Crutchfield: The Podcast Ep. 19

Hello and welcome everybody to another episode of Crutchfield, the podcast. I'm your host, Jr and I'm your co host eric. Welcome back into the studio today. Eric how are you? I'm doing great. How was the drive over to my house? It's pretty, it's a little breezy out there, but I don't know that I passed another car on the road today. Nice clear day to drive, nice quick over here to the studio. Loving it. Like I like doing this in person whenever possible. Were socially distant. We're keeping it nice and safe. Right? So, uh let's get into it. This episode. We are featuring an interview with Brooke Brooke is one of our advisors. She's been at Crutchfield for a good long while and you know, the purpose of this podcast is to talk to employees of Crutchfield that have purchased gear at Crutchfield with their hard earned money probably at a discount and we want to find out why they chose that stuff, how they're using it, how it's affecting their lives. And we also were just using this as a cheap excuse to talk about some of our coolest employees who they are and what they do? You've heard the interview with Brooke that we're about to hit play on in this episode. Did you know how much other stuff Brooke does does outside of Crutchfield? She's got a lot on her plate. For sure. Yeah, she's a foodie. She blogs and posts online about making really, really good food and healthy and healthy food. She works at a wellness company. She's also a personal trainer. She trains people at her home gym and uh it seems like her and her husband have a lot of interesting stuff going on. One of the coolest things about interviewing Brooke was going into it. I knew we were going to talk about Her sonos move right, which is actually featured in a catalog article. We'll put links to that in the show notes for this episode. But this interview expanded into so many more things as she sort of subtly in a low key sort of way revealed that she's got this product and that product and those products and she's put those in and she's done some installs and she's got so much going on. And I think when you're here for 15 years, sometimes we forget how many cool things we've brought home and kept. I know it's happened to me, I know it's happened to you, but sometimes the conversation kind of goes that way, doesn't it? It does indeed. And she's got all this stuff is basically at her home base, you know the brook family compound which seems like a pretty cool place to be in a pandemic. Like if you got to kind of not be around other people. So you're stuck at home. That's a pretty cool place to be. So let's get into it. This is my interview with Brooke, what what is a wellness company they focus on helping people lose weight from a mental perspective because most people's relationship with food is mental more than anything. So it's behavioral coaching to break your behavioral habits and behavioral relationships with food. Um So that's really kind of where it starts. But then of course there's a lot of other perspectives to it too. Like we do everything from um nutrition plans to one on one coaching. Like I come on their weekly and offer live recipes and they get a breakdown of the recipe and the recipe card with all the macros and the instructions. So there's a whole community of people there too on top of the services that are offered. So how do you recommend to somebody like me who is definitely a lives to eat person? I'm a live to eat person. Okay. So how do you square that with also not eating everything you want to eat? Like, I mean that's that's the whole 80 20 rule comes in because we know, I mean I'm a foodie, I'm going out of the country or to the next state over already know where I'm eating and it's not like healthy, but the other 80% of the time. So, you know, it doesn't mean you can't ever have bad food or alcohol, just 80% of the time you control it so that you can enjoy the other 20%. Okay. And it works. Do you have like cheat days and stuff like that. Yeah, because some people, sometimes people will be like, but I don't know how you can eat stuff like that because I don't eat it 24 7. There's a difference between having a day or on vacation because I mean I definitely eat whatever I want um when I travel. And so you had to go from working out in a, like a public sort of jim to working out and having a gym at home. Is that all pandemic related or were you doing that anyway or what? No, I've had, that's where I have personal trainer is here. Um so many years ago here where we're in such a small area at one point, although there wasn't really anything public gym wise. So 15 years ago we built on her um garage and started putting commercial equipment out there. But then it just grew and now it's too, too big, too big room. So in the early days of you having your gym at home, what did you do for audio and video playing music, having stuff? Did you have a tv in there? Did you have a stereo in there before we get the tv to the new stuff that's showing up in the catalog. What have you done over the years? And there was originally that there was an Anchia receiver with a pair of pulp bookshelf speakers for the longest time. Didn't have Bluetooth just am FM. That's all there was to it. I think I plugged into the headphone jack on my phone. They had headphone jacks then listen, literally that Anchia receiver set out there, whether it was 30 degrees or 90 it had been dropped and the top was caved in and it still worked like a dream. Anch'io receivers man, they are pretty much bulletproof, right? I've had, I've had multiples, I've sold them off to friends as I've upgraded over the years. I've got one that I've had for about 10 years sitting here on my desk. That's what I use is from my desktop audio system. Anch'io receivers have been amazing. Uh they're hard to come by right now and hopefully we're gonna be seeing more coming in into inventory here in 2021 because anch'io receivers have, they hold a special place in my heart for sure. How do you use the sonos move for workouts? Um it's, it's, there's, there's music going and it's loud, it's always loud and that thing gets, it's not big, but it gets loud. I've had several of our guy and girl friends that will come over and connect to it and immediately like I need one of those. How much is that? Because it gets loud? Um and that's too big to really good sized rooms that that thing will feel or you know, in the summers we take things out in my driveway, I have a private driveway and we'll drag equipment out. So it works out perfectly. So the sonos move is the one and only so knows device that is battery power that you can take it with you. And so when you have it inside, I assume it's just sitting there and it's charging base, it's connected to your wifi, you use it with the so no saP and all of that stuff. Is that, so that's like how you use it most of the time. That's how I use it most of the time. Everybody else connects to it via bluetooth, even though my garage and jim are probably 20 yards out my driveway. I have the Netgear Orbi system. My wifi reaches all the way up my driveway. That was actually my next question was how far away is it? And do you have good wifi out there? So you've, you've upgraded your router system to make that possible? Yeah, I've got the or B and it literally, I mean we have like a fire pit and ax throwing boards in my backyard that's all spread out. It reaches the whole entire backyard, it reaches all the way out my driveway throughout my whole house. Um, so it works really well. Ax throwing boards, tell me more. Yeah, yeah, we built them last summer. And are you guys like going competitive or is this just for fun or is this the, is this taking the place of cornhole? And now you're just throwing axes right. I went on a family vacation a couple years ago to Asheville north Carolina and that was one of one of the things we did, it was my sister's birthday and we celebrated, she wanted to go ax throwing. So yeah, man, we got, I got a lot of cool, slow mo video of axes flying through the air and wood splintering off. It's addictive. I can see why you might just want one at the house otherwise instead of going to pay for it at some business, we drew the circles on it and painted them and everything and everybody still got all of their fingers and toes and everything and so does the sonos move supply, the soundtrack to the family ax throwing parties. So the sonar's move is your sound system for your fire pit, your ax throwing and the workout rooms and when you go out in the driveway, out in the driveway. It's so it's so you're saying it's aptly named. All right, this is a great time to break in because you're a bit of a so knows nerd. Do you have a so knows move? I do not, I don't either. I'm going to get one. It's going to happen. I kind of want one badly. I took one home last year when they released it and so I was able to get it on my wife. I use it at home, took it out using bluetooth. It's everything so knows said it would be when they announced it and it's pretty awesome. It's also physically kinda, I mean it's not the smallest bluetooth speaker, right? Like if you think about portable bluetooth speakers, this is a little bigger than probably what you're envisioning if you're backpacking and camping. And one a little portable bluetooth speaker, it's probably a little a little big for that. Right? But because of that, I mean it sounds really good and uh we thought we didn't up here because so nose has recently announced a portable bluetooth speaker. That is that right? Or at least they're gonna have announced it by the time this airs. Yeah, technically we're recording this before. We're allowed to publicly talk about it, which is kind of exciting for us. It's really one of the cooler things we get to do. I just got an email that was all like confidential, don't talk about this. And he here I am talking about it into a microphone knowing that we will not release this episode until we are no longer under a non disclosure agreement and we're allowed to talk about the new sonos roam. That's right. It's a little bit of a smaller version, I would say, right? It's aesthetically uh it's got that sin is, look, it's going to come in both colors black and white and uh you know, it looks like this is uh even more portable and that it's smaller. Um and still does all the cool, so knows party tricks. It's still can hook to your wife. I um so I can't wait to get my hands on this. Yeah, no, it's all it's seems like just about everything. The sonos move is in a smaller package, right? Uh and it is very ruggedly built. I. P 67 rated. So that means it's drop resistant and waterproof up to three ft for 30 minutes, impervious to dust and ready for any adventure from. So knows. Huh? That's yeah, it'll do wireless charging with a qi charger. Uh there's an optional wireless charging dock that you can set it on. Uh it looks pretty awesome, very tiny. And by now, by the time this episode comes out you should be able to like see it in the in the on the internet, maybe on crutchfield dot com. You can place orders for it probably by the time this podcast comes out and we'll be able to ship them to you as soon as we have them in stock. We're very excited about the sonos roam and we just saw this as a fantastic opportunity to talk about a new product that we're not allowed to talk about it and I'm sure will be very excited about them. Yeah, no doubt. Yeah, she can add this to her. So knows ecosystem at her house. She can maybe not have to move the round the move the move around as much, right? Because these portable ones will be easier uh to take out for workouts and maybe out by her fire pit and things like that on this, on this catalog spread, it's obviously again showing the sonos move. But it also mentions that when you are, when Brooke Brooke also uses wireless headphones during some of her personal workouts. What, what headphones are you using? Well, I have, I have used the jaybird vistas since just about since they came out and we jaybird came in and demoed them. I have used those just about ever since then, but I visited the retail store when I was there and ended up picking up some of the Sony in ear wireless and they sound amazing. So now I have both and I won't get rid of my jaybird because I like the fact that I can wear one with the j birds at a time. They both have a bluetooth microphone and not all the headphones have that, but I can wear one no matter what I'm doing. So even if I'm in the kitchen and need my hands free and just need to pop a headphone in and still be able to hear what's going on. Or if I'm occasionally, I will go to the public gym, but I'm working out with somebody, so I want to hear my music, but I still want to hear them. So I put one in and not all headphones, let you do just the one, but the jaybird does. So I'll keep them. But if I have both of them in the sound quality and the range and the volume on those Sony's are really, really good. I was actually quite shocked. Yeah, the true wireless in ear buds have become like, they're they're like, especially the jay birds by the way, Made for working out. Like that's their design purpose, right? Is to be, Yeah, and they're perfect. I have a interactive bike and they link right up to my bike so I wear them if I'm on my bike too, and they definitely hold up sweat and have held up to sweat for a couple of years, haven't skipped a beat. I'm gonna look up the model of the Sony's, I just picked up the WF SP 800 n as the sport version of the Sony. I just picked up that I really, really like the sound, so, and they stay in, they stay put when you're working out? That's important. That's a big deal. Yeah, absolutely. You have to pull them out, they're not gonna fall out. We don't sell a whole lot of products that you actually stick inside your ears, you know, or you don't just wear them, they're they're like, they're in there. So, headphones in general and in true wireless in ears are some of the most personal products we sell and so it can take a little while to get it just right, anything else that you've bought from Crutchfield that you would love to talk more about. I have bought so much. It's embarrassing. It's what happens when you work here and you get to see it and play with it and you get a good deal. I can't pass it up. Seems like I end up with a new T. V. Every year. Pretty much my husband decided he needed a bigger tv christmas. So I ended up getting there was the L. G. O. L. E. D. In that room which is fantastic and I would never get rid of. Now it's got the Sony X. 9 50 above the fireplace. Um And then it's got the polk RT speakers in the wall and the ceilings in that room we planned ahead when we added that room onto the house. So that's kind of the one we use the most that's the one we'll watch the football game in later today. So that tv and the the L. G. O. L. E. D. R. Are heavily used by people at the house here. All right. So just when I thought the interview with Brooke was kind of coming to a close we got to talking about a bunch of different stuff and how she stays busy when she's not on vacation and stuff for her husband do. And that's when I found out that she's got like three or four classic cars in the garage that they are sort of constantly working on. And that sounded to me like something we needed to explore and explore. We did. That's what you're about to hear is is the sort of the second half the other side, one of the other sides of Brooke and her husband and her family. Uh And you thought you were just gonna be talking about a really cool so no speaker and how she's using it and everything she's got going on and all of a sudden it turned into a classic car conversation or 72 Blazer is, there's a big print out one of the catalogs on it. It's got a really fun system in it. It's got um kicker because the top comes off of this blazer so it's got um the kicker, Wakeboard tower speakers attached to the roll bars in it. And a kicker marine sub a kicker five channel amp kicker six by nine. So and it all lights up orange, just like the vehicle. Um So three of the 11 blazer is new but there's a 71 C. Series pickup, a 72 blazer and a 68 Camaro. That all have retro sound stereos from us and speaker systems and then that I did, he takes care of the performance and the motor and the engine stereo stuff. He basically just walks away and says do what you gotta do. So you need my help to wire something do what you gotta do and you went with retro sound pretty much in all of them just to keep that sort of retro look to the car, to the vehicles. Yeah all of them just to keep the same look in the dash and it gives all the new features and gives the pre amp outputs for the amplifiers but they all look original as far as the dash goes at least. And what about speakers on these older cars? Speaker locations on classic cars can be super challenging. They can be and that's a lot of times and we get a lot of customers with classic cars, so when they call and they get me and I'm like, oh I have this, this and this is like, thank God you know, then you know the challenge. Um, so really the, the truck, we were not somebody else owned it before us and they had already cut five and a quarter inch well holds for five and a quarter inch speakers in the doors. So I took focal speakers and put in the doors on those because I mean they sound great and they had a nice kind of classic looking metal grill that covered it up nicely. And then retro sound made a four by 10 speaker, four by 10 inch speaker. That was dual voice coil that fit up in the dash in those trucks. So I did that got a sound ordinance, little compact powered sub under the trunk. The retro sound four channel amp behind the stereo sounds great. So I'm used to hearing about dual voice coil speakers when it comes to subwoofers, right? Subwoofers often have two voice coils so that you can wire them differently. Different impedance flexibility of installation, but this is totally a different application to voice coils. Yeah, some of those older cars, they would we have a instead of speakers in both doors, they would just give you one speaker and that speaker would be up in the dash and it wasn't really known for sound quality. It was like a four by 10 or four by six in the center of the dash and it was great at playing am only or FM mono. That kind of stuff was staring. That was the first time that, you know, uh that was an upgrade from FM to from A. M. Is that you went from mono to stereo. And uh, so yeah, so that speaker up there. The fact that you didn't have stereo separation, not a big deal. If you're gonna be listening to primarily A. M. And, you know, it could handle the FM two because it had inputs for both the left and right channel information. Yeah. And if you're gonna be putting like a modern stereo in your classic car, you're not going to have a mono output, you're gonna have a left and a right. And so it would be nice to, if you if you're not looking to cut holes in your beautiful classic car and put a left and a right speaker in, you can solve that problem with a single speaker in the dash that has two tweeters, basically a left tweeter and a right tweeter that takes advantage of, you know, the left and the right channels of your sound from your new stereo. And they call that dual voice coil. The sound system is not usually the focal point of like a classic car. Right? I mean it's, you kind of wanted to be there, you kind of wanted to work. Uh but it's really more about the look of the car. Is the engine running? Uh does is it drivable? Is it Right, Yeah, there is a, you said you mentioned your, your 71 blazer was in the catalog. It's also on the website, it's in our car showroom. I'm looking at the picture of you sitting on the tailgate of this beautiful blazer, good golly. This is nice. I would, I want to drive this blazer around in the snow in the mountains. Somewhere like that looks like a lot of fun. Um It is a lot of fun. The top is a hassle to get on and off and it's fragile because it's old. And then we've got another blazer that just that my husband just picked up somewhere here recently, but it's not quite as not, it's more just like don't do anything to it. Somebody put camouflage paint on it. It runs just to kind of beat around in or something. So I don't know that we'll do much with it, but maybe that's the one to go driving in the snow because it might not drive in the snow. Yeah, Yeah, this orange blazer is maybe too beautiful to drive in the snow. Yeah, it is, it's my 20 year old son, it's his favorite, we live near the Smoky Mountains where they have a couple of big car shows a year. So you know, it's the thing for the kids to go down there and drive around with loud music and that one gets loud because it's got Wakeboard tower speakers and in it, it's kind of meant just for that. So he thinks it's great. I was gonna ask you guys do go to car shows with these vehicles. Yeah, some of them. Um, the, the, the Camaro never goes anywhere but local really, I don't know that. I'd trust it driving that far to be honest maybe, but it's finicky a lot. So local. Yeah. Um, but the others, we've had Smoky Mountains were only 2.5 hours from there And then my in laws have a lake house, 30 minutes from there, so we spend a lot of time there when it's warm too. So they, they've been down there a few times. This is awesome. Thank you for joining me and doing this. Uh and yeah, I'm so glad you're willing to do it. I want to go throw axes now, I've, I've never wanted to do that before, but now all of a sudden I do throwing axes is way more fun than it should be. And yeah, you can go somewhere and do it or you can, if you're broke, you can just build it at your house and just throw axes whenever you feel like it. Yeah, so we're gonna answer a reel customers question. You know, we have articles on the website about all sorts of different things. Eric has no idea what question from a customer is about to be covered in this segment of the podcast. Betty's got something though. So there's an article that's all about the best true wireless earbuds, right? Which is all the rage right now with headphones. Every company seems to be coming out with no wired headphones. They sit in your ear probably built for exercising and things like that. And they're also probably not cheap either. Right? So $150 is where the, you know, a lot of them fall in the price range. But this customer's question says after reading that article, this customer from Rahway New Jersey, his name is Alan, he says. Fascinate reading. Unfortunately there are a number of people who like me simply cannot budget $150 for a set of earbuds regardless of their quality. I'd like to see you give us your opinions regarding the best bang for the bucks on more economical products if they exist. Thank you. I love that question. That's a good one. Yeah, especially for something that, you know, we take with us. Well, let's be honest, we're probably more likely to lose uh this thing and then probably anything else that we sell right like this, This is the kind of thing people will have in a coat pocket, they'll forget about it, they'll wash them. All kinds of things can happen here. So that's a great question. I mean you can think of it, it's basically a stereo that you can hold in the palm of your hand and lose very easily. Right? So spending 100 50 bucks is an sort of an if proposition because because of that, so wouldn't it be nice if there were true wireless earbuds, good sounding ones that stay put and and uh, that don't cost 100 and 50 bucks or more? Yeah, so, so next time we do this segment, I wanna have a computer with me, so I can actually pull up an example, like an advisor would for us, but you off the top of my head Jr I know JBL has a lot of really good headphones for the money and I know they come in different form factors. So um, you know, we're socially distanced, I do not have my laptop in front of me, but if you could dig into maybe a couple options there, I think I think there'll be some, some good solutions, I came prepared with my computer to this recording and I am looking at a bunch of choices. JBL has got several to choose from. There's the JBL tune 1 20 T W. S, true wireless and stereo. Bluetooth headphones available in a bunch of colors for actually they're normally 100 bucks as as of this recording there a little bit on sale. So even better than 100 bucks, I'm not gonna say the sale price, that sale price is gonna last under 100 and 50 for sure. Uh, the next pair up from that also currently on sale but also going for about 100 bucks. These are very much in the similar sort of style to an apple airpods. They come with a similar charging case. They're normally 100 bucks. That's a pretty great choice. There's a couple other companies doing it clips clear. Uh, if you can deal with some cables, there's some slightly wired ones that kind of with the cable that goes from the left ear to the right ear form factor is an important decision when you're trying to buy some, some earbuds for sure. But uh, I, you know, I just really like those JBL, I have had those, I've had JBL a couple different form factors. I've never been disappointed. Uh you know, for those price points what they give you, they're, they're good, they're solid. The good news is, is if you are shopping true wireless headphones from Crutchfield, we don't carry like the really inexpensive, like unreliable stuff that aren't proven products that work. Yeah, ours aren't throwaways, right? Like these aren't ones that uh, that you pick up in the grocery store aisle at the checkout, you know, that's, that's not, that's not what we're dealing with here. These are good quality headphones with good warranties from replicable manufacturers and uh, you know, with, with Crutchfield vacuum. Um, and I went on a trip a few years back and I had forgotten to bring my trusty earbuds that I used for working out. And so I did literally, we were driving down 95 to florida. I stopped at a truck stop and bought a $7 pair of in ear headphones, thinking this will get me through all fine electronics purchased at a, at a truck stop, $7 pair of earbuds. I, I chose to throw them away into a trash can on the, in the middle of my run Because I would rather not have them on my person than use them. I would rather listen to the traffic than listen to those $7 headphones. You wish you would've gotten the big gulp instead. It was, they didn't stay in my ears. They sounded like crap. They were fragile. They, they started breaking the first time I used them. So it was bad. You do not want to go, don't go, don't go truck stop. So the moral of this, if we're gonna wrap this up, don't go truck stop, use our filters, use our website, there's some great options in there. So uh, this has been a pretty fun episode to record the episode with the interview with Brooke was great having eric here in the studio today was great, especially with breaking news about a new product. That's awesome. I love that. We're going to put a bunch of stuff in the show notes for this episode. There's a link to the, the, the article about brooks, Chevy blazer, you're really gonna want to see that, that Chevy blazer is gorgeous. Uh and there's, there's also gonna be a link to some pigeon forge rod runs where Brooke and her husband attend car shows. We'll also point to the pdf of the spring catalog. So we've got the actual, it's a printed catalog, but we've got PDFs of it. We can link you to that so that you can see uh the spread that we did on brooks exercise set up, personas, move that kind of stuff. As well as the article that was referred to just now in our mailbag segment, the best headphones for running and working out article. Best true wireless earbuds articles. There'll be a bunch of links in the show notes. So if your interest in any of that stuff, I hope you find all of that helpful. Uh, the, the next episode of the podcast will be out in two weeks. We are right here in the middle of season two and we are thoroughly enjoying bringing this podcast to you. If you're enjoying listening to it, you might consider liking it. Subscribe to it, following it whatever your podcast player does. If you can write a review of it even better, you can go to Crutchfield dot com slash podcast and you can post questions there that we could address in the future podcast episode. We would love nothing more than to interact with you, our wonderful listeners. We interact with our customers on the phones and our chats uh, and uh through our advisors and uh it's it's really some of the most meaningful parts of our jobs is actually working with people and getting them set up with stuff and this is just kind of a new fun way to do that. You having fun making this podcast eric. I had a great time. Yeah, yeah, I did. I would have done a better job than you did making this podcast. You know, if I was in your seat. But other than that we gave that a try. You did, you did a really stand up medium. It was like a b like a solid B job. I know it's been a lot of fun. Yeah, well, good working with you again. We'll see you in two weeks. Thank you so much for listening.