Crutchfield: The Podcast Ep. 48

Hello and welcome to Crutchfield the podcast. I am your host Jr on the training manager here at Crutchfield. I am sitting in my small, dark office in the basement of Crutchfield that is uh sort of been converted into a podcast studio and I have two people here in the studio with me, which means we've installed a third microphone and it's kind of officially podcast studio. As always, my co host eric is always now except for that time. We Yeah, yeah, I'm still bitter about that when I cheated on you with the other area. Yeah. Hey, why don't you talk about who else is here to my right Dave de demo demo. Dave. Hey, now demo. Dave is here because he is been here almost as long as me, like within a year or so. And part of his daily job is to set up demos so that our advisors can get some in person experience with our products and uh, and that's what we're gonna be talking about today is the art of the demo. Uh, and so Dave, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much. I appreciate you having me and I'm looking forward to some fun time talking about some demo stuff. Heck yes, I see you. You can prepare it. I came prepared. I didn't know that the humor was already covered. Yeah, I'm looking, I'm not seeing any jokes on your piece of paper here. So it's okay. We got that eric. Why are why are you here for this episode? I'm here because I'm your co host. Your permanent co host, first and foremost, a little specifically today, that I've got a little bit of demo experience with a retail background. I worked in retail for 15/15 years, uh for consumer electronics at Crutchfield, and before that for a company called twitter. Uh so we've got some pretty extensive first hand experience, demoing home theater or bass or televisions and uh yeah, yeah, there's there's definitely, as you mentioned earlier, the art of the demo, that's the thing. So, first off, for some of our audience who may not even know what the heck we are talking about, what is a demo. A demo is a demonstration of the performance of some audio gear. And this happens in all sorts of different ways here at Crutchfield. Uh in normal conditions, when we're not in a pandemic, our vendors will come to Crutchfield about twice a week, we'll have a training where they have brought their products, they have set them up and they're going to play some music, they're gonna play a movie on a home theater, they're gonna show how their tv sounds, they're gonna play subwoofers and speakers and cD players and turntables. And literally, if we sell it, we would like to get our hands on it because our advisors don't have the ability to do what ERIC did in retail and demonstrate the products for our customers. So they get that in person experience so that they can use that to convey the performance of a product that they are recommending to a customer. And I, I think that, you know, it might be a different list for, you know, what's the first movie you're going to take home and play in your home theater. Like that might be a little bit of different, at least in my mind. It is, yeah. And we're, we're going to be talking about the art of the demo today. So that's one type of demo eric you did a lot of de mowing of equipment, literally first person with customers, right? That's the retail side of this, is that your job is not to convey what you heard in a demo, but to recreate a demo for a customer directly to, to tell somebody what it is? They're gonna hear, play it for them and then confirm that they heard the thing that I wanted them to hear. Did you always have to do that? Did you always, did you let them kind of just listen without any guidance and let them tell you what they typically typically know, typically know, you know, if you're trying to demonstrate the difference between, you know, two sets of speakers, uh, and you want them to, to listen in for that, you know, the hard hat, you know, those high frequencies coming off of a hard hat, then you're going to point that out and then play back and hey, did you hear that thing that I was talking about and hopefully the answer is yes, that's been my experience with a lot of the demos that our vendors are professional trainers do, right, when they come to Crutchfield is before they play a particular song or a particular scene from a movie, they tell you what you should hear. Which is that, is that like a calculated move or is that just good practice or are they, are they given their speakers an unfair advantage when they tell you what you should listen for thoughts on that Dave. I didn't always find that genuine when they kind of lead you down the path of what we were supposed to. Whoa, hey, it's just, it wasn't all the time. I felt that it was just some of the time and this just in crutchfield vendor trainings are disingenuous and you're not saying that this happened every single time? No, no, no, not at all. And if they pointed out certain things in a song, especially if it was a song or a video, wanted us to see things in a video maybe many of us hadn't experienced before, then the guidance was welcome. If it was something that we heard multiple times and, and they knew that for whatever reason, you know, and they wanted us to hear a certain thing out of it. I'd be like, okay, I'm listening for it, I hear it, but I also wanted to hear this other part that I know extremely well and um, I either picked it up and said, hey, nice job, Those things are great or Yeah, what about that? It was kind of, you know, 50 50 split there and what I wanted to hear, did I hear it? Yeah, it's pretty common that they'll bring in a song that I never listened to maybe have never even heard of, but because it was recorded so well or it features a particular female vocal that really sounds nice on that company's speakers, right? That that's why they're gonna demo that stuff. They are very hesitant to demo just like pop music, you know, hardcore, just rock and roll, you know, just songs that everybody knows because you might be, you might have an easier time picking out the imperfections because you know, that song on the flip side, you might pull things out of it that you've never heard before and be wildly impressed eric. You have clearly you are waiting for me to shut up so you can talk ready eric go. So I think it depends on what you're trying to do in your demo if you're trying to um if you want your speakers to stand out because you're going to talk about an experience or share an experience with with the listener that they've never had before. And then you can point out something that you really have to listen into two here. You know, I think often we've heard of demonstrations where they say now at the beginning of this, you can actually hear the artists open up their lips, Right? Yeah, that's that's one thing or fingers along the string. Right? That's another one of those detailed things that that come through on a good recording and when played back on good speakers, you can you can really get that experience and that's really, really cool. Um and I think that's one of those demos that demonstrates, you know what they want you to their separating their speakers from the herd, right? Or their equipment from the herd. But then there's the kind of demo that just wants you to get excited about the brand. Um and that can be a sound quantity type of experience that can be pop or rock music that just they really let you know some music that you feel something you've heard before, they get you in a good mood and that's okay too. Those are just two different types of demos, gold, that was gold, we can just end it right there. That's the two time we just talked about. Yeah, boom. If they weren't on these spring loaded arms, we would Dave you've been here for like me around 25, years. Uh when you think back over the probably thousands of demos, you've been on the receiving end of are there any that stand out for you? There's a few that stand out for me demo material wise. One of the ones they showed very often when, when you and I started, they were just getting going with Dvds. Right. So anything that had a layered soundtrack with Dolby digital, we were hearing it over a variety of speakers and receivers and so forth. So the movie, the 5th element. Many vendors brought that one in with the opera scene because, and I don't blame it all. It started off with a female vocalist, very precise, very good. And then you broke into an action scene during which she was still singing. So they were going back and forth. So system had to be versatile. Did I get a little burned out on that? Maybe because I liked the movie and I didn't want to have to see it every week. That's fair. But that's an amazing scene, like, and it holds up like today, if you go back and you haven't experienced that demo, you know, for, for 20 years, like that's, that's a, that's a heck of a scene. The whole movie is a ton of fun. You got chris tucker in there? Gary Oldman. I mean, there's a hilarious scenes, great action, Bruce, Willis doing some Bruce Willis things. Uh, and of course, what is it Jovovich doing? Milla Jovovich things. I mean, it's visually stunning movie. It sounds great. Apparently, there's only one scene in it that is worthy of home theater demos. And it's that one scene that you just mentioned, why not demo, some other scenes, because I think if you pulled any advisor that's been at Crutchfield, like as long as we have, that's the number one movie they will say was de mode probably too many times. There's actually a good reason for that. You don't want to give people too much. Like at the end of that scene, you know that action now has started in the movie, but it's not over yet and that's one of the feelings you want to leave with people. The worst thing that you could do for someone in demoing material for them is giving give them the final scene of the movie. The grand finale. You don't want to do that because you ruin a movie for someone obviously. But also just that emotional roller coaster at the end of that where you feel like, okay, now that's not really where you want to leave a demo, have them excited. And even maybe even cut off the demo short like in the middle of it. That's one thing where I think you had a distinct advantage if you want to call it that being in the store and you know, I agree. I agree because you got to basically run it as long as you wanted to. Whereas at the contact center, we, we had basically a 50 minute training and they had to squeeze all the info about their products into it as well as show a demo clip, which 30 to 45 seconds, maybe two minutes at the max for us just to get stuff in. I get it. But you know, it was as, as somebody that does the demo days and you help me with this as have you, I often didn't watch the demo, I started playing, I started watching people's faces when they were listening to the demo and if they weren't into it, they weren't into it, you could tell. But the ones that were like getting suddenly sucked into things started leaning forward and yeah, start leaning forward into the sea and then all of a sudden you stop it on them and it's like what happened? The body just like, yeah, what happened? That that's, that's a good demo. That's a good demo. Exactly. And it seems like the perfect demo should end with the, the viewer wanting more, wanting more and that way that they know, or you know, or both of you know, that they want more out of the gear. They just heard two, they just were quote unquote sold on it. You know, part of the reason we're discussing this on Crutchfield, the podcast is not just so you can hear what goes into creating an advisor and providing them the training that they get and our experience at a retail store. This is part of what we're gonna be doing today because that's a lot of fun talking about this stuff. But it's also so that you at home, maybe you just bought a new tv, maybe you bought a big sound bar or a full on home theater system or anything like that. And maybe some of the things we're gonna talk about here are demos you might do for your friends, uh maybe you're trying to sell them on maybe, you know, wouldn't it be nice if your cousin ralph also had a home theater system? So when you had to go visit him for the holidays, you weren't stuck watching a tv with no sound system and you gotta sell him on getting one. So he gets so he makes your life better. Right, right. This can help you help yourself, help your family, make everybody's lives better. Think about some things you've seen that really drew you in, like we just expressed, and, you know, if, like Jr said they got new gear or they need new gear, you know, tell them these are the things that you should listen to. Just, you know, a little snippet of this, or a little cut of this track, and it should help out with emphasizing effect. So we're gonna, we're gonna do some sort of, I've got several different lists of demos that we're going to approach from different angles here. Um, but before we get into those lists, let's finish the list. So I knew that the fifth element was going to be top of the cliche demos list, that I mean uh 50 60 times, That's probably not as many as eric said, well, the good news that the retail store is, we actually had control to some extent as well. Well, after, after I established myself when I was there for a while, I had some control of the demos so I could, so I could, so I could move it along at times. Um Yeah, last, last week I was there. That's right. So, I've got another cliche demo movie uh and this is a weird one because I've read the book when I was in high school, I loved the book. I've never seen the movie and its entirety. I've, if you heard that noise, that was my dog. He's under the desk or is he under is he over there now? Okay, don't move your legs guys otherwise. Yeah, so I read the book when I was in high school, I've never seen the movie because I was afraid that they were going to ruin the book for me. Um but I have seen clips from this movie, kind of like, fifth element 50 60 times easily. Uh and that would be Jurassic park. Never, never saw it from the beginning, all the way through. No, not once. Have I ever seen all of it. I've seen some of the Sequels. Why was that one such used so much for as a demo? I think the epic scene uh was certainly that the t rex Chase scene where it starts with the vibrating water, That cup of water and we even all probably know how that was created. Like that's how epic that scene was. That. I remember, you know the in the credits or or whatever. The bonus material they talked about how they actually got the water to behave like that. Like it was really really good as well done, it was very intense and it was just a base throttle. I mean that's that's what yeah, the speaker companies who came in and showed off their speakers, that was kind of the baseline 0.1 all of a sudden mattered right? Like that was the first time 0.1 was like really showing up to the party that rumbled, stay with you and you're like, oh yeah, yeah and it and it started off more, you know, kind of quiet exactly increased in intensity as it uh as as well, you know, I don't want to give away spoilers when I think of the that I think of obviously the rumble of the or the T. Rex. I also think of when I of course that makes me think of subwoofers and how important they are to the home theater experience. And I try to think of all the things you hear in a movie that are gonna rumble out of that subwoofer things like gun shots and explosions and car crashes and uh yeah you're really gonna you're gonna steal that from me right now. You know, you know, this is technically the last episode of season three of the podcast. Season four is going to start with search for a new co host. Uh, but yes, um, when talking about the need for a subwoofer and home theater, I'll often refer to dinosaur explosions because it cracks me up, whether anybody else chuckles or not, any other cliches, demos, movies that we've seen clips of way too often, twister was definitely one that got, you know, played and played and played and played, you know, in particular, the uh, the scene where the cow is just gently being yeah, there you go. Yeah, just kind of gently. I knew he knew he was crossed took it from. Yeah, it's pretty cheesy. The way you did it, you just gotta milk those puns for all they're worth. Yeah, yeah, come on, Dave, You got one? No, no, no, come on. Trying to keep this from getting utterly ridiculous. He's gonna stand over there and shoot your code. Huh? That's a good one. I'm working on something with bovine, but it's not coming to me. Dave, you said you had maybe a cliche demo. That's not a movie go. Uh I like this band and for those who do like this band, I apologize ahead of time, but eagles. Oh yeah, I mean hell freezes over hotel hotel California when they started that you could just almost hear the mon in the training. Yeah, and it wasn't, you know, it might have been products we really loved. We have, we have, we have a lot of great products here and a lot of great speakers, but even that demo coming on for anybody's, which just like, you know, it was like going to the dentist. Yeah, it wasn't that it wasn't good like most of these, it was just that it was so good. That's what its worst enemy was in our eyes, right? Because like this is gonna get played so much. So we were thinking uh, it would be kind of cool to provide some suggested demo material for you. The listener at home, we started doing some searching. I've got some lists SVS, uh, they make some of the biggest baddest subwoofers on the planet as well as the rest of the speakers in a home theater system. Uh, they come up first or they did when I googled whatever I googled for demos, home theater demos, they've got a couple top 10 lists. And the first one I want to talk about is top 10 movies for showing off your dolby at most speaker system. So this is them focusing not just on the thing they are the best at, which is that dinosaur explosion subwoofer, Right, But it's the rest of the speakers, it's all of the detailed sound, very precise sounds that need to sound like they're raining down from overhead or happening behind you or to the left and to the Right, so that precise accurate surround effects. Uh, that's, these are the top 10 movies. So you want me to rattle them off and then we can comment as needed. These are, they're not ranked, they're not like a top 10 all the way to number one. It's not like that. Uh, so I'll give you some, we can talk about Avengers infinity war and Endgame. They're kind of getting a two for one on that one, but there's a lot going on in both of those and I haven't seen either one. Oh, not an Avengers fan. No, I love it. I'm a comic book fan. I just haven't made it to you. Just haven't gotten there yet. Don't spoil anything for me. I already know. Okay, don't don't spoil okay, go for it a lot going on there. Clearly, if you want your full action movie experience on your own theater, these are primo. Uh, Billy Lynn's long halftime walk. That's an interesting. Yeah, here's what they say about it. He said. Many critics don't like the look of this movie, but no one complains about its Dolby at most soundtrack. Uh, there's apparently lots of detail and neat stuff going on. I don't even know of this movie. It's got something to do with being in Iraq. There's towns of bullets flying from one side of the room to the other that it should make you flinch like it's, it's got some surprisingly good effects going on in it like a modern day saving private Ryan type of situation because that opening. Well, I guess it's not that we're going to get to saving. Okay. All right. I got another list. Okay, beautiful. Not beautiful. Yes. Well done. You know this actually is we heard this inventor training one time. I remember this. Yeah, it was a halftime show or so they were bringing him out and but the, this is one of those where I needed somebody to tell me what to listen for. As you mentioned before because when the vendor had the thing he just let it go. He just played it on the speakers and I wasn't sure what it was. Number one. Number two. I wasn't sure what I was supposed to be listening for. It sounded great, but where there are certain things you wanted me to concentrate on and that was one of the few times I was kind of lost at about the demo. I didn't know what I was supposed to be no context for you at all. Right. And hadn't seen the movie, the movie. Yeah, I didn't know I was looking at it was a total so that distraction right there took me out of kind of demo mode if you will Blade Runner 2049. I saw this one in the theater. There is a lot going on on that subway for in this movie. I have not seen that, but I did a quick Google search kind of in preparation for this as well just to see what else was out there. Um, and that one popped up a number of times. That's the first movie as well. Has a nice little bass throttle going to evangelist. Evangelist. I'm not sure how to say his name. The guy who did the music for the first Blade Runner, uh, cocoa on here. Another a Disney animated movie. Uh, like a Halloween thing. Spirits and ghosts and music and stuff. That really fun movie. Uh, and lots of, lots of, lots of instruments surrounding you because it's like a psychedelic sort of stuff going on. It's pretty fun. Uh, Everest. They're calling out specifically the overhead speakers in that one are used mostly for the howling storm raging around the climbers. Absolutely they are. They're doing it. Um, Ghost in the shell. Yeah, the old one from 95 a live action version of a classic anime. I have not seen a live action gravity. Sandra, Bullock George Clooney. Did you see it more for the visual aspects of like making sure a Tv looks great with good calm contrast and black levels or did you or was it used for the surround effects? I mean they're, they're putting it on their list for the Dolby Atmos. So which is interesting because you can do both. Well there's no sound in space so they can hear you scream at jokes. Are we gonna beef over this. Somebody invite Neil Degrasse Tyson here today. I'm also pretty sure to be a scientist to realize that I remember that training or that demo for sound more than I do the visual and it was good. It was really good. It was realistic or not erIC it was a great movie. So perhaps everything, you know, decide the cabin of the space. She's onto a more realistic space movie. The martian. I'm not sure what the laugh was for either of you seen the martian actually. Uh, so I mean not exactly realistic there either. Well, I think Neil Degrasse Tyson poked a bunch of holes in a few years. Maybe the sound and visual aspects were both amazing. The opening storm seen wind and sand, various objects being blown around kind of like a tornado twist re sort of effect. And if you're showing, if you're here to somebody, that's a great way not to spoil the ending for somebody else as you mentioned. ErIC Yeah, because it's at the beginning of the movie, like good opening sentence to movies, leaves you wanting to go home and watch a 2.5 hour movie ready player one. That was, that was a fun one and right yeah, right up front. You know, there's, there's a fun race scene right out of the gate that doesn't spoil the whole movie. That's got a lot of action. It's got a lot of bass. Um, and, and easter eggs at the same time. So you know, if you haven't seen that movie, you're sitting there looking at it and wondering why he's getting in the, you know, the back to the Future car. And and uh it's a lot of fun. That's a lot of fun. So my I have I have to Ready Player one stories one is I zero familiarity with the material, didn't know the book or anything about it. And uh, so when I got to see it, it was because we had taken a class of new advisors to the Alamo Cinema and Drafthouse here in Charlottesville. And we got to watch this movie in their Dolby at most auditorium. Uh, right after having been spent several hours with Michael from Alamo, showing us how the projector works, how the sound system is calibrated, taking us on a tour of the background, audio visual experience at a pretty awesome movie theater. And then we got to sit down and watch Ready Player one, by the way. Yes, David, This was work. We got paid to do that. So, the movie itself, I went in knowing nothing and came out just blown away by the concept and of course how great it looked how wonderful it sounded. And it was pretty awesome. Uh, the other story is that Michael from Alamo talked about when the movie premiered at one of their other locations. I think it was D. C. Uh there's a scene later in the movie, which is probably not great demo material because it might be spoiler ish. Right? But there's a scene that will make your subwoofer earn its paycheck. Yeah. Right. But their their system they had it cranked to like it was premier level volumes right? Like it was built to impress. They broke circuit breakers because the subwoofer amplifiers were at their max drawing so much current that the wiring couldn't handle it. They had to dial it, dial it back a notch and it sounds like they were doing it right. Yeah that's exactly that's what I want like that's I wish I was there at that demo like yeah man they broke circuit breakers. Dude it was so that's an awful scene though. That to not have power to finish the movie once you once you get power going back again you're gonna have to rewind like three or four minutes just so you get the whole context of the scene and it plays right? I'm not gonna spoil it any more than that. If you haven't seen Ready Player one it's towards the end of the movie obviously and it's a it's a pretty big powerful scene and it doesn't just have the huge base thing that happens. There's like a sort of a quiet fight scene and some talking some dialogue in this weird spacey environment and it's got some cool sort of ATM atmospheric sounds a pretty neat fistfight and then of course major stuff stuff who doesn't like stuff. Yeah that was Spielberg Mr Spielberg did that one too. Eric what would you play for a demo if you had somebody right now today? So I think you got to read the Room right? Um You gotta you kind of got to have an objective to to the demo and you know sometimes you want to demonstrate surround sound without it being a dinosaur explosions. Um Sometimes you want to you know give someone an emotional connection to to something. Um And then other times you just want to like I don't know just blow them away with. Yeah yeah we'll go with that. Um And uh uh you know and a and a movie like ready player one could be excellent for that. So you know it depends. Um And by the way it was steven Spielberg. Yeah you're welcome. Um Is there anything else I can google for you guys so many things? Where are we going next with this? Uh Well the last movie on the list was Spider man Homecoming which is another fantastic you know Avengers movie. So I think we know what we're getting at there. Yeah so it's a pretty good list. Yeah probably throw thor Ragnarok in there too. For sure. Yeah opening scene and that was a lot of fun with the hammer again. An opening scene right? And it doesn't Give too much of the movie away. Um it's kind of funny. You could just play it on a loop. Um, and, and it would be fine. Yeah, probably sounds about right, but there's a lot of surround sound information in that one as well. Yeah, that one. We're going to finish this show with another top 10 list from SVS website. Specifically legendary audio demos from bad movies. We're gonna come back to that. You got some, yeah, I got some good movies still on the list. I've got some I've got some bad movies. I sent out an email to several 100 people here at Crutchfield and I got some replies to the email asked for, you know, give us thought your thoughts on demos. Right? And maybe you've experienced demos here in vendor trainings. Maybe you've done them yourself. Maybe there's a really memorable demo in your history, whatever it is. I wanted some thoughts, uh, and I got everything from one line responses to multiple page responses with total descriptions of like why this scene is the best demo scene and what to listen for and all of that. I got it all. Yeah, no kidding. Really. Great. Um, I tabulated the results into a nice Excel spreadsheet and I can tell you the number one recommended movie from the we got 57 responses. So what do you think number one movie on this list is it's already been mentioned on this show today. The first movie that we mentioned. No, no, that one is not even in the top 10 the SVS list. No one that we've talked Jurassic park. No, that's number three on the list, Jurassic park number three. Is it a recent movie that has people excited? Okay, can you say something other than any rewind and listen to this podcast? I'll give it to you. It's saving private Ryan five different people called out saving specifically the opening scene on Normandy beach uh, as being just everything you needed to be. Uh, D day seen blown, somebody blew their subwoofer with that scene in that movie. Uh, somebody said the Normandy scene is very intense and in a home theater setting really drives in. Uh, just how great it is. Uh, as far as the home theater goes, Mr Spielberg again. Yeah, So he knows how to master that. He really does because you could hear the soldiers barking commands at each other, you know, yelling at each other to get moving or whatever. But there's subtlety, you know, whether or not it's the water going up against the landing, the landing boats there. Um, you know, even before the gunfire starts, you know, the, yeah, there's so much detail and then it just opens up and pulls you in, but that does not make a good demo in a retail environment for sure. So earlier, all these, a lot of the demos that were mentioned were Disney right? Like I think Avengers, you know, a couple flavors of Avengers and and Spiderman and things like that. You're getting some of those effects, but you're not worried about, you know, giving someone a traumatic experience. So I mean, and wow, what an amazing scene, that whole movie is just absolutely phenomenal. Uh but you know, people don't want to necessarily walk into a retail establishment and have that in their face. I showed it a couple of times here for demo days, june 6th d day, um but I asked around first because of its graphic nature and everybody was like, it's a demo, you've got to show it off and we totally get why we wouldn't have any problems with it because once you say what it is, people can choose to go down and check it out or not and if you're just going down to get a feel for the surround sound system and you will get a feel for it with that scene at the beginning. Yeah, I think my back in my twitter days, you know, I had a couple of demos kind of queued up, ready to ready to go. That was one. So it was something I used, but it was, you know, in a, in a listening room with kind of, you know, permission, we kind of talked about it a little bit and uh you know, and then some of the other ones, if they were like, no, that's, that's not good, you know, I had Shrek ready to go as well, you know, just kind of overcorrect go the other way to have something fun. This movie was definitely used by our vendor trainers, but they didn't really, they didn't if they did it more than once or twice. I don't remember the D day scene being the main demo material. It was a scene from later in the movie where the where the guys in the unit that are saving private Ryan uh hunkered down. Which private Ryan? Right, that's right. They're hunkered down in buildings and there's like tanks coming into a small town or whatever. It's like it's almost it's a quiet scene that gets crazy. That is actually really effective too because the tanks are coming in and you get the feel of what that ground is gonna feel like with tiger tanks rolling down your street. Yeah. And it's maybe a little bit less of a trigger than the opening. We had a surprising 11 time and it was only shown once that I remember, I don't know if you guys remember this vendor training. Oh, I'm so curious now. The guy intraday he goes, I'm a show a scene and there's no music and it's an action scene and we were like, we all looked at each other like, okay, he goes, it's a movie called Open range Kevin Costner robert Duvall, very good movie, good western and he goes, this is the shootout scene. He goes, there's no soundtrack plane whatsoever. It's only the shot, the sound of the shots being fired. What's going around the action of the shootout? And I was like, how is this going to help? And I barely had that thought going through my head when he started it. And I was like, that's how it's gonna help because you could hear the splinters of wood getting hit by bullets, you could hear the horses, you know, when he's trying to get off their hitch because of the shots fired and it just, it was effective. It was quietly effective if you will. So it showed the accuracy of the speaker brand at the time, but it also got your interest because he told you what was not going to be there again. He said that's an interesting way to set a scene. You know, so many of these movies we've mentioned, there is some sort of under, you know, some sort of score that accompanying it and uh, the absence of that when you're focused on that, that that would be pretty powerful. That's cool. You kind of brace yourself, don't you? When you're sitting there, you're ready to hear a demo. They say they're gonna play a demo. So you're like, all right, we got base coming, we got soundtrack, it's on now. Just imagine that scene with, you know, sabotage from the Beastie Boys from the beginning of Star trek. Right, Right, right. Which speaking of cliche demos, I think we saw that one quite a few times. Yeah, probably. Which one was that? The opening to the first J. J. Abrams Star Trek. Yeah, so there's a car scene uh where a young captain Kirk is getting away from the law. He's got an old corvette I believe. And uh he throws in some classic music as they, some classical music as they called it in there. Uh it's a pretty cool scene. I dig it for different reasons. Number two on the list when I pulled everybody. Uh Star Wars a New hope really. Yeah, I had the same reaction really. I hadn't considered that. I don't think I've seen too many demos with Star Wars in it. I think about that too. I know it has to be the re master I imagine for the umpteenth time. Yeah, I've got mixed feelings on that, the existence of that really. Uh I just want to write, I just uh I just want the original on VHS like that's all I need right there. But they specifically called out luke Skywalker's epic battle to blow up the Death Star. So speaking of not great demo material, this is spoiler alert right to its uh to its height right there um, showcases surround sound home theaters. So it's obviously it's George Lucas it's THX it's great surround sound material. I showed 11 time that you commented on and I think it kind of surprised you. Uh I was showing off? I don't remember what I was showing off. It was a surround sound system or may have been a sound bar with surround sound built in, but it was X Men, Days of Future Past with Scene in the Kitchen, when Quicksilver, Quicksilver play Jim Crow Chee while he's going around and there's a sprinkler is shooting water down. So you got a lot of things going on and seeing, you wouldn't think a lot of things are going on and that's going around like rearranging stuff, moving, throwing a plate and then putting the guys. Yes, I had forgotten about that demo and how much I love it. It is just a fun demo to show off. I'm gonna give you some other movies from the list. I'm not going over all 57. Um, but you were top 10. Uh, so saving private Ryan Star Wars, Jurassic Park, Lord of the Rings 2003 got a lot of votes. Is there good demo material in Lord of the Rings? I don't know that it holds up for what it is, to be honest, I know three, we're talking about 20 years. So, I mean, I think it's one of those things that if you had to go back and and watch that versus um, the movie we started with Help me out with the Blue Lady Singing, Thank you fifth element. If you had to go back and look at that versus fifth element, you know, as far as an older movie, which would hold up more. I think fifth element does because the recording is so good and you've got that contrast right these days if you're looking for something where arrows are flying or horns are blaring or there's swords doing sword type things, there's there's a lot to pick from there right. There's a lot of different content that being said. I love the story I think visually it was amazing for the time. But then some of that C. G. Doesn't necessarily hold up by today's standards that C. G. I did literally I lost interest watching the C. G. I. Because I was watching C. G. I. And it was painfully obvious I was even 15 years ago when I actually tried these movies out next on the list. The Dark Knight intro and outro scenes, two words hans zimmer, that's that's a direct quote from one of our folks emails yeah, chasing is big and loud with sweeping audio from every direction. So uh Dark night, awesome. Ready player one makes the list. Uh And they are also definitely called out the opening race seen as the best demo. Their Top Gun Maverick, that's probably the newest movie on the list. I haven't had a chance to demo it for someone else but I've played it in my house and uh yeah I concur opening scene for that. Seems like a pretty good. Yeah or you know I think I would if today if I was going to do that for something so that's a fun scene in the beginning, but there's a lot of dogfight scenes, you know, kind of the beginning, half of the movie that doesn't, those will give away too much. Um, and that, you know, I think there's some music with it. There's some excitement. There's, I would definitely use one of those the last two you might not be expecting number nine. I'm not sure if this was a joke or if this was a serious submission, the bodyguard. So that's the Whitney Houston kevin Costner. Is it just because of the music? They specifically called out a scene interesting the boat blowing up scene Really, that's what they said. I do want this list by the way, because I can use it for demo and this will be like a customer's request. Okay, I want the names, I want to have a word with these. I mean, Last, as far as the top 10 goes queen live at Wembley, the sound mixing on that was just top notch and Freddie's vocal mixing with with the rest of the band is just amazing, especially for something filmed at that time. Yeah, so that's pretty solid. The last one on this list I want to give an honorable mention to comes directly from our corporate lawyer. Yeah. When I sent this email out, he responded like that. Not to give me a demo, but to make sure that we were not going to play the audio from any of these movies on this show. He reminded me that we are a for profit business. We can we do not have the rights to these things nor are we going to pay for the rights to these movies. That's why you're hearing us talk about movies and not playing scenes from movies. Yes. But then I said, hey uh you can't just give me that. I knew that mr lawyer. Uh I'm not we're not gonna play any audio from movies but now that you've responded I'm gonna need a recommendation of a movie demo from you. He said I don't watch movies. I read books, somebody needs to read. That's the lawyer's comment to me. I forced her, I pushed back, I made him give me a movie and he said I remember seeing Terminator and thinking that was pretty cool. Okay, do you think he's thinking Terminator two maybe. Right? Because Terminator Two, Terminator two was that was that was actually one that got played. We were just talking about the little better or as good as they're Yeah, absolutely. The last list on SVS website is a fun one. They've got a a top 10 legendary audio demos from bad movies list. Got one. So the sound is good for demo material, but the movies are horrible. That's the premise of this list. Those can make some of the best demos because chances are the person you're showing it to hasn't seen it before and we'll never see it. So you can even tell them, Look, I'm doing you a favor. Yeah, you're going to see the best part. Right here, you can save you saved you two hours of your life because of this. I'm gonna go I'm gonna go from 10 to 1 because they did rank these. So this is a top 10 list. Number 10, santa. Andreas 2015. The most recent attempt to make a disaster movie that isn't awful, doesn't succeed. It's a disaster. It's a disaster movie and it is epic, epically disastrous. Apparently though lots of great sound going on in there. It's a really nice, lively dolby at most soundtrack. So that's why they call it out. Number nine Batman and Robin 1997. Yes, that's the one with Arnold Schwarzenegger as mr freeze with Clooney. Or did that have Val Kilmer, thurman. Arnold Schwarzenegger, colorful. Remember? Alicia Silverstone was in it. Chris O'donnell was Robin. Yeah, yeah, that was not a great movie. Was that the fourth batman in the series? Right, I think so, it was Keaton for two Fell Kilmer for one and George Clooney. Right, so that was the fourth. That's gonna that's gonna you're gonna start to see a trend here in the movies on this list. The next on the list. Number 82 fast two furious number seven Tron Legacy 2010. I didn't hate that movie. You didn't didn't daft punk do some of the soundtrack for this daft punk soundtrack and stunningly impactful, low frequency effects are the highlight in a movie that it offers no interesting story advancement from the much edgier original. So that's from SVS, that's their opinion on that. I kind of enjoyed it. I enjoyed it was all right. And then I like this one to making my kids watch that. Before you go to Disney World Next there's a neutron ride, not a sponsor. A lawyer will be happy you clarified that. And if you're wondering why we're talking in hushed, muted tones, just a reminder, the video studios right next to this podcast studio and they're recording a video that's apparently more important than this podcast. And the comments let us know if you prefer us hush and muted or you prefer us more jovial. Yeah, yes, please please let us know that we're better jovial so we can tell them for next podcast at dot com. It's not exactly a fair comparison now that you put jovial in, you know, leading the witness right, objection number six on the list. The haunting from 1999. I had no idea that soundtrack was anything. The plot character development and premise of this paranormal stinker are on poor on par with a typical episode of barney and certainly not worthy of lead actor liam Neeson, But the base is mixed very high in level and goes extremely deep to create ominous fear inducing feelings with chest thumping effects. The next on the list after earth 2013 ever heard of it, nope. Apparently this was a will smith with his son jaden smith in. Oh yeah, okay. Yeah. Uh and they SVS just just tears the movie apart uh for being awful. But the soundtrack does make great use of all channels to emphasize sensations like walking through a forest while a predator is stalking wild Wild West would be another one of those horrible. That might sound pretty good. It had promised it was like the day after Tomorrow from 2004 is number four on the list. Uh The ultimate, predictable stereotypical disaster film, but lots of lots of interesting hailstorms and other destructive forces that will really show off your at most in your subwoofer. Alright, we're at the top three now, Godzilla from 2014, how many Godzilla movies have there been every one of them for me? Unwatchable. Um but apparently this one's got some great sound going on. Number two transformers, Revenge of the fallen transformers and then anything after that one. So the first one was great. Like I thoroughly enjoyed the first transformers movie. Everything after that could be on this list, they all sounded great, right, Good sound. I do remember some things I liked about that first transformer movies, but Bumblebee. Yeah, number one, number one on the list, Another in the trend of horrible Sequels. Not always the second movie, but the third or the fourth movie in a series. Uh there's like five examples of that on this list and this one is in my, I fully agree with placing it at number one indiana jones and the crystal skull in 2008. How about the pod? I do want to comment on this because this was overused as a demo in vendor trainings for about a year, maybe two. They came in and played the scene with the jeep and the bugs and all the crazy stuff right there. And it was uh, it was to me unwatchable. There was not one good demo of that scene from or any scene from that movie, like they couldn't even make the demos good because part of the problem was this is back when the TVs were overly refreshing to give you smooth motion. Right? And it was that hyper realistic soap opera effect and it was the height of that and this particular scene was the worst example of that. It was like how can we take a good looking warm 24 frames per second movie and make it look like days of our lives and that's what they did theirs. I'm done with my lists guys. Eric you have some final thoughts on demos, other people's list. So I'm just gonna throw out Star Wars phantom menace to an unwatched. Well, you know, I it was one of those overplayed. The movie itself is unwatchable. Right? The movie itself, just like episode one, Episode one. Right? I mean, people, I wanted George to give me some money back for that. Yeah, people absolutely hated that movie. Yet we leaned into some demos for for a while from it. So there was also a movie uh that I used to use for a demo called driven had Sylvester Stallone and it was a Formula One movie and there was a uh a crash scene that everything slowed down and uh, all of a sudden the car ended up in a pond. I go ahead and look it up. But anyway, it was a great demo, horrible movie, horrible movie. Um so those are two that I remember fondly for being, I don't know, not great movies that were actually had some pretty decent demos. Did that have some good stuff, terrible movie that was like, is that the one with tim allen? No, no, that's good. Isn't that like a cult following though, like? Yeah, everything fair. You know, we didn't mention as far as good movies. Doom. Right? We saw that like I do. That's what I said. Well, it was a different movie. Dune. Yeah, that's good too. Um We should probably finish that with some good movies. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I have, I have a solid one here to finish this, but so Dune was great. Now Dune is one. We've got some history with that. Yeah, that's yet another one that ERic and I got paid to watch for at work twice. Fantastic twice, once in the movie theater, once at ERic's house on his home theater so that we could compare and contrast and then talk about it on Crutchfield live and then repurpose that for Crutchfield podcast. So if you want to know more of our thoughts on Dune, go back. Listen, it's on Crutchfield dot com slash podcast. Find that in the show notes Doom probably belongs on the other list. Right? The bad. Sure, sure. It was a movie. It was Dwayne johnson slash the rock movie with, it was off a video game. That's right. Yeah, yeah. I'm gonna throw another good one from a long time ago. This is when I remember you asked earlier, you know, what kind of movie did you like to use? And I said it kind of depends. Right? Um Oh brother were out though. That was, that was a movie I used for when I wanted to demonstrate that surround sound didn't didn't have to be dinosaur explosions. There's a camp scene where there had a campfire, the main characters of a campfire. And uh there's a guitar playing with a solo musician just sitting there plucking away at a guitar and the surround sound effects in there bring you like it makes you feel you're at that camp fire and he's sitting across from me, there's a little conversation between two the actors going on. But you got the solo guitarist and at different times. There's an owl and then there's crickets and there's a little bit of wind going on and you just feel like you're outside and it's subtle and it's amazing and it's so it's done so well that I've had people looking for like a cricket. Like I played it at the first time I played in my house. You know like I thought there might actually, yeah, I thought there might have been actually a cricket in in the room. One thing I will look really when doing demos like that is when I'm watching the people watch the demo. If I see him turn ahead looking for something that I know is in the scene then you know you got them. It's a really good soundtrack on that movie too. So that's that's a fun one. I'd offer up as a good one. Uh And this is all about big explosions and stuff like that. The train scene from Super eight, which is a J. J. Abrams movie that kind of was filmed a lot like a Spielberg that's one of the kids are filming filming train derails and crashes or something behind them and they're going to be filming when it happened. I never actually saw the movie itself. It's a fun movie. Yeah. Yeah it's uh kids from the late seventies just putting the movie together for a contest and it's very Spielberg esque if you will, if you're looking to try out a new audio system or even a new tv, some of the new Daniel Craig Bond movies, Bond movies are very good ones with great surround sound. The running scene in Casino Royale, which was Daniel Craig's first movie is very good, literally had a supervisor sweating and tired after the scene like, oh my gosh, that was amazing. And uh, the car scene at the beginning of Quantum of Solace is also very good. If you just look for an old fashioned car chase with machine and the bourne identity movies used to be really good for that back in the good, very good. But yeah, these days, the, those, those double oh seven movies are awesome, very good. Yeah. And, and he really changed things with those Bond movies, didn't they? They aren't the same. I mean there's a story to all of them now, whereas the others were totally, you know, not associated with the other unless it was a character that reappeared or something, right? But a lot of fun sound wise. And visually they're very good. Absolutely. And the last movie I want to mention is inception. A lot of crazy things going on with the sound. In inception of course, it's visually stunning some very, very cool effects going on with the bending and the melding of the world's and such. There's demos within the demos. You think you're watching one demo, but you're really watching for something totally different buried within that demo. Uh, and if you watch even clothing, Okay. Um, but the sound design on that? Like, uh, what's his face chris something Stapleton, How they do? Great. I just figured to throw chris out there Christopher, Nolan directed inception. Uh, and his movies in general, he is very, very aware of the impact of the sound. Um, not just the direct sounds of the things you're seeing on the screen, but all of the underlying sounds. And he plays around with different frequencies and intensity of those frequencies to create emotions, to create uh, tense feelings, you know, like anxiety and then he knows how to release that anxiety. I mean, he's just really, really good. And if you, if you're watching something like inception on even the nicest of TVs. Uh, if you don't have a decent sound system, you are missing so much of what chris Nolan puts in his movies and it's not just inception, but that is a fantastic example of it. Um, so, so sound big, kind of a big deal and yeah, uh, and I think we focused a lot on sound today. We didn't talk too much about the visual aspects of demos. Maybe we'll save that for another show because there's a lot to talk about, There could be a whole different lists, you mention in three D and all those demos back in the day. Oh yeah, that could be a fun episode. So we're gonna bring season three of Crutchfield, the podcast to a close with this episode. Did I ever tell you about that? The the demos I used to do for, for Bill? Oh, tell me more. I don't know if I told you, I forgot that you put that piece of paper up and then I said, yes, let's do that. And then I just totally forgot. Yeah, so I'll come back with the ending later. So, so over at the retail stores, you know, the crunch will retail stores, we from time to time to get to test out and demo some really cool technology that we have over there that's unique uh, to our stores, the virtual sound rooms. And uh he uh, Bill, uh you know, Bill Crutchfield, Ceo of the company would come in from time to time. Uh, and want us to demonstrate, you know, his technology, his store to a guest of his and I ended up being kind of his go to uh, you know, person as far as that goes. And I used to always use the same demo material. Um and it reminds me a lot of the eagles, you know, we talked about them, hotel California because there's a long build up for this particular piece of live music. Um, but it definitely pulls you in and it's emotional. Um and uh it's Adele live at Royal Albert Hall, I thought you were gonna say steely dan. No, no, no, absolutely not. Yeah, there's the track I would play the ones that gets particularly emotional is someone like you. Um and it is, it's strong, you know, she kind of cries a little bit during uh you know, she has a hard time fighting back emotion as she's seen to this live audience and it's powerful and her voice is stunning in it. Um so, you know, it gives you that open field, all the surround sound speakers are doing surround sound speakers, things not in that her voice is coming from all over the place, but it makes you feel like you're in a live venue and uh it's it's really good stuff. So um you know, for that one was a little bit about the setup, but that's when I would play a lot as well. Yeah, that's so you would play that for Bill Crutchfield and for people he would bring in and not just on like any set of speakers. This was in the virtual listening room, right? With with the DSP technology that you sort of gives you the ability to demo speaker A versus B and all of that, which is something that's Crutchfield exclusive. It's in the stores, it's actually on the websites called speaker compare if you want to check it out. Just put speaker compared to the search bar on the website and you'll you can read all about it and you can even try it out at home, maybe maybe you do in the store. I would let the guest kind of give me the parameters of their room, They're listening room at home. So uh and then we'd go through and pick out some speakers and it'd be like virtually putting speakers in their living space and then I'd play that track for them and it's good stuff. Really good stuff, awesome. So I think we end this episode and season three of Crutchfield, the podcast with eric's demo for Bill Crutchfield. I think there is no better place to end it right there. Uh Thank you guys so much for listening to this show. We are going to be hard at work on season four. Uh not sure exactly when it's gonna hit your podcast player, but uh if you subscribe you will be notified. That's how podcasting works. So subscribe. If you can rate the podcast on your player, please do that. Please write a review. That will help this podcast will go up in the algorithm and more people will see it and you can say you were here first co host, Go ahead and reach out. And that's that will be that's how season four will start the search for a new co host. That's what I'm gonna be hard at work doing between now and the start of season four. Are you gonna do with all your free time? Just something? I'm sure uh David, thank you so much for hanging out with us here in this season. Ender, we've been looking forward to doing this episode now for weeks. Uh and so glad you could make time to to talk demo stuff. Absolutely, thank you so much. It was a lot of fun. And if you have any questions, thoughts, things you want to hear us tackle on a future episode of Crutchfield, the podcast hit us up and it can literally be about anything. Uh if you can find out, find it on Crutchfield dot com, we can talk about it. And maybe we'll even talk talk about stuff you can't find on Crutchfield dot com. If you've got questions about anything audio, video, car, stereo, cameras, drones, pro audio, literally anything, we would be glad to tackle that podcast at crutchfield dot com. You can get all the show notes for every episode on crutchfield dot com slash podcast. Uh and so we're pretty easy to find. You have no excuse. Uh and on behalf of David and ERic, I'm your host, Jr saying over and out, we'll see you back here for season four.