HomeTech.fm - Episode 283 - Polk Audio's Bronson Gannon

Episode Date: December 6, 2019

On this episode of HomeTech: We are joined by Bronson Gannon, Global Brand Manager for Sound United’s Polk Audio. Our discussion covers the company’s new Legend line of speakers. We also dive into many of the fundamentals of speaker design, providing information all of us can use in order to make more educated buying decisions. That, plus the latest home tech headlines including: Cyber Monday 2019 shatters records. Plex launches their ad-supported TV streaming service. Sony updates TVs to support AirPlay 2 and HomeKit. The FBI warns consumers about the cybersecurity risks of smart TVs. Wyze undercuts the competition once again with their $89 smart lock. Best Buy hits an impressive 2M+ subscribers to their Total Tech Support membership. And more…

The Home Tech Podcast is supported by you. To find out more, go to hometech.fm support. This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, December 10th. From Sarasota, Florida, I'm Seth Johnson. And from Denver, Colorado, I'm Jason Griffin. How are you doing, Seth? Pretty good. Pretty good. Jason, I'm broke. I'm broke now. Yeah. There's no money left for Christmas. Blew the budget. Blew it. It's all gone.

No deals. All the deals were taken. Amazon. I should have bought Amazon stock is what I should have done. I would have been the smart thing. No kidding. What'd you get? What'd you pull the trigger on?

Well, I've got sitting next to me on the desk here a beautiful Apple HomePod. Oh. In white. All right. I'm just getting prepared for the um what's it called the graveyard for the for the graveyard yeah yeah it's it's there um it i mean for a graveyard product it certainly works nice and does look nice um what was the sale price on that one again 188 is what it got down to which is incredible yeah yeah so that was over it that's really low yeah that i think is lower than what it was when we talked about it last week i feel like it it was

last week they were hovering at like 120 and i think that they said they were going to go down i've seen them at 110 uh 220 sorry uh and then you know for black friday of course and cyber monday they got down to the 188 price and limited in limited quantities, yada, yada, yada. I was like, well, that is just too tempting. So I bought two. So you bought two. Look at you, big spender. Yeah, I fell for it.

I like it. Well, I mean, these are supposed to be pretty good in stereo pair. So I'm going to try and set it up in a stereo pair. And then that should be fun. I can connect my computer to them and make it it do it that way so it should be fun well there's certainly a far cry better than like uh an echo or uh or uh a google home for the you know for the most part unless you get up into the i think google home has some bigger models that might might compete but either way yeah i've i've heard the home pods and they are they're

pretty good speaker you know speaking kind of a speaker centric episode here we will tee it up a little bit more later but we had bronson gannon on from poke so we're kind of in a speaker state of mind here and yeah home pods are i don't own one but you know they're definitely a good a good speaker and that's a that's a really compelling price. I mean, these were what, $349 when they first came out? They are still $349. Well, I think they were $399 maybe, and they dropped to $349. But yeah, they're still $349 if you buy them at the Apple store today. But the question is like, how long will they remain at the Apple store? And you know, how long will Apple continue to support them? So that's the big question. That's me. What about you? I saw a picture of the back of a car just loaded up with TV screen. That's right. That's

right. So I talked about it on the show last week, and I was originally conceiving for down here in my office where I work. It also doubles as a guest suite when we have guests in town. And I was thinking maybe a smaller size TV. And then I had started looking at the 50 inch TCL that I think was $249, if I recall correctly, is what we talked about last week. And that was the one that I had kind of set my sights on. And when I sat down to purchase it on Black Friday. I went online and started looking around and I realized that the 55 inch was only $30 more. So for an additional $30, I could get a 55 down here. So what originally started as me thinking about something in the smaller kind of 40 inch range or so, quickly became a 55 inch TCL that I picked up for the basement down here.

It's a four series. So it's not the six series like I have upstairs, but I've been really happy with the six series. And so they've built up some brand equity with me. And of all the deals out there, I felt like a 55 inch TCL, it's the four series. It was $279. Felt like it was a great deal. I have to admit, Seth, you know how things move around my house. It's still sitting in the box. I still see it in the box behind you, right? Yeah. I was going to say, we both got upsold this year. I bought two HomePods and you bought five inches more worth of TV than you thought you were going to. That's right. That's right. That's how they get you. So pretty excited about that. And the and, uh, you know, the, the money to offset it was, was thanks to you because I also had my eye on the MyQ, uh, smart garage door opener,

which when we talked about it last week was hovering around the $30 mark, I think, which very, very inexpensive, but I don't know how exactly you came across it. You over the weekend or on black Friday, I think slacked me the deal uh amazon lightning deal on the myq garage door opener for 17 crazy which is just insane um fire sale price so i i jumped on that picked one of those up you will not be shocked to know that it is not installed yet i'm not really that shocked that's too funny but I'll get around to it eventually. Well, I guess that's the holiday season for you. It's all about finding those. Those were the highlights. Yeah. Those were the highlights. We picked up a couple of

Amazon Fire tablets for the kids. They've had some kids' Fire tablets for several years now that have served us really well, but have gotten a little long in the tooth. And so we thought it'd be time to upgrade them this year. So we picked up a couple of those on the technology front as well. Very cool. Yeah. I can't say that I got very much more technology wise to, to brag about, but the, uh, but the home pods, I think, I think that's a pretty big investment in, in, in the, uh, in this,

in a stereo, in a stereo system. It's more than I think I's a pretty big investment in a stereo system. It's more than I think I've ever paid. And you killed two birds because now you've got them ready for the graveyard. They're ready. And I'm not going to throw away my Mackie monitors that I have here on the desk. I'll just have to keep them and box them up somewhere. And then when the HomePods die their slow, painful death from Apple, or just maybe one day they just won't work

anymore, I will just switch back over to the Mac-E's and use stereo monitors again. Very good. Yeah. All right. Well, there you go. All right. Well, let's shift gears and get into it here. I alluded to this a second ago. We do have an interview this week and had a lot of fun. We went outside of where we don't go into home theater and audio and speakers all that much on the show, but I really find it an interesting technology. And when I do have opportunities to speak with people who really know their stuff, when it comes to speakers, I always come away

from it learning a thing or two. And this conversation was no exception. We had Bronson Gannon on, he's the global brand manager over there at Sound United. Specifically, he works on the Polk and Boston Acoustics line. So they came on to primarily talk about a new Polk legend series of speakers, which you'll enjoy hearing about. But we also got into really some of the more fundamentals of speaker design and really how to think about what makes a good speaker good. And I really enjoyed the conversation. so we look forward to sharing that. Be sure to stay tuned. But before we get into that, Seth, what do you say we jump into some home tech headlines?

Let's do it. All right. Well, speaking of steals and deals, the dust has settled, and this was the biggest shopping weekend of the year. Excuse me. Early data here shows that Cyber Monday broke records, with total sales reaching an estimated staggering number here, 9.4 billion with a B. This is according to a report from Adobe Analytics. It shows that sales during the online shopping frenzy were

up an estimated 19% from last year, so almost a 20% gain. Last year was a $7.9 billion in sales. Get this, during the peak shopping hours of Cyber Monday, which Adobe Analytics pegs as between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m. Pacific, consumers spent an average of $11 million per minute. That's funny. So I don't know if that's 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. Pacific time. So maybe there's just a one hour window there. I'm not sure. But $11 million per minute, that kind of puts that $9.4 billion number in perspective. Yeah, no kidding. It was funny, Jason. I really didn't realize that there was a Cyber Monday thing. I've heard that before, but I thought it was like a joke or something. I don't know. I didn't really think much of it. I've heard that before, but I thought it was like a joke or something. I don't

know. I didn't really think much of it. I knew Black Friday had kind of like creeped out over the weekend and even like into the previous week. But I really didn't know Cyber Monday was this big of a deal. I guess it is. It's a thing. Yeah, it's a thing. Yeah yeah amazon uh there was a separate story i saw that amazon said it was their biggest shopping day in history uh there was not any specific sales numbers in that story that i read but one interesting thing they did say was the top 10 best-selling computer products on amazon were all some iteration of the fire tablet including kids edition and fire hd8 tablets so i know they had like the seven, which is the older model on sale at one point for like $30. Uh, so these things were apparently,

apparently selling like hotcakes. Yeah. You gotta, you gotta watch out for that. Um, I noticed that when I was shopping on, on Amazon is that they were selling really good deals on like a 2018 model of something or the previous model of whatever was latest so it I it almost caught me a couple of times where I'm like oh this is a really good deal and I looked at it I'm like oh but that's the old thing like nobody wants the old thing I want the new thing right so um it's something you do have to watch out I really wasn't um there wasn't much on Amazon I found compelling this year, but I suspect that's because I'm not in the TV market from what it looked like. Literally everything TV related, Sony, Samsung, everybody had a sale going on for TVs, which looked great.

TCL. So, yeah, I think I think this time of year is pretty good time to pick up a commodity priced TV. Yeah. Yeah. And actually one last comment on this, and then we'll move on. This story also talked about a growing trend. Apparently there's an acronym for this, Buy Online, Pick Up in Store, B-O-P-I-S. I guess that's a thing. But that caught my eye because actually I did end up doing that.

The TCL that I purchased ended up purchasing that from Target. So they had the same price as Amazon at target, but I was able to go pick it up, uh, locally that same day we were going to be in the area anyways. So I really liked that with some of these bigger purchases. It's, it's nice to be able to just go get that instant gratification and put your hands on them right away. Yeah. Yeah. That's, uh, we use that quite a bit for, uh, for like going to Target or something like that. Um, they, they've offered that service for a long time. You just walk up to the front, get what you need and walk out. Um, there's no, that's right. Wandering around the store, spending more money than you need. That's right. Yeah. It's kind of a nice middle ground

between online shopping and, uh, traditional retail. Yeah. Well, we've known for a while that Plex is getting into the streaming business. In September, it announced that it had teamed up with Warner Brothers to deliver an ad-supported content by the end of 2019 with the promise of more partnerships to come. And that now has come to pass. As for today, thousands of, quote, free movies, TV shows, extreme sports film, music documentaries, Bollywood musicals, hold on, have been unlocked inside the Plex app. This sounds great. I'm off to watch Bollywood for the rest of the night. I thought you would like that. I thought you might like that one. Seth, it's an audio-only show. Nobody can see your dance moves. That's good. That's a good thing. Yeah. So this is available now in more than 200 countries, available to anyone with a free Plex account. There's no paid subscriptions available. So this is a completely ad-supported service at

this time and yet another offering. So definitely something to go take a look at if you're looking for free options. I know a lot of people don't mind that ad-supported model. So this might be a good option for that. Shifting gears here on Tuesday, Sony is rolling out firmware updates for several TV lines that run Android TV, upgrading them to Android 9 Pie. The update adds several new features, including Dolby Atmos support, and perhaps most relevantly, Seth, for us, HomeKit and AirPlay 2 support. Back in January at CES, several TV manufacturers announced this. This was one of the big stories at the previous CES that we talked about quite a bit, this HomeKit and AirPlay 2 support on TVs. Most of those announced products have either shipped or had

firmware updates already. Sony's been a little bit slower than other companies like LG, Vizio, and Samsung, but they do have this firmware update rolling out now. I find they're a little bit slower in getting onto this, but they are one of the, I think just about everybody has backported the AirPlay 2 into their older models or 2018 models. I know LG is the lone, the single standing company that has not, uh, loaded air play two onto their TVs for their 20, 2018 TVs. So the 2019s have it 2018s don't, um, unfortunately. So, but that's pretty cool. Uh, that I really like it when, when, uh, when you can get an update on a product that you paid a premium price for, I mean, these are not, Sony is not a cheap TV. The XBRZ9F, the XBRA9F, as well as some other XBR models, those are not inexpensive TVs by any means.

And seeing those get software updates that add functionality, I'm a big fan of that. Yeah, absolutely. In a pre-holiday message to consumers, an FBI field office is warning that smart TVs may be vulnerable to intrusion. In addition to outlining how new advanced technological features risk allowing television manufacturers and app developers to snoop on consumers, the bureau says malicious cyber actors can also take control of unsecured smart TVs and potentially wreak havoc on unsuspecting owners. I got this story, Jason, not because I read about it, but because my wife texted me and said, they're breaking into TVs and now they can hear everything we say. Make sure you fix this before I get home. That's funny. Yeah, take care of this. I think a lot of people are, you know, jokes aside,

a lot of people are like that. Like they're looking for somebody to take care of this problem. And there are certainly opportunities for that. In fact, we'll talk about Best Buy total tech support. And I know at One Vision, we're getting ready to roll out a network security offering for consumers. So we're pretty excited about that. It's a growing, a growing trend, growing area of awareness. But, you know, thankfully, there are some things you can do to simply protect yourself. And we've talked about that numerous times on the show, we won't spend a lot of time on it. But the story did mention, you know, the FBI talking about these sorts of simple things like changing default passwords, understanding that you need to do, you need to do updates when they become available. You know, all of these things that sound very

obvious to a lot of everyday consumers might not think about that. So there are some things that people can do to make sure that they stay protected. I thought this was interesting. At the low-end risk of the spectrum, they can change channels, play with the volume, show your kids inappropriate videos. The FBI warning states, in a worst-case scenario,

they can turn on the bedroom TV's camera and microphone and silently cyber stalk you um so yeah i think that's uh some head turning uh you know uh things to see come from an fbi memo right like it's not something that we uh we we'd want to have happen uh but when my wife got home like this tv it doesn't, it doesn't have a microphone. I mean, it's connected to the internet. I do updates on it all the time, but it doesn't have a microphone and it doesn't have a, uh, a camera. So we don't have that to worry about at least. Right. Yep. And they talked about, uh, you know, if you're, if you're not using the smart features on the TV, which a lot of people don't like, I know our, ours upstairs, we're, we're just, we use the Apple TV for that. Take it off the network, right? Take it off.

That's something a lot of people may not think about either. You don't have to put it on the Wi-Fi or plug it into the network if you're not using those features. So that's another very seemingly obvious thing that people can do that, that some, some might not think of. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and we know from, from, from TV manufacturers themselves, you know, the reason that our TVs cost, you know, offense, Jason, the reason they cost, you know, two, $300 for Cyber Monday is, is because they spy on you. They want to know what you're watching. They hash out everything that you do and report back to their ad databases, basically, to figure out what you like watching on TV and how long you watch TV and all that good stuff. I mean, that exists. So if you don't need to have those types, you don't need to have those features, just leave it unplugged from network completely.

Guess what? You don't guess what? If you leave it unplugged from the network, you don't even have to do the updates on it. Like that's right. You don't need what if you leave it unplugged from the network you don't even have to do the updates on it like you that's right you don't need them problem solved exactly so it's one less maintenance routine thing that you have to do um but yeah i i i there are while there are advantages uh clearly there are disadvantages um to having that as well um so i we all can't have uh we it's it's one of those things's like, it's a double-edged sword, right? Cause we're going to have, uh, a situation where there are bad actors. And then

we also have the situation where there are good actors like Plex, for example, offering, you know, all those videos and everything. So, um, you can't have one without the other, unfortunately. That's right. We got Bruno, uh, in the chat room. Good to see Bruno joining us. And he said, we're worried about TVs now. And we've had mobile devices in our pocket for 10 years. And it's a good point. A lot of these concerns are things that have been around for a while. There's perhaps more awareness now that more and more devices are being connected. But a lot of these best practices, like not using default passwords and always making sure you do your updates. I mean, these are things that have been relevant

for a really long time. It's a funny side, kind of same conversation, but a funny conversation I had with Ashish over at Kavo during Cedia. He was showing me the little keyboard thing that I have a video of where it types out what you're searching for really quickly on the Apple TV. And, and I kind of looked at him. I said, so you can type in passwords too. He's like, Oh yeah, we know what your passwords are. I'm like,

like, how do you know? He's like, if we can see the pixels, we know what the passwords are. Do you think your TV doesn't know what your passwords are? Your TV can see your passwords. I'm like, right. Yeah, I guess it it can it knows what it knows what letters are it knows where the pixels are it knows what color they are they can see the passwords yeah yeah yeah kind of wild to think about unique passwords yeah well it doesn't matter at that point well right but it's one thing for your password to get compromised if it's oh yes used for one thing it's another if you use it for your banking and your password to get compromised if it's used for one thing. It's another if you use it for your banking and your email and everything else under the sun.

Absolutely. Which, unfortunately, a lot of people still do. Anyways, all right, let's shift gears here. Moving on to our next headline, Wise has announced its latest smart device on the mobile site Tuesday, a smart lock. Only a small number of Wiseze locks will be made available through its early access program, with shipping not expected to begin until after Christmas. An official launch is set for sometime in February, the company says. The Wyze lock has all the smart features you would expect, including Alexa, Google Assistant, and Zigbee support, with voice unlocking via the voice assistants coming in early 2020. The lock runs on four AA batteries,

which the company says will last about three months of regular use. Very cool. I'm shocked, I guess. I mean, this seems like it's complementary to their line of cameras. And what do they have that scale out yet? The waist where you can weigh yourself? I'm not sure. But it seems complementary to the product line that they have.

And I'm shocked at the price. I mean, it looks really good. It looks like it's really well done for $89, $90. And I'm sure we'll see it less in the future. Yeah, the story says device by device, Wyze is steadily putting downward price pressure on the smart home market. They've already been successful in doing that by any measure with its most popular product, the Wyze Cam, which I've picked up a few for my house. And at $25, $30, it's insane what you get for that price.

So this, again, will be at $89 and continues to put downward pressure on the market. I don't know. I still have my questions about the long-term viability, but, uh, who knows? Yeah. It will be interesting to see, uh, where that company goes. I certainly, uh, I don't, I don't know how they would, they they've got to be able to come up with some kind of service that they can offer on top of this, you know, $89 product to help subsidize that price point because that seems yeah really low yeah it says it requires no subscription to use and has built-in door position detection so it can tell you if it's locked or unlocked but yeah currently

no subscription required i know on my cameras you don't need a subscription but i have seen them you know i saw some emails come across for enhanced features so for example they've got motion detection that'll grab like whatever a five second clip if you want to get the they call it full motion detection where it'll store the whole clip for as long as there's motion in the frame then it costs like i don't remember i mean it was ridiculously cheap it was like a dollar don't remember. I mean, it was ridiculously cheap. It was like a dollar a month or something. Right. Well, I mean, and they have,

Wyze has a security system either out or coming out soon as well. So, I mean, this ties in directly. I mean, it could just be something as simple as an accessory to that, right? And maybe there's no subscription for the smart deadbolt, but once you get involved with a bigger system i'm not familiar with their product line completely but like i think it would make sense for them to start selling something on top of it to help subsidize these low prices

because yeah eighty nine dollars is insanely low compared to like i think the quick set i have over there is what uh two hundred dollars so like we're not we're talking magnitude lower. Here. This is this is wild to see it is. So Best Buy reported strong Q3 2020 financials driven in part by more than Jason, are you sitting? Yes, I can see you're sitting down. 2 million subscribers to its geek squad total tech team support. That is wild. The $200 a year program was launched in May 2019 and drove the company's services division revenues up 12.9% for the quarter. Wow. Overall Best Buy domestic revenue for the quarter was $8.96 billion, up 2.4% versus last year, and Wall Street reacted favorably to the news with Best Buy stock up more than 10% during the day. That is incredible that a $200 a year program has 2 million subscribers.

Yeah. That is wild. Wow. Yeah, it is really an interesting story to watch. As you can imagine, at OneVision and amongst our network of partners, our network of integrators, I should say, both that are partners and those that we just sort of interact with at industry events and other various channels. What Best Buy is doing here with total tech support is massively interesting. And the success

is really validating. I think that ultimately, you know, they talk about in the story, this is from CE Pro, and they quote, Corey Berry, who's Best Buy CEO, says, we are excited about our progress and opportunities as we execute on our building the new blue strategy, which is their sort of overarching corporate strategy, designed to develop deeper relationships with our customers and uniquely position us over the long term. And I think that really hits the nail on the head. And if you take any time at all to go study what Best Buy has done over the last decade or more, it's been an incredible turnaround story. And for them to be doing this in the day and age of

Amazon and e-commerce in general is really impressive. And a lot of the cornerstone of their strategy is really centered on deepening that relationship. And I think there's a lot that home technology professionals can take away from that in terms of shifting from a very transactional, strictly project-focused mentality to one that doesn't throw out the project mentality entirely, but also embraces the need for this longer term comprehensive technology management that, that many consumers are clearly looking for. Oh, absolutely. And, and there was, there was one thing that was, uh, when, when I was selling

alarm systems, I'm shivering right now. Um, back in the day, like there was, there was one thing that came up with price and there were a couple of guys in town that were like, I don't know, $20 a month for their alarm security system. And then we, we were looking at it like, well, you know, we can sell it up to like 49, $50 a month is, is, is what 80 ADT and all the big guys are doing. So like if the big guys are able to sell it for that without anybody turning ahead, like why wouldn't you? Like the big guys in this case are Best Buy and they're proving that this could be done. Definitely take a look at what they're doing and see if there's any way that you can weave that into your product offering as a business. It totally

makes sense to do that. It is clearly an opportunity that, I mean, what is that number? $200 times 2 million. So that's $400 million a year for Best Buy. That's great. Yeah. That's amazing. Yep.

The story also mentions that it says, the service continues to get strong reviews and members spend more and are twice as likely to use other services than non-members. There you go. I think that's an important point as well is, you know, it's not Best Buy for now. One other point we'll talk about is they're looking at possibly expanding this. But for now, it's really kind of a one-size-fits-all. It's total tech support.

You buy it or you don't. But they have other services as well. And I think the parallel there for home technology professionals is that you can start with a tiered structure and you can have some sort of a membership service offering that is relatively basic, but provides maybe something like guaranteed access to 24-7 support, things of that nature. And then you can scale it up from there. And if Best Buy's success is any indication, then getting customers to at least start to opt into these membership and ongoing service programs is really just a foot in the door. So you don't have to swing for the fences and do it all on your first sort of entry-level plan.

You can get started small and then look to scale up from there over time. Right, right. Which, by the way, is what, you know, Best Buy, the one last thing I wanted to mention on this story is that Barry, the CEO, also talked about total tech support with networking. And apparently Best Buy is piloting this program.

It includes setup and installation of routers, parental controls to manage devices on the network, a subscription to Microsoft Office 365, one terabyte of cloud storage, along with all of the other total tech support benefits. So you can see them very clearly looking to scale up on their early successes. Yep. And that's a smart place to be. All the tools are there now. All the tools have been developed to be able to do that remote tech support with networking and figure out. I mean, there's a lot of better devices that are out now, too. Like networking is pretty solid these days.

I mean, when your choice is like between like an Eero or a Google Wi-Fi, like you're getting a pretty good product, right? Right. So like it's a really smart thing for them to do to kind of go ahead and insert themselves into that marketplace. Sounds like a pretty good idea. Yeah, absolutely. We'll include a link to that in our show notes, along with all of the other stories that we've talked about on this week's show at hometech.fm. While you're there, don't forget to sign up for our weekly newsletter. We'll send you show reminders and other occasional updates about all the great things going on here in the world of home tech. Once again, that link is hometech.fm

slash 283. And don't forget, you can join us in the chat room live Wednesday, starting between sometime between 730 and 7 and 730 p.m. Eastern. You can find out more at hometech.fm slash live. All right, absolutely. Well, Seth, what do you say without further ado, let's go ahead and get into our interview. Once again, we had Bronson Gannon on. He's the global brand manager for Polk and Boston Acoustics over there at Sound United. He joins us to talk all about not only their new legend line of speakers, but also speaker design in general. And what are some of those fundamental and really important things that you should understand if you're going out there and evaluating speakers. So we hope you enjoy the conversation here with Bronson Gannon. Hey, Bronson, welcome to the show. How are you?

Good, guys. How are you guys doing today? We're doing great. We're excited to have you and jump into a conversation about speakers. It's not a topic that we touch on as much as I would like on the show. I certainly appreciate a good speaker, and I'm looking forward to really learning about not just the legend speaker, which is the primary thing we're going to talk about, but also just Polk's philosophy and really what I as a consumer and everyone else out there in the audience really should be thinking about when we start to take a look and think about speakers. But before we jump in to all of that, why don't you give our listeners just a quick personal introduction and talk about some of your background as well as your current

role today over there at Polk? Absolutely. So as you mentioned earlier, my name is Bronson. I've been with Polk Audio for about two years now. I'm the global brain manager for Polk Audio. And prior to this, I was actually in a completely different industry. I was in sporting goods industry. And I decided to shake it up a little bit because I got really bored. And I really love audio. Turntables have been my deal forever. And then I just finally said, I'm leading sports. I'm done with it.

I need to switch it up. And I got this job at Sound United underneath Polk Audio. And ever since then, my brain has just been getting destroyed by amazing speakers. So it's really cool. I mean, I feel very blessed. I can come into work and I can listen to music all day at work and test out speakers and find out the breaking points, you know, and I can do all that kind of stuff. So it's, it's a blessing. It's been a ton of fun over the last two years. Awesome. And I would imagine as the global brand manager, you're, you're a busy guy. Talk, talk about what kind of a day to day,

if such a thing exists for you, what does that look like for you? Oh, good God. That's a great question. I'm still trying to figure out what my day-to-day is too. Like you said, there's no day is the same over here. I mean, as you know, with Polk Audio, we have component speakers, which is this legend line. And then we also have soundbars and we have all-in-ones. So my day varies greatly. I have calls, let's say with China super late in the evening. I have calls with Australia in the afternoon. I have calls with Europe in the early morning, trying to figure out exactly what their markets are needing, how they can figure out a way to help put those products into their market, and then also market it as well to the different regions. And as everybody knows, China is very different than Germany. So it's one of those things where nothing is the same every day, but it's a grind constantly. It's a solid 12 to 14 hour day every day.

Awesome. Well, it sounds like that keeps things interesting and I can tell that you're reason and how that's all put together. Give us a short history of Polk and what do you feel like makes the company really special? Yeah, absolutely. So Polk actually started in the early 70s out in Baltimore, Maryland. And it started with a gentleman named Matthew Polk, who the company is clearly named after. And they ended up going into this massive Victorian house in Baltimore

and they started just making a speaker workshop in there their their passion for life was audio they wanted to make an amazing speaker that people could actually afford to purchase as opposed to back in the day where people were making Bose speakers I believe it was a 702s or something like that and it was like a $10,000 speaker so back in the 70s that's a ton of money. So what we want to do is pull in what it started is, and what it's morphed to today is we want to make amazing sounding speakers for everybody that is able to afford it. So our goal is to make speakers with

legit materials that are natural, nothing that's crazy exotic. So you won't find any aluminum. There won't be any carbon fiber. There won't be any beryllium on any of our speakers because when you have those products on your speakers, the price gets shot up dramatically. And we don't want to do that to our consumers. We want to make sure that you're able to enjoy the same great audio that we're able to enjoy. Very nice. Well, let's talk a little bit about some of the newer speakers you have coming out, the new Legends series. Legends is a pretty good name because Polk has some pretty legendary speakers, right? The Monitor 10s, SDAs, RTAs, going way back. Yep. SRTs, LSIs, it seems like that heritage is ending up in the legend.

The Polk heritage is coming in and it looks, I mean, the speakers almost look like something that you would see, a modern version, of course, but something you would see come out of that 70s workshop. Yeah, absolutely. So a lot of the stuff that you think that isn't with 70s within Polk and especially the SDA is the dual tweeters, the two transducers that you have on the top. And that's going to be in our flagship line called the L800. Now, for everybody out there listening, the L800 goes for $6,000 a pair. Nice. I know.

You think that it's crazy high, but it it's not you need to go and listen to these speakers and once you sit down and listen to these speakers you'll understand what i'm talking about first time i listened to these speakers i i i started crying i'm not even kidding there was one song they played uh ave maria and it just it hit me and i just yeah i was transported into the actual opera house where this was recorded live, and I felt like I was there. It was just something totally crazy. But sorry, I digress. Let's go back.

So talking about the actual Legend series themselves. So we have seven speakers with us in this line. We have the L800 that I just spoke about, which is our flagship speaker with our SDA technology, which is our legendary technology, like what we did there. Then we have a traditional stereo tower called the L600. We have a center channel for every home theater need that you could possibly have. We have two bookshelves. And for the first time ever, we have an Atmos module that we're able to drop into the tower speakers. So that's both into the SDA and into the typical regular stereo tower speaker.

Can you, we touched on it a couple of times, but let's talk a little bit about that, the SDA, the stereo dimension array. Ah, you really want to get into it right in the middle, don't you? Let's go. Let's get in the meat. Yeah. I mean, we talked about this a little bit before we started, is that like these speakers are, I mean, it's a podcast, we're an audio medium, but like we're trying to describe something that you really have to be in front of to hear because everybody who is listening to this isn't listening on these Polk speakers. They're listening on whatever they have in front of them. So it's, we've got to, got to get in and talk about the juicy bits here. Let's break it down. Let's, let's get into brass tacks boys. So it's, we've got to, got to get in and talk about the juicy bits here.

Let's break it down. Let's, let's get into brass tacks boys. So the way you're listening to stuff right now, if you don't have headphones on, you are getting an inherent distortion with stereo listening, no matter what. And it's called interaural crosstalk. And interaural crosstalk is when you're sitting in front of your, your two channels set up and you have your right speaker on the right and the left speaker on the left. And you press play and Pink Floyd starts playing.

You're like, hell yeah, that sounds great. But what you don't realize is that the sound from the right speaker is going to your right ear, but it is also going to your left ear. That is called interaural crosstalk. And the same thing is happening on the left speaker to the left side of your face as well too. So what we have done with SDA, which stands for stereo dimensional array, we have created a crosstalk cancellation signal. So if you look at our speakers at the very top, you see that we have two transducers up there. We have two tweeters and we have two cones, two woofers, right right so when you position them in the room the inside of those transducers that's called our stereo

array and those are the good signals that we want that's the right signal to the right ear and the left signal to the left ear the outside of those transducers it's called our dimensional array and that's what sends the cancellation signal to your so let's say your right side, the right speaker will send the cancellation signal to your right ear to cancel out the sound that's coming from the left speaker. Does that make sense? It does. Clear as mud? Yeah. No, it's interesting because you start to think about the physics of listening and these things are obviously measured in tiny fractions of a second.

But I have to imagine that the audio hitting one ear is hitting it also possibly even a fraction of a second later to the other ear. I would imagine that maybe is that part of what causes? Jason, that's a great question. Yeah, like what is it about this cancellation signal that actually then from a human perspective makes it sound better? Absolutely. So what you just described was a phase delay that you would get within that as well too. And it's a head shadow effect. So it crosses your head. So when you cancel out these signals, what will happen was that you will get the recording as it was created from the actual sound engineer itself.

So one of the big songs that we use during our demos is time by Pink Floyd. And, you know, at the beginning, like three seconds in all the alarm clocks are going off and you're listening to it regularly. Like if you're in headphones, you're like, wow, this sounds great. Everything's really close to my head. And you listen to it on stereo channel speakers. You're like, wow, this is great. It's a good sound image, right? If you were to sit down and listen to it on these L800 speakers, it would take up the entire wall. It would go from floor to ceiling, and it would go wall to wall, and you would have precise imaging on each of the alarm

clocks that are going off. And you'll be able to feel the depth and the height and the width that we're able to give you. And that's what Pink Floyd wanted to give you. You know? So, I mean, it's one of those things where you're actually able to listen and witness the music or your favorite movie or TV show, how it was meant to be. Like, you will be there. Yeah. Yeah. And that is one of the big things. I, I, again, certainly appreciate a good speaker. I do not consider myself an audiophile or an expert in, in speakers, but one thing that I, even as a relative Luddite, when it comes to this stuff, one thing that I have noticed is that when I do sit in front of a, a good pair of speakers that

you just, you just do get a lot more of that imaging, like you said, and the depth and you can feel the spread and the soundstage a little bit more, a lot more in some cases. And it sounds like this SDA technology is really designed to even take that to the next level. So pretty interesting stuff. And I'd love to get an opportunity to sit down and listen to that someday. Let's shift gears because that's obviously one big component of the speakers, but there's a lot else going on here. And it'll also, I think, lead to some interesting conversations about other aspects of listening and how these speakers are engineered. So I know for the mid-range, you've got the technology called Turbine Cone. So talk about that specific

technology and relate it just in general to, you know, how you guys think about, about conveying that important mid range of the, of the audio signal. Yep, absolutely. And as you said, the mid range is extremely important. It's, that's probably about 70% of what you guys are hearing anyways, is all the mid range stuff. So what you want from a good mid range is for the cone, you want it to be a stiff cone. That's super light. That's able to move back and forth really quickly to give you a more precise mid-range. So normally what you have to do is

you have to invest in exotic materials like carbon fiber and stuff like that. But what we've done is we've stayed with the typical paper polypropylene cone. But what we've done is if you look at it, we have those little bridges on there. They may call those turbine pedals. And what we've done is if you look at it, we have those little bridges on there. And we call those turbine pedals. And what they do is they actually increase the rigidity of the cone without adding any additional mass. And the way that we're able to do that is by injecting aerated polypropylene in the middle of that so we can adhere it together. So think of it like a sandwich. So on the outside of the sandwich, we have polypropylene. On the middle of the sandwich, which is like your meats and your veggies and all the fun stuff, that's our aerated polypropylene,

which is the adhesive that helps keep this together. And on the outside, you have the crispy bun, and that's what's going to be our turbine cone, our turbine ridges that you see there. So we're able to do two things within one little motor structure. We're able to increase the rigidity, and we're also able to increase the damping. So with that, that gives you faster, faster motor, faster cone. It gives you more damping materials, which is great, which absorbs resonances. And you're also able to get clear mid-range sounds without any sort of distortions. And that's the turbine cone. And the cool thing is, is that that's not just going to be in the L800 speaker. It's going to

be in the entire Legend line that we have. And that's another cool thing that I kind of want to touch on real quickly is that the entire line is tamper matched. Whatever you get in the little baby bookshelf speaker will be the same componentry that you get in our big L800 flagship speaker. It'll be maybe formed a little differently, but it's all the same technology. And that's what we wanted to make sure that our consumers are able to get. We want them to have a stellar, awesome experience with just our bookshelves or even the L800s. So from $1,200 to $6,000, we want you to have a great experience. And the way that we thought you could do that is by giving everything in the line the best possible products that we could make. Very cool.

That is really neat. A lot of times you don't see the Tamper matching coming in until you're paying $6,000 for each speaker you have around the room. Exactly. One quick question came up while you were talking about the turbine cone. Why is the rigidity important? Is that just because it needs to be a cone to move sound, so to speak? Or why is rigidity important in a cone like that? So the less, the less rigid it's going to be, you're going to have ripples within your cone because your cone's moving so quickly. So you're going to have different spots of your cone. That's probably going to potentially quote unquote, break down or have waves in there. And when you're creating waves within the cone

itself, it's creating more distortions and the more distortions will come out and they alter the sound, obviously. And that's something that we don't want to do. So the more rigid it is, the less, let's say, morphing will happen within the cone itself. So the stronger it is, the tighter the sound waves you'll get, and the more distortion-free music you'll be able to listen to. Cool. Well, appreciate you elaborating on that. I was curious about that as well, just from a higher level perspective. What is it about mid-range cones that make rigidity important? So that makes a lot of sense. Shifting gears here and down to that ever important bass and lower frequency range that really rounds out the sound. I know you guys have,

and everybody likes that. Even those of us who don't know as much about speakers, you know, it's always a fun thing to check out. So talk about, you guys have an enhanced power port on the speaker and talk about that technology. And again, what is it about your design philosophy that makes that bass better. Yeah, absolutely. So before I get into that, I want to tell you guys a quick story. We were at the New York Audio Show two, three weeks ago, and we were in the room testing out our songs and making sure that the room was acoustically friendly

and all that kind of stuff. And I love to play this one song. I know you're probably going to judge me for saying it, but when I play Part by beyonce on these speakers and i crank the volume up to like let's say 65 70 and within the first 10 seconds you have the lowest deepest bass drop you could have we actually rattled the room and the tiles that were in like a typical hotel room were shaking out of the actual roof. So we had to tape the roof together so during our demo, it wouldn't fall apart. Kind of bananas. So now I'll tell you why

we're able and how we're able to do that. So as you mentioned earlier, we have this really cool thing called our power port technology, which has been around probably for about 10 years or so. We wanted to make it better because we like to do crazy things. So we made our enhanced power port. So what we ended up doing is a traditional port, there's a circle, let's say a hole cut into your speaker that lets air move in and out within the actual cabinet itself. Now, when you have that, traditionally ported speakers give off an effect or a distortion called chuffing. And what chuffing is, is when you're driving down the freeway and you roll your windows down a little bit and all of a sudden you hear that from the air trying to go in and out of the window from your car. It's the same experience that you're having, except with a pair of speakers.

So when you turn up your speakers really loud and you have a lot of low end, you'll hear a lot of coming out of the actual base port itself because it's not dispersing the air into the room properly. It's not a smooth transition. Now, with our power port and our enhanced power port, what we have done is we've taken a, let's say, a Hershey Kiss-looking piece of plastic, for lack of a better term. And what we have done is we have put the tip of that Hershey Kiss within the actual port itself.

So once it goes into the port, we're able to direct where we want the airflow to actually go when it's moving in and out of the cabinet itself. So you're able to actually disperse it into the listening area evenly and smoothly without getting any chuffing at all. And even when we do that, we're able to actually increase our low end frequencies by three dBs as well too. So what essentially what you're able to do is you're able to play your music or your movies lower and louder. That's the big takeaway for you. You don't have to worry about having the car driving down the freeway with the windows down type deal.

It's lower and louder. So your bass is going to be crisp. It's going to be tight. You're not going to have any sort of distortions going on with it as well. Yeah. And that's another area that I've observed when I listen to good speakers is that the bass really comes through nice and evenly. And I've also seemed to observe that sometimes on cheaper speakers, I feel like you got to really crank them up to get any sort of bass. And on a good speaker, you get that same sort of effect even at lower volumes. Absolutely. And I think one of the cool things that you really should look for or listen for in finding a good set of speakers is effortless bass because people

can put you know crazy amounts of low end especially if it's an active speaker you know so they can tune it that way but if it's not tuned that way it's a passive speaker you want to make sure that the bass is just effortless and it just flows into the room and just kind of you're you just get enveloped into it as opposed to it just being there. They're really, really pushing hard on those woofers to really work hard. Right. Very cool. Well, let's, uh, let's shift gears slightly here and talk about you. You alluded to this earlier in the conversation, the, the Atmos modules and 3d audio and, and talk a little bit about the application there and how you guys are approaching that technology. Maybe give a little bit of a background in case there are listeners who aren't yet familiar. I know this is still a relatively

new technology and it's been around for a little while now, but not quite as adopted as something as established as like a traditional 7.1 or 9 point whatever. So talk about 3D audio, what that is conceptually and how you guys are fitting that into the Legend product line. Of course. So let's say you're going to go to the movie theaters, right? And the typical movie theater is a 7.1 to 9.1 setup. But us, we don't think that's good enough. We want everybody to be immersed in the true sound.

And that's where Dolby Atmos has come into play. They have said, guess what, your typical 5791 setup is not good enough now. We have created something called Atmos, which transports you into the middle of the action, because realize is that whether you have a 5.1 or 7.1, 7.2 system, whatever, the biggest going to have your rears, and you're going to have your fronts as well, too. So when you're doing that, it's essentially fire downward or what we have in our towers where we have the modules that will drop directly in. They will shoot up. They will reflect off the ceiling. They will come right back down into the listening area. So from a standpoint, from adapting to the times and the 3D audio and all that kind of stuff, this is Polk's first venture into it. But don't get me wrong, we have been doing years of research into it

as everybody has been. Everybody's been coming out with products. We've been wanting to perfect it. Now, the way that we were able to perfect it was if you go look at a typical Atmos module today, you'll notice that the tweeter's on top and that the woofer's on the bottom, the cone's on the bottom.

Now, that gives you a really, really tight sweet spot and you're not really able to move around that much. So what we've done is we've altered that. We've changed it. We've flipped it on its head. So what we have is we have the tweeter on the inside of the speaker and the Atmos modules are the closest to you and the woofers on the outside. Now what that does is it gives you a wider sweet spot. So when that sound gets shot up to the ceiling, it reflects and comes right back down. Instead of coming down to the itsy bitsy little two foot wide sweet spot, it's going to come down to four to six feet. So we've essentially almost doubled the sweet spot for you on these Atmos modules.

And that's something that we have taken pride in we've done three four years worth of research on very nice very nice and it so the atmos the atmos module uh is a drop-in module for the tower speakers like basically on the top of the speakers there it goes or is it a separate product line that you have to get you know so we have created it and like you hit it right on the head it drops directly into the towers so we actually have like a cap on top of the towers that you're able to unscrew. You take that off, you connect the Atmos module inside the speaker to a little connector,

and then you drop it right on top of the speaker itself. So it integrates seamlessly. And the really cool thing is, is that you don't have an additional box on top of your speaker, nor do you have to worry about running cables down behind your actual speaker itself, because we've

integrated that for you within the speaker already so you just have to plug it into the binding post on top and you're ready to go very nice well i i think i think the only the next step for me is just to go listen to these things because i i'm my curiosity has been piqued um like like we were talking about before i used to sell polk way back in the circuit city days and uh actually bought them because i i, paying for the buck, they were the best thing we had in the store. Yeah. And, uh, which is looking, looking on the website, it doesn't seem like that has changed

very much. It seems like you still get, uh, a lot for what you're, you're paying for out of a, you know, two or $300 pair of bookshelf speakers. It looks like a pretty good value. Um, where, how can someone go listen to these? Oh, I'm really happy you asked that question. So the best way to listen to them is we're holding listening events around the country. And today we've held about nine listening events so far. And when we update that on our website periodically, whenever we have another retailer sign up,

we try to get them to do a listening event. So we have a listening event coming up on December 14th at Worldwide Stereo in Pennsylvania. So if you're around there, go check out that one. But I encourage you guys to go to polkaudio.com backslash legend, and that will help give you guys and show you where the next listening event is, or to even locate a legend dealer. These are only going to be sold at certain legend dealers. They're not going to be sold at everywhere around the country. So Best Buy won't be taking these things. We are only selling to our specialty dealers on this one because we want to make sure that our consumers are getting the full experience that they, that they deserve when it comes to listening to these amazing speakers.

And to leave you with this, it's Stu Lundzen. He's been with the company for 42 years recently, or just retired. And this was his swan song. This was the last speaker that he had the opportunity to work on. And he came in and sat down right after Rocky Mountain Audio Fest. And we were all talking about it. We were throwing around these terms loosely and stuff. But he did one demo in there and he played one track.

And he just looks at all of us in the room, the Polk guys. And he's like, wow, these are the best damn speakers that Polk has ever made. Hands down, bar none, best damn speakers Polk has ever made. So having the guy who is our lead acoustic research and development engineer, he's created crossovers and done all that kind of stuff to come in and say that this is the best speaker that we've ever made. And now we're able to share that with the consumers. I mean, it's one of those things where it really doesn't get much better

than that. So, yeah, I'm super stoked to be even just talking about these things and being in the same room as them. So if you're able to go out and listen to them, I highly recommend it. Um, you, you won't regret it at all. And I'm not just saying that it's changed my listening experience forever. Awesome. Well, we've also got a lot of, uh, professionals in our audience as well as end users. And I know that many of them out there may also be interested in taking a look at that. I would imagine you've got a pretty healthy dealer network. And if anyone in the audience is interested in providing these to their clients, it sounds like they'd be a great option and not

exorbitantly expensive. The professionals professionals out there, especially will know that, that high quality speakers can get really, really expensive very quickly. And so, you know, you talked about $6,000 a pair earlier for those L800s. And to a lot of people that may sound like a really high price, but to most of the professionals out there in the audience, who've done any sort of selling of high-end speakers, they know that that's actually a very reasonable price for what sounds like a pretty high-quality speaker. So we are running up against our time. As we do that, I'd love to zoom out a little bit and just talk about general guidance for people out there looking for speakers. I know one of the big things I was excited about coming into this interview was to learn a little bit about conceptually just how to think about speakers. It's such a mature category. There's thousands of options

out there for people who are interested in shopping for one. How do you, as somebody who lives and breathes this stuff, what are some of the general sort of guiding principles that you're evaluating when you go out and listen to various speakers and really try to make a determination on the quality of what you're listening to? Absolutely. So that's actually a great question. And when I first got in the industry, I asked the same question myself. How do I know what's a great speaker? What are the things that I need to look for? And the real answer to that is is it's nothing. It's personal preference. It's all subjective. Some people like a speaker that has more bass. So that's, those are

like the Beats by Dre headphones that they have injected bass into the headphones and stuff. And some people like our European counterparts, they don't like a lot of bass at all. So you have other brands out there that specialize in that kind of stuff. But what we hear in the States that we've really pride ourself on and actually Polk itself is that we want to give it really a, let's say a rock and roll bass to a European mid range to high frequency. Me personally, I like having a good amount of bass, even out with a smooth mid-range, in really nice high frequencies. But like I said earlier, it's all subjective. Some people like really bright speakers. I've heard a ton of speakers that are bright, and they're just like, I can only listen to them for so long.

So I like something for me personally. It's smoother. It's nice that that effortless bass that I was talking about earlier, it seems like that they belong in the room as opposed to standing out crazy like and just pushing crazy sounds at you. To me, when I sit down and I listen to the speaker, if the speakers disappear and I can close my eyes and there's no speakers in the room, they've done their job. That's me personally. Very cool. Yep. And I've heard that a lot. It really is subjective. And the best thing with speakers is, like we talked about, find an opportunity to go sit in front of these, listen to them, close your eyes, allow yourself to be absorbed a little bit in that

experience and see if they connect with you. So Bronson, thanks again. We really appreciate you taking some time to come on and join us. If there's anybody listening who might want to connect with you or the company and find out more, what would be the best way for them to do that? Reach out to us on social media. So Instagram would be Polk Audio and Facebook would be Polk Audio as well, too. Go ahead, send us a message, slide into our DMs, and we'll be sure to get you guys the information that you're looking for. Awesome. Well, again, we really appreciate you taking some time to come on the show and join us and talk about these speakers

and speaker design in general. I know I learned a lot, so we really appreciate it. Absolutely. No problem. Thanks, guys. All right. Take care, Bronson. That was a pretty good interview here, Jason. I was clicking around on the Polk website here, and I am just stunned by the amount of product that they have out these days.

I mean, they're in just about of product that they have out these days I mean they're they're in just about every category uh that you can think of and like I said like I was telling the I'm not sure I said it on the show but I was telling Bronson for sure um Polk had some of the best bang for the buck product out there when I was when I was selling it back at Circuit City uh in the dark ages that's right um but But man, they've really come, they really have come a long way and have a really good product line for every, really every price point that I can think of. Yeah, I enjoyed learning a little bit about, again, not just the speakers, but sort of who Polk is as a company. I think one of the things that I always grapple with when I even think about speakers is just, it is a very mature category. There's so many options out there and, and how do you start to distill it down? And I think even just learning about the culture and philosophy of a company

like Polk helps you understand like what, what makes them unique and special and, and every speaker company certainly has, has their story. And so I think that's part of the equation. All right. Well, let's go ahead then and shift gears, Seth. We've got a great pick of the week this week from the hub. I'll let you tee this one up. Yeah, so this comes from Robert Spivak, kind of right after the last show last week. I think he posted this intersection of some things that I really like. One, networking gear. And it's got Ubiquiti networking gear. Two, wire management.

And three, Jason, Lego. This is a powerful combination. Yeah, it is. It truly is. Somebody has taken the time to make a nice little Lego rack that looks like a cable modem a ubiquity uh cloud key uh ubiquity router and a small ubiquity eight port switch and they also went the extra mile jason if you see they have little wire management things in there like in the rack built into it

where they can run their cat fives in and everything looks nice, nice and tidy. Looks great. I like it. It's adorable. Yeah, absolutely adorable. It really is. It's a perfect word for it. I, this is a great find. I, I don't know where Robert found this one, but, uh, thanks for sending that over.

Definitely head on over to our show notes at hometech.fm slash 283. If you're a fan of wire management, gear and or legos absolutely this one's for you yeah if you have any feedback questions comments pics of the week or great ideas to for the show give us a shout our email address is a feedback at home tech.fm or you can visit home tech.fm slash feedback and fill out the online form or you can just post them in the hub and i'll find them there it seems like a pretty good place to put them absolutely it's effective all right as we as we always like to do we want to give a big thank you to everyone who supports the show but especially to those those of you who are able to financially contribute to our efforts through our patreon page if you want to learn more

about that head on over to hometech.fm support and learn how you can support our efforts here for as little as $1 a month. Any pledge over $5, we'll give you a big shout out on air, but every single pledge, we'll give you an invite to our private Slack chat, The Hub, where you and other supporters of the show can gather every day for all kinds of interesting conversations and fun pictures and whatnot surrounding the world of home technology. Yep. And if you'd like to help out and you can't support the show financially, we definitely appreciate a five-star review on iTunes or positive rating in a podcast app of your choice.

We're aiming for those five stars, though, nothing less. That's right. I mean, if you do have a complaint, let us know. Let us know. We'll fix it. Yeah, we do. We'd love to know. Absolutely.

All right, and the last thing we always want to mention is that Home Tech is a very proud member of the technology.fm collective of podcasts. You can find other great shows like Home On, The Smart Home Show, and DTNS. Once again, that is technology.fm. If you're a supporter of our show, head on over there and you'll find plenty more that you like. Well, Jason, that wraps up the week of spending. I hope you've gotten all your your your holiday presents purchased no no yeah it's certain it certainly wraps up it certainly

wraps up the uh the week of self-indulgent spending there you go that we've still got we've still got some buying to do yeah but we're making good progress we we definitely put a good dent in it very cool yeah i i, we got off lucky, too. Like, we've gotten, we were able to find a couple good deals on things that she wanted. My daughter, my daughter did this. We went and saw the Santa, right? The big man? Yep.

And we're like, what do you want for Christmas? And she goes, you know, I want a rainbow slinky and an Elsa doll. Done. We're doll. Done. We're lucky. Yeah. No, hold on. Hold on. So she goes up to Santa, and I've got video of this.

I've got video evidence of this. She goes, he goes, what would you like for Christmas this year? And she says, I want a purple motorcycle. She sandbagged you. Totally sandbagged you totally sandbagged me and then i i will share with you a picture of her looking at me with the most impish grin saying and i could just see her saying in her head like i told him a purple motorcycle and there's nothing you can do about it it's it's it was the most wonderful time i gotta say that's great yeah three years old really funny perfect yeah

so it's the modern version of i want a pony yeah purple motorcycle you know it's gotta happen now don't know how i'm gonna do it i don't know where they come up with it that's really funny well good luck with that yeah right i'm not sure if you found any black friday sales on on purple motorcycle did not find any deals on any no i'll keep an eye out. Yeah. I appreciate it. Yeah. If you see a $17, uh, purple motorcycle, let me know. Yeah. I hooked you up with the wise or not with the wise. Yeah. I was going to say maybe send a wise, wise and note. They'll make one for you. Yeah, exactly. Sounds good. All right, Seth. Well, I hope you have a great weekend and, uh, look forward to connecting with you again next week. All right. Have a good one, Jason.