Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast - Your 22 Questions for Waveform Answered!

Episode Date: April 28, 2026

You guys came through! This bonus episode is all questions that you all asked. We got over 1600 questions so we tried to answer all of them! Just kidding, but we did try to answer as many as possible. Follow us on socials: Marques: https://www.threads.net/@mkbhd Andrew: https://www.threads.net/@andrew_manganelli David: https://www.threads.net/@davidimel Adam: https://www.threads.net/@parmesanpapi17 Ellis: https://twitter.com/EllisRovin Waveform Threads: https://www.threads.net/@waveformpodcast Waveform Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/waveformpodcast/?hl=en Waveform TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@waveformpodcast Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/mkbhd Intro/Outro music by 20syl: https://bit.ly/2S53xlC Waveform is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Amazon presents Laura versus Fruit Flies. Swarming your fruit and terrorizing your kitchen, these little freaks multiply at a rate that would make a rabbit say, yo. Chill. But Laura shopped on Amazon and saved on cleaning spray, countertop wipes, and fly traps. Hey, fruit flies, your baby boom ends here. Save the Everyday with Amazon. Welcome aboard via rail.

Please sit and enjoy. Please sit and sip. Play. Post. Taste. View and enjoy. Via rail, love the way. The surface of the sun is colder than the inner core of the earth.

The surface of the sun is closer than the pyramids being built? I didn't know the core of the earth was that hot. Bro. It's molten iron. I know, but the surface of the sun is. sun? No, the surface. Hotter than the surface of the sun?

What about the sun? What about the core of the sun? I don't know the surface of the sun wasn't the hot part. It's not. But it's the surface of the sun. It's still really hot. I mean, I guess I just never thought about how hot. Do you know what I might see today?

The surface of my sun? Hey! Ha! They call that the Corona. What is up? People of the Internet. I'm Ellis. This is Adam.

And before we kick off. this very special episode of Waveform, I want to ask the host, the first question of Waveform, which is, how is this podcast different from all other podcasts? This one right now?

Well, Andrew is the host who does not know how to ask, clearly. But this episode is different because we're answering questions from you, our lovely audience, viewers, spectators. We have,

we've gotten, over 1,600 questions for you guys. We're going to answer all of them. We're not going to answer all of them. It was so many questions. We picked our favorite ones. We're going to kick it off. Before it was just honorary mention, like a third of the questions, like over a hundred of them, I want to say.

We're just like, what do you guys think about Zen browser? Shout out of Zen browser. What do you guys think about Zen browser? I think it's pretty solid and it needs a couple more features for me to switch to a full-time. I just don't like those types of browsers, but it's run on the Firefox. That's why. Everyone's like, Andrew, you know. You're right.

I should. I'm not giving it a shot yet. Mostly because everyone keeps telling me, too. And I just don't want to do what they tell me as, you know, Rage Against the Machine would say. What's this thing to arc? Two really good references in the first like two minutes of this podcast. I like, you guys all got my reference, right?

What do you say? Don't even worry about it. The people listening, they'll know. Okay. It was a Judaism reference I definitely missed that one Literally the form we sent out was What's your question? Who are you?

There's no categories We're just gonna spit them off This first one is from Constantine It's a question for David specifically David the question is Khan David Das lesson Yeah I got this one

Is Khan lesson What language is That's German Can David understand this What he said Oh Nice. How much did you practice pronunciating that?

None. That was off the dome, baby. Wow. I also speak German. I don't speak any. I don't know how to say over here. I actually don't have to say anything other than Spreckenzie Deutsch. It's been a Berlin or.

I think it's pretty simple. Am I the only one who doesn't speak German? There's a lot of German words that is just if you say the English word, angry. That's house. It's house. I think I made this joke on the podcast. It's hausa.

It's not house. Same thing. It's a house. It's hausa. But you'd know what they meant if you went to Germany and said. Yeah. I mean, English is a Germanic language. No, it's hausa.

Kick-crush. Play it. House. She was, she wasn't as angry. Not very angry there. All right. That's hilarious. Well, okay.

Next question. This one comes from Shaw. For ad breaks, do you guys take actual break? Or is that just a post-production thing? Sometimes we've got to pee. We do take little breaks, yeah. Stretch our legs a little bit. Stretch our brains.

I mean, sometimes the brakes are too long because we start talking about stuff that has nothing to do with the show and then we realize we're way too deep. But yeah, it's usually bathroom break, stretch break. In the summer, turn the AC on break for a couple minutes. Which we might need to do today.

It's 18-7. Yeah, fun facts. For those, I don't know if we've even said this in the pod yet. When we record, we turn all the ACs heating and cooling off in this room, so it's as quiet as possible, so it sounds good. The vent is right there above, like, our logo in the back, which means it would be blowing directly on all of the microphones.

So we're very nice. We turn that off for you guys. But that means this room, which is surrounded by glass, if it's super hot outside, that means as we're recording, the temperature of this room slowly goes up as we're recording the podcast. If it's super cold outside, yes, this temperature of the room actually slowly goes down as we record this podcast. So in the winter, we would warm it up in here

before we were recorded, and then we'd turn it off and we record the pod, and we were done. We'd all be a little bit cold and shivering because it's 12 degrees outside. Now, today, I think it's 90 degrees today outside. Yeah.

So we are slowly being cooked as we record this Q&A, but that's okay, because we take those little breaks and we cool it off. The point is it's really uncomfortable to do this show. Yeah.

I mean, there's a lot of times David and I are just wearing like full winter jackets in here. Yeah. And people are like, why? It's like, it's freezing. I just took a video of the witness. I'm already considering taking off my second layer.

It got hot real fast and it's only 10 a.m. And we've been recording for 15 minutes. It's been working out. Yeah. All right. This question got asked another, you know, dozens of times. It's the classic, why to Adam and Ellis share one mic? That's on you guys.

We can't ever tell them that, right? Well, the answer is sort of different now because the excuse used to be like, we were using the roadcaster when we were out of inputs. And so, like, why would we, you know, do anything about it? Now we have the taskam Sonic View 16, which is just, you know, it has inputs falling out of its pockets. Yeah, we could each have two mics. But it's just kind of part of the bit now. Yeah.

It feels like the box Cheerios. Yeah, this was, exactly. This was a conscious effort when we got this machine. We were, like, looking at each other, like, okay, do you want to each have a separate mic now? And we, like, pause for a second. And we're like, nah. Also, like, it isn't a kind of thing where it's like, this shirt. show works for us as like a business because we it's so efficient. We have such a system for

like the reason we can be creative with it is because so many parts of it are like this very systemized thing. And it might not immediately seem like it, but over the course of a year, like per episode adding another mic doesn't really make it more complicated. But when you take the 60 plus episodes we do a year, that actually does add a significant amount of time. So it's easier. We also get 50 free comments in episode telling why would we screw engagement.

Yeah, also the live show that each had, the sexual tension of adamantized heads constantly being so close together, like this is gold. If you had vision pros on it, it'd be even harder.

This is showbiz, baby. But yeah, so that's all the reasons why. That's a good bonus episode. One mic. All of us. That's actually a gnaz song. All right. Next question.

comes to us from Claire Cole. Is David's Fediverse Corner dead? I can bring it back. Figuratively. Is it the corner that's dead or the Fediverse that's dead? Mostly corner. The Fediverse is definitely. No.

No, no, no. Welcome to David's Fediverse. Welcome to David's Fediverse. We're back. Give us a quick update. Meta has probably given up on it because Mark Zuckerberg sucks. Yeah. And they just don't care anymore.

And that's sad. But I did go to the Blue Sky Atmosphere Conference in Vancouver a couple weeks ago. There's a lot of stuff happening in the atmosphere. I will say the majority of the Fediverse is now made up of Blue Sky and RSS. What about threads? You can still federate in threads, but they actively try to make you not. Like I get a notification on my threads all the time that's like, you've been federated for 30 days. Are you sure that you want to keep that on?

Are you sure you want to share to the Fediverse? And it's like, they're actively trying to, like, bury that under the, under a rug. That's so funny, because the Fediverse is supposed to be this really, you know, not simple thing, but a simple thing to where all the things using it, it shouldn't really affect it. So the fact that they're saying, like, are you sure you still want to do that, even though it doesn't change your threads profile at all? Yeah. It's a red flag. It's a big red flag, yeah. Yeah.

And I asked them about that, and they were like, well, you know, some people don't really know where their data is going. and I'm like, that's so cool. Adam. Yeah, people on the meta account are worried about their data. Yeah, Adam is there. Just go answer your Instagram questions. Just stay away from my Fediverse. You know what?

Now that you ask that question, I'm bringing it back. Every week, we're going to have a lame update. No, no, no. Next question. Next question. See what you're done. But guys, this one's coming to you. Okay. Because we frequently describe things that happen in basketball in tech terms. However, Danny,

We'd really like you to explain the vertical tab situation in basketball terms. Hmm, the vertical tab situation. It's Steph Curry. It's Steph Curry. It's changed the game. You know, before Steph Curry came along, peak basketball was just what we all expect. You know, Michael Jordan from the mid-range was the greatest thing we'd ever seen. Horizontal tabs are Michael Jordan?

Yes. Greatest of all time. However, the game has changed. It simply has evolved, and we've realized that the... there is a more efficient way to get more done, and that is to shoot from further away. And that's exactly what happened with vertical tabs. We went, oh, wait, it's widescreen.

Duh, we could be doing this better. And now everyone shoots threes the same way that, you know, the game has moved on. Even Andre Drummond shoots threes we were talking about. We just learned that. Yeah, I did not realize how many threes my rebounding goat was shooting. Yeah. I do the exact number.

This season, look, it's not, you know, as many as you would hope. It's 1.4 a game. That's a lot more than I expected. It's a lot more, and he's making him at about 36% clip. So, you know, Andre Drummond has a three point in his bag. He made it two last night.

Now, is it just wide open corner threes, or is he, like, doing dribble handoffs and, like, stepping out of screen and roll, like, backing out and, like, step back threes and stuff? Or what does he do? So, Andre Drummond is a 12-year NBA veteran in his mid-30s. Yeah.

Approaching seven feet tall, if not over. No. Andre Drummond is in the corner. He gets past a ball and the defense goes, he's not going to make that. And then he does, baby. I love that. Wait, so he's shooting 36% and averaging 1.3, three-point attempts per game. 1.4 per game.

So he makes a three-pointer once every three games. Yes. But remember, for the past like 12, I forget if it's 12 or 14 season. That's the vertical tab right there. He averaged one per season. Oh. Not one made. Yeah.

One attempt per season. That's the Andre Drummond I know. So he's shot 60 or 70 this season and made 20 or 30. No, any. Don't talk about Andre Drummond. He's slandering vertical tabs by doing this. Slandering vertical tabs right now. It's because he's seven feet tall.

So it's like anything vertical is. Approaching seven feet tall. I think he's grown yet. I think it's seven feet. Yeah, Andre Drummond has to. Is he approaching or has he done? growing. That's what I was confused about when he said approaching seven feet. He could still be approaching seven feet. He's old enough now where he's done growing. Yeah, well, Mike,

big. Okay, I just want to say underderminus 611, I think approaching seven feet is the perfect way to describe that. He's not still growing. All right, well. What? I'm saying, the game's changing, David. We don't know. All I'm saying is Mike Bibby would have made those threes. Oh my God. Nice. Good reference. Love it. All right. Next question comes from Poncho. What was the first piece of tech that you hacked, modified, or took apart. Oh, Motor droid. HGroid.C. Droid errors. Really?

Mm-hmm. Does it like a computer count? What computer do you remember? It was a custom-built computer. My friends, in first grade, my friend's dad built computers for movie studios. I was like that was his job. So we built them with them sometimes. I built one earlier.

But this was take, I never took it apart after. Because I was not going to try that variable. again at that age. It worked. The first one I heavily modified was definitely my first smartphone, for sure. Yeah, I had my droid running

custom ROMs, custom kernels, overclocked. I probably flashed a new ROM every other day. I was going to say it worked every other day because... I just the nightlies on cyanogen mod.

Yeah. And it's crazy because that shit wipes all your data. Every time. Every single time. And it was nightly and I was like,

I can't wait for the new build. Every morning, you have to log into everything again. It was such a... I don't know what the hell I was thinking. Those were the days.

Seriously. Those are the days. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I painted an Xbox once, which I had to take apart. Oh, I wanted to do that so bad to make it white and blue. Mine was orange, and you had to, like, take the circle with the green Xbox out and, like, acetone, but I couldn't find acetone. So I just sandpapered it and totally screwed it up.

And then the paint I used was way too thick. And then my Xbox just looked like hot garbage for a lot. But did you put it back together? Then it worked. It worked. Yeah. It just had, like, a quarter inch of orange paint all over it. I did that to a keyboard.

One of my first keyboards that I, like, heavily modified. It was, like, a cooler master keyboard with, like, toper switches or something. And I painted it with spray paint. Horrible idea. The texture was, like, tacky. Like, it would be a lot of sticky keyboard. You, like, put your thumbnail in it. It would, like, make an indent.

Yeah. Yeah, it was terrible. It was stupid. It was, like, neon blue that I painted it in purple. Yeah. I modded a lot of Minecraft stuff and did a bunch of weird stuff as a kid. But, like, the big breakthrough moment. for me was my

some point in college getting an old, my first VCR that was just someone like, I think this is broken, do you want this? And I was like, sure. And it would spit out tapes all the time. And so I took it apart and took the IR sensor out. And I think I just literally solder the two connections together.

And then it worked. And I was like, I'm a man. How old were you that you had access to soldering? This was like, I must have, I was in Philly, so it must have been like my junior year of college. I was picturing like a first grader solder. Whoa.

I was not that cool. My first one, I remember I was like four or five, and it was a CRT TV that I took a part. No. No, do not take apart a CRT TV. I was seven and I did my dryer. I did fully disassemble a dryer once before Googling how to disassemble a dryer and then finding out that that was the last thing I should have done. Is it really dangerous or something?

It's unbelievable. You can electrocute yourself to death. In like nine ways. Even when it's unplugged, you can electrocate yourself to death. How? That's true about a CRT also, right? It is true about a CRT. Wait, how?

Capacitors? Yeah, there's capacitors in there. Capacitors and transformers that store a lethal charge. Yikes. And if you, if you, I mean, I don't want to, never mind. Just don't do it. Just don't do it. And if you're got to do it.

No, don't. If you're going to do it, don't. This one comes from Owen McCarty, specifically for Marquez. And it was a long. question, so I'm going to summarize. How do you script your videos? Because he's a small content creator and he's trying to work through that part of the process. The literal answer is I just spew, I just like word vomit into a doc. And it's kind of just like a train of thought. And then I refine that into kind of how I speak. I've gotten really good at writing how I talk. So I write out

literally how I want to say things, how I want to explain things. And then in the actual recording process, I have that doc on my phone in front of me, usually on a table next to me or literally on my lap, and I'll read what I want to say and then put it down and then deliver it pretty close to word for word, not exactly perfect, but as long as I get the point across that I meant to say when I wrote it down, then it's a success. So it's not perfectly scripted, but it's kind of like writing a conversation down as I talk, if that makes sense. Yeah. Podcasts totally different.

Where a lot of bullet points on here. No, it's perfectly scripted. Get the really important numbers in. But I mean, if you're trying to figure out what you should do, you should try a couple different ways and then watch the videos and be like which one of these felt like it worked the best. Yeah. Because some people can do bullet points.

Some people need to read straight from a script. I will say, you know. you learn by doing. So you might think you need to script everything and then you, you watch yourself back reading from a script and it's super unnatural and that doesn't work for you. I think the best tip really, just to skip the whole scripting process is to try to get good at talking to a camera like it's a person. Right. And then if you need to write some things down to remember them, that's good. If you need to write it down verbatim, that might be you. But like, the whole point of scripting for me is to get good at saying the thing I want to say in as a few takes

as possible efficiently. But it's really just about delivery. Yeah, I think is more. Most people when they're new to talking to the camera, they are enunciating in weird ways. And for some reason, there's like a disconnect there. But if you're able to just figure out how to have a natural conversation

and look straight ahead of you, then that's when people connect with you the most of them. Which is not normal and very hard. It's not normal. It's hard. It takes a long time. I mean, Marquez has been doing this for how long? Look at the old videos. There's probably sometimes where it's like five to ten takes of us

single paragraph. You see the end result. There's a lot more on the other side of that. Yeah. The next two I'm going to read together because they're different, but both kind of like inside baseball podcast producing questions. Who? Claire's calling me.

Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Live on the pod. Andrew's happening. What? Hi. Hey. What's doing?

Middle of podcast, but I can leave it. Oh, it's the podcast today? A second one. Oh, sorry, is this not a come-home call? No, it kind of is. Oh, okay. Wait, Andrew, put your headphones on real quick. Cool.

Thank you all. I'm going to go have a sun. Enjoy the rest of the pod. Is the surface crazy? That's crazy. Sometimes, like, someone leaves a video. It comes back and they have a different shirt. That's like a mild transformation.

Sometimes, sometimes they leave. and they come back the next episode and they have a different haircut and you're like, wow, they changed a lot. Sometimes like Andrew leaves the father of one and returns the father of two. Huge transformation. All right, so I don't know how much of that

is going to make it into the podcast, but what did just happen is Andrew just got a phone call and he had to go leave and have a son. So, that's crazy. Now, literally, we've adjusted the cameras and David and I will continue answering questions. You know, somebody had a baby live on Twitch for the first time. I think we might be the first podcast to have a baby live on a podcast.

Yeah, kind of. Kind of. There's no way we're first to that. That's only if Andrew comes back to this podcast and is a father of two. Wouldn't that be crazy in one episode? If he came back next week. If he comes back just at the end of this episode and he's like, by the way, now I have two kids. Normally it takes nine months for that to happen.

Yeah. He just did it in a day. Andrew just did it in a day. All right. Well, do we want to do the inside baseball podcast question? still? Sure. All right, sweet. So these are our two sort of similar questions, I want to ask them together.

Chris asks, why is the audio podcast available so much sooner than the video podcast? Meanwhile, Sean Paul says, Sean underscore Paul on X, excuse me, Jesus.

Twitter. Sean underscore Paul on Twitter asks, what does being part of the Vox Media Podcast Network actually entail? Valid question. Adam, do you want to do the audio episode one? Sure. So the audio part of this happens because I don't know how this actually started. I think it was Studio 71 when you guys were initially planning it came up with a time that was like,

we'll launch at 4 a.m. because we'll hit like every major time zone at a decentish time, you know? Yeah. And that works fine for for audio. But then when we started doing video as well, it's like publishing at 4 a.m. Eastern Time is a little weird. So we had a discussion. We were like, do we just like move the whole published time entirely? And we were like, now people kind of like got used to expecting it when it comes out. Let's just keep the audio what it is and video will come out when it's ready. And that's pretty much what we've been doing ever since. Yeah. I think the original 4 a.m. time was like so everyone's morning commute is covered. If you're an audio only listener, it's probably in your feedback time you're going to work on Friday. It's interesting that like the audio podcast, like

audio podcasts are something people consume with some sort of regularity and we can like sort of plan around that. Whereas YouTube videos, it's like, I'm going to watch a YouTube video. Yeah. And also, we collectively don't trust automatically publishing on YouTube. Yeah. So we manually publish. It gets time zones wrong all the time somehow and yeah, or at least it did when we were, you know, publishing a lot. Now, the Vox Media Podcast Network question is another interesting one.

Essentially, it just means that we are part of a larger group of podcasts. to which you can go to to buy ads, basically. So Vox Media Podcast Network sells the ads that you see that support this show. And when you're part of a larger group of podcasts, what that means is someone like Vox Media can bring a group of shows to an advertiser and say, look at all these tech shows that we have,

and you can reach all these audiences with one fell swoop, basically. So it's a nice advantage there, and they've been great support for some of the stuff we've done with the live shows and some other fun stuff we wanted to do. So it's all good, friendly support for the show. If you want to reach Waveform's audience and Esther Perel's audience at the same time, you know where to go. Vox Media Podcast Network.

Guys, this is a great question for you too, because you both have been getting shipped review units for quite some time. Because I think I know what you would probably answer this question as a terrible way to say that. But what's the most expensive tech you've broken while reviewing? I will also substitute this for any fun, oops, I broke this while reviewing at stories you may have. Yeah. Well, what do you think I would say? I assumed you were going to say the classic, why did this ship with a screen protector? Oh.

That is a classic. How much was that when it came out, the first fold? 1800. So if you weren't around for that, what else is referring to is the first ever Samsung Galaxy Fold. It's kind of a big deal. It's a phone that folded in half, and there was a lot of unknowns about it,

and I shot my unboxing video. And the way it went is I actually shot my entire unboxing and first look video, edited it all together, got it ready for upload, and then as I was going to upload, I said I need to shoot a thumbnail. What I'll do is I'll take the screen protector off take a photo of it. So I upload the video and then I start to peel the screen protector off and then some pixels start to go black. And then I pull it a little

further and more of it starts to go black. And I'm like, whoa, wait a minute. This is weird. What's going on? Turns out that top layer, we didn't really know at the time and it wasn't really explain to any of us, but was a very delicate layer of the actual display. Yeah. So I quickly put it back on. I published the unboxing in front of look still, but then I started to see other people post on Twitter that their displays were breaking. And so I chimed in and I said, mine is also breaking because of this top layer coming off. And other people had essentially tried the same thing as me.

They tried to take the top layer off. So yeah, I broke it. A couple other people broke it. We all sent it back. Samsung had an internal crisis. They fixed it. They revised it and shipped it a couple weeks later. They had baskets to it.

Yeah, they added a bunch of stuff. Yeah. So that was $1,800 phone broken during the review process. Yeah. I actually never reviewed that phone later. Oh, wow, really? Because I shipped it back to them. They took them all back.

Wow. So, yeah, that might be my answer at $1,800. I remember I flew to Vancouver to do the hands-on video for that, and I shot it. And then, like, as I was editing it, you tweeted about that happening. So I had to revise my – I had, like, I added to my video, and I was like, okay, breaking news. Marquez broke his and Deeter broke his and then I'm editing again

and then Samsung releases a statement we're delaying this now and I was like breaking news again so in one video there's like three segments of me being like actually actually yeah in like different locations and everything yeah yeah

the most expensive review unit I ever broke was the Galaxy Note 10 it was like completely made of glass and the front and back, both, like, the glass kind of, like, beveled around the backs.

And I was at a pizza parlor, like, the day I got it in New York. And I was sitting at a high top. And I can see who this guy. It, like, it had this coating on it that made it slippery. Yeah, the note. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yep. And it's in your pocket? No, no, I had it on the table. Oh. But it was, like, one of those metal tables. I think a lot of people don't realize how many phones just slowly slug.

across the surface. Just autonomously. Yeah. It was just slowly kind of moving and I didn't notice. The world is not level. Yeah. And it fell from like four feet or whatever and because it had the glass that sort of like beveled over all sides, it hit the corner and just like cracked up the whole side.

Yeah. And then I tweeted about it and then I got a really angry call from Samsung. Yeah. As if it was your fault. Was this necessary? And I was like, no. Is anything necessary? You made your phone.

slip and slide. I literally, the crazy thing, I think earlier that day I had tweeted like, damn, this phone seems like it's going to be the most fragile phone that Samsung's ever made. And then, lo and behold. Yeah, it was. I've had various scares like that. Luckily, a lot of the carpet in the studio where we shoot is carpeted. Yeah.

Which is nice. I don't know. What did I just say? A lot of the carpet is carpeted. A lot of the carpent is carpeted. A lot of the studio is carpeted. A lot of the studio where we shoot is carpeted. Right.

I've come into the studio and seen like three phones on the floor next to my desk. I realize that they'd slid off my desk. That's crazy. Which is why a lot of you know, I have a mouse pad on my desk now that I put phones on. Gripi mouse pad. Yeah. This is from Alex. Will you be doing any content around the World Cup this summer?

Lots of cool tech used in soccer. Oh. I did learn that recently. And I learned that because I was thinking into if we should make a video on some of that stuff. I could be cool. I think what I might end up doing is just focusing on the coolest individual thing that I find. I'm not sure what that's going to. to be yet, but I am now aware, just like Alex is, of a bunch of cool tech being used in the

World Cup, which some of you might know, the finals are going to be 30 minutes from this studio. Yeah. It's going to ruin traffic for a long time. I need to rent out my apartment and get the hell out of here. Yeah. Make it an Airbnb for whatever week or two so somebody can pay you at ridiculous amount of money. And then, yeah, it'll happen. Yeah.

Yeah. You got to beat Cleo Abram to the video, though, because she always does the tech of sports videos. Of course. Of course. Maybe it's a collab. You should collab. Yeah. Yeah.

You heard it first on this podcast. Yeah. This one got asked by a lot of people. And it's going to become a big fight between Adam and I on one microphone. Oh, do you also have the same question pulled up? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And so you guys can decide who's more right and why it's me, which is.

Okay. I'm reading Katie, but it looks like someone named the man, the myth, the legend. So asked this question. It's to say it's not the same person. Why does Ellis hate frequency response charts so much? Ah. Can we first explain what a frequency response chart is for people? Yes.

A frequency response chart. Should Ellis be the one explaining? It's this bull's shard. It doesn't mean anything important. Sounds like a bees asshole. Okay. Okay. Yeah.

Okay. Okay. A frequency response chart is an X, Y. It's a function. I guess it's not technically a function. but it's a curve plotted on an X, Y graph, where the Y axis is volume or loudness or amplitude. I can't believe I just said volume.

That's one of my biggest pet peeves. So I'm already off to the races. Is it a Nambra jog wheel? Well, it's loudness, which is very different than volume. And the X axis is frequency from usually about 20 hertz to usually about 20,000 hertz. this line represents how much loudness, how many decibels are added or subtracted from a device, like a loudspeaker or a microphone at a given frequency. So if something has like a big spike at around 3K, 3,000 hertz,

you know that that device is either going to be receiving or outputting 3K at a much louder volume than other frequencies. Yeah. Cool. Is that satisfactory, Adam? All right. David. Oh. Do me a favor.

Think about your favorite photograph you've ever taken. Not the best, but the photograph that you took, that just really, like, moves you. You know, that you think, like, every time I look at this, I get excited about photography and how good a job I did. And just, like, wow, I really have come so far in this practice, right? You have the picture in your head? There's a twinkle in your eye. I want you. I want you to describe the picture to Marquez, but you are only allowed to describe it in terms of how much red there is.

That's not fair. There's some orange in the photo. No, no, but red. We're thinking about red. Desaturated red. No, no, but just give me a number. What? Like, from 1 to 10, how much red is there?

1.2. All right. Marquez. Can you describe the picture? I'm seeing it. I'm seeing it. And now. This is a frequency response chart.

Okay? It is really good at explaining a very small, very small modicum of information that can be useful, that has these like very specific uses that when you're directly comparing, no, I'm not even going to go that far. If you're trying to find a very specific piece of information, the frequency response chart is where you will find it. if you are trying to express the sensory experience of listening to something, it's the exact same as being like, look at this picture, how much red is in it.

That's the picture. I think most people see these charts in headphone reviews, right? Yes. So you'll see a pair of headphones, maybe compare it to another pair of headphones, and they'll put the frequency response charts next to each other and go, see, look how much more sub-based response there is in these headphones, because the charts higher over here than the other one. Is that valid?

No, because, David, think of the second best photograph you've ever taken. Now, think about how much red is in that. Okay. Is that a good way to compare those two photographs? Well, if you're looking specifically at how much red is in it, then yes. Yeah, but you don't look at, the point of a photograph is not how much red is in it. Yeah, I think your argument, your argument is the frequency response is a unimportant factor. I wouldn't say it's necessarily unimportant, but it's leaving out most of it.

of the story because what does sound need in order to exist? Needs a medium. Well, that's actually a really good point. That's bigger brain than I was going to say. I was going to say it needs time. Like there's no such thing as a paused sound. A sound can only exist over a spread of time. I have a good analogy for this.

What is missing from the frequency response chart? Yeah, how fast a response? How fast is. Another thing that's missing is like this is sort of the idea of like you can, You can think of sound as like, oh, there's more 3K than there is 600. So we can do a little bump here. But that's assuming that you're giving it one flat input of zero decibels. All these speakers, all these headphones, they have these nonlinear curves.

Like you might get a bigger boost at 3K from a sound coming in at minus 10 dBLFS than a sound at minus 20. You know, like, like, there's different sensitivities. There's different ranges. There's almost like each one of these frequencies is going through its own lookup table, right? Yeah. And so just saying like there's more 3K actually says nothing about how you would perceive these headphones. It's just a little. You can see two frequency response charts of a headphone and see one of them that has like a crazy boost in the high end.

And then you'll put them on and it will not sound significantly brighter because that boost might only be for really loud sounds. or it might only be for really slow sounds, or it might only be for really fast. Like, there's so much information that is, like, left out of this thing. That if you're, if you're, I will say, like, a great example is, sometimes they're useful with microphones. You know what I mean? Like, what is this microphone good at picking up?

But even then, the parts of microphones that sort of give them their really distinct sound, I don't think are captured in frequency response charts. Because the dynamic range information is missing. And I just want to follow this up with one other things. A lot of people ask, like, well, Ellis, like, we use spectrographs all the time. And you don't seem to have a problem with those. And I don't. I really like spectrographs.

A, have a time. The x-axis is time in a spectrograph, right? The y-axis is frequency. And the point of a spectrograph is to be able to visualize a specific sound, not a device. So when you need to understand, like, I'm hearing this sound, where am I actually hearing things, spectrograph, really awesome. There's nothing that a spectrograph can do to explain speakers or headphones or microphones. All very valid. I think, yeah, I actually get a lot of flak sometimes for not putting as much benchmark information and graphs in my reviews.

And instead, I rely on describing the sounds, the feelings, the materials and things like that because I think that works when I'm talking to a regular person. It's more important. But I do. I do. I do hear from people who are like, yeah, but you got to measure this and really be able to back it up. And sometimes we even do measure it and don't include that in the video. But I think a lot of that is the reason why. And the analogy I thought of as you were talking is it's like trying to compare two cars with just the horsepower number. Yes. Or just the zero to 60.

Yes. Which could tell you that one of them is more powerful than the other and maybe is faster. But when you line them up over a quarter mile, the way they behave. the way they go through gears, if they even have gears, that there's so many more things to consider in how they will drive than just 805 horsepower might suggest. And that's the same. It's not too dissimilar to transfer function charts on lenses,

which are supposed to measure sharpness from like the center of the lens to the edge of the lens. That's obviously useful for like medical purposes if you just like want as much sharpness and fine contrast as possible. But the actual human experience of using a lens is not peak sharpness and peak. Exactly. It's like the experience of the lens is different looks. And you're doing creative looks.

It's very different. If this is not enough for you and you need scientific proof that I'm right, go on your computer and search Fletcher Munson curve. That's Fletcher F-L-E-T-C-H-E-R-M-U-N-S-O-N-S-O-N-N-C curve. This is the frequency response curve of our ears, like the most famous frequency response. curve in history. Right. And you'll see there's like nine lines.

Yeah. Because our ears respond to different frequencies at different volumes, just like every transducer. Because our brains are dope. Well, it just goes to show when you actually need a frequency response curve and it's like of medical importance, you don't use these silly little one-line nonsense burgers. You use the big, the big Chad dynamic range measurer, you know? Adam, do you have a response?

My response is, one. headphones use these curves as well to, they account for this. It's not like they don't think of this stuff, the people that make these. There's like the Harmon Cardin curve, there's a bunch of these. But two, you're talking about frequency response graphs and sound as if it's art, but that's not art, it's science.

Music is art. The way that the speaker moves and pushes air, we can measure. And if you are comparing two things, if I have one speaker that does the exact amount of air as another speaker. Me personally know that speaker will sound the same to me, not to you, not to anyone else in his room, but to me, those two speakers will sound the same. Everyone's ears are different, but the speakers aren't.

I mean, there are because there's like my new differences in how we make things and nothing's perfect, whatever, blah, blah, blah. You're missing an asterisk, which is if you play the exact same sound at the exact same volume. Yes. Which is why when you're testing headphones, you usually play the same songs. you usually play the same things because you want to compare them A, B. You're not like nothing's in a vacuum. You're comparing these things.

And frequency graphs in particular are useful for the internet. Not when you're like talking about if we're in person and we're talking about headphones, like just try the headphones. Trying the headphones will always be the best thing you can do. Unfortunately, not everyone has access to very expensive headphones all over the world. Exactly. The next best thing is how we share information on the internet are these graphs. If you have a pair of headphones that you have access to and you can try them on and you

see their frequency response, and there's another trusted source that uses this technology to measure the exact same frequency responses in another pair of headphones that you don't have access to and they're expensive, you can be relatively confident that they're going to sound more or less how your headphones are. And if you have a preference, that's where trying a lot of this comes into play. If you have a preference with how you want your headphones to sound, then you know what to look for in the frequency response graphs. And again, that's not 100% true because you might try a pair of headphones that you thought you wouldn't like because of the graph and then it ends up being great. But that's like the beauty of trying out a bunch of different headphones.

That's why people fall into these rabbit holes. Yeah. It's hard to compare things online when you can't play, you can't put the headphones on their head and let them hear it. So we are trying with these graphs and measurements and words to give them the experience and it's hard. Which is an issue that Ellis had with his speaker that broke physics video because everyone was like, why didn't you give us a test because you don't understand the speaker is pushing air which needs to be picked up by a microphone which is then being digitized and pressed on your phone like you wouldn't understand what it sounds like there's no way yeah yeah well i think that we just uh should start a debate club that sounded that was pretty crazy adam which one of these two microphones is brighter

are you looking at a chart yeah i'm looking at two charts the one on the bottom is the rk 87 and cardio response graph chart. RK87 is the name of the capsule. These are two different microphones. Yeah. And their frequency responses. And I'm looking, the first one, I'm trying to describe for audio. So the one on top is like a bump in the lows.

Then it slopes down a bit around 1K and then it bumps up again around 10K. Then the one on the bottom is a bunch of peaks and valleys, but pretty much flat around zero all the way up until about 8 or 7K. Then there's a big bump. So judging by this, my guess would be the. bottom one because there's a bump into 10K. You are technically correct, but what you're missing is that this microphone that you said is very flat is famously the least flat microphone money can buy.

It's the Neumann U87 AI. It famously has the pointiest, most cutty dynamic, like mids of all time. It looks like it. No, it doesn't because the reason is is because the power of the U87 comes from an extremely limited dynamic range in those mid frequencies. Nothing is going to ever get boosted, but it also means that your quiet mids are just going to get brought up by the capsule.

So when you hear it, it's like, it doesn't sound flat at all. You can look at this almost completely flat line. I think like, oh, I need a flat mic. This is the exact same thing as like seeing an EV with 800 horsepower and a gas car with 800 horsepower. Because an EV, you also need to know that it makes all of its torque instantly all of the time and a gas car makes peak horsepower at certain RPMs and also builds torque over and over through the different

RPMs so you can have two cars that both have eight and a horsepower but you put them on the line next to each other and the race looks like this and you're like why is the EV not slowing down because the gears there's gears there's different torque there's like all these other variables that are not explained in this one so you could be right by looking at a graph of horsepower and go okay I think the one that's lighter is going to do better. But like there's, there's a lot to it. There's another, a bunch of factors. I'm going to die on this hill, but I'll end it with saying, if you want to know how something

sounds, type in to google.com, the name of the thing, and then type in sound on sound, and it'll take you to the website of this magazine where they do great gear reviews. That's what you need. And someone will tell you how it sounds. Great gear reviews. That's what you need. I will also die on the hill if you need great reviews. Yeah. Yeah. I know it's a shocker, but I believe it. Yep. I think that's a great time to take a break. Sound like, yeah, see, see. We're not doing trivia. Not only did we get questions for you guys,

but we also got a few trivia questions submitted via this forum, which means we have the very rare bonus episode trivia. And I have no idea how we're going to make sure Andrew can get points. Isn't he winning? Yeah, he's winning, but I'm winning. Oh, by a lot. Okay, four points. We'll keep track of point.

We'll figure it out later. Yeah. All right. This question comes from Mojave. The question is, what was the last iPad to ship with iOS? Oh, yeah. Oh, I know this.

That's a good question. I know. I should know this. Okay, so they switched to iPadOS when they added... I'm talking through it out loud. Mojave. They added widgets to like 17. Right?

Wait, did you say which iPad? Which iPad? iPad 17. Well, iPad OS 17. What are we on now? So it was iOS 16 and then iPad OS 17? Is it just... iPad 2026 or whatever?

Well, then we need to know which iPad came out when, because there's like the air that comes out, staggered from the pro, which comes out separate from the mini, but that was definitely after. And then the base iPad, which sometimes comes out the same time as the air. There's no way I get this right,

but I'm going to try to get close. iOS 17. Okay. Well, I guess, did they give an answer in their question? They did. Can you verify it? Yeah, I just fact-checked it.

He was correct. Okay. Well, you know, We'll do the same thing we usually do. Answers at the end like usual. We'll be right back. It's never too early to plan your summer story in Europe with WestJet, from rolling countryside to cobblestone streets.

Begin your next chapter. Book your seat at westjet.com or call your travel agent. WestJet, where your story takes off. From Iran to Venezuela to China, what is driving President Trump's foreign policy? Both Russian China are big losers. if there's a transition in the nature of the Iranian government, which again is why I think we have to see this campaign through. I'm Jake Sullivan.

And I'm John Feiner, and we're the hosts of The Long Game, a weekly national security podcast. This week, Trump's former national security advisor, H.R. McMaster, and Deputy National Security Advisor, Matt Pottinger. Join us. The episode's out now. Search for and follow The Long Game, wherever you get your podcasts. This week on Net Worth and Chill,

I'm breaking down the institution everyone's talking about right now, but nobody actually understands the Federal Reserve. With all the drama happening between Trump and Fed Chair Jerome Powell, you're probably seeing headlines and wondering what any of this has to do with your money. Spoiler alert, it's everything. I'll explain what the Fed actually is, why it exists, and how this one institution controls the interest rates on your mortgage, credit cards, student loans, and more. We're diving into why raising or cutting rates isn't just boring policy talks. it's the difference between affording a house or watching prices spiral out of control. Plus, I'm breaking down the current controversy over firing Fed Board members

and why both Republicans and Democrats are freaking out about it because this fight isn't just political theater. It could mean real chaos for your wallet. Listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube.com slash your rich BFF. All right, welcome back. We've got some more questions from y'all. Thank you again for asking them. Hopefully we can answer as many of them as we can in this pod.

Go. I made a promise to myself that if I didn't know how to pronounce any of your names, I would Google them instead of being like, I'm sorry if I mispronounce this. Yeah. Because I really try to, but I googled it and I cannot find anything. So I really hope your name is Jason Abe. And if it's Jason Abe, I sincerely apologize Jason. I could have just said Jason and skipped all of this. Yeah. This question comes from Jason. Marquez, what started your addiction to weather content? Jesus.

Small talk. Like a lot of people, like a lot of people, actually that's part of it. But the content part, I think, came in the last couple of years because of just,

you fall down a rabbit hole sometimes, and instead of the conspiracy theory rabbit hole, I fell down the weather content rabbit hole. I think this was right around like big, yeah,

big winter storms. So we're sitting here, a sitting duck on the East Coast. We get these big blizzards that wipe across the country. And then you watch one video about the blizzards. And then you're like, okay, now I know. That was a pretty good video. And then you get another suggested video about it.

And you're like, all right, I'll watch this one too. Is it related? Because I'm a distinct memory I have working here is like in my first like two or three months of working here, like I barely knew you, only knew you from the internet. Really. Someone at lunch asked you like what your bucket list items were. Yeah. The first one you whipped that.

Like, like, turn it. No hesitation, you're like, I want to see a tornado. Yeah. I remember being like, what? Interesting. Yeah, well, I've always wanted to observe a bunch of natural phenomena, and I've always been interested in natural phenomena, including weather. And every time we get a big hurricane or a crazy low pressure system or even wild thunderstorms or whatever,

that is fun for me. I love lightning and thunder. I love that. So, yeah, naturally I would like to see. But the tornado thing was specific, though, because I worked at the Liberty Science Center, and I was in this little exhibit a lot, which was basically a 360 set of displays, and you step into them, and it would play a video of a tornado coming down a path at you, an actual video of a tornado passing over the top of you, because somebody managed to go get a probe with a bunch of, it was like a cone with a bunch of cameras in it that they put in the path of the tornado and drove away. Yeah, they made a movie about it, called Twister. You didn't see it? About the probe? No, I'm joking.

I mean, it was super cool to watch. And the video even starts with the guy, like, putting you on the ground and driving away. And then the tornado goes over the top. And I was like, that is crazy. And I learned way too much about tornadoes. And I'm like, this is the craziest information anyone's ever seen. How does this exist on Earth? I got to see this.

It's crazy that it's real. We should take a field trip to go see a tornado. I've looked into this. It really want to do that. It's hard. It's hard to, like, coordinate safely. It's not like a safari where you just go, oh, there's one that's been sitting there for a couple days. It's like very sporadic.

A few days ago I was walking around in Bushwick and I saw a trash tornado. That happens sometimes. Yeah. That's a very east. It's just a trash tornado. Yeah. That was awesome. Anyway, I like weather.

I've always liked weather, but maybe more than the average person. Are you still using Acme? Not as much as Carrots still. Because I found out new features of Acme that I want to try, but it's $25 a year, which is like a lot. But the radar part of Acme is actually pretty. interesting. Yeah. Apparently they have a

ways-like feature where you can report you can report hyperlocal weather. Yeah, but you can also report rainbows. If enough people report a rainbow in your

neighborhood, then you get a notification. And now they also will alert you if the sunset's going to be sick. That's cool. And I'm like, Earth is sick.

I know. I know. Being outside. I'm in the middle of Project Calmerian. I'm just keep thinking about it. You're in the middle of

the book, sorry. Yes. Oh, wait. Yeah. You're reading? It's an audiobook. I say reading, though, because I don't like to say. I'm listening.

Yeah. That counts. Yeah. I'm listening to it. Especially this book, the audio book is crazy. The audio book's good. It's so good. It's good.

Anyway, it just makes me appreciate Earth a lot and it has all kinds of crazy stuff everywhere. Cool. So, pretty cool. Yeah. Shout to the weather. You know, I used to not give a rat's ass about the weather. Because you lived in California. Yeah.

In San Francisco. It's the same every day. 65 and sunny. Why would you? care about the weather. You don't even have to check it. We just vibe. No, but yeah, I remember in 2020, when I started to weirdly, it's like it's kind of like when you become a birder, you know, it's not like, it's not if you become a birder, it's

when you become a birder. It's the same with weather, I think, because I remember waking up one day and just asking my router, what's the weather like today? And I remember that That was a really weird experience. You asked your router? Yeah. What does that mean? I asked my Google Nest what the mother was. Oh, because it has an assistant built.

My Nest router. Yeah, has a built-in Google assistant speaker. That's hilarious. I'm so sorry. Speaking of this, you might already know this. So like the Nest thermostat that's on the wall. I was at an Airbnb last weekend. And we were trying to get music to come out.

All the TVs had like these like big surround sound bar systems. We were trying to figure out. how to get music to come out of there via casting. Does it have speakers, the nest armistadt? Well, so we were like, we found a device called a kitchen, or it was called living room, and we were like, oh, that must be the living room TV. And so we like hit cast and we hear music coming out of the bedroom where there is a TV. So we're like, oh, we must have actually like cast in Spotify.

And we go in and I realize it's coming out of the next pernestack. Did that sound like a bee's asshole? Because it was terrible. We were all just like, these things are Bluetooth speakers too. Well, Wi-Fi speakers. Wow. But the Internet of Things is truly a utopia. It really came out the way that they pitched it.

Next question comes from at the month July. They want to know, what is something you miss about being a smaller channel? And what is something you are happy the channel grew out of? That's good. That's a good question. Is it for waveform or for? I think it applies to a lot. Lots of different things.

We can probably all answer. I'm going to answer for Marquez. He misses not having us around because we just annoy him all day. No. He loves us. No, I think. You love us, don't you, Marcus? You love crappy patties.

Don't you? You know, the thing that came to mind when you read that about being a smaller channel is it's both the upside and the downside at the same time. So I watch a lot of YouTube. and a lot of tech YouTube in the process. And so I see lots of great tech videos that are inspiring. I see lots of pretty mid-tech videos. And I see lots of low-effort tech videos, fine. And when I'm a smaller channel and I put out a tech video that has maybe a little bit of shortcomings

or I missed something or there's a little bit of, oh, we could have done that better. It's just one of the tech videos. Yeah. But as a big channel, maybe just as this channel, when we put out of, video where we we kind of like crunched at the last minute or we were on to the next one and something got missed or whatever there is an ecosystem of criticism yeah that echoes for days and weeks on that one issue yeah speculating on way more malice and and negative intent uh than just oh i was an idiot and i forgot something and so i do miss the smaller channel days where

where it was like you could just toil away and get better on camera over and over until you're just good at it. But on the other side of it, it's actually a good thing that we're under such a big microscope because we have such a big platform, obviously. But then also it makes us better even faster.

Like we have to do the best possible work. It's an extra pressure. We've described it as the publish button feeling heavier. But yeah, there's two sides of that coin. So I remember the days of being a smaller YouTuber and making like a video every other day. Yeah. And if you asked me about the video I made like earlier that week, I'd be like, oh, yeah, I just made a video.

I don't know. Yeah. I didn't really think too hard about it. That doesn't happen anymore. Yeah. It's interesting. When you're smaller, people are nicer. That's another thing because people want to root for the underdog, right?

So if you're like a growing channel, people are like impressed for, oh, I'm surprised that a channel of your side, like that your channel doesn't have more subscribers. Like, there's very nice about it. But then when you get bigger and bigger, I think people are sort of just more critical and they're just like meaner because it's, it's, it's, it's, you know, it. It feels less bad to be mean to a bigger. It's punching up. It's punching up. You can only be overrated. Yeah.

You can never again be. Like, just like when you're young, you're like, wow, you're so young. You're so smart for your age. Smart for your age or whatever. And then you get older and they're like, yeah. Yeah. No. Yeah.

I know. People for years were always telling me like, oh, you're so introspective for your age. I'm like, when will that stop? At a certain point, I'll be 40. And then you're going to be like, wow, you're so introspect. And I'm like, no, I'm an old man, bro. Yeah. An old man.

Do you guys miss anything about the old days of the Wayform podcast? Oh. I feel like I never had that experience with Wayform podcast in particular, because from day one of the video launching, it was like the most subscribed channel I've ever been a part of. So it was like from zero to 100 real quick. But I do miss making videos. So I remember making videos all the time in my bedroom doing a bunch of reviews. I made a video in your bedroom. Yeah, you did make a video on my bedroom.

Yeah. And it was... In Oregon. Yeah. When I lived in... A tech video. Yeah. I was an...

Yeah. I didn't say that. No, it was a tech video. Yeah. Jesus. But we were in Vision Pro, so it was okay. We were in Vision Pro, so it was fine. But yeah, it was like, it was more so that up-and-coming part of it was fun.

And I feel like now this is more of a very established. We have a flow. We are more professional in this sense. But I think it also reflects just like where I am in life in my age. So I'm, like, riding. this because it feels right if I was like still doing what I was doing back then I don't know if I'd have the energy for it right right yeah I'm an old tired man now so the up and coming thing is just a special like grinding phase that can last a short time or a long time but it is it is very unique

and you never get that again after you've done it I guess some people are like serial entrepreneurs and they kind of like do that all the time but it is kind of in in YouTube land anyway you kind of just get it once. Yeah. When we were both learning, I remember you, your motto was like, try to make every video better than the last. Yes. The way I got better was I did, every single time I make a video, I want to try a new

technique. So whether it's like a new editing technique that I need to learn by watching videos on YouTube about or a new like shooting technique or a new way of describing something, like you sort of like grow our repertoire over time. And that repetition is like so good and so important. and eventually, you know, the curve is like this, but then it eventually kind of like caps out a lot. And then every time you're doing something new,

it's like this much more. Nowadays, it feels like we can never do anything without a plan. And like a, it's almost, I feel like this happens in tech companies. Like you need a multi-stage rollout, like plan for like how to do something. Like when they were making the iPhone air, they were like, well, we're going to have an air too. And then the next thing or whatever. For us, it's like, if we're going to try something new in videos, it's like, well, Are we going to do that forever?

Forever? Or are we just going to try it once for fun? And we, I still like doing the random things. We just try for fun once in a while. Something I missed about early waveform, though, is like a lot of the experimentation that we were doing at the time. Just like random weird, like long-form episodes

and random weird like special episodes. Random Q&A's just in the middle of, yeah. Random stuff. Yeah. So, you know, it's possible to bring that back. But people do get into a flow about the kind of show that they expect every Friday.

So they can do their dishes, you know. Fishes are important. The dishes would never get done if we didn't do this. Nah. Yeah. A brar asks, what is a video or a video idea that you were really invested in and wanted to make but never did? I have one. Right when ChatGPT came out, I went down this insane rabbit hole of like what is a large language model, how to.

as a transformer work. And then I also went down this like really philosophical rabbit hole about what does it mean to be alive? And I wrote this like, Adam remembers this because we were on a run together and I was like venting to him about this. And I went down this really deep philosophical rabbit hole about like Socrates's like five steps of living like consciousness. Oh shit. Yeah. And then eventually. All right to him like,

I don't know, yeah, and eventually I just was like, hmm, none of that matters. Yeah. It was interesting. I was like caring so much about it

and then at one point I just hit this wall and I was like, why are we caring about if the computer should have rights? I feel like that's not something we should worry about. I don't think we need to. Because that was like,

kind of part of the video was like, will there reach a point in which the AI need to have rights? and then I eventually was like maybe not and that's okay and I wrote like three quarters of the video and then I was just like

I've done that's kind of pointless yeah I've done really deep rabbit hole stuff where I'm like what's the point here also when you said the AI stuff I mean we have there's a lot of videos that are kind of just on the back burner like in the back of my head that we just haven't quite

figured out a reason or a way to do one of them is you know how we did like Google Assistant versus Siri versus Alexa versus whatever Bixby. Yeah. I was thinking we should, you know, in this height of, everyone's talking about all these AI models, let's do Gemini versus ChatGPT versus, and every time I think I should do that

video, I look at how fast they're changing. And I'm like, there's no way to do this video. And even if I do thoroughly cover of 45 minutes of all the things they're capable of, literally the next week, it would be like, now it can do better code. Now it can do this. Now it can do that. It's like, well, I guess I can. While we were recording this podcast, Opus 4.7 just dropped.

Yeah, and I'm like, all right, I guess I'm not going to do that. Yeah, it did. Are you serious? I'm serious. See? It's like we could publish the video today and it would be wrong. So yeah, that's a tough one. Exactly.

Yeah. Trivia. Wow. Y'all really came through. Trivia questions. That's hilarious. We didn't even ask for trivia questions. They just decided to give us trivia.

Yeah. Wow. Guys, this question is from Sasha, who had, I just chat. Sasha gave us a lot of questions. One of them I just thought, I'm not going to ask because there's no what you guys would know. But apparently the German keyboard layout is like different and has lots of weird shortcuts. Yeah, it's annoying. The L is like at the bottom instead of on the left.

Yeah. It's so annoying. Thank you for blessing me with that info. Sorry on the right, yeah. The question we do want to ask is a classic Price is right rules question, which is how many emojis are there in the Apple keyboard? Oh. Oh. I kind of think I might.

In the Apple keyboard. Price is right? Price is right. Okay. Okay, that's good. And it's like the current number because they, you know, add some of it. Yeah, we're going to double trial. iOS 26.4 or whatever.

They only add like six a year, though. Wait, how do you have a point four of an emoji? No, iOS 26.4 got some emojis. I'm joking. They had like six. Up to date numbers. I'm just joking. All right.

Amogy consortium. We'll think about that. We'll be right back. The ride that steals the spotlight every time it hits the road. That's the Volkswagen TIG one. It's sleek exterior makes a first impression you can. and ignore. Step inside to find available full leather seats and wood accents. Under the hood, the available 201 turbocharged horse power engine gives it a fun to drive edge. The refined Tiguan,

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Question number one comes from Bongus. He wrote Bongus question. Question number two comes from Tim. Tim wrote, it hurts a little when I pee, which is not a question, but I wanted to let you know anyway. I get that. Oliver

asked, what is the best Taco Bell item? I like anything with the Doritos Locos shell. That's kind of my answer. She's if yes potatoes. David? I don't go that often, but the Crunchy at Supreme is... Classic? Yeah, pretty classic. You don't really like Taco Bell.

I haven't gotten a long time, but yeah, it's good. Same. Anonymous says, no question, just love, heart emoji. Appreciate you. Are they going to hack us? Anonymous says, yeah. Harvey asks, Ellis, why are you so funny? Born this way. Nice. Taco Bell's Chimmy Chungis asks, when is DJ Cafe 84 coming back? DJ Cafe 84 is a name that I DJed with in college.

all of three times. I don't know how you know that. That's crazy. It was anonymous. That is an arduar? That's like the level of this. Still keep me nameless, please. Asked, is Ellis real or is he actually Adams ventriloquist puppy?

Interesting. Very true. Brandon asked, how many total responses to this survey? Like 1,600, I want to say. Maybe even more. We've only answered 10 questions. Thank you, guys. for coming out in mass

for this, yeah, like 16-17-ish hundred. 1-6-66. Good year. Craig Hyundai asks. Oh, no. That's probably a war. Craig Hyundai, which I can only assume. Is that like John photography?

Yeah, it's like John Photography. I like what you're doing with cars, man. Craig Hyundai, killing it. Top three Chrome extensions. I'm going to sit out from this one because I only use one. it's clot I should look at what I'm used.

Yeah, okay. Okay, I know I really like what font is a great Chrome extension. Oh, that one is good. You can highlight anything on any page and it tells you what the font is.

Amazing. U-block origin is classic. Send a Kindle for Google Chrome. Good. Do you have a Kindle? I have the Kindle app. Yeah. That's three.

Hide shorts for YouTube is good. Yeah. Yeah. I only have the Amazon Price Tracker one and Google Docs offline. That's it. Interesting. This one comes from Cat and Jazz. And it's just an interesting question.

What is everyone's favorite sound made by a piece of tech that is not produced by the speaker? So, for example, a hinge closing, a certain brand mouse click, lens attaching to a camera, things like that. Whoa. That's so good. That is so good. Really good. Okay, I had a couple things pop into my head. I want to pick a best, but there's some really good ones.

David, you'll agree with this one. Hossoblad lens clicking on the body. That was mine! That's a nice... I wish I had it right. I could put it right in front of the mic and you could hear it. That is a prima funk sound. Yeah.

The leaf shutter as well. But I also think of like a really nicely sealed... Like the MacBook closing? It's pretty good. Settle. Yeah, decent. There are definitely multiple devices. that I think are generally bad devices,

but have such good, like, clamp feeling or, like, when you close them, it's such a satisfying, like, clomp, that I keep using it. Just because it's satisfying. Yeah. Yeah. Multiple foldable phones are like that,

where, like, the action force of closing it is just very satisfying. The One Plus Open has a really nice. Um, sound. Okay. my Hossabud Flex tight drum scanner, virtual drum scanner, when I scan with it,

it goes, and it goes, and it goes, sounds like it's struggling for the first half. And it does that for... Yeah, it does that for 15 minutes. So I like the last sound. It's nice.

I'm trying to remind myself with these. This is such a good question. Yeah. But there, There are many. There are quite a few. I definitely thought of first the hassleblad leaf shutter

from the phones even. Like not even the camera. It's just like the phone that have the partnership and press the orange button and you get the leaf shutter sound. That's the speaker. Oh, you're right, you're right.

I'm thinking the actual leaf shutter. You got to experience the Pentax 6-7. It's this old, the Pentax 6-7 is this old medium format film camera and the shutter on that is insane. It's like you're shooting a bazooka.

Andrew's going to have some keyboard suggestions. Oh, yeah. God, yeah. I don't know if it's like a favorite all-time, but we recently, for the avid heads, we just got an avid S-1 in our audio room, which is a like Pro Tools controller with flying faders. And so when you load up a layout or a preset,

all of the faders like jump the correct point, and it sounds kind of like this. Ooh. I don't know if it's like a nice sound, but I just get really excited watching the faders go like, you know what that reminds me of, is the Logitech MX Master when you switch it into

like free flow mode versus like the clicky mode it's like yeah this is an ESMR episode I just thought also in the car world there's so many of these certain switches and cars are really good but the door closed sound on some of these cars

the German cars oh my God the perfect seal wow really good question that was a great question oh also my water bottle makes this sound yeah that's sick we're gonna get one of those.

That's right. MKBHU.com. Love it. This question comes of Oh, Helvia, which is, what is the hardest part about staying unbiased on waveform?

Hardest part? The hardest part is just getting everything to actually correct. But that's, the unbiased part is easy, I think. Yeah. I feel like sometimes

I try to, if I know I'm like dunking, like making a lot of jokes, because it's, I feel like it's all jokes. You know what I mean? If I'm making a lot of jokes about a product,

I'll like try to be like, well, here's something nice about it to balance it out a little bit. but I don't know. I think, I don't know. Yeah, I guess you guys right. Like, it's not hard.

I do have a thing now where I, this came from making a product. So we made panels. And there was a good week where everyone on the internet was relentlessly dunking on it. And that gave me a good window into what it's like when everyone's relentlessly stunking on your thing. And 75% of it was just wrong. And it was weird because people would pile on repeating the wrong thing. And it wouldn't make sense for me to pop out and be like, hey, here, this is wrong.

Because we knew that so many other things were wrong. It wouldn't make sense for me to defend certain things and leave other things. So I just kind of let it all happen. And so now when we go in to criticize something, I have this extra lens of like, we need to make sure we're right about the things we're criticizing because if we're just repeating something that someone else repeated wrong, then that makes us look worse, especially to the person who made the product. And we might meet that person, we might know that person, we might lose respect from people in the industry who see us repeating the wrong thing.

So I want to make sure every time when it's correct or when it's incorrect, we're at least saying the correct thing, like the right thing, the accurate thing. Yeah. Because I've seen what it looks like when they don't. I think it's valuable to get context too. Like most people are like, how could they have let this slip through the cracks? And it's like a lot of the time they know that a thing is like that in a product, right? And usually they have a reason for doing it.

Now, that reason could be valid or less valid. You could be like a regular person doesn't use this thing this way. But usually there's a reason why they made a thing a certain way. Sometimes there is no reason. Yeah. Sometimes the volume of the Subaru is full screen. No reason. Well, there's a reason.

I mean, someone made that decision. Someone did make that decision. And we can ridicule that. But we should think long and hard about why they made that decision. And I go, okay, yeah, that was dumb. dumb. Yeah, which is fine. They can be wrong. Yes. It's like Samsung making the part of the screen, the screen, like a screen protector, but it's actually the screen. But, you know, we do criticize products all the time, and we always have to remember that there's nobody who knows

these products better than the people who make them. Yeah. Because they know what it could be capable of, what it, what, you know, they, they know where they stopped in development, where it could have done something else, and it didn't. They know exactly where its boundaries are, what its limitations are and they strategically thought of ways to minimize cost and what boundaries they wanted to hit all these things that we find out by using it. But that, that I'm always conscious of that relationship because when we make a product and we know things about it that other people don't know and then they're just spewing wrong things, I'm like, oh, yeah. Damn. And that's the hard thing about the internet too is that everyone sees a different timeline. So the things that you could correct somebody

about something and most of the people will not see your correction. We'll just keep repeating the incorrect, you know, statement. So it's tough. I mean, first I got to say, like, the concept of bias is not, like, it's impossible to not to be biased. Like, it's literally impossible. You know, you can go, you can just deliver facts, sure. But almost every way that you deliver the fact, if you rearrange the sentence in a different

way, it's got a different connotation. It's going to skew things a little bit differently. Everyone has their personal opinions about whether it's anthroposy, versus Open AI, whether it's, you know, like every single thing, your personal opinion, as hard as you try to not let it influence your reporting, will in some way influence your reporting. That's just a fact. So that's what you sign up for as a reader. Yeah. When it's, or a viewer, like when I'm watching this person's review, what I'm signing up for is their take on this thing.

Right. Because if you just want a spec sheet, you can read a spec sheet, but that's, I think, ultimately what people are here for is they trust our take on things. Yeah. The bias that people generally talk about is like, is someone getting like paid to say a certain thing. Like that's a true, that's like an obvious bias. Yeah. But, um, yeah. Remodum too asked, if you could pick an old phone design and put modern cameras and software on it, what would it be?

And why? There's a correct answer. There's a couple correct answers, but there's. You're going to say Nexus 6P? No. I think you guys are glazing that phone for, for no reason. What? Why are you so?

No. Nexus 6P is nice, but like, it's iconic. That's not the correct answer. It's iconic. The 6P? Yes. The Huawei with the visor at the top? Yes.

Why that one? It was metal. It was beautiful. It had a great screen. It didn't rock on the table. The visor was awesome. Okay, but if you just want a nice metal, well-built phone with new specs, do the HTC1. Yeah, but that one had huge bezels.

Yeah, because it had boom sound speakers. Yeah, it had a kickstand. Who needs speakers? It had incredible speakers. I will say the HGC Thunder Bowl. with the kickstand was pretty thick but it was also my first kickstand was nice yeah the kickstand was hot a phone

the thunderbolt but actually lasting all day on a charge would be nice yeah the thunderbolt burned me I had to return it because it burned in my hand damn and I got a Samsung droid charge instead which was worse by a factor of like 30 it's funny because these phones all have such like electric names and then have horrible batteries

yeah I think the correct answer is the Samsung Galaxy Nexus the correct answer no it's not no what that phone That, no. That OLED. No. That slightly curved screen.

That perfect size. Nata. It was made a plastic. Yeah, but if I had the recharge, popped the battery out the back and swap a new one in, that was nice. Keep that. Yeah, I guess.

I mean, yeah, bring that back. Yeah. The real correct answer, guys, is the Samsung Exclaim M550. You're going to make me Google this? It's a feature phone. Oh, I'm not going to Google this. It's a feature phone and has a slide-out numpad.

Exclamation. Separate slide-out keyboard. So what are you modernizing? The camera? And the battery? Yeah, and get Google Maps and email. Huh. That's all you need.

Well, and the antennas, because I don't think it had anything past 3G in it. T-Mobile G-1 or the sidekick. Give me one of those sidekick. This is... Y'all like the physical keyboard. I would love a sidekick. Well, they both had physical keyboard.

Oh, the digital. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The track ball is nice. The track ball is nice. Wait, what was the, so the Galaxy Nexus one had the trackball, but what, oh, the Nexus one had the track ball. That's a good one. That was the first Android phone. Wait, well, the G1.

The G1. The G1. The keyboard, but then the, sorry, not Nexus. But then the Nexus one had the RGB lit track ball. That with today's text would be pretty sick. That would be nice. Here's a question for Andrew. Why do you look at the ceiling when you're speaking?

Well, um, I'm looking for the answer. I just thought of a really sassy answer to the last question. What? The iPhone air. Oh. Give me the iPhone air, but with modern internals. That's so good. Yeah.

If they put silicon carbon in that thing. Yeah, give me like two good cameras, silicon carbon, like real speakers. Telephoto. Yeah, man. Oons. Oons asked, is there a company like Pantone but for sounds? Which is, whoa. That would be a frequency response church?

No. Oh, look it. It's like, ooh. Uber for sound. There are various sound standards, organizations that set standards for various things. The short answer is kind of... THX. Yeah, THX would be an example of one of these companies.

Dolby would be another example of one of these companies. And what they're doing is they're saying, if you deliver your audio meeting these specs, it will sound like this on these systems. So kind of. All right. This question comes from Owen. If you couldn't talk about tech on the podcast, what would it be about? I think that's pretty clear.

This would be an NBA podcast. What would I do? We would explain everything to you in technical component. It would actually be really fun. The token dumb guy? No, we're not because... Get out of here. Now, Andrew wouldn't know what to do either, right?

Andrew and I would start our own podcast. and you guys could have your basketball podcast. Tech is kind of everything, though. Tech is everything. Like if you say photography, it's just tech still. I know. It's, even policy is tech.

I know, it's crazy. It's like, if you say cars, it's kind of. When we used to cover tech, it used to be just for the nerds and, like, geeks. And then eventually it just bled into everything. And the tech companies are everything now because everything is a tech company. Yeah.

Yeah. Even all birds. Even all. That's not going to get all of any time. Jeep, baby. This one comes from AJ. Who do the waveform podcast hosts listen to as their waveforms podcast? Oh, wow.

I'm kind of embarrassed. Tech? Am I allowed to say? I don't really know if I listen. They specifically asked about tech, but I figured it doesn't have to be about tech if you listen to something else. I don't know what you guys listen to a lot of podcasts. I don't. I read the verge.

I really like. Yeah. I'll usually go through like tech meme once a day and see what's going on. Who are some like tech writers I really like? I really like, um, I think Hard Fork is like one of the best shows right now. Yeah, they're really good.

I know. There's a substack by a guy named Matt Stoller called Big. That's about monopolies. And so it ends up covering like he covered all the antitrust stuff. Is it a limited series? It's a substack. Oh. Yeah.

It's a word. Is it a limited series? infinite Matt Stoller will never stop I really like that I like the American prospect prospectorg I will say

I dis I hate even I hate even okay I like listening to pivot I disagree with both Kara and Scott a lot however

when Scott is gone I really dislike the episodes so there's something about their chemistry. Like a lot of people say they listen to waveform because of our chemistry, right? Because we're all in love with each other. It's electric. It's electric. It's electric. Anyway,

and they just have really good chemistry. And it's just really fun to listen to people who are enthusiastic with good chemistry who are also pretty smart in a number of categories, even if they're wrong a lot like us. I think that show also is good to listen to for us because we don't necessarily need other people's opinions on like new devices.

Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, I love hearing other people's opinions, but generally we form our own opinions. Yeah. But for things like big tech policy news. Policy, business. Hard Fork generally has like a really large part of their podcast dedicated to those topics. Hard Fork is just great in general. Yeah.

Yeah. They also have very good banter. Yeah, holy smokes. Sorry. Trivia time. Trivia, dude. Question number one. Coming to us from Mojave.

Mojave. What was the last iPad to ship with iOS? Oh, last to ship with iOS? Yes. Shoot. Correct. I'm just going to leave it. See what happens?

Like specific model? Shit. Indeed. The W.H. 1000X. M5 iPad. I don't even think I'm right. The iPad Air. Gen 6. What you got?

Okay, well, we're both wrong. I said iPad Air 3. What? What? Oh, I was right. That's crazy. The piss yellow one? Oh, I actually got it.

Wow. Other pissed device. Wow. Yeah. I wrote iPad Pro Gen 1. Yeah. Because remember last iPad to have iOS, and I was thinking first iPad to have iPad OS. Yeah, but that's not the same thing.

Wow, I'm shocked I got that right. Well, I'm also shocked. You got that right. Stab in the dark. Broken Clock is right twice a day, Fakes. Question two is, closest to that going over. How many emojis are there in? the Apple keyboard.

I'm going to write the number that I, that pop into my head. And cross my fingers. Cross my fingers, hope to die. I think I'm wrong. But last time I was wrong. Yeah, man. I think I'm, you might be right twice a day. I think I'm way too low.

Remember I said, wow, when I saw the answer many years ago. Oh yeah, you're right to. I have 6.4.7. And David? 3,100. David, the point is yours. There, I'm... Is it 3,247 or something?

I'm finding a few different numbers, and I think it's because some of them are counting all the different, like, skin tones and stuff as different... Oh, yeah. But it seems like the general consensus is there is about 3,700. Nice. 3,700 emojis? Yep. Yes.

That number feels high. It does. Yeah. It does, but I also saw that number recently, and I was like, hmm, crazy. Well, we learned something new. David got another point. He really didn't need it.

You got another point, too. I got a point. Basically nothing happened, except Andrew fell below in the rankings. Yeah, I desperately needed that. Do you think Andrew will name his new son emoji? I would. I don't know. We'll have to ask him.

We'll see. Yeah. Anyway, thank you so much for all the questions. It's fun when we kind of get to go off the rails on our not-so-regularly-programming. our next episode we will be back on our regularly scheduled programming and so for that we will see you soon face wait for us produced i adam oliana and elis froven we are produced we are we are part of the vox media podcast network and our intro outro music is by vizel there were still woolly mammoths alive when the pyramids were built rosin lasagna medium power 15 minutes sounds like ojo time let's play feel the fun

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