Your 22 Questions for Waveform Answered!

When you run a business, you want the right tools. Enter Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world, from household names to brands just getting started. With hundreds of ready-to-use templates, Shopify helps you build a beautiful online store to match your brand's style. So if you're ready to sell, you're ready for Shopify. Turn your big business idea into... with Shopify on your side. Sign up for your one euro per month trial and start selling today at Shopify.nl. Go to Shopify.nl. That's Shopify.nl. Power your business with the platform trusted by millions today. Heinz is inseparable from both football and the city of Pittsburgh. It's an iconic staple that simply can't be replaced. And just like football fandom, Heinz is fueled by a kind of irrational love, the same unwavering loyalty Heinz fans have for the brand. So the next time you want to gather with friends to talk about how this is the year for your team, remember to add Heinz to the menu. It has to be Heinz. Stock up on Heinz. Available at retailers nationwide. 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? No, the surface. Hotter than the surface of the sun. Yeah, I can feel the sun. What about the core of the sun? I thought 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! Ah! 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 1600 questions from you guys we're gonna answer all of them we're not gonna answer all of them it was so many questions we picked our favorite ones we're gonna 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 so shout out what do you guys think about zen browser i think it's pretty solid and it needs a 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 but i don't i'm gonna give it i have not given it a shot yet mostly because everyone keeps telling me to and i just don't want to do what they tell me as uh you know rage against the machine would say let's just sing to work two two really good references in the first like two minutes of this podcast but 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 going to spit them off. The first one is from Constantine. It's a question for David, specifically. David, the question is, kann David das lesen? Yeah. What language? It's German. Can David understand this? Oh. Nice, David. How much did you practice pronunciating that? None. That was off the dome, baby. Wow. I also speak German. I speak any. Sprechen Sie Deutsch over here. I don't know how to say over here. I actually don't know how to say anything other than Sprechen Sie Deutsch. It's been ein Berliner. It's Portahia. 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... Haus. I think I made this joke on the podcast. It's hause. It's not hause. It's the same thing. It's not hause. It's hause. 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 Alza. Kick crush. Play it. Play it. House. She wasn't as angry. Not very angry there. All right. That's hilarious. Well, okay. Next question. This one comes from Sha. For ad breaks, do you guys take actual breaks, or is that just a post-production thing? Sometimes we've got to pee. We do take real breaks, yeah. Stretch our legs a little bit. Stretch our brains. I mean, sometimes the breaks 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 of minutes. Which we might need to do today. It's 87. Yeah, fun fact. 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 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 record, and then we'd turn it off and we'd 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. 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. I mean, there's a lot of times David and I are just wearing full winter jackets in here, and people are like, why? It's like, it's freezing. I 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. That's not ready. It's been working out. Yeah. All right. This question got asked another dozens of times. It's the classic, why do 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 was in the Rodecaster when we were out of inputs. And so why would we do anything about it? Now we have the Tascam Sonic View 16, which is just, you know, it has inputs falling out of its pockets. We could each have two mics. But it's just kind of part of the bit now. It feels like the box of Cheerios. Yeah, exactly. This was a conscious effort when we got this machine. We were looking at each other like, okay, do you want to each have a separate mic now? And we paused for a second and we're like, nah. Yeah. Also, like, it is the kind of thing where it's like this show works for us as like a business because it's so efficient. We have such a system for me. 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 an episode telling why would we screw engagement? Yeah. Also, the live show that you had. The sexual tension of Adam and I's heads constantly being so close together. Like this is gold. If you had Vision Pros on it would 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 nod song all right next question comes to us from claire cole is david's fetiver's corner dead um i can bring it back figuratively is it the corner that's dead or the fetiver's that's dead um i mean corner the fetiver's is definitely no no no no welcome to david's fediverse welcome to david's fediverse we're back uh give us a quick update meta has probably given up on it because mark zuckerberg sucks yeah uh 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 the majority of the fediverse is now made up of blue sky and rss because threads but you can still federate in threads yeah but they actively try to make you not like i get a notification on my on my threads all the time that's like you've been federated for 30 days are you still 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. 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 bullsh**. Adam, Adam... 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 asked that question, I'm bringing it back. Every week, we're going to have a lame update. No, no, no. Next question. Next question. Steve, you done? All right, guys, this one's coming to you. Okay. Because we frequently describe things that happen in basketball in tech terms. However, Danny would really like you to explain the vertical tab situation in basketball terms. The vertical tab situation. Uh, it's Steph Curry. 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 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 the game has moved on. Even Andre Drummond shoots threes. We were talking about that. 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 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 them at about 36% clip. so you know Andre Drummond has a three point in his back he made a two last night now is it 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 uh is a 12 year NBA veteran in his mid mid 30s yeah approaching seven feet tall if not over yep um no Andre Drummond is in the corner he gets passed a ball and the defense goes he's not gonna make that yeah and then he does baby I love that wait so he's shooting 36 percent and averaging 1.3 three-point attempts 1.4 per game yeah so he makes a three-pointer once every three games yes like on fire remember it in for the past like 12 I forget if it's 12 or 14 that's the vertical He averaged one per season. Not one made. 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. Don't talk about Andre Drummond. He's slandering vertical tabs by doing this. I don't even know what team he's on. Slandering vertical tabs right now. It's because he's 7 feet tall, so it's like anything vertical is just freaking out. Approaching 7 feet tall. I think he's 7 feet. Yeah, Andre Drummond has to be. Is he approaching or is 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 did. Okay, I just want to say underdominous 6'11". I think approaching seven feet is the perfect way to describe that. But he's not still growing. All right, well. What? I think 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 hdc droid uh does like a computer count what what computer do you remember i it was a custom built computer my friends in first grade my friend's dad built computers for um movie studios as 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 gonna try that variable again at that age it worked the first one i heavily modified was definitely my first uh smartphone for sure yeah i had my droid running custom roms custom kernels overclocked i had i probably flashed a new rom every other day i was gonna say it worked every other day i did the nightly's on cyanogen mod yeah and it's crazy because that 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 log into everything again it was such a i don't know what the hell i was thinking those are 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 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 uh with like toper switches or something and i painted it with spray paint horrible idea the texture was like tacky like it would lightly sticky like you like put You had a thumbnail in it. It would make an indent. Yeah. Yeah, it was terrible. It was stupid. It was like neon blue that I painted in purple. I modded a lot of Minecraft stuff and did a bunch of weird stuff as a kid. But the big breakthrough moment for me was my, at some point in college, getting 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 soldered the two connections together. And then it worked. And I was like, oh my God. 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 soldering. 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 apart. 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 electrocute 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. Yes. And if you, if you, I mean, I don't want to, nevermind. Just don't do it. Just don't do it. And if you're going 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 like work through that part of the process. uh 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 uh 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 podcast totally different where a lot of bullet points on here it's perfectly scripted get the bit the really important numbers in but i mean yeah 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 yeah some people can do bullet points some people need to read straight from a script i will say 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. 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 the whole point of scripting for me is to get good at saying a thing I want to say in as few takes as possible efficiently. But it's really just about delivery, I think. Most people when are new to talking to the camera they 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 yeah then that's when people connect with you the most which is not normal and very not normal it's hard it takes a long time i mean marquez has been doing this for how long like the old videos there's probably some times where it's like five to ten takes of a single paragraph. You see the end result. There's a lot more on the other side of that. The next two I'm going to read together because they're different, but both kind of like inside baseball podcast producing questions. Claire's calling me. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Live on the pod. Andrew's having a baby. Water's breaking live! What? Hi. Hey. Whatcha doing? Middle of podcast, but I can leave it. Oh, it's the podcast? today a second one oh sorry is this not a uh come home call no it kind of is oh okay wait put your headphones on real quick cool um thank you all i'm going to go have a son enjoy the rest of the pod that's crazy like you could sometimes like someone leaves the 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 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 uh 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 that only if andrew comes back to this podcast and is a father of two wouldn 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 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 yeah do we want to do the inside baseball podcast question still sure all right sweet uh 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 what says not sean underscore paul on x excuse me jesus twitter sean underscore paul on twitter nice asks what does being part of the vox media podcast network actually entail that's a 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 decent ish 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 no 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 gonna watch a youtube video yeah and also we collectively don't trust automatically publishing on youtube yeah so we manually 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. Marquez, I think I know what you would probably answer this question as. I would love to hear. There's 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 it 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? $1,800. So if you weren't around for that, what Ellis 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 and 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 peel 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 uh we didn't really know at the time and it wasn't really explained to any of us but was a very delicate layer of the actual display yeah uh so i clear yeah quickly put it back on i published the unboxing and first look still but then uh i started to see other people post on twitter that their displays were breaking theater and so i chimed in and i said i mine is also breaking because of this 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 but that gaskets to it yeah they added a bunch of stuff yeah so that was 1800 phone broken during the review process yeah i actually never reviewed that phone later oh wow really i shipped it back to them they took them all back so yeah that that might be my answer at 1800 bucks 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 uh marquez broke his and and dieter broke his and then i'm editing again and then samsung releases a statement we're uh 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 actually yeah in like different locations and everything yeah yeah uh the most expensive review unit i ever broke was uh the galaxy note 10 it was like completely made of glass and the 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 uh i was sitting at a high top and i can see this guy it like it had this coating on it that made it slippery yeah the note yeah 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 slide across surfaces autonomously yeah it was just slowly kind of moving and i didn't know the world is not level yeah yeah 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 uh 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 a slip and slide i literally the crazy thing i think earlier that day i had tweeted like damn this phone seems like it's gonna 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 is carpeted yeah uh which is nice i don't know what what did i just say a lot of the carpet is carpeted a lot of the yeah a lot of the studio where we shoot is carpeted right uh i've come into the studio and seen like three phones on the floor next to my desk and 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. Grippy 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 digging into if we should make a video on some of that stuff. That 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 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 a ridiculous amount of dollars yeah and then yeah it'll 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. 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, you also have the same question pulled up? Yeah. Yeah. 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 also asked this question. He's to say it's not the same person. Why does Ellis hate frequency response charts so much? 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 bullsh** chart. It doesn't mean anything important. It sounds like a bee's a**hole. Okay, okay, okay. Yeah. Okay, okay. A frequency response chart is an XY. It's a function. I guess it's not technically a function, but it's a curve plotted on an XY 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 knob or a jog wheel? Well, it's loudness, which is very different than volume. 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 dude is that is that satisfactoring adam yeah all right david uh-oh do me a favor think about the the your favorite photograph you've ever taken not not the best but the photograph that you 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 and just like wow i really have come so far in this practice right you have 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 no but red we're thinking about red desaturated red no no but just give me a number what like from one to ten how much red is there 1.2. All right, Marquez, can you describe the picture? I'm seeing it. I'm seeing it 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 gonna 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 compared 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 chart's 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 but but you don't you're usually not doing the point of a photograph is not how much red is it yeah i Your argument is the frequency response is an unimportant factor. I wouldn't say it's necessarily unimportant, but it's leaving out most of the story. Because what does sound need in order to exist? It needs a medium. That's actually a really good point. That's a bigger brain than I was going to say. I was going to say it needs time. 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 it is. Another thing that's missing is, like, this is sort of the idea of, like, 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. You might get a bigger boost at 3K from a sound coming in at minus 10 dB LFS than a sound at minus 20. 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 there's more 3K actually says nothing about how you would perceive these headphones. Says 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 yeah that is like left out of this 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 thing. A lot of people ask, well, Ellis, 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. But 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, 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 i i actually get a lot of flack 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 things like that because i think that works when i'm talking to a regular person more important but 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 uh 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 the way they behave the way they go through gears if they even have gears that like there's so many more things to consider in how they will drive than just 805 horsepower yeah i'd suggest yeah and that's the same it's not too dissimilar to mtf uh modular transfer function charts on lenses which are supposed to yeah they're supposed to measure sharpness from like the center of the lens to the edge of the lens. That's obviously useful for medical purposes if you just want as much sharpness and fine contrast as possible. But the actual human experience of using a lens is not peak sharpness and peak. It's like the experience of the lens is different looks. 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 curve. This is the frequency response curve of our ears, like the most famous frequency response curve in history. And you'll see there's like nine lines because our ears respond to different frequencies at different volumes, just like every transducer. 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 uh there's like the harman-kardon 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 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. Yeah. 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 you have access to and you can try them on and you can 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 the beauty of trying out a bunch of different headphones that's why people fall into these rabbit holes yeah it's 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 yeah it is 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 because that sounded that was uh 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 rk87 cardioid response graph chart rk87 is the name of the capsule it's not These are two different microphones 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 8K or 7K Then there a big bump So judging by this my guess would be the bottom one because there a bump in the 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, like mids of all time. It looks like it. No, it doesn't. Because the reason is, is because the, the, the power of the U87 comes from an extremely limited dynamic range in those mid frequencies. If it, 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's, it doesn't sound flat at all. You can look at this almost completely flat line. It's 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 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 800 horsepower, but you put them on a 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 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 there's a lot to it. There's another 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 the 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 of, yeah, see you. 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. Unreal. I have no idea how we're going to make sure Andrew can get points. Isn't he winning? Yeah, he's winning by... No, I'm winning. Oh. By a lot. Yep. Okay. We have four points. We'll keep track of points. We'll figure it out later. Yeah. 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. Because it's... Yo. I should know this. Okay. So they switched to iPadOS when they added... I'm talking through it out loud. Mojave. Nice. They added widgets. Nice job. To like 17, right? Wait, did you say which iPad? Which iPad? iPad 17. Well, iPadOS 17. What are we on now? So it was iOS 16 and iPadOS 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. I'm Maria Sharapova, and I'm hosting a new podcast called Pretty Tough. Every week, I'm sitting down with trailblazing women at the top of their game to discuss ambition, work ethic, and the ups and downs that come on the path to achieving greatness. We'll dive into their stories and get valuable insights from top executives, actors, entrepreneurs, and other individuals who have inspired me so much in my own journey. Follow Pretty Tough wherever you get your podcasts. From Iran to Venezuela to China, what is driving President Trump's foreign policy? Both Russia and 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. 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 rabbit hole i I fell down the weather content rabbit hole. And I think this was right around like big winter storms. So we're sitting here. We're 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 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 out like like no hesitation you're like I want to see a tornado yeah I remember being like what interesting yeah I've well I've always wanted to observe a bunch of natural phenomena and I've always been interested in natural phenomena including weather yeah 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 move they made a movie about it called twister you didn't see it about the probe no i'm joking i mean it's 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 gotta see this it's crazy that it's real we should take a field trip to go see a tornado i We've looked into this. Really, really want to do that. Maybe a fire tornado. It's hard to 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 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 easy... It's just a trash tornado. It's just trash. 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. Because I found out new features of Acme that I want to try, but it's $25 a year, which is a lot. But the radar part of Acme is actually pretty interesting. Yeah. Apparently, they have a Waze-like feature where you can report... Yes. You can report... Hyperlocal weather. Yeah, but you can also report rainbows. And 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, maybe that's $25. $75. I know. I know. I'm in the middle of Project Calamari and I'm just keeping... You're in the middle of... Wait. The book, sorry. Oh, wait. You're reading? It's an audiobook. I say reading, though, because I don't like to say... I'm listening. That counts. Especially this book, the audiobook is crazy. The audiobook's good. It's so good. Anyway, it just makes me appreciate Earth a lot. And it has all kinds of crazy stuff everywhere. Cool. Very cool. Shout out to the world. 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. 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 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. Wait, wait, wait. You asked your router? Yeah. What does that mean? I asked my Google Nest what the weather was. Oh, because it has an assistant built in it. My Nest router. Yeah, it 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. Uh-huh. I was at an Airbnb last weekend. And we were trying to get music to come out. All the TVs had these 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 thermostat? Well, so we were like, we found a device called kitchen, or it was called living room. And we were like, oh, that must be the living room TV. And so we hit cast, and we hear music coming out of the bedroom where there is a TV. So we're like, oh, we must have accidentally casted Spotify. And we go in, and I realize it's coming out of the next purpose. Did that sound like a bee's asshole? For sure. It was terrible. We were all just like, these things are Bluetooth speakers, too? Little 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? Hmm. That's good. That's a good question. Is it for Waveform or for... I think it applies to 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. Nah. He loves us. No, I think... You love us, don't you, Marquez? You love having us here. You love Krabby Patties, don't you? the thing 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 a 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 uh an ecosystem of criticism yeah that echoes for days and weeks on that one issue yeah uh speculating on way more uh 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 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 the publish button feeling heavier but uh yeah there's two sides to that coin so i 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 earlier that week, I'd be like, oh yeah, I just made a video. I don't know. I didn't really think too hard about it. That doesn't happen anymore. It's interesting. When you're smaller, people are nicer. That's another thing because people want to root for the underdog. If you're a growing channel, people are impressed for, oh, I'm surprised that your channel doesn't have more subscribers. They're 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 meaner because 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 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 introspective. 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 Waveform podcast? Oh. I feel like I never had that experience with Waveform 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 in my bedroom. Yeah. and uh it was in oregon yeah and when i lived in a tech video yeah i was an yeah i didn't say that no it was a tech video um but we were in vision pro so it's okay we were in vision pro so it's fine um 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 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 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 taps 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 fate like plan for like how to do something like when they were making the iphone air they were like well we're gonna have an air two and then the next thing or whatever multi for us it's like if we're gonna try something new in videos it's like well are we gonna do that forever forever are we just gonna try it once for for fun and we we i i still like doing the random things we just try for fun once yeah something i missed about early waveform though is like a lot of the experimentation that we were doing at the time yeah just like random weird like long form episodes and random weird like special episodes and um random q a's just in the middle of random stuff yeah so you know it's possible to bring that back but people do get into a flow of the kind of show that they expect every friday so 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 bra asks what is a video or a video idea that you were really invested in and wanted to 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 does a transformer work? And then I also went down this philosophical rabbit hole about what does it mean to be alive? And I wrote this long... Adam remembers this because we were on a run together and I was venting to him about this. And I went down this really deep philosophical rabbit hole about like Socrates is like five steps of living, like consciousness, consciousness. Yeah. And then eventually him like. Yeah. And eventually I just was like, hmm, none of that matters. Yeah, it was it was it was interesting. I was like caring so much about it. And 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, it'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 uh 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 chat gpt versus and every time i think i should do that video i look at how fast they're changing and i'm like yeah there's no way to do this video and even if i do thoroughly cover uh 45 minutes of all the things they're capable of yeah literally the next week it'll be like now it can do better code now it can do this now it can do that it's like well i guess while we were recording this podcast opus 4.7 just dropped yeah and i'm like all right i guess i'm not gonna do that yeah it did are you serious i'm serious we could publish a 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 uh this question is from sasha um who had i just sat sasha gave us a lot of questions one of them i just thought i'm not gonna ask because there's no way you guys would know but apparently the german keyboard layout is like different and has lots of weird shortcuts i did yeah i think 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 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. Yeah, we're going to double check. iOS 26.4 or whatever. They only add like six a year, though. Wait, how do you have a .4 of an emoji? No, iOS 26.4 got some emojis. I'm joking. So, yeah. They add like six. Up-to-date numbers. Just joking. All right. Emoji Consortium. We'll think about that. We'll be right back. Okay welcome back We going to kick off this third segment of the pod with some rapid questions from you guys I'm bringing my computer closer so I can read rapidly and fire them off. 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 Loco Shell. That's kind of my answer. She's a piece of potatoes. David? I don't go that often, but the Crunchwrap Supreme is... Classic? Yeah, pretty classic. You don't really like Taco Bell. I haven't gone in a long time, but yeah, it's good. 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 chimichungus asks when is dj cafe 84 coming back dj cafe 84 is a name that i dj'd with in college all of three times i don't know how you know that um that's crazy it was anonymous that that is an arduar yeah that's the level of this. Still Keep Me Nameless, please. Asked, is Ellis real or is he actually Adam's ventriloquist puppy? Interesting. Very true. Brandon asked, how many total responses to this survey? Like 1,600, I want to say? Maybe even more? Before I answer 10 questions. Thank you guys for coming out in mass for this. Yeah, like 1,600, 1,600, 1,600. six six um good year craig hyundai asks it's probably a war wait craig hyundai which i can only assume is that like john photography yeah it's like john i like what you're doing with cars man craig hyundai killing it um top three chrome extensions i'm gonna sit out from this one because i only use one and it's cloth I should look at what I'm using. 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. Ublock Origin is classic. Send to Kindle for Google Chrome. Good. Do you have a Kindle? I have a Kindle app. Yeah. Oh, the hide shorts for YouTube is good. I only have the Amazon Price Tracker one and Google Docs offline. That's it. 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. That's 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. Hasselblad lens clicking on the body. That was mine! That's a nice... I wish I could put it right in front of the mic and you could hear it. That is a primo funk sound. Yeah. The leaf shutter as well. But I also think of a really nicely sealed... Like the MacBook clothing? that's pretty good subtle 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 yeah because it's satisfying yeah yeah um multiple foldable phones are like that where like the the action force of closing it is just very satisfying. The OnePlus Open has a really nice... Sound. Okay. My Hasselblad FlexTite drum scanner, virtual drum scanner, when I scan with it, it goes... And it goes... Sounds like it's struggling for the first half. Get off the phone! Yeah, it does that for 15 minutes so i like that i like the last sound it's nice i'm trying to remind myself this is such a good question yeah but there there are many there are quite a few yeah i definitely thought of first the Hasselblad leaf shutter from the phones even like not even the cameras just like the phone that have the partnership oh that's the orange button and you get the leaf okay but you got that's the speaker oh you're right you're right i'm thinking the actual leaf you got to 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. Oh, my God, yeah. I don't know if it's a favorite all-time, but we recently, for the Avid heads, we just got an Avid S1 in our audio room, which is a Pro Tools controller with flying faders. and so when you load up a layout or a preset, all of the faders jump to the correct point and it sounds kind of like this. Ooh. I don't know if it's a nice sound, but I just get really excited watching the faders go like... You know what that reminds me of? It's the Logitech MX Master when you switch it into free flow mode versus the clicky mode. It's like... Yeah. this is an ASMR episode I just thought also in the car world there's so many of these certain switches in 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 yeah really good question great question yeah oh also my water bottle makes this sound yeah that's sick where can I get one of those I'm sorry mkbhc.com love it this question comes from Ohelvia which is what is the hardest part about staying unbiased on waveform hardest part the hardest part is just getting everything factually 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 um if i'm making a lot of jokes about a product i'll like try to be like okay 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 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 dunking 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 are 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, right 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 this 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 yeah 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 that 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 then go, okay, yeah, that was dumb. It's dumb. Yeah, which is fine. They can be wrong. Yes. It's like Samsung making the part of the screen, the inside of the Fold, a screen protector, but it's actually the screen. We do criticize price all the time, and we always have to remember that there is nobody who knows these products better than the people who make them. Yeah. Because they know what it could be capable of, 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 costs and what boundaries they wanted to hit. All these things that we find out by using it. But 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, 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 statement. So, yeah, 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 anthropic 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. 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 someone getting paid to say a certain thing. That's an obvious bias. Ramonim2 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 of correct answers. You're going to say Nexus 6P? No. I think you guys are glazing that phone for no reason. What? Why are you so... No. Nexus 6P is nice, but like... It's iconic. It'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 a table. The visor was awesome. Okay, but if you just want a nice metal, well-built phone with new specs, do the HTC One. Yeah, but that one had huge bezels. because it had boom sound speakers and had a kickstand who needs speakers it had incredible speakers i would say the hcc thunderbolt with the kickstand was pretty sick but it was also my first kickstand was nice yeah the kickstand was 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 electric names and then have horrible batteries. Yeah. Yeah. I think the correct answer is the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. The correct answer. No, it's not. No, what? That phone. No. That OLED. No. That slightly curved screen. Mm-mm. That perfect size. Nada. It was made of plastic. It was made of plastic. Yeah, but it had to pop 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. 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. It has a slide-out numpad and a separate slide-out keyboard. So what are you modernizing? The camera? And the battery? Yeah, and get Google Maps and email. That's all you need. Well, and the antennas, because I don't think it had anything past 3G in it. T-Mobile G1 or the Sidekick? Give me one of those. Yeah, exactly. The G1 or the Sidekick? Y'all like the physical keyboard. I would love a Sidekick. Well, they both had physical keyboard. Oh, the digital. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The trackball is nice. The trackball is nice. Wait, what was the... So the Galaxy Nexus didn't have the trackball, but what... Oh, the Nexus 1 had the trackball. The trackball, yeah. That's a good one. That was the first Android phone. Well, the G1. The G1. The G1. Had the keyboard, but then the... Yeah, sorry, not Nexus. But then the Nexus one had the RGB lit trackball. That with today's tech 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, I'm looking for the answer. I just thought of a really sassy answer to the last question. What? The iPhone Air. 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 two good cameras, silicon carbon, real speakers. Telephoto. Yeah, man. Oons, O-O-N-Z, Oons asked, is there a company like Pantone, but for sounds? Which is, whoa. That would be a frequency response choice. It's like Uber for sound. There are various sound standards, organizations that set standards for various things. the short answer is kind of um 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 kinda 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. That would actually be really fun. The token dumb guy? No, we don't because... Get out of here. 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 that's that's 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 old anytime baby this one comes from aj who do the waveform podcast hosts listen to as their waveform podcast oh wow i'm kind of embarrassed tech am i allowed to i don't really know 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 i don't i i read the verge i really like, I'll usually go through tech meme once a day and see what's going on. Who are some tech writers I really like? I really like I think Hard Fork is one of the best shows right now. They're really good. I know. There's a sub stack by a guy named Matt Stoller called Big that's about monopolies. It ends up covering all the antitrust stuff. Is it a limited series? It's a sub stack. 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. Prospect.org. I will say I dis... 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 uh 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 new devices. Yeah. I love hearing other people's opinions, but generally we form our own opinions. Yeah. But for things like big tech policy, policy, business, hard fork generally has 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. Indeed. The WH-1000X M5 iPad. I don't even think I'm right. The iPad Air Gen 6. What do you got? Okay, well, we're both wrong. Who said iPad Air 3? What? Oh, I was right. That's crazy. The piss yellow one? Oh, I actually got it. Wow. Another piss device. Wow. Yeah. I wrote iPad Pro Gen 1. Yeah. Yeah, because remember, last iPad to have iOS, and I was thinking first iPad to have iPadOS. 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. A broken clock is right twice a day, folks. Question two is, closer to that going over, how many emojis are there in the Apple keyboard? I'm going to write the number that I... that popped into my head. and cross my fingers cross my fingers hope to die i think i'm wrong but last time i thought you're right yeah man i think i'm you might be right twice a day i'm way too low remember i said wow when i saw the answer many years ago oh yeah you're right i'm in read what you got i have six four seven and david 3100 david the point is yours there i'm is it 3247 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 is different but it seems like the general consensus is there is about 3700 nice 3700 emojis yep yes that feels that number feels high it does it does but i also saw that number recently and i was like crazy uh 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 just really needed that yeah 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 scheduled programming our next episode we will be back on our regularly scheduled programming and so for that we will see you soon peace wait for us producer adam oliana and eliz rovin we are produced we are we are part of the vox media podcast network and our intro outro music is by being sil there were still woolly mammoths alive when the pyramids were built