NZXT PODCAST - #016 - Patrick

Episode Date: November 7, 2019

On this week's podcast, Denis and Ivan are joined by NZXT’s Product Manager for Audio: Patrick Butler Patrick and the crew discuss: The new NZXT AER audio line, The Beatles, humidity control, and lefties. Listen live to the NZXT CLUB CAST on our Discord server at discord.gg/nzxt every Thursday at 10AM PT! Thanks to ItsDaMuneeROW#7843 for the artwork!

Hello and welcome to the NXT Club. Mind you did? No, I'm not podcast. The official podcast of the NXT community. The podcast is recorded live. Why did I bother writing this? Every Thursday at 10 a.m. Pacific Standard Time on the official NXT Club Discord server and is available to stream wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

My name is Dennis. And with me as always, we have Ivan. Hello. I'm just sitting here with listening to old school face songs on my NZXT air headset, drinking some G fuel. Wow. That was the coolest thing I've ever heard. It's the most zoomer thing I've ever heard.

And with us today, we have Patrick. Hi, Patrick. How's it going? Patrick is our product manager in charge of audio. Surprise, surprise. Almost as if like this was planned ahead of time. Not at all. Yeah, we don't plan anything here.

Patrick has aged like 20 years while he's been working on this project. I'm seriously going gray. It's actually the most ridiculous thing in the whole world. I literally yesterday. It was like just, you know, I look like a Silvio from The Sopranos or something. But congrats, man. You did it. Dude.

Thank you. So excited. Long time coming, you know, people have been asking for audio stuff, among other things, but like people for a long time, like, when are you guys going to make headsets? Would you guys ever make headsets? Would you ever make headsets? And thanks to you, we finally did it, man. Yeah, it's awesome.

It's been a sort of a long project in the works. We wanted to take our time, obviously, dial everything in exactly the right way for gamers. And the whole audio system here is essentially a love letter to our fans. That's actually a really good way of putting it. Because I think like there's a lot of cool, neat little features in there that's like, this is for playing video games as opposed to, you know, like, I know, producing a podcast or something like that. But you could still use a fast stuff if you wanted to, right? Yeah, actually, you know, the thing I like the most about the headsets is it's, you know,

you can tell from space when you take a look at them that they're obviously made for gamers. I mean, there's no doubt about it. They have a big microphone boom, and obviously it's for gaming. But if you take the microphone boom out, these work as just regular old consumer headsets, and they're incredibly durable. And I actually go running with mine when I'm not gaming or testing them out here. Pat, the type of dude that works out where beats by a dray? Oh, yeah, of course.

You have to have the full enclosed experience to get the full calories to shut off, bro. I thought it was funny when I used to work out. I would see guys like you know with these giant like beats by your headphones but I guess it makes sense like if you want to you know tune the world out yeah that's the best way to do it but you know what you know what it is for me is I can't you know they just in years just kind of fall out of my fall out of my head and it's hard to you know hard to get in the zone when you're constantly you know yeah exactly exactly so Patrick before we get into the stuff that we obviously want to talk about let's talk about How'd you end up in 16? So like how'd you start like just working in audio and just your career in general? The whole thing.

So I may, I went to Ohio University and I was into the music production, audio production. I minored in music. And right after graduation, I got a- Correction, you went to the Ohio State. No, no, so there's the Ohio State and then there's Ohio University, Ohio University.

Oh, you're to Ohio University. Yeah, the cooler of the two schools. So whereas Ohio State is, you know, you know, probably in the top 10, academics right yeah oh you was uh number one in the playboy party schools uh the senior year i was there that's fun let's go yeah good degree that was great i had the best time there but um did that and got into uh worked for a company called sweetwater sound in uh in fort way in in indiana and uh my my now wife was in uh los angeles she was actually rob zombie's personal

assistant what yeah yeah yeah yeah then she uh can we talk about that now for like two hours because that sounds more interesting that he's the nicest guy ever actually She seems like a really cool dude. Super cool. He got her Christmas gifts every year and it was like super kind. Was it like a creepy Christmas gift or was like a regular person? So it was like a skull, right? That was also you just drink wine out of this.

The weirdest thing. No, it was like little books and things like that. It was super cool. But we did a long distance thing for like a year. And so finally one day she's like, hey, so when are you going to move to L.A.? And I said, so when are you going to move to Fort Wayne? And she said, never, which is fine because I always wanted to be in L.A. for forever and ever and ever so uh moved out here worked for a company called westlake pro

and designing studios for like warner brothers and 20s social fox and we did Sony we did blizzard so studios like that and then what goes into like making a studio because it's a lot of work right like it's not it's not it's not like here's a room it's like also the structure of the room is like a big thing right yeah so typically what they do is they they budget out they have like big roadmaps of what they want to do project wise and uh they they'll have budgets per project right right so you know hey we have so much money to spend and we want to do this this this and this and this and so it was up to me to go okay if you want to do this this this this you'll have to you good uh you know you'll have to oh is everything okay yeah

oh good good good gucci i see the ohio up there that's funny oh yeah uh so you know i'd put together a big sort of a quote for them you know how many computers they need what kind of micrids they want software and etc etc etc and then i go back to them and they go okay well that sounds good now and then it was up to me to sort of work with the manufacturer sort of get it all together and sort of send it out to the to the to the studios to blizzard or to um Warner Brothers and Sony we should hire this guy to do our podcast studio yeah exactly our budget is $1 what can you do with that I have a bottle cap here I can give to you uh not thank you we don't drink Costco water oh uh is it it is it appropriate to use an old sock in front of your

microphone in place of like a little foam little sock here if it works it's not stupid dude honestly if it if it works as a as a windscreen that's completely that's completely valid told you told all of you out there completely that the sock on my blue yeti is perfectly okay yeah it's totally that's no problem with it no it's a sock like I couldn't find the friend to I'm like well I don't want to throw away this perfectly good sock yeah let me stick it right on top of my microphone and just this works fine exactly but because I did that I got to know some of these manufacturers really well some of the internal people there and and among all the people I worked with I

actually got pretty close with blue mics nice and so the Yeti right the Yeti snowball the raspberry I'm like plug and blue now and I worked there as an associate product manager for two years and then that was great and then I got married and then the day before like two days before my wedding I got recruited by Fender guitars oh nice and I went to do that for about a year and some change It's in Fulerton? That's in, their office was in Hollywood. Okay.

Oh, really? That's interesting that they have a, I mean, it makes sense, but it's also like, very Hollywood thing for Fenderderder to have a... So they have a couple of... So they have one on Hollywood on sunset,

and then they have their main, their big, their big sort of corporate offices in Scottsdale, Arizona. And then they have another board they actually make the U.S. guitars as in Corona. Oh, okay.

And then a whole bunch more sort of elsewhere. But I was in the Hollywood office, product management, their accessory line. And then NZXT came, around and now I'm here at the coolest company the NXT. Here's a question. Fender or Gibson? Fender.

Okay. Why? The modular design. Okay. If I break a, if I break a neck or it was, let's say my head sock cracks on my last bar or an SG, you have to replace the whole, the whole guitar, pretty much. I mean, you probably get it repaired if you have like a good, good guy who can do that kind of thing, but it's kind of, it's kind of done. You do look cooler though with the SG than a, than a strat, depending on the music, but, you know.

I mean, can you imagine like ACDC with a strat? I mean, yeah, and here's the thing. It's a different tool for a different job, ultimately. I have, I have Gibson's. I have, but I just, you know, but what I was saying is if you break a neck on a, on a strat, you just replace the neck. Yeah. Or if something's wrong with the body, you just replace the body.

So that's kind of cool. Yeah, you're definitely super into guitar music, which we will get to. Yes. It's definitely a topic, yeah, because it's actually, Actually, me too, because like, well, we'll talk about a second. Okay. So you were at Fender. So how did you transition from Fender at NZT?

Like, did somebody walk up to you and go, hey, you want to work here? And you're like, yeah, sure. Did you apply? Did like, did you know somebody? Like, what was that? So we were working. So I was at Fender and it was kind of right before the tariffs hit. And I was on the sort of accessory team.

So Fender, there was on the accessory team. It was a guy who was working on accessories that go on guitars. Oh, okay. So this would be like pickups and knobs and machine heads and sort of this sort of thing. Like jack plates, things like that. Those were all US-made. So those weren't subject to tariffs. My side of the thing, sort of the business was everything was coming from overseas.

So our good buddies, China had a direct impact on the products we were making, which instantly made our cost go up. So if you look at, you know, basically Fender from a top-down perspective in terms of their money, it's like obviously their biggest contribution to their gross market. which is guitars and then like basses and then somewhere below you know ukulele's was you know kick bags and straps and things like that right so they they downsized me and they said hey do you know hard feelings and uh right you go so yeah and then and then i and then it was like okay cool and i was always was interested in working at nzdxd so i was like three days later i was working here so it was like completely fine and it was all good but yeah that's easy it's easy yeah simple enough guys i'm just kidding that's all you're gonna do guys it's really

simple just to work at Fender for like you know 20 years and then just okay I want to work in xxc and they'll say okay um it's actually funny because a lot of people we talked to like how they ended up at nzcc they're always like I kind of wanted to work there because it seemed like a really cool place and they was like now I'm here so you know I think that also that says a lot to the people who are here like they're they're passionate and like they want to be here right and it's like oh yeah you know I just ended up and I'm here for a little bit's like no like I legitimately want to be here because I like it yeah I love it here it's great I'm the only person that doesn't want to be here well you know

Okay, so day to day, you drive in in that fancy car that you have, right, that makes zero noise because I've driven it a million times. What do you do? First thing you get in. First thing I get in is a pound about 17 cups of coffee. Okay. I get myself all amped up. Do you use the coffee maker or the little pod thingy that we have right now?

I use a little pod thingy because it's easy and I'm a lazy boy. Which is your favorite one? The, we just changed up the coffee's not. It's the Columbia, Columbia light blend. Okay. Because I think, like, everyone we talked to you about it, they like the donut shop one, I think, right? That's the one that they're into. Donut shops are you.

You're one of the first persons in the office. It's usually me, Patrick, Anna, Vivian, and, like, Leo in the county. We usually, like, the first five people here every day. Yeah, you know what it is. So it's a crazy morning routine for my wife and I. We have to get up really early and, like, be out the door by 730. And we're in Hollywood. And the location of this office is in industry.

kind of near West Covina if anyone knows the area obviously. So from Hollywood, it's about, if I leave at 7.30, I'll get here like 8.15. If I'm good, sometimes 845, which is awesome. But yeah, so first thing I do is get in, I pound some coffee and then get kind of answer whatever wacky emails came in overnight and immediately start doing what I have to do to make sure everything's hunky and dory. I usually play round it to a counterstrike. Really?

Yeah. What's your rank? Do you play ranked? No. No? No, I'm so bad. I suck. Okay. To be honest with you, I suck. I do see you tweaking with a lot of knobs and stuff at your desk a lot. Non-stop, yeah.

And those giant speakers that you have on your, I think you're the only person who has like speakers at their desk. Yeah, I do. And a giant microphone is hanging off of it. It's like, this guy's like, what he's doing over there? You don't want to know. Actually, for the long time, I didn't know what you did. I just thought you just liked microphones and stuff. It was like, man, this guy just really wants to sound great when he's doing phone calls through Slack and Discord.

I remember one time you asked me like, hey, I have a question about, Audio, who did I talk to? And I said, Patrick, he's the audio guy. Probably that weirdo. And he said, oh, that's why he's always messing with those things. Yeah, that's why, dude. It's like the only guy in the office with like a million gadgets on his desk. Other guy, just real quick, this is relevant.

He wants to know what speakers do you have on your desk? So those are audio engine A5s. How much are those speakers? I think they're $1.99. They're not that expensive. Yeah, they're great. They sound fantastic. I love them.

I think they're the same ones in the, in the audio line trailer. The video, yeah, I think so. So there's the, they come on white and black, I have the black ones. I think Jen has the white ones. I got a piker of,

Clipsch speakers for my computer, actually. They're really, really nice. They're great. I think they're like $300. And they got them for $40. I was working at Best Buy as like,

as like a HP wrap. I'm like, hey, what's up the speakers? Oh yeah, we're going to go and clearance them out. Oh, cool. How much are they? He's like, how much you want to pay? 40 bucks?

He's like, all right. And they're super loud. I've had them forever. Nice. First time I heard those audio engines I was like, I'm buying those. Really, really good for the best. They're awesome.

They punch above their weight class, you know. And they, um. Yeah, they're tiny. Yeah. And they're freaking loud. Yeah. But I have them all positioned all nice and needed my desk kind of on this, that's like this little like lip or something right.

Yeah. They're kind of pointed right at my ears and we'll take a picture of your of your desk after the podcast posted in here. So you look to check it out. Nerting out hard. For sure. So day to day you're doing all that stuff. So exactly like what are what are you doing?

like day to day like what are you testing what are you know what are you actually doing with those knobs it's so the role of a product manager is is kind of it's a you know it's kind of a tricky one it's it's it's kind of the intersection between uh you know the the engineering side the marketing side the operation side and the sales side i'm kind of like the exact middle sort of sort of crossover there so depending on who needs what and what needs to happen i'm kind of like on it and making sure everything's just kind of flowing nice and nice and neat so it's it's hard to say what I do on the day to day, constantly diving into the product, constantly making sure everything's right, constantly making sure it's all coming together if I have to send things out that need to

go to whoever in China or some guys, some of our sales reps in maybe Europe or Japan or wherever, making sure that's all finding good, answering their questions that they have that come in overnight, constantly exploring competitive products. Really anything you can imagine has anything to do with the product. I'm sort of messing and messing around and tinkering with. It's interesting. It sort of changes depending on where we are in the development cycle too. So early on, if we're trying to define a product, it's kind of more my time spent on

product definition and, you know, hey, what do we need this to be? What does it need to do? Who is it for? Who's it for? Okay. As opposed to maybe we're a little bit further along a little bit later in the game. And, you know, perhaps we're in, you know, we're about to kick off into production of something.

Is everything right? Is it all told up? Do I have to go to the manufacturer? to make sure everything's good. Did you go to the manufacturer? Not yet. Not yet. Do you want to go?

Yeah, I would love to go. I would love to. It's how it's made, right? Exactly. Feel touch and do the whole thing. Yeah, we'll love to. Okay, so before I actually get into the audio line, I have one question for you, give me one sweaty audio fact.

Sweaty audio fact? What's a sweaty audio effect? Sweaty is like, okay, example, like, people in CS, right, who, like, are always peeking like the most optimal corners, right? It's like a sweaty person who just, like, has to do the most, right? So what's like the most like the most like a super nerdy audio fact that you know that like audio people do? The so I spend a lot. So we were talking about the speakers on my desk being exactly.

So what I do is I spend a lot of time. I did this at home too. Like making sure my speakers are exactly the right equidistant length of part. I'm totally going to start. There we go. There we go. Every day I'm going to move those things. You should.

Oh, I'll kill you if you do that. I finally got it dialed into it by like one degree like ha ha ha. You know what sucks. So we do the big town halls here. And it was Alex who hijacked my speakers. And he like flipped them around and did them. And I'm like, what happened to my speakers? It was crazy.

But making sure that's all dialed in and perfect and constantly playing with the settings that just get a little bit better stereo. I mentioned a little bit better overall sound experience. Dom, I know you're listening. Can you take a picture of Patrick's desk before and after you moved the speakers? It's a big. You tell the difference.

And posted in the podcast chat. Oh my gosh. Pat said her he's like looking around like he's he's sweating right now. Oh yeah, yeah. And I never really said this, but you know, I mean, congratulations. I mean, it's awesome, right? We officially launched the other line. People know that it's a thing, right?

Like, you know it doesn't sound like we're excited, but like we're like we're all super tired. Like me and I haven't sleep with the daily announcement because we have to like look at tweets and everything. And I know Patrick probably has. Actually, you know, it's funny because I asked Patrick yesterday. I'm like, hey, Patrick, you know, like, how did you sleep? I said pretty good. Like, okay. I guess you weren't that worried.

Whiskey will do that, you know. I've been here five years and I've never slept the night before a product launch. Even for like a case, like you can only imagine what I was thinking the night before audio. And it's because like I really do not that I worry about what the community says, but I'm like excited to know what they're going to say, you know. And yeah, like when we launch audio, yeah, the feedback so far, most of it has been very, very positive people saying that, you know, looks cool. They're excited that NZXT is making headsets and other audio products.

But the night before, didn't sleep. I couldn't sleep by there. The other thing about launch days is we have to wake up early to, you know, make all the posts and things like that. Yeah, I mean, you know, for me, there was so many already sleepless nights that I had kind of worrying about this. And finally, I just come to, my wife actually told me, she goes, you just got to trust that everyone just does their job. Yeah, that's it. You just got to trust that the team does their job and that everyone executes faithfully. And I honestly, I have to say, I have no concerns at all with that.

I mean, we have the exact right guys here doing the exact right things. Nice. And it's going to be awesome. Yeah, I'm excited for the audio stuff, man. Seeing the progress it's made up until launch has been very interesting. And I look forward to, you know, even more audio stuff coming out down the line. Oh, yeah. All right.

So now we get to ask, what is the NZXT audio line? What is it? What is it? What is it? What is it? It's, it's a, it's a. It's a whole family of products. It's not just, you know, obviously everyone's talking about the headsets.

It's kind of the bigger thing everyone's talking about. It's a whole ecosystem of products that on their own work incredibly well. But when combined together, kind of sort of one cohesive sort of audio ecosystem. So what do I mean by ecosystem? It's really four products. It's two versions of the headset, an open back and a closedback version. It's a mixer and a stand. and the stand is kind of the glue to the whole thing.

Right. The stand has a 2.5 millimeter cable on the back of it. I'll be got really close to have like some ASMR. This is serious stuff. Right. That plugs into the back of the mixer, right? On the top of the stand is a mechanical switch that is weight sensitive. Right.

It's not like a magnet. It's not like a laser. It's nothing. It's not, it's caveman technology. It's just a little weight trigger. Push and push down, right? Push and push out. When you have a headset on the stand,

it sends a signal down this cable to the mixer. The mixer goes, oh, you're obviously not using your headset anymore. You probably wanna use your speakers. So it'll automatically switch your output from your headset to your speakers. Got it. Because ordinarily, say you're playing Fortnite, right?

Fortnite. Sure. I would never play Fortnite. Totally, yeah. So we're all playing Fortnite. Yes. Play along. Listening to old school phase.

Exactly. Drinking our G fuel. And these games last 35, 40 minutes. And if you want to do something as simple as switch your audio output, you have to wait until pretty much the game is done. Right. It could be 40 minute long endeavor to do that. All tab into your sound preferences.

Switch your outputs. Apply, okay. All tab back in and into a lobby. And eventually one day you're playing again, right? It's ridiculous. It's like a 40 minute long endeavor. But with the stand in the mixer. If you're good at the game.

If you suck, you're good. You know, two minutes and two minutes. But we're all good, right? Yeah, we're all amazing on Fortnite here. Crack in 90s hardcore. But the stand in the mix. mixer or the stand sort of the glue to the whole thing and it automatically enables this this automatic sort of switching now you go the other way say you're you don't want to listen to your speakers anymore

all you have to do is lift your headset off the stand put them on and boom right back to that just like that super simple it's just kind of works it's actually funny because like it seems like it seems like such a simple thing right and I have another headset that's why I listen does the same kind of thing right it has a dongle and I plug my speakers into it and when it turn the headset off it switches to my speakers but the thing is I have to take it off and press and hold that button for like five six seconds as opposed to I literally just put it on the stand and it's and now it has a home and then my speakers and you know what you're doing when you're pressing and holding a button what not playing a game how about that all I want to do is play games that's all we want to do

I don't press no buttons no I want to press buttons when I'm playing video games but not by itself there you go my favorite part of the headset is that little divit it has for the stand What if I have a weird shaped head though? In seconds, you know how you get that headset head where you get that thing in the middle? I think that's going to kind of prevent that. Yeah, so like I was, I forget where I was there like on Facebook or something. Someone's complaining is like, that dip in the headset's going to make it so uncomfortable. I'm like, what sized head shaped head do you have?

That dip's going to bug you like zero sense. That's a good question. You ask that, you know, what if you have a weird size head? Yeah. We spend a lot of time on these on these headsets. dialing in the exact right fit and comfort level for the for the product a lot of people here at nzxte have weird shaped heads weird shaped domes right i mean uh you know my you know my you know there's guys here that have like motorcycle football heads right i kind of have like a he's not lying like some

people here have some funky looking heads pumpkin heads i got i have like i have this like you know vertical hey arnold thing going on myself it's kind of ridiculous uh so um we tried them on everybody And we were able to get to a level where we fit at least 90, I think 91, 92% of most people, which the general population at large is like everybody. Yeah, I'm one of those weird-shaped head guys. I have a really hard time finding headsets that are comfortable. So far, the only headsets I've ever been able to find that fit my weird-shaped head and I can wear for like at least an hour are the HyperX Cloud 2s.

But these, and I'm just saying this because we made them obviously, but these are definitely more comfortable to me than the ones I have. You're not just being a homie right now. No, I swear. And I really do think it's because of that digit. I think that's the part that really annoys my weird shaped head is it hurts like right here all the time. So I have to like push my headset like up all the time. And with these I don't have to do that.

Constantly adjusting. Yeah, that's a common thing. We spent a lot of time dialing in the like I said, the overall comfort level of the headsets. And you know, it's not just the comfort level. It's the overall headsets themselves. They're 40 millimeter drivers. they sound absolutely amazing. They're high-rest certified.

So what does high-rest certification mean? There's called the Japanese Audio Society that does the high-rest certification. And in order to be high-rest certified, you have to send in your product along with EQ curves. They have a guy in Japan that calls you on a Skype call. No way. He's like, why are you doing this?

What's going on? He's like, why are you such a weeb? Why are you such a weeb? Digging into everything, asking every question you can possibly think of. And then after months of evaluation and testing and sending in, you know, dental records and blood samples, I guess.

You finally get high-res certified. And it basically... So it's an easy process then. It's a lengthy process. And what that essentially means among just having a very good audio quality standard and a good overall EQ sonic signatures, you also have low distortion. Right. So most games...

Which means... Well, so most gaming headsets in this sort of price range here have a THD total harmonic distortion rating of like, I think it's 0.05% or something, which is okay. Ours have less than 0.1. Right. Distortion. So what does that mean to us? Why is that important?

Right. So the longer you game on a headset with a distortion rating of 0.05, your ears are constantly getting pounded by distortion, which over the course of time, you get what they call ear fatigue. I thought that was because 13-year-old kids were yelling at me while I play Call of Duty. Yeah, so exactly. So they're yelling and screaming at you, and their voices being so shrugly. as 13-year-old voices are. Over the time, over course of a long period of time,

your brain starts to perceive all these sort of distortion as ear fatigue, which, you know, I told you I come from the studio design world, Warner Brothers and all these guys, name dropping. Over the course of time, I know engineers that mix so long on speakers and studio monitors that even on pretty decent setups, they get ear fatigue. So they'll mix a track, a record, for, you know, a couple hours, go to lunch, come back, go to listen to the track, they just record it.

It sounds completely different. The guitars are gone. Everything's not as where it should be, you know, left, right, stereo-wise, and it's all kind of just not there anymore. And I'm not going to speak to like someone who does a lot of audio, like, audio files, like, there's so many little things that go into like how, just, just like how they hear things, you know? Like, I was making a joke with Ivan yesterday, it's like, I really hope that, like,

the sweaty audio fact is like, if your headset isn't like X temperature, it doesn't sound right, you know? I'm sure it's like a factor to you, right? I mean, like, with audio, like, it's, what's, like, temperature and, I don't know, humidity and all kinds of stuff is like a thing, right? Everything sort of comes into play, too, you know, the angle of the sun. I feel like audio, audio files, nothing against audio files, you know, I'm, I wouldn't consider myself an audiophile, but I do, you know, enjoy music. But I feel like just the audiophile community in general, it's impossible to please. Would you agree?

Unless. The audiophile community. It seems like there's just so many things to consider and everyone has like their own preference that I feel like. They're tweaky, you know, I mean, they have their own. It's the entire sum of their all of their components. Right. So they would have, you know, their own speakers through their own eamp, through their own DAC, through their own everything. They're just, they're very tweaky.

Right. And a cool thing about audio files is, or becoming an audio files, you can update and upgrade your system sort of one z-to-to-sy style at a time and kind of get eventually over the course of even many years to finally. Because to me it's kind of a work in progress. are all these years. No, it is. It's kind of a work in progress. And, you know, obviously some of the audio file stuff is not cheap, especially when you start getting up to, like, the real, real expensive stuff.

Yeah, right. So, but, you know, it's kind of a, it's a fun thing you can do over the course of time to sort of get into it. Is it possible or impossible to please audio files? That's maybe. Yeah, maybe. If you get lucky, right, you can do it. But, you know, I think our headsets are going to please everybody.

And like I said, they have such, such low distortion that you're going to be able to game longer more competitively. So why does stereo matter for our guys? Well, you know, if you're playing a game and all of a sudden after five or six hours, because your ears can't process that ear fatigue, maybe the guy who's shooting at you kind of front right is sort of sounding a little bit more to the right than he actually is in the game. Right, right.

So if you want to be competitive, you want to have less ear fatigue. I mean you can game longer more competitively. Listen to more old school face songs. Yes. Right. Okay. So that's just like the audio stuff. Let's talk about like the construction of it

Because one thing I actually absolutely love Is you can take that cable and put it on any side right Yeah so cool feature super cool so Why anybody else do that? I don't really because they're not us Because they're not us Oh got them So it's not I wouldn't think I would be saying anything

Controversial that not all setups or battle stations are the same right I've seen PCs on the left of desktop Seeing them on the right I've seen PLP setups I've seen things that go up the ceiling Could be on the floor Could be in a hole at the room Most of the time most headsets have the microphone on the left and sort of the cable the audio cable on the right So maybe you're a lefty or maybe you just don't like that maybe you went on the other side

I am a lefty actually same here it sucks all right I'm a head out You can do it if I'm by way So suppose you wanted to have your microphone on the other side all you have to do is unplug the mic plug the mic plug into the other side the tip of the microphone rotates To accommodate the placement right place the audio cable on the other side and on the way you go. It's also good if you have a baby like we do. Because as you know, if I'm doing something and my daughter's next to me,

like she's going to want to like pull stuff. Yeah. So it's going to be nice to just say like, okay, I'm going to move this on this side and you can sit here and rip my fancy little headset. That's exactly right. And, you know, there's impossible to account for every possible setting or setup or your use case out there. So we give people the flexibility to really customize their,

their microphone placement right which is a nice so um microphone said with the microphone because i i so like the reason one of my questions is not just because we want to inform people but also because i literally i know nothing about audio like i'm such a you know like this sounds good you're running this podcast right exactly right you're starting from square one essentially i literally hired you because you told me you were good for audio i'm good for production production and audio two complete different things true see thank you he knows i know i know i can set up audio tuning it You know, I learned on a new social media specialist if anyone was interesting. The thing is that I spent too much time listening to old school to face songs.

So my ears are just destroyed right now. There's too much utter distortion. I'm never, this is too funny to me. Okay, so Mike, what's up with the mic? The mic. What do I want it? Why do you want it? What do you want it?

What do you mean? What do you want it? Of course you want it. Okay, cool. Great. All right, guys. Thanks, podcast over. Go buy it.

It sounds awesome. It's super unbelievably cleared. Discord certified. It's awesome. What does that mean? Discord. You have to send in the product that gets evaluated by the good people at Discord. It also means you cannot get banned from our Discord server.

Correct. That's true. If you have a headset, you automatically get one free get out of ban card. I know. That should be the way you get a ban from our server is you buy the Discord certified headset and then we unband you. Yeah, but it's kind of like the Japanese Audio Society sort of certification. They sort of go through their testing process.

How many? So I know there's two versions of the headsets. there's the closed and open back versions. Can you explain what the difference is between those? Yeah, so it's really, it comes down to two things. Why would I want to have a closed back versus an open back? The first thing to note, they're both priced the same. So the first question people ask me is, oh, which one's better?

Which is cool that they're priced the same, right? Oh, yeah, it's super, it takes out the what is better sort of conversation, and it kind of moves that towards which one do I need. Right. And that kind of falls in this sort of two sort of buckets to me. one, what are you, what's your use case? And two, which one do you just kind of like better? They're kind of two different flavors.

Right. You know, technically speaking, most audio files prefer open back headsets because there's no replacement for displacement, my friends. I know the words. Hold on. Let me tweet that real quickly. Yeah. That's actually really good.

Yeah. We're writing that down. We literally are. The driver, because there's air, because it's open back, can move more freely, right? And if it can move more freely, it can sort of replicate the sound a little more accurately. But that is sort of aside the point. The fact of the matter is it's sort of a use case thing, right? So suppose I'm a single guy.

Maybe I don't have any kids. Maybe I'm in an office. Imagine being single and by yourself. I know. No one to come home to at night. And I don't need to hear like my screaming wife or kid or whatever, right? I just, I'm kind of, I need to be closed out to the world. Or maybe I'm a competitive gamer and I kind of want to have some sort of privacy.

in isolation and what people sort of hear and what's leaking out. Closeback might be more for you. If I'm married, if I have a wife and kid and they're yelling for me and I need a little bit more environmental awareness, let's say. Or maybe I'll have a home office where, you know, it doesn't really matter if I have an isolated sound,

then open back might be the way to go. Ultimately, what I recommend everyone to do is to listen to both of them and see which one you like. Again, people ask me, which one's better, this one and I say, just try, they're kind of, you know, what's better, chocolate or strawberry. Right. That's easy.

It's chocolate. Yeah, exactly. But just try both of whichever one you like better. There you go. Yeah, I've only personally owned. It's actually a good question. Where can you try? Soon in your local retailer.

Oh, really? At some point in time, we'll have to check back in with that pretty soon. Is there like an audio file like home or like or like Grove I can go to and like, I don't know, is like a line of stores just in general they have like different kind of audio setups I can like test out for myself? Or if it's like? If you want to listen to different kinds of audio setups, I would just go to like your local boutique. Right. Audio sort of still. They'll have a kind of an A-B sort of a.

So like a music store or something like that. Something like that. It's hard to test microphones on showroom floors because, you know, like in, you know, because it'll be like a headphone section. Right. That's next to like the speaker section. Okay. And also they'll have music playing. Yeah.

Yeah. Some guy on the guitar playing Stere Way to Heaven next to you. Just butchering stairway to heaven. I've only you purchased. for myself, closed bag headsets, but this is probably the first open back headset I get. Not because I'm interested in the way it sounds or because I'm married and I have children,

but I just like the way it looks. It looks super cool. And that's completely valid, too. I mean, a lot of people like the sort of open backs with the holes on the side there. It's just part of the look, and that's completely valid too. Yeah, it fits the NXT design aesthetic, you know, the holes we have everywhere now, yeah.

It is beautiful, and they look as, they sound as good as they look. I mean, they really do. These things are incredible. I really, really think so. And they're available in black, white, and we have purple, but that's only enclosed, right? Correct. Cool.

And so you said they cost the same, how much do they cost? So the U.S. pricing for the headsets will be $1.29. And worldwide pricing will be $1.19. Why is it more expensive? Tariffs, L. tariffo. We just got to make sure that people know because people are going to complain. They complain all the time about the pricing. It's not our fault.

We can't do anything about it. But ironically, it's usually more expensive outside of the U.S. And this time now it's more expensive in the U.S. No, the rest of the world knows what it's like to be superior. Yeah, and quite frankly, I mean, I mean, I really, really mean this. I think these sound much, they sound like they should be much more expensive. Right. They sound great. Don't tell Johnny that or else he'll make us charge more for them. I think they're priced exactly the way they should be. They sound incredible. No, I think it's a great price too, actually. I was expecting them to be a

a lot more to be honest. I was thinking they're going to be at least 150. But the fact that they're under 150, actually closer to 1, 25, you know, kudos. That's really cool. We got that cheap. That's really good, yeah. Okay, so the mixer.

Hold on before we get one. Okay. When are they available for pre-order? For pre-order, probably early to mid-December. Probably. Probably. Yeah. We're still working out of the end.

Yeah, we're still working out the... That's really close, yeah. We're kind of figuring out the exact when that sort of will be available to the pre-order. Probably, probably mid-December, early in mid-December. Cool.

Okay, cool. Okay, so the mixer. Hmm. There's a DAC in there, right? What is it that? Yeah, exactly. I mean, like, I have no idea, like, what the heck is the DAC?

So we were talking... What I want this mixer? We were talking earlier, you used to say sweaty audio effects, right? A lot of people don't realize that they aren't computers. Okay. A lot of people don't realize

that... They, you human beings can't hear ones and zeros. Oh. You can hear sound waves. Oh. But you can't hear ones and zeros. So most computers have built in digital to analog converters to AC deck to convert to convert those ones and zeros in the sound waves.

Right. Now, a lot of what's built into your phones or what's built into your, to your, you know, your motherboard. Those are like okay decks, but they're not like awesome decks. They don't translate those ones and zeros to sound waves as best as they could. Why? They just cheaper parts or cheaper parts, cheaper components. I mean they work and they sound okay, but they don't sound as good as the deck that we have

in our mixer. Okay. So we have a Wolfson deck in our mixer. It's 24 bit 96K. Sounds freaking incredible. Okay. Sounds really, really good. It's gonna make your headset sound better than just plugging it into your, you know,

what if I wanted to use my X manufacturer in that mixer? Can I do that? Well, then you can just get out here. I'm just kidding. You can because on the mixer it's a 3.5 millimeter output. So you can use if you can use. you have hyperx you can use that if you have any any you know headset you want if you have if you like your apple earbuds and they're 3.5 mil what if i'm a big fan of like my synhesi's on my desk

well yeah you can do whatever you want i know so what they're called there's pat's desk oh there it is that's a lot of stuff on there uh look at that we're not allowed to show uh all of it i'm just kidding yeah look at that look at a call yeah i mean that's it's a lot so you know everyone's going to see this and think i'm a big slob thank you i mean i'm pretty sure you are anyway um Yeah, but I mean like That's that's kind of how we know that they're that good Because we test them with like against everything right And like you know we we tune them to the to the point where we think that they're

That they do something different than other they're gonna be good because he he designed them on a Mac Exactly totally enough I'm gonna be a Mac manufacturer soon enough Okay, so the thing I like the most about the mixer is something I actually like about my current headset right now is that you can mix the game audio and the voice Yeah because for me So this is my use case, right? I stream, right?

Blue or not? I stream. And I have my audio on my OBS mixer tuned so that, you know, my game audio is this. My Discord audio is that. And then my voice is up here because, you know, obviously I'm the star of the show, right? Right. But sometimes I have one or two people who are a little loud. It still sounds fun to the stream.

But for me, it's annoying. I can just turn my dial down on my headset. And now the game's a little bit louder. Or that friend who's yelling in the mic is a little bit louder. or whatever. And we just have that built into the mixer. So now like it doesn't matter what headset I have, ideally you would have everything.

But if I want to, you know, if I'm a big fan of somebody else, sometimes I can plug that sucker into that mixer, then it just works fine, right? Like no problem. Yes. Yeah, exactly. The cool thing about ours is, you know,

if you can, you know, there's a voice game fader. Yeah. On the right, right next to the volume dial. And obviously, you know, obviously you can sort of route your audio outputs to, to, you know, the game. So, you know, Counterstrike

and then voice to, your to Discord and you know if you're playing and someone's you need to hear your teammates a little bit more obviously you just bump that fader up to the voice side right hear them a little bit more and a little bit less of the game right or if someone's speaking ill of your mother which they often do you can just you don't want to hear him you can back him down to go into game exactly so now is that um is that only for things like discord or like or like can I can I put the microphone because like I haven't played kind of stricken forever but does kind of strike have separate audio options for

voice and for the game think so you can I think you can route it however you want so I would just route it the way it was intended and awesome sounds cool you would be avoid any of those I have its memes on the on the discord right there oh nice I'm gonna post a picture of the stand the headset with the stand and the mixer there just I shouldn't have just told you I should have just done it right yeah but I mean this is actually a great reminder for people who are listening not live on Discord. We do record this live every Thursday at 10 a.m. Pacific time. So if you want to hear live and ask questions live, we record this under Discordncc.com.com. I always do that.

Discord.com slash NZXT and then you can just find us. I wrote discord.g. I literally wrote everything down for you. It's on the other side of the papers. Isn't it on here? You did not write down Discord.org.G.org.org. NXXT on this piece of paper. We need to work on this thing. We're getting better at like having things written down. that like we have to say perfect labor single time unless. You'll get there one day, buddy. Yeah, one day, one of these days.

You know, it's only been like 16 episodes or whatever. So biggie. How much is the mixer? $99. And that's US and one. Why? That's so expensive for a mixer. Why isn't it cheaper, Patrick?

It's everything you need. Okay. No, it's great. It's going to make your system sound better because it has that super high quality deck in it. Right. It's a volume control. It's a voice game balance.

And if you don't have the stand, a lot of guys asking, Do I need the stand to do the switching feature to switch from the headphone to the speaker mode? Automatically, yeah, you would need that stand to sort of enable that, but you can manually switch the outputs on the mixer as well. Oh, really?

So you just press and hold the volume ring and it'll switch outputs. Oh. We have white LEDs for the headset and purple IDs for the speaker. Press wants to mute and it's that easy. Okay. It's actually really cool.

I did not know that. I legitimately did not know that because our sales suit doesn't have it on there. and I'm talking to Jip about that right now. Should have it on there. Yeah, but it's also a reason why I wanted to have you on here because you actually, you and I haven't had a real chance to actually sit down and talk.

Yeah. Like, actually go, okay, what does this do? What does this do? What do I want it? Well, blah, but that's really cool. The important thing to remember is that the whole glue to the ecosystem, what makes it go is the stand. Right, right?

Because a lot of people ask them, well, we choose to stand. No, it's not just the stand. It's the whole glue to the whole automatic switch. But not just that, though, like the stand has per, and you guys can't really tell it, But on the bottom of the mixer, these little feet, right, are designed to fit in the holes on the stand. Exactly.

So it stays nice and secure. So you literally, like, going to pop it in the same way that we have our SSD mounting. Look at that beautiful. Yeah. So, like, if you guys know the H700-8-710, it has those little, like, dots right above the PSU shroud, you can put your SSD caddy. It's the exact same kind of thing, right?

It just sits right in those holes. So it doesn't slide around or fall off or anything like that, which is stupid. Like it's so awesome they like it fits in like that Wow sick headsets that look at all those guys are really messing up and up being on on on a Discorm turning that right now oh my god Amazon's choice who Amazon choice no I mean That's exactly right and the thing the fact of the matter is the mixer is a product you're gonna be interacting with The most right probably the most I mean touching that volume ring over and over and out yeah

So you're gonna be interacting with both you don't you don't want that thing to sort of slide off your desk when you're sort of in and you know when you're in play You want to be able to just you don't even want to have to think about it be just muscle memory. You put your hand over, you turn a knob, you flip it up and down. So having the feet that fit on the stand is key for that. Okay. I think, I mean, do you have any questions about the mixer? Availability.

Also, same time. The idea is to ship this all and one shipping. Cool. And the price is the same global? For the mixer, yes. So 99. 99. It's awesome.

All right. So now let's get into the stand specifically. It looks sick. Yeah. A lot of people were saying, like, I just want the stand because it looks cool. Yeah, you know what it is? And it's sturdy too, right? Super sturdy.

That guy's... Steel construction, super durable. Super, it comes in two pieces that are super easy to slow. I just slap sort of snap the sort of down tubes into the bottom tubes of the base. Super easy to install. Durable, really sort of a rigid sort of design. A lot of people, you know what I think? A lot of people sort of don't give too much thoughts to headset stands.

I kind of just put some plastic thing together and then they, or they have a puck or they have or they have a puck uh but it's not really anything that people give most uh most thought to be honest but we really wanted this to be we really wanted this to look at home with our with our PC cases you know and this aesthetically speaking it looks um it looks uh it looks uh right at home and again it's a whole glue to the whole system right because the mechanical switch on top is just weight rated you can use any headset with it which as long as you have a headset since like i don't know 1979 you should be you should be fine I'm going to get a stand just to put my puck on it.

You can do that. I think with that too. There's a way they can like stick that puck on there so I can make it just, I don't know, it's like really wonky. Right. I would have any other questions about the stand? Yeah. So you mentioned that, you know, it switches automatically when you put the headset on there, you take it off. Will that work without an NZXT headset?

Yes. Because like I said, it's weight rated. So there's no, it's not like you have to have this, you know, the NZXT magnetic. adapter or anything like that it's just weight right so you can have uh you know you could use any competitive headset if you want i prefer you not do that but uh you can't because it's just weight rated it's it's it's just it's caveman technology it's weight or not um the coolest thing for me about the stand uh and kind of going on what you said earlier how you said the stand is kind of like what holds everything together and the coolest part literally and figuratively the coolest part for me is

you know like when you look here like at our podcast there's like tons of cables everywhere right and you your desk or my desk there's tons of cables everywhere because you got to plug in everything separately with the stand you can use a stand with our headset and our mixer and it's just one cable right correct and you don't have to like worry about plugging in all these different things literally just one cable that just plugs in and that's it and there's no messy you know cables all over your desk all over your setup yeah it's kind of a built-in cable it's kind of like a cable management system if you if you think about it because most people would park I would suspect most people would park their mixer and their stand kind of off to the front right

because most people are right-handed, obviously. Boo. I know. Left again. It's kind of all in sort of one spot because there's a 3.5 millimeter headphone port on the front. That's where you're obviously plugging your headphones. On the back is where you park the 2.5

and then the speakers on and then the USB connection. So it's all kind of off the side and neat and clean. Cables are fun. Cables are very fun. How much is the stand? Stand will be 49, 99 U.S. and 3999 worldwide. And when is that one available?

Same time. Comes on white and black. So it's going to be a very good Christmas. White and black? Yes. White and black. Both headset flavors, so open and close back,

also come in white and black. Did we think about having a white version of the mixer? Good question. You know, we're always, we're always investigating that. The cool thing about the mixer is because it's, you know, obviously black's kind of universal color, sort of goes with it.

So it makes things just easier from a, some management perspective to have one's black skew it but if people requested white i mean obviously we'll we'll listen all right cool i think it's pretty much like all the all the as ivenez of the question so the like i mentioned earlier the feedback has been oh really good mostly mostly yeah the bahn has been really good the only real concern i've seen from people are the people that have concerns about cam you know which we've been working on very hard for the last year. If you're using the latest version of Cam, in my opinion, it's, and the opinion of others, too, it's the best version we've ever had. Oh, yeah. Oh, for sure.

But with that being said, it's still not perfect. But I just want to reassure people, you know, who have any concerns over that. Like, we're really working hard to make sure that our software is, you know, not perfect. Not perfect. There's no such thing as perfect software, but, you know, like, there's no issues whatsoever with this. But the number one question we get about Cam and the headset is do you need cam to use these headsets no okay you don't need cam to use a headset that said if you want to access some cool features like mic suppression and 7.1 and EQ presets things like that then you would have to download cam which we could do a video because you gave us a demo last week on the EQ yeah man

there's a it's awesome difference yeah and is that because of the DAC that is so that is it's kind of so audio is obviously like the sum of the the whole thing right the EQ is feeding that DAC essentially and just making everything sound bigger and better. So like you have something like a DAC because when you do fine-tuned stuff

when your EQ, it actually, you can actually tell the difference because like for me, it was like Night Day. I forget what song it was. It was like, Otel Road. Yeah, it was like, O'Tai Road or something. I was basically like, play O'Tire Road.

I want to hear all this thing. And like it was actually nuts the difference from when you went to like just the regular flat EQ to like this is how someone who knows stuff hasn't tuned up you know I said it before I'll say it again hearing is believing oh yeah and once once once once once guys hear the cam software features I think are you're people are gonna be really really freaking blown away look I really really really mean that do you explain the 7.11 because like my understanding has always been like when I was like a lot younger and it's like

these companies try to sell me a 7.1 headset that there was like seven speakers no it's it's it's it's a stereo headset and then it's like a digital 7.1 so does it like So how does that? That doesn't work because I have no idea how you turn two speakers like on the side of your head to like a 7.1. It's just time delay trickery and things like that to trick your brain into 7.1s around. And it works pretty effectively.

Black magic, you said? Black magic. NXXT magic. Yeah. It's going to work's great. I mean, it's awesome. All right. So I think that covered everything about audio line.

We will get to everyone's questions in a bit. So if you have any questions about audio for Pat, Please just drop him in the podcast chat and we'll pin him and we'll answer him in a bit. But want to move on to a little bit different topic here. So a couple weeks ago when we had Andy on our podcast, I decided to bring in my guitar to play him a song because Andy considers himself a bass lapper on his Twitter bio and he hasn't played bass like ever in his life. He started a podcast and let's talk about Andy at least once.

Yeah. So I brought my guitar, played a song for him. And then when I was, you know, walking into the to the room there, you saw the guitar and you're like hey man can i can i play that and i said sure and i knew you you know i knew you played guitar because we've talked about it before but um i was so shocked to see you pick up the guitar turn it upside down yeah because you're left-handed and then you were just playing like a beautiful music man you're really really talented thank you you you're good thank you dude actually i think i have the clip here somewhere because i put it on yeah you put it on instagram the

i also put it on our story so i got to find it but yeah because my first question is you know how long even playing guitar. So I grew up. My dad is probably my first influence. My dad is Jimmy Hendrix. My dad, Jimmy Hendrix is crazy. Literally. He had me in 1962. I have it right here. Give a second. I pulled it up. He was the biggest influence of me because he was a gigantic Beatles fan and I wanted to just be as good as my dad. And so I started playing when I was 12. I got my very first ever as an epiphone special too. Oh, there's a clip. You can drop the link and Oh, you can't that. Or you played on the

I don't if I can link it. I don't know if I can. Okay. Come on, man. You're the social media specialist. You don't know you can link stories? Come on, there we go.

Yeah, drop it right now in the chat. You guys can check out. Yeah. Actually, I could probably play on the podcast through the, through the thing or something. I don't even remember what I did. You were just picking, man.

You were just, you know, picking strings. Oh, I think I was playing like something sort of like roundabout or something. Just sounded really, really cool. Something like that. Let me see if I can click it here real quick.

because it'll work if it don't break it. Uh-oh. Nope. No, that's, uh, yeah, that was me. Yeah, so this is Patrick. He's a really good, uh, musician. Listen to the tonality. Oh, so great.

I know. It's right here. Uh, beautiful. Pull this up. Go log in. Man, I love Instagram, dude. It's the best. So your dad, well, how long has your dad been playing guitar?

Since he was, uh, probably 14 or 15. And, uh, he, so I just wanted to be as good as him. And I was, I was 12 years old. And I decided to get an epiphone special, too, because that was like one of the only guitars that was available Lefty at the time and got it and took lessons for like maybe a year and I only really practiced maybe like 30 minutes

before my lesson. It was like every Wednesday like seven. And I didn't really take it seriously. And then I kind of just stopped taking lessons and then maybe a month after that I was like no, I'm actually going to try to play this. And I played, I decided I was going to learn every single Beatle song. So I started with the first album.

I started with please please me. And I learned all the first album. learned all the John parts on guitar. I'm like, okay, that was cool. So then I went to the, you know, with the Beatles, and then Hard Day's Night, and then Help, then Revolver, rubber, and through the whole thing.

I'm like, okay, that was fun. Now I've probably learned the George lines. So I started on the Please Please Me again. Again, learn all the George lines through, you know, all the way through, you know, Abbey Road. Then I'm like, well, okay, well, what's next? Well, probably learned the Paul bass lines.

So I started again on Please Please Me and learned all the Paul baselines. And I've been playing ever since. I love it. It's funny, a couple weeks ago, I also had a meeting with Dennis. And as I was walking into the meeting room, I bumped into Patrick.

And we just started talking about the Beatles. And we ended up talking about the Beatles for like an hour. I was like, oh, crap, I have a meeting with Dennis. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was really sitting on my phone. I guess I'm going to answer Instagram while he's like talking about. I walked into the meeting room and I said, sorry, man, I forgot. And then you're like, yeah, I know.

I know. Well, that's cool, man. You know, it's cool that you're good at music. Because I think having a passion for music probably helps you make, good headsets in my opinion. I just try to play and I just, I know the sound I want to hear in my head. And I, if, you know, if I'm lucky, that translates to sound that most people like, then we, damn, we probably have a cool thing, you know.

How many guitars do you own? In L.A., I have seven. In L.A.? Wow, he is like, okay. In Columbus where I'm from, I have three. And the reason why I have a couple of parks. in Columbus because whenever I go home like for Christmas I can jam with my dad my dad has it's actually really cool yeah so we have a whole bunch of your dad ever play like any gigs or like he

just no sometimes sort of but not not really he just collects okay he's got some monster guitars man what's his like his like price possession he's got a uh prototype 62 fender telecaster well that's actually I know what that is I actually really really cool yeah it's pretty cool he's pretty cool he's got Gretch she's got two rickenbackers he's got uh 57 strat he's got the whole he's got a lot of cool stuff i like those grutch guitars they're awesome they're awesome they're a lot more versatile than what people think too they just look cool to me they look like very like old school type of like country style rockability yeah yeah yeah yeah brian setser chad i can's i love grch guitars but again being a lefty

right you can't find the damn things anywhere so you have to either special order them from the factory which takes some time or it just so happened to stumble on a guitar center or sam Or you flip it around. Well, it's tough to flip a guitar around and play it upside down. Even if you go the strings the right way, you have to cut the where the strings sit on the on the net there towards the top. And even if you get past that, the controls are on the top. So every time you go to strum a chord, you may turn it up, right, turning it down.

So it's kind of kind of cool to me is like the greatest guitar player of all time, in my opinion, Jimmy Hendricks was lefty and he played with the strings tuned upside down, right? So that's a good, that's a good, that's a, that's a, that's a misunderstanding of that. So he actually, it was a right-handed guitar, but the strings were strung left-handed. And I read somewhere a long time ago that part of the, part of the sound that he got was that because the pickup, I don't know if this is true, and I just kind of read this, because of the pickups are tuned for each string, so the low E, in this case was on where the high E should be on the pickup.

And that's why his low tones, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his, his e-string sounds a little higher, just a pitch is because of that. It makes sense because, yeah. I still, to this day, I have never heard a human being

play guitar like that guy. Yeah, he was a monster. And that must have been amazing to just see him play in person. Can you imagine? Like, that noise like I was making is insane. Insane. Playing with his mouth and all that?

Behind his head, catching the thing on fire is wild. My favorite Jimmy Hendrick story is actually the day after Sergeant Pepper was released in 60s. or like two days later he opened up a set in London playing Sergeant Pepper

like two days after like the album came out not wild you already had it down oh yeah he just knew and his whole band was incredible they they knew it too he was so young man oh yeah he died me he was 27 yeah 27 27 club man another 27 club member

who left this earth too young Kirk Cobain lefty how did he string his guitars he actually played left-handed guitars so his body shape for his guitars was left-handed. So, yeah. Except on the unplugged album,

I remember the acoustic guitar was a right-handed guitar. That's right. By, it's a cool guitar. I don't know who makes it. It was an old Martin, I think. I think it was an old Martin,

I think. It could have been a Gibson, J-45 or something. But yeah, yeah, that was cool. I forgot about that, yeah. I remember when, like, Kirk Cobain's death was probably the first time someone died where it had, like a huge impact on people my age.

I was a, I think it was in junior high or high school. No, I was in high school. I was my freshman year of high school. And I just remember getting to class and then everyone just being really quiet. I was like, what the heck's going on? And people were crying and they're like, oh, Kirk Cobain killed himself yesterday. Wow. Because at that time, I guess people don't really realize like how big that band was.

Yeah. Because I don't think there's a band like that now. Yeah. Well, we talked about it a little bit. A couple weeks. A couple weeks. Generation, right? Yeah.

Like, you're speaking directly to like what, what, like, all these kids are going through. Seattle grunge scene. I mean, that really pulled us out, I think, of the 80s hair metal. Yeah. We were talking about this couple weeks ago. It was like, all up to then, it was like poison and rat. Yeah, you turn on the radio and it was like, I want to rock, rat. Like, it was just very, you know, it's cool music.

It's nothing against that type of music. But it's kind of empty, right? But then. It's kind of, I mean, in my opinion, it's like shallow, right? It's just, you know, very generic. Yeah. Cookie-coder kind of thing. And Nirvana comes out with like this music that like just no one's ever heard before.

Right. And then you look at them and you're like, damn, this guy is just wearing like a shirt with the holes in it. He looks like a junkie. Yeah. The bass player is like seven feet tall. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This drummer is just going nuts behind him. And nothing else sounded like it.

Nothing. There was no band like that. I love Nirvana. One of my earliest memories is my dad coming home with a, Nevermind. And he was on vinyl. He wore the record out. Yeah.

He had that. He had a, uh, bleach, I think he had an NWA album. And he was, he wore that out too. And that was,

it was big for me. It was good for me to hear that. I love, never mind. That, it's funny as my daughter, but the song she dances to the most. It smells like teen spirit.

Yeah. But I personally, oh yeah. I personally like in utero a lot more now as I'm older because now that I actually learned the history of that album, or both albums, it really, really shocks me because I found out that Nirvana and especially Kurt, they didn't like the sound of Nevermind.

They thought it was too polished because they wanted to make, like, the record label essentially wanted them to blow up like they did. And they did. And then for in utero, Kerr Cobain was like, we're going to do a totally different raw sound. They hired Steve Albini who's like, you know, this punk rock dude. And it was so different from Nevermind. And when I was a kid, I didn't think like that.

I was like, oh, this second album sucks. It's not as good as the first one. But now when I understand what Nirvana was actually trying to do, it makes a big difference to me. Yeah. And the album choice, I guess. Yeah, that's how I feel about, honestly, how I feel about the Beatles, too.

I mean, the older I get, the more I kind of go, like, wax and wane through the albums, that kind of matter more to me and stuff. And the older I get, I have more of appreciation for, like, Abby Road. Whereas when I was younger, I was all about. know a hard day's night yeah beatles are awesome man yeah yeah they're cool i think they're gonna i think they're gonna go places that man i really do but yeah you're right i mean the older i get to i mean

i i definitely kind of feel the same way about never mind yeah honestly it's uh you know nowadays it kind of sounds like they just wanted to make a freaking hit after hit after hit and they accomplished it you know it's great it still holds up yeah what can i say but yeah i feel the same way um so besides nirvana and beetles what music are you into uh so i i I try to make music on my own. I have a band now that we're trying to make just like anything that we can make make on the Spotify top 40. Yeah.

Like I don't care. Like honestly, if it's, where can people listen to your band? We don't have anything on like a SoundCloud or anything like that. Just yeah, but we're kind of working on it. We just cut a record last week on my buddy's place in Pasadena.

That's cool. Yeah. Can I be a ROTI? Yes. You can. Yikes. So that's good. I listen to anything on the,

on the Spotify top 40 and I think well how do I do better than that how do I make a song that sounds like as good as that now I'm a guitar guy so it's you know I have to sort through a lot of stuff I think post Malone's actually doing pretty good stuff okay I was actually I wanted to ask you about that I was waiting for this to come up I haven't I haven't hates post Malone why do you hate most malone I don't I don't hate him I don't I don't hate post I don't I don't like his music and I don't understand how anyone likes it either personally okay I hate it I just that I don't understand how anyone can like this. Okay, boomer. I love music. I listen to all types of music. To me, post Malone,

I don't think he's talented. Like, I heard Jimmy Fallon do a spot-on impression of that guy where you can not tell the difference. And you just, you know, he's singing through a machine. Yeah, but you know what? The reason why I say I think post-mone's doing good things because I, for a long time, and this is probably three or four years ago, I thought, okay, guitars are dying on the way out. But I see a lot of videos of post, like, buying like crazy, crazy love. Pauls and crazy strats. I'm thinking, wow, it might be making a comeback. And I'm here in guitar,

make a big comeback in records. And I think... And he plays, too. He actually plays, man. He plays pretty well. Yeah, he plays pretty well. We were at Fender two years ago. I was in the office and in walks post Malone.

We're getting like a custom strat or something. That's when back when he was pre-malone. Yeah, pre-malone back then. So you listen to everything, huh? Everything, man. Everything I can get my hands on and digest. And, you know, fortunately, we're in the era of unlimited content. So if you're into anything, it's out there.

It's kind of hard to find. stuff though right because like it's it's like it's hard to find it since that there's so much it's hard to like figure out like where you want to find things like there's this um there is this is this is back in Spotify had like apps you could plug into like your your player which is like they just got rid of that there was one I figure it was called but it was basically like the hunted or something and there was this group of people that just curated like different sounds and like and like was a more like a real up and coming like chart and

then they got bought up by Twitter music when they tried to do music and then it just disappeared because Twitter does a bunch of boomers trying to figure out how to do music and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. And then that now like the stuff like Spotify recommends is good, but it doesn't feel like it's like it's real discovery. Right. It's like stuff that's like just there, but not like oh like this is a band and never would have figured out. It kind of, because it's all algorithmic based stuff, it kind of takes what you already have been listening to and sort of Spinox, things are similar to that. Yeah, which like, you know what we need,

there needs to be like a, remember stumble upon? It needs to be like a stumble upon for like Spotify or something. That's a little bit better than just like a playlist, you know what I mean? Those don't know. It was, I think it was a browser extension you would download and you would click on it and it would just give you a random website and you can upload it or download it and just like keep, keep having stuff pop up.

Do it now? We should do it. Okay, cool. That'll be N60s new endeavor. Stumble upon music. Do you like buy it? buy music like CDs or tapes or records? Physical.

A-tracks. A-tracks. I have a big old vinyl collection back in Ohio. Don't say vinyl, huh? Yeah, but I'm a little hesitant to ship them out because finals, they're kind of really old records. They're kind of finicky, and I just don't want the records to get warped in the shipping process. So I just kind of leave them there.

But I pay for Spotify. I pay for music a lot. I just don't have physical products. If you ever listen to the Pono player? No. Pull it up, Dennis. The Pono player is actually developed by, I believe, Neil Young, who's a huge audio file. I don't even know they still make this thing, but he tried to make this MP3 player

that only, I guess, works with like very high-quality type of audio files. Like a flak player or something. I'm just curious if you've ever listened to this. No, I heard something. Isn't that, is that the thing that's like a pyramid-shaped box? I think it, no, it's like a long, there it's right there, like a long. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Here's the thing, man.

I mean, it's. It's interesting to me because most people that listen to, you know, Spotify and all this stuff, they don't realize that the sound quality is not that good. But it doesn't matter, though. Well, it doesn't matter to most people because they don't know. They just care about content. They just want to have unlimited content. content at their fingertips.

It doesn't matter because like what are you listening it through? You know, like your car speakers are like... I don't think people have anything to compare it to, man. Your XXT Air headsets. Oh, yeah. If you were to listen to, let's say like Abbey Road, right, on Spotify through your car speakers and then you were to put on a headset and listen to Abbey Road on the vinyl record, it's no comparison.

You would hear different instruments. I would, I tend to think that the people who care enough about high quality stuff like that probably I'm gonna find it and figure out how to do it right they probably listen to physical media they probably have like a they're probably listening to

title at home through a nice deck through a nice like slamming things on on the best speakers that are isolated up on top of stands pointed directly at their ears

and you know I tend to think that you know that someone just put a Zoom up there I tend to think that those people probably are more like that and people who are more focused

on music players like Spotify on their phone they just want to have They just want to be able to listen to like Taylor Swift like right now. They don't give, they don't care about the quality. They just want the content. That's all. Alexa, play Billy eyelash.

I want that caseway. Billy eyelash. All right. Should we get into some questions then? Before we get to questions, I have one more thing. Okay. So, you know, like me, not Dennis, you're also a dad of a young, young little girl. I am.

Yes. So just, you know, how, how is it, you know, you know, to balance like work, life, baby. I'm just curious, you know, because I had to go through that myself. Well, fortunately, I have the best partner in the world to do it with. You're married to my wife too? Yeah, she's great. No, I couldn't deal with that.

My wife, honestly. She's like, she mazes me every single day, and I don't know how she does it. She's the most badass person I've ever met, and she, if it wasn't for her, I would be incomplete, to be honest with you. And she, she, she, we do it together. We wake up every single day at the same time. She gets her, gets ready to go to work and then drops to get off of daycare and then, you know, goes hard at work, picks up the kid, comes home, then we take care of the kid, kid goes to bed, and then we do it all over again the next day every single day. And that is completely on top of everything we're doing for work and all that.

So it's tough, stuff to balance it out. But if I didn't have her, I couldn't do it at all. Did you show your daughter the headset? Oh, yeah. What did she say? She said something like, God, really. She's trying to talk. She can't talk.

I showed my daughter the... She bit it really hard too. The audio trailer and she started jumping up and down. That was pretty cool. Yeah. That's great. She's going to work here one of these days. But I recommend kids, man.

You recommend kids? Yeah, I do. Go try it out, guys. It's pretty good. That's good. Go try kids. She has conquered territories of my heart that I didn't even know existed. That is true.

That's a line. That's a line. All right. I steal on my line. All right. Let's get to the questions here. Okay, Potatoa wants to know, are you guys working on mice? We're working on a lot of things all the time.

Yes. Working on a lot of things all the time. Stop asking when we're working on something because the answer is going to be yes. I'll say this. We hear you. Yeah. Right. Anytime you guys ask for something, anytime you guys ask to do this or do that or have this

in that color or whatever, we're always, always listening. Always, always, always. Yeah. And it's like, people ask me this all the time. It's like in my personal time. Like, we want to make everything, but we have to make sure that it's something that we're going to make and it's something that like we would do. Yep.

If it makes sense like the case and point, the air audio line, right, having the switching when you put your stuff on the stand, like that's something that only we would do, right? Because we think, oh, what is a problem we can solve? How do you make this better? This is now. Now it's better. Go by, right?

Right. I don't know how to pronounce this guy's name, but other guy, Pillinius? Pelinius. Pelinius monk. Pellinius monk. Oh, is that what it is? I think so.

That's what I think of it. Yeah. What is your favorite audio gear, not instrument? Not instrument would be the I own is probably, I have an Appigy duet. What is that? It's a, it's an audio interface that has, it sounds a super, super, super good deck. And it's also has a microphone XLR input on it. So it's kind of like the one stop shot for everything I need to do, like cut demos on at home.

Okay. Things like that. It sounds great. Preempts and it are good. And it's awesome. It sounds really good. It's, I think, 700. It's not the most expensive thing in the world,

but it's like just opens up your whole system. Which is like, you know, probably why our mixer is not $700 because like... Yeah, I mean, there's no... Yeah, I mean, XLR puts on this one. Yeah, that's a lot. Wink, wink, wink. How would you compare mic quality to with other headsets?

I think it sounds on par, if not better, than all other headsets. Quite frankly, I think it sounds the best, but that's just me being a homer. What I would tell everyone is hearing is believing. And just go listen to it. Minimi wants to know NXT versus Senheiser. NZXT. Obviously.

What kind of question is that? Get out of here. You know, they probably compared it to the HD 280, I would imagine. The thing about the HD 280 is it doesn't have a modular input design. Right. So if your cable breaks on your HD 280, you're kind of like done unless you resoddered or just get a new one. But, you know, the worst thing to happen is you just replace your 3.5 cable.

And you don't, yeah, and you don't have a modular. microphone design on that one. But they sound great. They sound awesome. They sound great. And I love HD280s. I have HD2 ideas. I have ATHM 50s.

I have a ton of headphones and these sound better to me than them. Yeah, it was funny on our subreddit, some guy commented, I'm not going to trade in my signage's for this. And then there's a, there's a Reddit bot apparently. For that replied,

something like, Hi, I'm not going to train my HD TV. Yeah. Something dad. Yeah. Yeah. So it's like a, like, a bad dad bot or something.

Yeah, yeah. It's like, okay, dude, like, hi, I'm not going to trade my H-Sin-His. I'm dead. Then don't, like, you're not telling you to it, right? I can tweet that. Another question to the MZC audio guys is from Pellinius again. Have you heard of Thoman or have seen slash been to it?

I don't know what that is. Yeah, no, what is Tomen? Bye. You'll ask us afterwards. Yep. What did you choose, Sirius Wolfson? What did you choose a Sirius Wolfson, Dak that you did? and why not TIE, Burr-Brown, or ESS-S-Sabra?

We looked into all those just with compatibility issues and just overall sound, just subjective sound testing and also costing and also, that's kind of a loaded question. Basically is the best choice for us, right? It's the best choice for us.

Ultimately, it was the best choice for us, and I think it sounds great. Right. Thanos or Suicito wants to know, when is NXT speaker being released? If enough people ask for it, we'll make it. Again, we're listening to everyone's questions and any suggestions you have we were listening and always

clicking up good fun, happy stuff all the time. N6T XLR gear and collab with AKG or SEM any of this stuff means. Would you, would that be something you would do if it was requested enough again, same answer is yeah, you know, if it's something that we can easily do that we think we can

improve upon and we would explore. Yeah, exactly. And we would talk to anybody who wants to talk, probably. Let's see, S Panda wants to know N60 K Swet. We're a headset company so if you're going to, you know, we're going to standard lane thank you yep thank you your pod case yeah air pod case you um Alan guitar center or Sam Ash oh okay so I've been so I have actually a very good theory on this

I'm sorry to anyone who works a guitar center or Sam Ash if you're a guitar guy uh-huh Sam Ash although I will say this for some reason the Sam Ash acoustic guitar room it's always like 150 degrees dude yeah it's always so warmer there why why why why because guitars want to think they're trees. What? Yes, because if guitars think they're trees, you need to have a humidity-controlled room, and acoustic guitars are especially susceptible to humidity changes.

So it might be 100 degrees, which are probably actually more feeling is just humidity, which makes you think you're way hotter than you really are. That's why I hit about Sam Ash. Yeah. But that's why, because I'm spoiled, right? Because I live right by the Hollywood Guitar Center, which is right across the street from the Hollywood Sam Ash,

which are like both showrooms for the... Just docks yourself, bro. I don't care Docs away Actually no Don't do that please thank you Please don't I have my family

You know You know There's cool stuff You know I'm a lefty So it's just kind of My impression is that Sammash That was more cool

Lefty guitars You know I don't know I'm selfish What can I say All right Pellinius again wants to know Would be possible to have Anxxxifolding at home team

Sure go make it And run it Cool thanks buddy If I don't to do it I'm super down I guess the mods fell asleep or something Jin wants to know So NSC, Jin our creative director wants to know

What do you think of garden nooms? In general? Yeah, garden nobs If I had a big front yard That I could put garden gnomes I would use garden gnomes And I would have them I come from a very pro-garden gnome

Political position But because I don't have a front yard Where that would make sense It's kind of like a little Cove where I have like a little palm tree This is a gnome-friendly podcast Okay, I would I would be the weirdo of the complex,

and I don't want to be, you know. Right, give you that guy. Yeah. If you can compare yourself with any animal, which would it be in why? A dolphin. Why? I don't know, I like to splash around.

I don't know. Dolphins are so smart. Dorphins are smart and I'm kind of a dumb guy. So I want to aspire to be a dolphin. They're super smart. You know what it is? I watched that documentary when I was in college called The Cove. Have you ever seen that documentary?

The one with the Cove. Yeah, it's like the, I was thinking of what's that movie with Leonardo DiCaprio? Titanic? No, the other one. It's not called the island or something. It's not called the Cove.

Shutter Island. Oh, you're thinking of Once Upon Time in Hollywood? No, or maybe it wasn't, maybe it was Brad Pitt. Once upon time in Hollywood? No, it's not that one. It was like a long time ago.

It's like the island of Dr. Moreau? No, no. Is that the name of it? It's the cave of the cove. I forgot now. Someone like, there's like a lot of like teen, teen stuff happening and people getting killed or whatever. I don't know.

This is maybe think of that. Favorite spice girl? Uh, Scary Spice. I think she was underrated. Really? Sporty Spice, I'm sorry. I thought she was underrated.

I thought Ginger was overrated. I thought Posh was cool and I thought Baby was funny, but I thought I always thought that sporty spice was an underrated spice girl. I thought she had a very good voice. Okay. And she was also sporty. So there's that. Yeah.

Winky Blinky Lee wants to know, I think that's the name that I gave him. When is the N16A microphone coming out? Again, same as every other time you guys ask us if we're making this or that. If enough people ask for it, we'll look into it. If it's something we can improve upon and make it unique, we will think about it super hard. And then spend like 50 years straight to make it. Spanda here at Pinsman. He was asking about the bot.

So we are. We haven't officially started looking for the bot stuff yet. But it is in the works. We've just been doing stuff kind of leading up to that. Yeah. I mean, I can give a little bit more like a deep answer. It's just the Bada is one part of a lot of a big thing that we want to do with the N60 Club. So like we're not just going to put on the Baut and just leave it there.

So like it's something that we're planning. We're planning out that is going to make the whole club overall better for everyone. We can't nudge, nudge. You guys can decide what that means for yourself. Pucci Halloween costume was your favorite. Which Pucci Halloween costume was your favorite? All of them. It's a good answer, especially if you don't know.

Jim wanted to know If you were a character from Star Wars Which would you be? Dash Rendar Who that is that? This is the main character from Shadows of the Empire I forgot that game was a thing That game was hard

That was hagg and hard I remember I got that game When I was like a kid And like I couldn't get past the wookie Yeah You know what I'm talking about? No No or was it a Yeti

It was the Oh It was a wampa The wampa Yeah On the second level I can't believe I remember Thing always killed me

I think always like And I forget why I got that game I think it's like one of the worst Star Wars games Ever made but like everybody remembers it Because it was like super hard It was like oh Star Wars game went in 64 I just find out some Star Wars trivia yesterday That I did not know

What's that? So you guys know Rick Baker The makeup artist? Yeah yeah He's like the world's most famous makeup artist He's done American World Warwolf in London He did a Hellboy He did the Michael Jackson Thriller video

He's basically like, you know, the biggest. He's the guy. He's the guy. And for Star Wars, after they had finished the movie, George Lucas had one scene that he did not like. And it was the canteena scene. Really? So he reached out to Rich Baker, who was halfway across the world

because they filmed Star Wars in, I believe, England. Sussex, I think. Yeah, and Rick Baker's here in L.A. And he told him, he's like, I want you to film this canteena scene for me, but I want you to use, like, whatever characters you think would fit in there. So if you actually watch that scene again,

there's all these, like, weird characters in there that you never see, like, in any other Star Wars movie, and they're really weird looking. Like, there's, like, a devil in there with horns. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was like a butt face, right? Yeah, and I never knew why. Like, I always thought, like,

yeah, these aliens are so weird, but I just found out yesterday why, and it's got to, so Rich Baker, he just had all these old, mask laying around. And he's like, I'm just going to put them in the thing because I don't have time. To actually like, well, he, they wanted him to like go to like England and do it over there. But he's like, they want this in a week.

I have to do it here. So he just basically filmed it in his house and that he filmed all that over here. Yeah. And they splashed it in. All right. Fun fact. Yeah. Andy wants to know, can you make me a headset?

Just for you. Yes. Jen wants to know. What would you do if you find a penguin in your freezer? I would go up to my daughter and ask where the hell she found a penguin. There you go. Cuddle wants to know, opinion on the Apple Home Pod. I haven't used it, to be honest with you.

I don't know too much about it. It looks cool. Are you a smart home kind of guy? No. Did you like smart home up your house? No. Honestly, nah. Siri, turn down the humidity in my acoustic room.

I don't trust the technology. Oh. No, I don't know. I don't have a big house, you know. I mean, those guys, like, are you like legitimately afraid of like? No, dude. I mean, here's the thing. I don't have anything for the government to like,

or even them, them. unless to spy on me about um scale one to 10 how happy are you 10 11 if you were asked to unload a large airplane fill of jelly beans what would you do uh enlist go on to uh craigs list and enlist the help of a lot of people to help me unloaded or something like that oh maybe it's a very important question here when are you going to play marri cart with us uh tomorrow okay did you try the poppise chicken sandwich yet i can't find a pop eyes i haven't looked i don't know just i heard good things I just like to around here, dude. Oh, I don't know.

Hey, we'll do that from lunch. How about that? Jollyverer wants to know. Thoughts on XXExtentacion? I think, yeah. I have mixed opinions. So I hope no one judges me too hard, but I think the best thing he could have done

for his career was die. Here's why I say that. I know that sounds controversial because now he lives forever. That's true. And it's like Kirk Cobain, although I do think Kirk Cobain would have been still talked about,

right? In John Lennon and Hendricks, these sort of people, but I don't think XXXX was like unbelievably talented. It was like a good rapper, but he wasn't like the man. He's no post Malone. So I have kind of a different thought. I think that he could have been really big. But at the same time, though, he had so much like drama and like just negative things

about him as a person that like I was, I'm really curious to see if he could have like turned that around and been like the people and been the person that people wanted him to be or thought he could have been. Yeah, but that wasn't on brand for him. Yeah. Getting shot to death, unfortunately, was on brand for XXXX. And that sucks. I mean, what can I say?

Would you say it saying about like Tupac and Biggie? Yes. Really? Yeah, it sucks. What can I say? You don't think that Tupac would still be out right now putting out like bangers? Maybe. But I don't know.

Is any rap god from the early 90s still out putting bangers? Just by statistical virtue? Ever last. Like one or two guys maybe, but do I think they would have... Too short? You see this is kind of, you know... But do I think they would have broken the mold and somehow would have survived the test of time. I mean, dude, I don't know.

Maybe. But I don't know. Yeah. Interesting. Good. Where do you see yourself in five years? And hopefully, so five years I'll be 36. Dikes. Probably present in the United States. No, I... Wait, hold up. You're 31?

Yeah. Good math. Huh. I, I, um... Wait, hold up. How old do you think I am? Do you know how old I am? You're 26. I'm 30, bro. No, you're not. Get out of here. You're fired. I'm legitimately 30 years old. He's just really immature.

Yeah. I mean, pretty much. What would you, what would the coolest animal to scale up to this full size of a horse? That's June, by the way. A miniature horse. It's actually really good answer. What's your favorite non-NZXT brand? I actually like that.

It's a good answer. Non-NZXT brand in the computer space or just in general? I'm going to say probably a computer. So in the computer space, I like HyperX, man. Honestly, I mean, there's stuff's comfortable. It sounds good and it's pretty durable. Again, I go running with my NZ. To me, the ultimate like durability test is if I, can I run two miles with you every day

for a week and do you break? And the answer for NZXD is no. Actually, so we sound great. Quick question about the headset. What material are the ear cuffs and the pad made out of? And what's, what's the supporting stuff inside? It's a memory foam. It's just a memory foam material with a sort of a, just sort of, we really dialed in the

thickness of the phone. We actually spent like four weeks going back and forth of two thickness. Should it be this millimeter of padding? Should it be that millimeter padding? So how's it up the I mean it's obviously not resistant for like look at it but like how is it for sweat? So you do running it? Yeah. Are you a sweater?

Do you sweat a lot? Yeah, unfortunately. You sweaty boy and it's still good? That's fine. It doesn't break or anything. That me that's the ultimate, you know, it sounds like a weird out right? But like that's the ultimate durability doesn't doesn't break. Well, because like I'm actually considering buying, I mean I'm going to get myself upset

no matter what. But like my girl for her because she runs a lot. I was thinking of getting beats because she likes big headphones like don't fall off and I was like maybe it's pretty good. You should. She did this. It was great. We should do one more question. Do you want to choose one, Evan? I actually like

I like the one that Mini Me Cuddle iced out ass here. He's asking, describe a time when there was a difficult situation and you use teamwork and collaboration to resolve the issue and achieve your call. He's interviewing for your job. So it sounds like.

The reason I like that question is because I feel like product managers, that's literally what they do every day, right? Like they're kind of working with different teams, trying to solve a problem. I am the difficult situation. Well, I'll say, I'll say this. This is in a past job I was at. If you have a product that is maybe, let's say, a batch gets out that is defective or something's like just a little off about it or something like that. Oftentimes, a big online retailer may or may not pool the product. until you can prove that it's okay.

So there's a couple times that that's happened in past careers where I would have to instantly go look at our stock, wrangle up a bunch of team members, conduct a big test, like an assembly line style, quantify that data, measure it out, make sure it's all right,

send that data to the online retailer and say, no, actually, we're fine, we're good. and if we can prove that fast and not miss any sales opportunities then man that's a big win that's when you think I have actually one last question question we ask every single time

I have one last question Do you? Okay are you gonna ask it right? No go for it. Okay What is your favorite N60 product? The H-500 Just a timeless piece It's just great it's perfect What is your least favorite?

You can be honest Don't worry Johnny doesn't listen he's like he's like the mixer probably the mixtures the puck just because I what I just get out I know I just don't use it that much I'm biased though right because I

only have had the stand and or prototypes of the stand so I just kind of use that and it's not from the I like it the least it's just I haven't used it as much okay then we need to learn you a little something yeah exactly I can you hit on the puck seriously the biggest thing you've ever made

And now we go. Okay. How about you? Do you have any questions for us or the community? Wait a minute. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. The second part of this last question is, what's one thing you want and you wish NZXT can make that isn't a gaming thing?

Isn't a gaming thing? Yeah. Or isn't like, you know. He's like a cable management solution. Not a gaming thing? Something that's like has a magnet that's put on my fridge. Oh, dude. I don't know.

I mean, uh, uh, uh, uh, um, I mean. I mean, that's a hard question because now you have this sort of frame of reference where you only think about NXT a certain way, right? And that's not to say that you can't stay in your lane. Because, uh, okay, so like, let's say, you know how we do like, we put like an NZXT touch and everything, right? Like obviously the headset is an NZXC product. You look at it and you're like, yeah, this NXT.

So what do you think we could, we'll just, anything is just off top that you want to see us make that would have that N60 touch. Anything. Gaming, furniture. Sure. Okay. You make chairs? Chairs.

Things like that. I think that's at least, that's a thing I can see yes. That's very designed influenced. That's very aesthetically important. And why is it a toaster? Exactly. That we could get into that would be like not a head scratching move. And I think we could do it really well.

Okay. And do you have the questions for us? Or the community. Or the community. I just want to say that I'm really happy that we've done this. I want to say thank you guys for having me on this. for having me on this. I don't have any questions for you,

be honest with you other than, you know, if you have any questions for me or if anyone has any questions for me, get a hold of me. And I'll answer personal questions. How can people get a hold to you? They can email me if they want, if they so, should I put my email out there?

It's up to you. I'll do it. It's my first name. dot last name at NZXD.com. That's Patrick Butler. Yes. Spelled normally, like normal people spell it.

Like the servant. I'll type it in the chat. Or the keeper, Keeper of the wine cellar. So I read once upon the history of my last name. You're not going to be subscribed to like a million newsletters. Thank you. By me.

Cool. All right. Sell me out. So with that, thank you very much for joining us today, Patrick. Thank you. And thank you to everyone who tuned in. Remember, to tune in next week at 10 p.m. Pacific. Sorry, 10 a.m. Pacific, I always screw this up.

I'm never going to get this right. I don't know why I have been on the official N6T Discord server and follow at N6T on all relevant social media. And I forget to listen. two previous episodes on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and SoundCloud. Thanks. Thanks. Bye.