Hello and welcome to another episode of Crutchfield, the podcast. I'm back. Your back. Did you, did you hear our last show eric? I heard of it of course, at the time of this recording, that one hasn't come out yet, but I heard I wasn't involved with it. I did realize that there was an absence of me. There was an eric there. We can just what you think and go out and just get any eric. It did feel like I was cheating on you with another eric. That's what it felt like To me, we might have to go to counseling now. You know, that eric, significantly fewer puns? Yeah. See you're definitely missing out there. I was missing you. I mean there was a reason we brought in the other eric and I think if you listened to our last episode, it made sense. Right? But sure he might know more about that particular subject than me. He may, he may have actually written the article on our website. Sure, but where's the puns? Where's the fun puns? Not about the fun puns. Not at all. Well, I'm glad to have you back buddy. Things are a little different though. Right? I for one I'm recording at home today, which is, you know, I normally come into the office every day and have been doing so for most of the pandemic, but that's also because I have avoided getting covid for most of the pandemic. And uh, well, it finally called how's that been going for you? I don't mean to make light about that. That's uh, I'm glad you're, you're symptoms seem to be fairly, fairly mild. Yeah. Currently working from home feeling pretty good. Uh technically this is like day three of having some symptoms and so so far so good, relatively mild. Suffice it to say we are not in the same room today. No, no, I I'd prefer not to share space with you. My spot is a little different today as well. You're actually in the office. You normally sit at a desk in a cubicle in the call center. Right. But now it looks to me like you are in one of the meeting rooms or something. Do you have a new office or something? No, nothing that fancy. You know, in preparation for our training classes, ongoing training and knowing that I'm gonna have a larger role to play with. Uh during the next couple of weeks, I had moved into a, an empty office space. Um and lo and behold, the acoustics here were worse than at my desk. Uh, so I'm taking matters into my own hands. You say, I'm leaning in to uh some some, I don't know, acoustic treatment, you might say 10 minutes ago when we first started talking, getting our audio level straight and everything. You know, that time we record all that before we actually start the show. That's when we stay horribly inappropriate things. Just for our producer that will never make the actual show. Uh it sounded like you were in a huge bathroom. Right. right. And and that's not ideal. Not ideal for the podcast, not the vibe we're trying to give off that. Is he in a tiled bathroom right now? No. So what is that acoustic sound treatment thing there that you appear to be holding up and we'll have to be holding up for this entire show I guess. Uh I am literally leaning into a dog bed at the moment um and it seems to be working. So so you grab the dog bed off the floor, you put it up on your desk right behind your microphone to sort of soften the room a little bit. So it doesn't sound like a big echo chamber. That is what I'm doing. I hope everybody at home is okay with this because eric is really putting himself out there. His arm's gonna be tired by the end of the show, holding up this dog bed. That's not too bad. Cool. Shall we get into the show a little bit? I think we should. We've got a pretty cool interview for you today. Dolly is one of our corporate sales advisors. She started at work here at Crutchfield 13 years ago as a as a as a general advisor. Uh so taking calls and chats from just about anybody on our website, looking at just about any product. But for the past few years she has moved into a completely different department and is dealing more with businesses that need, you know, commercial audio designs, Right? We have a whole department of those folks. I'm sorry, I got sidetracked, this was going to be one taken. I'm messing this up. I just sent a picture of this to you and chris so that you guys can potentially use it. I'm ignoring that kind of stuff because we're recording a podcast. Right, Right, right, right. I just, I thought it was kind of comical and distracted with with uh A. D. H. D. I looked into it but I got uninterested and started focusing on something else. Oh my gosh, so well played. I was not anticipating such a good answer to that question. Hey, lex producer lex. I suggest all of this stays in the show. That's my suggestion. So they moved me into this office because I figured it could help me stay focused and um, you know, the truth is I, I stay focused on everything. Um, so I don't, I don't know why I decided I needed to do this, but I thought it might help for training. Also lex, if possible, I'll send you the picture that he sent me. So if, if maybe you can actually put this on the show notes for the show so we can all see what eric looks like holding up a dog bed in an effort to get good audio wearing a Hawaiian shirt because it's a friday, a pretty killer Hawaiian shirt. I'm jealous of that. It's a Tommy bahama. It's the good ones. I've got a yeah, it's, it's anyway, that doesn't need to make, but we should talk about dolly. Dolly. Dolly is awesome. So in this interview, you're gonna hear Dolly and me talk about the work she does with our corporate sales and some really cool stories that have come out of that as well as, you know, the whole point of Crutchfield, the podcast where I ask people that work here at Crutchfield, what they have bought that they are just enjoying and want to talk about and why they chose it and what their story is like with the, with their cool Crutchfield products and we got a bunch to talk about here with Dolly eric and I will come back in and clarify and interject as we feel like is necessary throughout the Dalai interview and then we'll come back afterwards and we'll do some other fun stuff. So here's my interview with Dolly. So what does your day look like now? Like what's your primary job? So for me right now as a commercial audio designer, I'm in the corporate group and we handle all the business sales at this point. Um I am somebody who business calls in and says, hey, we're building brand new brewery for example and we need audio in there, what can you do for us and they would send in their floor plan, that's what we like best and we would look at those floor plans, take the dimensions, do some calculations figure out how many speakers they might need in there, how much power would be required to kind of get above their sound level so that the music is heard while they're full of full crowd of folks that are in their sampling. And um then I would put together a floor plan with speaker placement, put together a wiring diagram that shows the backs of all the pieces of equipment, how they wire together, quote, send it over to them and then they have somebody install it or we make it. My designs are are built so that they could really design it themselves just in regular crutchfield D. I. Y. Kind of philosophy. So it's a lot of fun how often do places do that where they install it themselves? I would imagine they save a lot of money, right? And they might see it like if they know a guy or if they're handy people that are opening a business, they might want to do it themselves. Is that pretty common? Oh yeah. Absolutely. I feel like just like regular crutchfield residential customers, our business customers are also keen to D. I. Y. You know, do it themselves. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And so we spent some time um tech supporting with them too. We do our own tech support and commercial. Um And so those guys will call back in and I'll pull up their floor plan and pull up the back of the equipment and we'll walk them through it. Or sometimes we'll use that really cool. See support app. We do. I have not had to use it yet. I'm, I'm chalking that up to my designs being so awesome that customers. Yeah, totally. Um, that's always my goal anyway, Right. That they never have to worry about tech supporting that they can handle it all themselves themselves. Good goal. It is. Right. And so, um, but yeah, we definitely some of the other guys in the, in the group, they've, they've definitely had to do some C support stuff and, and it's great because usually it's like those two wires right there. Let's just switch those back the different direction. And then the magic happens and the magic is when you're on the phone with a customer and there's no sound in the background and then magically their sound. And I never really realized like how much how cool that is. I love my job. I've been here 13 years. I love doing what I'm doing. But to put something together, send it across the country, have someone else install it. They call because they've got a problem. And then while you're on the phone you hear this magic music come on in the background. It is so gratifying, it's just like you get to experience the fruits of your labor. Yes, Absolutely. Absolutely. And, and, and rarely because we just handle the national customers, right, our local, our local crutchfield store handle stuff locally. So I don't get to walk in very often and hear my own designs. I have, I did have an experience where that happened to me recently, where I was down in Richmond at short pump town center and I just happened to be shopping down there and there's a store with its doors wide open and I looked up and I see these JBL Control HST speakers and these are pretty unique, right there. Wide dispersion speakers. You don't see them everywhere. And I looked up and I was like, oh yeah, that's just like I put in my fabletics, uh, franchise stores, all the ones that I've been doing and I look up and realize I'm standing outside with fabletics. So here I've done probably 25 of these stores with the same audio design that I've been doing. They've been putting it in across the country for the past two, three years. I'm actually walking into the store and hearing my design live and I geeked out on a whole, another level. Like I was taking pictures, the girls at the register are looking at me like what is she doing? And I'm like, I made this happen. So, and it sounded great. And did you talk to him about the system? How do you like the sound? Yeah, that sounds great. So I was really pleased. Yeah, for sure. That like, I mean, and I never had anybody say like, oh, it's not working great or you know, we don't love it. You just assume that if no news is good news, if they, you know, they don't call you to try and get something fixed or add a symbol for something else that it's great. But to walk in and like hear it and, and it was just a really great experience. Yes. Magic. Yeah. It's, you know, working in a contact center, you rarely get to see the end result of your work. The system you put together for a car or the camera, you sold a customer a home theater system. It could be anything. But rarely do you get to actually see the end result. Right? It's so cool when that actually happens. And those guys, they just buy systems. So I don't always know what location it's going to be. And I didn't even know they opened a fabletics location down there in that mall and it just, it all just came together and here I was standing there, I will tell you that a few weeks later, my dad and I were down in Richmond and I did have to bring him into the store as well to get a little like, hey dad, look what I did and I'm 45 like, you know, but everybody still needs those kind of moments, especially because he's always still challenging my home, you know, my electronics knowledge? Yeah. Oh yeah. Does he consider himself an expert in this stuff and he's challenging you or does he learn from you or what? Well he considers him an expert most, I think most dads consider themselves experts. Mine doesn't mind openly calls me and says, I have no idea what the hell I'm doing. How do I turn this apple tv on? Maybe it's, maybe it's a father daughter dynamic. But um, yeah, so, but yeah, no, he definitely still is like, I'm not sure that that works that way and I'm like, well I'm here to tell you it does. So, um, but yeah, it was a good, it was a good moment. So I totally geeked out about the whole thing and it was great. But to be able to walk in and and hear something that you put together and, and sent off, you know, never to see again. It really was awesome. That's so cool. Alright, let's get down to it the purpose of this podcast to talk about. The stuff that you have, you know, you've got access to everything. We sell at a discount. What all have you bought that you want to talk about that makes you happy that you, uh, it may be installed. You love it. You show it off. I've been looking over your list of stuff you've bought, but it's not complete their stuff you bought that I don't even know about. So you tell me first, what do you want to talk about? I mean I think for me and we've kind of touched on this a little bit. Love broadway, love, love musical theater, love movies. I mean I've been going to the movies with my dad since I was, you know, teeny tiny E. T. Is the first movie I remember seeing. So my home theater is very important space and it has been in our basement and it has been our kind of pandemic hideout. Right? We leave the day upstairs, we come downstairs, my husband and I to just enjoy being down there hiding out and and and watch a movie and just relax from everything. And so it was important for me. I had to start in stages when I built my home theater. You know, I started off small, but but then because working here, I had the ability to get some stuff and and really improve it and now I'm very happy with what I've got. So is it one of those things where you, you're, you're never quite finished building your ideal home theater? Like are you there now or are you already thinking about the next thing you want to add to it? You know, we have to improve the subwoofer subwoofer is the next thing that has to happen. So I started off with a really small pole cause kind of all in one speaker package. Not like with a receiver, but an actual all they had a speaker, home theater speaker package. So like small speakers and a little tiny you know size of a coke can kind of like they were tl 1600 Blackstone's. Those were we sold so many of those people loved oh they're fantastic speakers. I'm a big poke fan anyway I've always been from my very first start but and that came with a little tiny P. S. W. 1 11 subwoofer. Not much 125 watts, you know 10 inches just a little guy. But uh eight inch, it's a modest subwoofer but for just us down there it worked really well. We've got concrete floors in the basement and and so it just fills up that space pretty nicely. However I have systematically upgraded so we went from little the little T. L. Sixteen's in the front to moving those to the back and adding some poke. R. T. I. A. Three's which I got at one of our employee events. That's like a bookshelf speaker. It is bigger beefier than the small little black. Yeah yeah they're probably 16 inches tall. Yeah they're great. Um But I acquired those at a crutchfield employee event, one of our events. Um That's code for, she didn't pay for them. No I got them free um And they were and they're great. The only thing that happened was one was missing a grille and I love them without the grill anyway because they're cherry and they have this great kind of retro feel you know, with the black surrounds on the speakers unless you've got little kids with dirty fingers around, take the grills off your speakers. They almost always look way more beautiful without the grills. Absolutely, absolutely. Um so then we had those for a little while. Um and then I went to our super awesome employee store and got a new center channel upgraded to the matching center channel for those um, a three speakers. So now we've got a nice um, you know, front row of perfectly match and visually they look good together. They're great listeners of this show should know about the employees store and how amazing it is for us to get products that we can't sell to customers anymore, but we can buy them, you know, at an incredible discount. We've done a show with Simon over there. Yeah, no, it's fantastic. And, and to me, I never want to see anything go to waste and, and to be able to grab a speaker that may have a dented corner or you know, the wood or a missing grill or whatever and be able to use those and then have that knowledge that I can then share um with customers is, it's pretty priceless. Yeah. Know where Crutchfield might not be making back all the money that they paid for a product that they end up selling at a loss to an employee, they usually make up for it in that employee, knowing more about that product and being able to talk about it passionately with customers which helps everybody, So everybody wins with the employees store, definitely, definitely. And on that same note um recently went in and bought a new tv from the employee store and they just happened to be giving away some poke R. T. I. A. Seven towers that matched my speakers. So we moved the A. Three's to the back. Now we've got towers up front. I had to upgrade, uh we were using just a little um den in receiver like a 16 12 from several years ago, not enough power for those beautiful speakers. So I did my favorite, favorite analogy which is uh denim and marines are like Honda and Acura and I boosted up to the Acura world of, of receivers and got my Marantz um, and it just sounds amazing. Um I'm the installer in my household. My husband is not a um super techie guy. So when he sat down in the new chair and we did the um speaker calibration, the odyssey speaker calibration, I made him sit with a little microphone on his on his shoulder and not move and not say anything while I did all the calibrating off the marines and man, it just sounds fantastic where we're sitting for for our spots, which is, it's so it's so perfect. The room calibration systems really make a difference. Like I've definitely tried before and after, like what is it sound like just, you know, manually set it up, enter in the dimensions of your room in the distance on your speakers from the, the, you know, your listening position to your center channel to your front, right, all that stuff and try to dial it in, then listen to it and then run the room calibration. So it kind of does all that automatically and it does more than just distances, it does digital signal processing and the difference is significantly better. Sound totally and we have a super quirky room, it's kind of a horseshoe like our staircase from the upstairs comes down right into the middle of the room. So we've got these weird pockets of, of places where sound could get lost and all of that and I think without using that calibration we would not be in the great kind of listening spots that we are now so good stuff. So eric, I don't know if you picked up on it, but Dolly just said that Dennen and Marantz are like Honda and accurate and I thought that was a brilliant way to sort of put those receivers in their respective places in the world of home theater and comparing them to Honda and accurate. But I also thought it might need a little further explanation. What's the company, their sound United owns both Dennen and Marantz and several other companies I believe poke and definitive technology and maybe even more than that are all under this one business daddy umbrella, Right? Uh, and so Denon and Marantz were competitors. Now they retain their separate branding. Right? So they are sort of going for ever so slightly different customers. They do basically the same thing, just like a Honda and inaccurate do the same thing. But the person who wants the Acura might also be the person who wants the Marantz, which is a, you know, it's a slightly more elegant looking receiver. The amplifiers are known to be a little bit warmer and more musical than a non receiver. Yet, many things under the hood are the same in a Denon and Marantz and that's okay. And you know, Honda's known for their engines and it's okay that they make the engines for Acura as well since, well, it's the same company and both of these companies, you know, had that history of making, uh, medium to higher end home electronics and you know, it's okay that they come under the same umbrella. They get to work off each other's notes. Um, and you see a lot of, uh, you know, they maintain their differences and kind of like their history there. But I think, uh, you know, for Helios, you know, he uses a, uh, Den in specific in home integrations of competitor of, so knows, right? And you see that both in the grants and the Denim line. So that's awesome that now you can get this whole home, uh, whole home audio option and uh on both of those lineups, so you know, they share some technology like Eos now that they wouldn't have in the past. Um and I think, I don't know, I think both companies came out really uh better for it. It doesn't always work that way right? We see sometimes where uh there's a loser when those things happen and that's not the case here. Yeah and like Honda and Acura, I think most people would agree. Denon and Marantz are really good. They're both good. They're just, they're just aiming for different customers. That's all, yep. Exactly. So what are you up to? Is it a 5.1 system? 7.1. Yeah, I'm kind of a traditionalist. So we're a, we're a 5.1 right now. The two floor standings in the matching center channel in the front, you're R. T. I. A. Threes in the back, your bookshelves. Yeah. And I still have a pair of the little poke 16 hundreds. I could put those in for 7.1. Um but I haven't done that yet. Maybe, maybe that's another step coming thinking about putting any speakers in the ceiling or any upward firing dolby at most speakers. Yeah, I totally dig the at most to such a cool feature. So it's it's possibility we'll probably have to do another upgrade on the receiver before that happens. But um yeah, I mean if you're going to be immersed, be immersed. Yeah, totally the tv that I found most recently purchased in your list of stuff, I'm not sure is this the tv you're using? It's a Sony X 849 inch. No, that's our upstairs tv. Oh thank God because the way you, what you're describing, a 49 inch is not going to get the job done. Yeah. No, so another beautiful thing about working at Crutchfield. Um, and I've been here for a while, so I've been through the, we've been through the life of the plasma tv. Yes. Rest in peace. The plasma tv. Yeah, let's not jinx mine though, I have one in my bedroom. It's my secondary tv, but I love it. Yeah. So, um, we had, I don't know, 10 or 15 left of the Samsung, the P 8500 series TVs, how many years ago was this was 2015. Okay. Yeah. And um, I think they even did like, we're taking them off the web, we're gonna do a lottery for any employee who wants to buy one and I won one of the lottery spots. I hope with all my heart that this tv never ever dies. The pictures so great. If you read about the p the P 8500, they call it the last, greatest ever plasma tv online and it is, it's gorgeous. It's a 60 inch. Um, And yeah, no, yes, 60, but mostly because of the way and I'm a furniture girl. Right? So it was important to me that this piece fit well in the furniture and we've got a big, you know, to peers, bookshelf peers and a credenza and everything had to fit in properly down there because you know, I'm big on aesthetics to um but yeah, so it's just phenomenal. And um even my brother in law who works here who's in research and development, he comes over and he's got a 65 inch Sony newer tv. Then he comes over and he's like, man your pictures so good, like I know right, But um yeah, I hope it never dies. If it does, I'll have to make the switch. But um it just sticks with my retro vibe, right? No grills, we've got our turntable down there, we're building our record collection and our plasma tv. I love it. That a plasma tv qualifies in the same conversation as a turntable is like retro gear? It does, they're extinct right now. Actually, no, they're still making the plasma is more retro than the turntable, but yeah, no, I love it, it's great. The picture quality is fantastic. Um and I couldn't, I couldn't be happier at the moment. I'm just hoping that we're not jinxing it out of existence. It's been going strong, don't work that way. Words were saying here don't affect the TVs operation at home good deal, that doesn't work. Yeah, but no, so it's it's a nice hole. Great little setup for us down there and we really enjoyed it. How crazy would it be if you went home and your T. V. Wasn't working? I'm gonna be really mad at you blame your the full jinx if that's the that's the but if it does then I'll just you know mosey my way over to the employee store and see what I can find what measures are over there. So Dolly loves plasma TVs. Who doesn't? I still have one. I mentioned that to Dolly. I have one in my bedroom which is a great great tv. I think I think if you pulled people at Crutchfield that have been in this business for any length of time we would all agree. We all miss plasma TVs. Yes 100%. However it's not the end of the world that they're gone. They weren't power efficient at all. They got really really hot. They used a ton of electricity. They were bigger, they were thicker, they were heavier. Yeah they weren't marketed as you know a little space heaters for your room but you know maybe you didn't have to turn your heat on as much in the winter time. Right? Yeah if you got like a youtube video of a fireplace going you could literally walk up to your plasma and get warmed by it you know just like by standing by a campfire or something but there's there's new TVs that have sort of taken over and filled the space that plasma is used to fill right. There's two main types of TVs plasma and LCD back in the day and now it's Oleds and L. C. D. And back in the day to be fair the fair the uh the L. C. D. S just look as good as the plasma right? I remember uh at a retail store talking to customers and trying to qualify them to get the best tv for them and it kind of felt like I had to help them come to the conclusion whether or not they wanted a really good picture or if they wanted it to last a long time right? And and there was some concerns with like burnin and there was you know and the L. C. D. S just didn't look very good. Um And that's just luckily we're past that now at that time I think those plasmas were the first time that we ever saw a flat panel technology that blew us away. We're like oh okay I get it this looks better than a C. R. T. This looks better than a projection. I get it. Now these flat panel things are appealing to me but you still have to have those other considerations, they weren't energy efficient. There could have been some burning issue but luckily today we have other that both look good and last and it's really just the best of both worlds. Yeah and in the L. C. D. Side of TVs they've really worked hard to fix all of the shortcomings right there now there now using a lot more tiny little L C D L E D lighting, backlighting those LCD tv panels so they get better black levels better local dimming. They look more plasma like than they've ever looked before. And instead of plasmas we now have TVs organic light emitting diodes which very much like plasma, they don't use a back light system at all. Each individual pixel is its own light source which gives it infinite black levels and signify looks significantly more warm and movie like and that's that difference is still there. Right? So plasma shortcomings were overcome by replacing it with a lead and L C. D s have just been evolving to the point where they're really almost as good as Oleds now. Yeah I think the other thing that you know plasma buffs will kind of recall is that they also did a really good job of handling motion right? We're talking about colors before and and colors are super important in plasmas definitely had the better colors in those early generations of those flat panels but there was also uh it was just clear that they did a better job of handling motion and that's because the older LCD technology it was it was just slower reacting than you know the plasma gasses um and the today, you know with a good motion processors and the technology how it's been refined that that issue has gone away as well. Now there's still, you know, some considerations when looking at different TVs. It's one of the big differences is okay. Which processor are they using within the T. V. To handle the motion. But you know, there's plenty of good options these days for every budget. So when Dali's plasma tv is finally, you know, not cutting it for her anymore, she will have many great options and I predict she will go with a top of the line, oh led Tv cause that's going to be the most like what she's been experiencing with her plasma. Absolutely. I was looking again through your list of stuff and I noticed two different powered subwoofers on your list. Like you bought a yam Os 801? I did because I have a family of folks who also need guidance, you know, from my sweet, overworked brother in law, not the one who works here, but yeah, and it was a birthday present for him. He asked me and he's the one actually, I gifted my other Blackstone speakers. Um, and so we've been building a system because, you know, he wasn't able to just buy whatever he wanted for his man cave. However, he's got a great sister in law who can provide him with some audio and I did, I bought him the little sub and it looked great. It was white one compact. My sister didn't even really balk at it, but yeah, man cave is a little bit look great. They sound great. Musical. Yeah, it's only 50 watts. That thing is, it's not, you know, crazy power, but they've got a pretty big kind of bonus room where he's got a setup in and it sounds fantastic in there. Yeah, no, it did a really good job. I was really impressed with it. You also purchased a granite colored clips. Rock speaker. That's my newest purchase. Yes, it's not your newest purchase. Oh no, I got some cables recently. Something else. I'm gonna ask you about two. Oh, I know you're gonna be okay. So these are all things, everything I bought recently from my husband. Right? We had, it was christmas was coming. Yeah, yeah. It's funny because I was just upstairs and that rock speaker didn't make it out of my cubicle for a few weeks, but because I don't want to take it home and ruin the surprise. But yeah, so when I moved my, put my new Marantz in um Moran, some theater, I moved my little denim receiver out to the garage and wired in para polk speakers to it. And I'm going to wire the clips, rock speaker right outside um, to our fire pit area, fire pit, that's a perfect speaker for a fire pit, ideal. It's gonna be great. It can't be one of the rocks that actually surround the fire pit. Probably, no. Yeah, no, Yeah I don't think it would hold up quite as well it's not actually a rock. No it's not. Um But yeah I did so I'm excited to do that. But yeah it's it's definitely a huge benefit um Working at Crutchfield to be able to get your hands on gear and and have that experience. I wish we could do it with every single piece. Um Just so you have that knowledge but even just being able to listen to one pair of speakers and and be able to compare it to another, it's it's super helpful so it's good stuff. I definitely become more of an electronics store. Even if we're looking for um vacation rentals. If we if we pan through the vacation rental and there's a there's not a flat screen tv. Or something. I'm like nope we're gonna move on to the next one. I've become that that person where I need to have a level of quality on my I mean I already have it for furniture like it already has to be a level of quality for what I'm looking at furniture wise. But then if we pan through and there's a you know uh you zoom in to see the logo on the front of the T. V. To see what brand of tv is it? Because are you are you as snobby as I am about that I'm like no no no not quite but if there's a box and a slot where a cd goes into the or DVD goes into the T. V. We're moving to the next one. Like yeah but that's not that's not gonna work for me. I don't really make those anymore. No I don't even know how those are still working but they're there and if that's in the vacation we've got to move on. Yeah it doesn't work for me. So it changes you when you start to be able to appreciate the really good stuff. And I feel like we we really try and we really try and focus on the really good stuff here. You ever get really stressed out. You still don't seem like a person who gets all worked up but you seem like uh no I'm an emotional person, right? So I get I get stressed out for sure. Wouldn't how cool would it be if we sold stuff that was like good for relaxing your muscles? Like workout recovery devices, things like that. It would be amazing. Right? Somebody must have thought that because apparently we carry that stuff now. And you bought one? I did. Yes. You got the enjoy electro. I did. Um And mostly because my guy has a problem with his like bulging disc and so he spends some time rolling around on a tennis ball right per his doctor's orders? And I'm like well there's gotta be a better way and wouldn't it be better if that ball was vibrating the heck out of your back? Yeah and it has a bunch of different levels on it. It's really cool. Plus it's already textured and everything too. So even if you didn't want to use the vibrate feature on that little enjoy guy um it's already textured and so it gives him just a whole another level of comfort. Um when he's trying to relieve some of that back pain, I got my girlfriend one for christmas. I bought myself one without telling her that. I bought myself one too because yeah I mean it's pretty nice to just sort of put it between your back and the couch while you're watching tv and just like move it around man. It may it's a huge difference. It feels great. Yeah, for sure. I think it's also a great desk chair. Um You know activities to have one if you're if you're working from your desk all day like like I am like like you are, you know we get up as much as we can but to be able to have that kind of relief if you're not comfortable on your desk chair, it's great for the office to pull stuff. There's a bunch of different options, differently shaped ones. There's the peanut, there's the ball, there's a massage gun, like a whole bunch of neat stuff in there. Yeah I actually just saw one of our research guys was taking three or four of them home to try and I know his wife has got some neck issues. And so that targeted gun one. He thought it might be really cool. But I'm gonna try it out. Like, man, we got these things in how great a whole nother level of Crutchfield love, you know that you got there with the products, cool stuff. Did we miss anything? Is there any stuff you purchase that we haven't talked about yet that you wanted to bring up? I can't think of anything to talk about. My favorite little turntable. We've got that guy going a little bit. I mean, I just mentioned that I had it with my retro stuff, which turntable did you get? Um I had that done in the the DP 29 F because I'm a chicken and I wanted to automatic arm, right? You wanted the record player to do the job of lowering the needle. I don't want to touch it. No, no, no, no, no. All that. I don't even like the noise. So I just want the automatic arm on there so it will lift up and drop down just like I needed to. So, convenience over purity. Yeah, but it sounds amazing. I mean, I'm still getting all the pop and hum and the, you know, the warm, fuzzy stuff that you like from listening to an album And it's been great because I my husband is a classic country guy. And so, um being able to buy him some classic country albums. just building this whole collection. It's been great for gifts. So one or two for his birthday and there's some cool places in Charlottesville where you can get albums plan nine and some other side tracks. Absolutely. There's also a sweet little antique store in Ruckersville that's underneath Jack Shop Kitchen. Yeah, the big the big building, there were 48 shops and thousands of huge, huge section of amused album. I had no idea. Um so but you gotta be careful because most of those guys haven't been treated as well as you would hope. But we have some cool products for that too. Like the we have some cleaner and stuff that you can use if you need to prepare, but that's been a fun project. Um and just listening to those old albums and stuff. I recently interviewed charlie Pastor Field for this podcast. Super cool. I went to his house uh and uh as part of it we were listening to some records and he is so uh particular about cleaning every record he puts on his record player, like he does not put a record on, he runs it through the vacuum cleaner machine basically that really just removes any particles out of the grooves. Uh and then he puts it on and then he brushes off the needle with like he puts a light there, like he is so particular about all of that. I am the opposite. I mean I just take a record out and put it on and go yeah, no you have to, I definitely have to be careful. Um It's funny to just all of the different adjustments that help with having vintage albums. You know like how the tone arm adjusts, how you can set the counterbalance all those things if you're using an album that has deeper grooves than another one or there's just so many different things that you have to think about when you're getting, getting those guys and you can really get particular about it. Um But I think our last album though was Kenny and Dolly is christmas classic, classic. Yeah. And for I guess we're telling everybody right that we're doing dolly is right, my phone name. Right? Yeah. Yeah. So um do you still go by Dali was your phone name from since 13 years ago. Do you still go by Dali? Even though you've moved from, I'm talking to you know residential normal consumers to talking with businesses. Are you still dolly? Yeah, I couldn't lose the Dalai. Yeah. No, it's it's it's my trademark. Yeah. So it's great. I even still have customers who still call in just from residential to chat. And I even had a guy once sent me in handwritten lyrics to a dolly Parton song like that Dolly wrote. No, he just wrote him out. Oh yeah, people love it. Yeah, I had a pretty cool experience one time, this was like first year I was here. I was a guy called in and he was literally at a concert in the back of way back in the concert. So we could I could hear him. It wasn't a noise problem but he's like hey I just need you to settle a bet for me like oh great I love this, right? And he's like all right this is keep in mind this is 1997. He's like I'm just talking to my friend about like record players and C. D. S. And stuff and I'm trying to decide if I want to get a CD player or not. And he just told me something. I can't believe he said that Cd players. I know I know their digital right? But there's something in there that converts the digital to analog. Like if that happens aren't you losing the benefit of the digital C. D. And I had to explain to him that you can't actually hear digital, it needs to be converted to analog. So because that can be powered and sent on to your speaker and digital's won't make speakers move. You know so blew his mind uh settle the bet he lost. But then we talked about because that's his his real love and he's like I got thousands of records. Name a record. I have it. I said alright Donovan cosmic wheels which is this weird little Donovan album that my dad used to listen to when he was in the Navy in the seventies that has some funky psychedelic type stuff on it and I have the copy of it, but it's unlistenable, it's so beat up. He's like, yeah, I got it was like you have that, he's like, yeah, I know about it, it's the one with intergalactic laxative on it, right? I'm like, yep, that's the one, he's like, I'll make you a copy and put it on tape and send it to you, like, seriously? He's like, yeah, just look for it will be in there in a week or two. And sure enough he sent me a tape of cosmic wheels. Yeah, connected. That guy never bought anything from us, but it is one of my most memorable calls from so long ago. Yeah, it's funny, I have a similar turntable story, at least just with the nostalgia where I had um a customer Cullen and she had just been, she had just inherited all of her dad's albums, the whole collection and she had no idea what to do, how to play them, what to get or anything like that. And we got to the right turntable and everything she needed and and she was just so she was just so grateful. I remember even being kind of a little bit emotional after that call because I'm a I'm a I'm a daddy's girl. Anyway. And so too um help her find a way to listen to these albums that she had just inherited from her dad passed away was really cool and we don't always think about, I think every day how gratifying our job is and how much we really, I mean I set out every day to try and help somebody, but to really, really help somebody do something like that. Um, it really just makes it so awesome to still be so much more than just, hey, I need to play records now because I'm into that. No, this is a, an emotional thing. You know, it's a connection to a person who's, I assuming no longer with us. Right. So I mean that's, that's deep right there when you can make that possible for somebody, it's, I'm getting chills just talking about you. Great story. Yeah, for sure. Great experience For, for both of us, I think I have no idea what the answer is going to be to this question. Do you find yourself not really talking turntables that much in your current job? Because I would imagine turntables are not the go to audio source in most commercial settings. Yeah. Unfortunately not right. Where you talk about rock bots and like the commercial audio streaming because we got to make sure that anybody who's out there in their business, if it's a retail environment that they're playing stuff that's commercially licensed. So they don't get the big fine, you mean you can't just stream Sirius XM or Spotify or something right into your business. Well you can, but if, if somebody, you know from ascap or somebody walks in and hears it, then then you'll actually get a pretty big fine eric are you familiar with ascap? Well, I'm more familiar now than I was before. Do you know what ascap stands for? I know you're going to ask me that. I can't say, I know what it does. I wasn't 100% sure of exactly what the A. S. C A. P. Stood for but I googled it american society of composers, authors and publishers. Oh, that's actually what I was about to say. Yeah, I mean, and they are one of several companies that basically their job is to make sure artists get paid for their work. How's that working out for you? I mean, we're getting paid every bit of what we should be getting paid based on how many listens my band's songs has on all of the various streaming platforms, which ain't much. Let me just tell you to, to be fair dot com, by the way, if you want to check out my band's website, I get paid more when the song is played in a public space where the assumption is, is that more than just one person is listening? So the royalty fees are a little bit higher in a commercial setting and if you are a business and you're not appropriately playing licensed music through a legit type of source, then you're doing it wrong and what the end the end result is that the band isn't getting paid what they should be getting paid for their song being played. And that's why there's the ascap police that dolly mentioned and B. M. I. And there's one or two other companies that do this, they literally go around and make sure that your if you're a business and you're playing music that you're doing it the right way. I think that seems fair. By the way it's T O B F A R E. We spelled it weird because because you're supposed to do that with a band name. All right back to the interview, I've certainly been into restaurants and I'm not going to name any, but I can think of one right now where they're definitely not paying the royalties, they're not subscribing to a service that licenses the music properly for a commercial setting. They're just playing their Spotify. And how does somebody like that get caught? I don't know if this will make the episode or not. I'm really seriously just curious about this. So I think it really comes down to somebody from ascap or somebody whose whose job is walks into a business listening to the music searches to find out if they have some sort of um they've paid royalties with, you know, because you can pay them directly um to be able to stream. So you could, you could actually playing Spotify but pay them a fee. So if you had a business and you're like maybe uh you made a playlist that you're like, I want these songs in this order to play every day in my business and I will call ascap and say these are the songs I'm playing, I would like to pay you for them so I can do that. That's a thing you can do. I had no idea. And it doesn't matter what your sources, like Spotify amazon as far as I know that that's the case um that you can pay those fees to them directly. I mean, I think it's much more affordable to just purchase like the product that we sell is the rock bot. And they have, they taught one of the biggest libraries like, I don't know, something crazy way over a million songs that they've gotten a library and you can curate a playlist. And the other thing that's kind of cool about that services that you can do things like um at this time of the day, you can make sure there's no songs playing that have explicit lyrics or in the morning we can have really happy, upbeat stuff in the evening, we're going to switch it to low key and program all of that. You can program it to turn off and on purchase quickly and go home. So we can close on time, all of those things. Yeah, it can be done in that rock bottom um interface. And so it becomes very user friendly for owners of businesses and so that we, we try and recommend that service. But there's also, I mean you could purchase a so knows, um, you know, ports and then get the rock boat service through the Sonos ports. That's one of the services that can be done on the right. And um, I think also Spotify for business and I have to double check exactly what this is, compatibility is right now. But yeah, there's ways to do it with regular gear that you're totally reasonable. I mean I currently pay 15 bucks a month for Spotify. That's a family plan. So my daughter can listen my girlfriend all that for $10 more. I could make my business have whatever. You know, if I had one that seems like a pretty reasonable number to spend. For sure for to do it right to not have to worry about the Ascap police coming in and busting you for just playing your Spotify. Yeah. I kind of thought it was urban, you know, legend about those guys getting fine. But we actually did have a customer call and say, hey, I just got fined, you know, from ascap for playing what we wanted and I need to find something else so that, that doesn't happen to us again. So it's happening out there for sure. There's people that that's their job is to go around to businesses and listen to the music, look up an account and bust you and find you or maybe give you a warning if they're a really nice person. Yeah. I feel like it doesn't happen. By coincidence. There's got to be people who are actually out there doing that job. Yeah, for sure. There's gotta be travel involved in that job. Yeah. But it's nice. They're protecting the musicians, right? Like that's the whole idea is that we're protecting the position as a musician who's made several pennies off of the streaming from our songs. I get it. Yeah, definitely, totally. But I think I want that job just the more I think about that job they can't go. We need you to stay. Maybe this will be like a part time thing. Trying to do it on the weekends, all the time you have with your many bands. I'm going to be the bad guy at all the tiki bars. That's great. And then just hand out you can hand in my card and I'll get them what they need to get you. Got it. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. This was way more fun. I mean, I knew what we were going to talk about mostly, but we went places. I had no idea. We were gonna go. And this was a ton of fun. I hope you enjoyed this as much. I did way more than I thought. I would. I wasn't sure if I were you nervous about being on a podcast? Yeah. I mean, I'm just nervous in general anytime I'm putting myself out there to do something that all the world could hear you saying and want a karaoke contest. This can't be any harder than that was. Yes, but that, that also you can sing karaoke and have beverages. That's true. This is a little different environment understood. Thank you so much for doing this. My pleasure. Thanks for having me and tell Corey, thank you for freeing you up for an hour because I know you guys are busy, so we'll do and I'm going to then make sure that he comes down and does this podcast to that that guy, he knows some stuff. I would love to talk to Corey? Yeah, mostly about nineties alternative and grunt. Well, he's a, he's a, he's a connoisseur. Excellent. Thanks so much. Thanks. So that was my interview with Dolly had a good time talking with her and she is fantastic. If you are a business that needs a commercial audio design, get in touch with our corporate sales, commercial audio division. It's right there, go to Crutchfield dot com. There are design services available on the website and Dolly just might be the person that ends up doing your design. Yeah. Eric, what did you pick up on there? Did you notice that she um, she didn't go out and buy like the biggest baddest and result home theater all at one time. She's been building it kind of in stages. What do you think about that? I love it. Uh to me getting one or two pieces at a time enables you over the long run to get better stuff and probably spend the same amount of money. So, you know, one way to do it is as she did with the home theater package, I love that, that she got the small little home theater package. She was getting 5.1 right out of the gate. Um you know, and another way to do it, the way I chose to do it was to actually start with, you know, two tower speakers and then over time, turn that into a home theater system. And this logic can be applied to any audio system, right? Like if you're just buying a bluetooth speaker, that's 11 purchase and you're done. But if you're building a system home audio system, whether it's for two channel or for home for theater or maybe you're building a car stereo system, doing it in stages. I mean, unless you just have the money and want to buy it all at once, that I mean, that's great, we'll be glad to help you. But doing it in stages is a fantastic way to build a system over time and it allows you to not have to make compromises, right? If you're having to make compromises for budget to try to get an entire system, don't do that by part, you know, each piece individually over time And uh and it allows you to get the best pieces of the puzzle each time, you know, it struck me when dolly was talking about walking into that store and hearing her system that she put together and I mean that's so cool. I mentioned it to her in the interview, but it really strikes me, you know, I've been working at Crutchfield since 1996, I've always been in the contact center, I've always talked to people either on the phone or chatting with them online. And one thing you don't really ever get to experience is what is that customers life like after they buy that cool new thing, whether it's their new turntable, their new tv, their new sub wolf or whatever, what is their life like afterwards, Right? I wanna, I kind of want to experience the system and we don't really get that. I love how excited, I love that she used the term geeked out, right? She was so excited to see the system that she built actually, you know, working and doing the thing that she designed it to do and doing it well and uh you know, I'm sure it has brought pleasure to, you know, all the patrons, you know, that fine establishment over the years and uh you know, it will continue to do so and it was great that she got a chance to enjoy that. But yeah, being able to see that first hand, I love that she brought her dad to the store to show him that was so cool. The closest we come to that now is something that has become one of my favorite parts of Crutchfield dot com and that is, we've always been doing customer reviews right. But now and for the past few years people have been able to upload pictures with their reviews and we're seeing this so much more and it's pretty fun to be able to look through reviews of products and see car stereos installed in dashes, amplifiers in trunks, TVs mounted to walls powered subwoofers over in the corner. I mean, I want to see the Prada, we sell in their natural environment being used by our customers. I mean it's so, it's just, it's satisfying to just look at those pictures and see that it's also really helpful for me. What am I what I'm doing here normally is I train new sales advisers and a big part of every day when we're talking about different product categories is looking at these reviews so that we can see the products we're talking about, how are these things going from our warehouse and being used to do what it is that, you know, you're that you guys want them to do like that at the end of the day. That is the most important thing. You know, they look great on our website, but they look better in your living room or in your car and how you made that happen and how we got you there, it's, it's awesome. And you know, even talk about them sometimes on the, on our Crutchfield live events, right? Like, well bro, bring them up and comment on those, those, those pictures and you know, I think that's a fun segment of that show as well, so we absolutely love those who appreciate them. Hey eric, it's been good to have you back for this episode. Hey, you know, just saying it's, it's fun to be here. Um you know, if you come across any other Eriks you want to have on instead of me, you know, sure have at it, but it's good to be back. How many Eriks do we have working at Crutchfield right now? I don't even know, I can't even check on this computer. I kind of want to find out you're going to be a part of at least every fourth episode of this show. So that's great. I appreciate that. I kid I kid you're a permanent co host. It's just that sometimes we do other things absence makes the heart grow warmer or bigger or it grows in some way fonder. That's the that's the, that's the way man. Like I said, it's been great having you back on the show, we'll be back in a few weeks with another episode of Crutchfield, the podcast please tell your friends and family and enemies about this show, get them listen and help us grow this thing. If you have any questions about any of the stuff you heard about in this episode, reach out to us podcast at crutchfield dot com is the way to reach out to us. We might even be able to answer your question live on the show. Uh and of course, if you have an immediate need, just go to like Crutchfield dot com slash contact or talk to any advisor any day of the week and they can help you get what you need anytime. I'm jr. That's eric, thank you so much for being here. We'll check you next time.