The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Amp Genie Booth Interview at CES Show 2023

Episode Date: January 6, 2023

Amp Genie Booth Interview at CES Show 2023 Ampgenie.com

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, this is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. We're at CES 2023.

We're at booth number 17289 in Central Hall, so you guys can check it out. And we're here with Brian Stoller. Brian, how are you? I'm doing great, Chris. How about yourself? Great. Awesome sauce. We're checking all the cool technology here at CES. So what is the name of your company and the.com people can find it at? Yeah, so I'm with Ampgenie, and our website is www.ampgenie.com there you go and what is amp genie that's a great question so amp genie is actually world's first signal sensing automatic receiver remote that sounds complicated but it's actually pretty simple and what that

actually means is that amp genie through its inputs the back, it's got all three types of audio inputs. It's got your standard analog input, your Toslink optical input, and your Spidiff digital input. And AmpTd is listening, and it's waiting for you to start your music. So as soon as you start your music, and it could be any type of music, it could be from a Sonos player, it could be from a turntable, it could be your PC audio, tape deck reel to reel cd etc any of those music sources start playing mtb hears that and immediately fires off an ir macro an infrared set of commands to your receiver so that it does these following five commands first thing it does is it does a power up in fact let me do a quick little demo of it. Oh, cool. You just hit power, and you can see it's blinking,

and it's actually set it to all-channel stereo. It's set the volume, and it has set the correct input and DSP type, so we can get audio immediately. Because without an Amgenie, you start your player, but your receiver is still off. Yeah. And the whole reason that we created Amgenie was so that as soon as you start your player,

which is typically done by an app or voice control, the receiver will follow suit. Therefore, you don't need a remote. You don't need another app. You just play, and you get audio right away. So what's the application this for? Why is this important to have with your receivers? Sure. So that's actually a good segue into the way that Amgenie got created.

And I'm actually an AV installer myself, and I install a lot of smart homes that have Sonos speakers everywhere. And the whole reason that this got created was my customers that had Sonos all over their homes, they love Sonos and the fact that most of the tabletop speakers and their smaller speakers just play automatically and you don't have to do anything. But that all breaks down as soon as you hook it up to a home theater receiver. So a lot of people were frustrated and be like, this great you know my $200 speaker works but my $10,000 system doesn't work the way that I want it to so I created Amgeny to fill that gap and so that all you have to do is start playing on your Sonos player Amgeny hears the sound coming out of it and it sends this set

of commands to the front to fire up your receiver for you and so it basically in short it makes your expensive home theater system operate just like a smart speaker so that it'll respond to your voice it'll respond to app control and most of all it'll play the same music as the rest of your house which is what people want that's cool because you know a lot of, especially hi-fi folks, we have old receivers. But they still, you know, kick butt and do great. But they don't have all the smartness. Exactly.

And that's actually one of our taglines is that you can easily automate vintage equipment. As long as your receiver has an infrared remote, so even receivers from the 1980s would have had this, and even in the 1970s and also as long as it's one of these major eight brands which are yamaha morantz denon pioneer sony onkyo audio control and anthem as long as you've got one of those eight brands and receivers empty you can control it that is awesome wow yeah because i've got an old receiver myself too that's now just the is this the wire from the amp gene that comes down yeah so this is just a standard, which stands for infrared emitter. It connects to the back of Amgenie, and that's how Amgenie sends all of its commands. And it's really acting just like your handheld remote, except that it's like a handheld remote with ears. Oh, wow.

Wow. And let me give you a little demo of it. Would you like to see? Sure, yeah. Please do. Let me kill up some music. We're just going to launch the Sonos app here. Find some music.

So there's an app that works with it, too? Well, this is the Sonos app here. Find some music. So there's an app that works with it too? Well this is the Sonos app. Okay. And so it's important to note that this is not a Sonos specific product. Sure. It works with any type of audio, not just Sonos. The only thing that's specific to Sonos is you made this nice little tray in the top of it that just happens to fit the Sonos port as well as the Sonos connect because they

have the exact same footprint. Oh, okay. But other than that, connector wise, as long as it's a standard audio device, doesn't need to be Sonos port as well as the Sonos Connect because they have the exact same footprint. But other than that, connector-wise, as long as it's a standard audio device, it doesn't need to be Sonos at all. Okay, let's see how it works. So here's a quick demo of Amgenie in action. You'll see we've got a Yamaha receiver here. It's completely powered off right now,

and we've got it connected to a Sonos port streaming device and an Amgenie that it's sitting in there. And you'll notice the red light on Amgenie. That means that it's listening and it's ready for us to start playing some audio. So all I've got to do is start playing my audio which I could do from the Sonos app or I could do it from my Lutron button. I'm actually gonna hit the Lutron button because I think it's fun. So I just hit play right there. In a second we've got audio coming out of here. You can see Amgenie is already working. It did power on, it did input select, it did

all channel stereo DSP. And just like that we we got audio i didn't even use the app that time i actually just used it here but you can trigger it any way you want we could also trigger it with our voice you want to do a quick voice control demo let's try it let's do that so let me have mtd turn the receiver back off here we go and i'm just going to get my uh source ready yep so I'm just going to get my source ready. Yep. So I'm just going to step over here where the Sonos can hear me. Okay. And I'm going to say, hey, Sonos, play. And just like that. There it goes. I just use my voice to trigger the receiver being turned on and music playing automatically. And we've got audio just like that. And you basically make it smart.

Yeah, it really allows any old receiver to act like a smart speaker, as long as it's one of the eight major brands and has an infrared remote console. That's great. Well, thank you very much, Brian. This has been pretty awesome to check this out. Whicher.com should we even find on the interwebs? Yeah, thanks for having us, Chris. Yeah, we're available online at www.ampgenie.com

and we also have a show special that's just running through the end of CES. You can go to ampgenie.com slash show special and get wholesale pricing. And you can also place a pre-order anytime you want. We're taking 50% down and 50% will get charged when we ship next month. That's awesome.

Thanks so much for having us. Thank you for having us as well. Come to the booth, guys. 17289 in Central Hall at CES 2023. Check it out or check them on Outline. Thanks for tuning in.