchfield? So, um, I like installing equipment. I like things that my friends and family, they would say, hey, can you help me do X, Y, Z. And I don't know why people think I have, what is it, you know, installers face? I have no idea. Did you go to stereo installation school? No, never anything like that at all. And I mean, I've been trained a lot, but I've never went to a school and I like things that work well that are elegant that are simple that you don't have to call in your five year old to explain how you, how to use it and well you laugh. But so, um, So what I was here in the 70s, is that right? No, early, wow. So it's a long, I don't remember. So I was here, I think in the early 80s and uh, got married and my wife, we bought a house in Richmond, which is about 80 minutes from where Charlottesville was here. But I kept commuting back because that was all you had to be here present doing it. And she kept going, no, no, I'm like, okay. So I went to work for Circuit City and the huge change was that back then Crutchfield and Circuit City were direct competitors these days? Not so much. Not so much because did you feel like you were going to the enemy back then? Oh yeah, very much so. Very, very much so. But what was interesting was in about six months I discovered that people come into the store and they're like, this is when vcrs were really popular and they got the S. V. H. S. And hooking it up and this yellow cable, what do I do with this? And then blah blah blah. So customers would pay me $25 to go out to their house, plug it in, show them how to do it. And I was leaving one day and this old german couple, the, he was a little scary the guy and he grabbed my arm and shook my hand but he wouldn't let go and he said, you should do this for a living. I said, well I do do this for a living. He said no, no, you should do this. And I went, installation says yes. And I went light bulb. So before you left Circuit City though, you were already starting this service circuit city. No, no, no poaching their customers and doing installs on the other sales, people would come up to me and go, hey, so circuits like your managers were okay with this totally okay because they make customers happy. So this is like the geek squad before there was a squad. Yeah, right. And uh, so what ended up I ended up doing was I took and uh printed up business cards and and I named the company hookups of Virginia. And the and I actually had at one time my phone number was 1 800 hookups. And through know it took me a little while. I was a little naive but I had 1 800 hookups. And uh, y'all are laughing but it gets, this is with the M. C. I. And uh and I was paying 25 cents a minute for the call coming in. And and invariably invariably because my company, I just said hookups not of Tennessee, not of anything, you keep saying it. And the, so uh well let's just say there were interesting calls. So I did it for three months and I call up M. C. I. And I. And they were great that they get rid of all the ones that didn't do anything. I only got two calls that were actually aimed for me and two calls out of three months so I punted it. I did not have realized what a gold mine. If I just kept it. You know, I could have made so much money selling it. So I should have bought 1 900 hookups that would have made money. But I didn't think about that. I think you're crossing a line now norm. Sorry, sorry. But anyway, so but what your license plate on your truck? Does that cause any problems? No, no people people, cause I mean it's a big work truck. You know why, you know, people go so long story short, you started your own stereo speaker, audio installation business called hookups of Virginia. And, and yes, I'm embarrassed. Did you leave? Did you did you make enough with that to leave circuit city? Yes. So what ended this was this was your main, well, I did it for another decade and I expanded to Richmond, Charlottesville and Lynchburg. And I ended up managing um anywhere from 30 to 50 jobs. And I was managing all these crews and stuff like that. But I was getting away from what I like doing, which was working with people and having them go, oh, I can do that, you know, click whatever. And I was just managing people. And and and a couple of times actually manage, I trained my own competition and it was like, cause they'd stopped business for themselves, but then they would call me when they get stuck. You know, another way of saying it is I'm The guy that installers call when they're stuck, you know, so which works out pretty well. But the reason why I contacted what wasn't jr was somebody else here. I was just getting burned out. And I had raised my rates 225 an hour and I did it for another year. And I thought, you know, this will, there's no difference, no difference at all. And I was like, so I realized it wasn't about the money. I just I really like making a difference people and I like having people go ah ha you know and they can make stuff work and stuff like that. So one thing led to another and uh talk to J. R. And and I said, you know they said why do you want to leave your making? Said it's not about the money, it's just not, you know, I'm just burned out, you know, managing people and blah blah blah. And when I came back to Crutchfield that there was 40 or 42 active jobs And some of the jobs would be a day, someone would be like 18 months because it'd be a new house being built, you know and break the foundation when you mean the day one when you started back at you still have 42 jobs active jobs. So one thing led to another, but it took another on two years to work through that backlog and the so I work here and then go and uh do you know whatever else on weekends and and I gradually, you know, we did it on down and I don't take new jobs, I still take care of old customer and stuff like that. But you know, I'm so hookups of Virginia is no longer a thing. No no longer thing, I just do it for friends and family and stuff like that. So y'all know a lot more than you probably ever wanted to know. I thought we, I thought we were just going to hear the story. I had no idea about the phone number norm. I did not, I did not know that was, that was happening. Um, that's, that's fantastic norm. Thank you for coming on the Crutchfield live today and having so much fun. This was, this was incredible. Thank you to everybody watching that. If you're still here asking all these wonderful questions, we put norm to the test, you put me to the test, you put our people here to the test and I think we raised raised the bar of Crutchfield live today. I think really, really well, wow, we are still kind of reeling from the whole Virginia hookups, phone number story here at Crutchfield every time we hear it, it makes us laugh. I hope you enjoyed that as much as we did. And big thank you to norm for joining us and taking time out of his day, uh, to be on Crutchfield live and he didn't, he may not have known it at the time, but now he's on Crutchfield the podcast. Thank you so much for listening. We're gonna be back right around the whole thanksgiving black friday stuff. We've got a really cool interview for you. Really looking forward to that. Please come back and tell your friends. Like subscribe if you have any questions or want us to talk about anything in particular here on Crutchfield the podcast. Send us an email using podcast at Crutchfield dot com. We'll check it out, and if we can, we'll read your email and question on the show and see what we can do to answer it. I'm J. R. Thank you so much for listening. We'll see you next time.