The dialogue features Lachlan interviewing Dave Friesma from Dark Matter Audio, focusing on the intricacies of designing in-ear monitors (IEMs) for musicians and audio professionals. A salient point of the discussion is the collaborative effort involved in creating high-quality audio products, which integrates both technical expertise and a deep understanding of users' needs. Dave shares his extensive background in the audio industry, emphasizing the importance of experience in driver selection and sound tuning, while also addressing the challenges and nuances of achieving optimal acoustic performance. Furthermore, the conversation delves into the significance of customization in IEM design, highlighting how individual preferences and ear anatomy affect sound quality and user satisfaction. As we explore the various models offered by Dark Matter Audio, listeners gain insight into the craftsmanship and thoughtful engineering that underpin each product.

In an engaging exchange, Lachlan converses with Dave Friesma, who offers a profound insight into the world of Dark Matter Audio and its innovative IEM designs. The conversation provides a fascinating glimpse into the design philosophy that underpins the creation of high-quality audio products. Dave recounts his extensive background in the audio industry, emphasizing the evolution of his career from Etymotic to Westone, and now to Dark Matter Audio, where he collaborates with fellow industry veterans. The dialogue touches upon the technical intricacies of IEM design, including the significance of achieving an accurate sound signature and the challenges presented by different driver configurations. Dave shares anecdotes about the meticulous design process, which involves not only technical expertise but also an understanding of the unique requirements of professional musicians and audio engineers. This exploration reveals the delicate balance between engineering precision and the subjective nature of audio preferences, highlighting the intricate craftsmanship that characterizes Dark Matter Audio's offerings.

Takeaways:

• The episode features an in-depth discussion on the intricacies of designing in-ear monitors (IEMs), particularly focusing on the expertise of Dave Friesma from Dark Matter Audio.
• Dave Friesma shares his personal journey in the audio industry, highlighting his experiences with notable companies such as Etymotic and Westone before co-founding Dark Matter Audio.
• Key insights are provided about the various types of drivers utilized in IEMs, including the benefits and challenges of using balanced armature versus dynamic drivers.
• The conversation delves into the significance of acoustic testing and the challenges posed by different ear canal shapes, emphasizing the need for precise measurements in custom IEM design.
• Listeners are informed about the complexities involved in achieving the desired sound signature for musicians, illustrating how different models cater to specific performance needs.
• Finally, the episode touches on the aesthetic aspects of custom IEMs, exploring how color combinations and design choices can impact the overall appeal of the product.

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• Dark Matter Audio
• Etymotic
• Westone
• ZMF Headphones
• Function Effects
• Dekoni Audio
• 64 Audio
• Passion for Sound

Foreign.

Just a quick note to let you know that scheduling has been an absolute mess from my end lately.

Not Nick's fault.

This is entirely my fault.

So things have been up and down.

We will get back on track at some point, I'm sure.

So thank you for your patience.

Thanks for those that are sticking with us and enjoying the episodes.

Thanks to those that have sent emails into askthegroovepodmail.com we haven't forgotten you.

We will get back to you as soon as I do another episode with Nick.

We will make sure to go through those emails and reply and just talk about whatever's been on the on the emails.

But today I've got a bit of a one off for you, which is I was able to chat to a guy called Dave Friesma from Dark Matter Audio.

This is a company that makes in ear monitors for musicians, live performers, and the audio engineers that mix and monitor live music.

And he's got a huge amount of experience designing IEMs.

He was a very interesting guy to talk to and I hope you will enjoy enjoyed this interview as much as I have or as much as I did doing it, I should say.

And the other point to make here is that if you then want to hear my review of one of Dave's creations, specifically the Dark Matter Audio DMA6IEM, do make sure that you subscribe over on YouTube to the channel Passion for Sound because I've got my review of Dave's iem, the DMA6 over there and so let's get into that interview now with Dave from Dark Matter Audio and I look forward to posting another podcast episode soon.

Back with Nick and hopefully also with Adam as well.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this episode.

I would love to know a bit of your backstory and how you got into the world of designing IEMs with dark matter Audio.

So do you want to just introduce yourself, Dave, and explain a bit about where you've come from and where you are now and how it all came to be?

Yeah, so my name is Dave Friesma.

I'm an IEM and actually a headphone designer too.

In addition to Dark Matter, I do headphone design for zmf.

So.

Wow, I didn't know that.

Okay, I'm kind of tied into and I have another company called Function Effects that does guitar pedals for musicians.

So I am everything to me is music.

I grew up with music.

My mom sang with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for 35 years.

So I grew up around music.

I grew up going to concerts since I was barely able to walk.

I've just been around music my whole life and I, you know, I've been a guitar player since I was 14, you know, and I sang in high school and we went toured Europe for a little bit and, you know, all sorts of fun stuff.

So it's always kind of been music to me.

So, you know, I got hired on there as an engineer, quickly became a project manager there as well.

In fact, all, eventually it was all the earphone stuff.

And I was there for 18 years.

We got bought out.

And then eventually our new parent company also bought Westone Audio.

So I ended up in charge of Westone and Etymotic.

Does that mean you had a hand in the Westone Mach 70 and 80 type?

Okay, love those two headshot earphones.

Yeah, the whole Mach series.

And that was an interesting challenge because all of those were based on the ES series.

And there's this sort of assumption that you can just take a custom multi bore solution and just turn it into a universal.

And that's not the case really at all.

Those all ended up being redesigns that were modeled after the ES series because they were all, you know, Weston Etymotic have always been what I would call small bore solutions.

The sound tube on them is pretty small, 3ish millimeters, which means that it's a single bore solution.

There's just no way you can do a multi bore solution.

Like we did.

All but one of the ES models was a dual, you know, a dual bore.

So we had to combine it.

But the problem is when you do that, you start dealing with interactions between the drivers.

So you can't just basically shove a single bore.

You can't just rip the two off and put another one on.

So you have to compensate for it and redesign it.

So that's what we did.

When you talk about the interaction between drivers, are we talking about almost like the pressure coming out of one driver changing the movement of the other, or is it just more of a resonance type thing of the sound waves being changed?

It's a combination of factors, but you know, because, you know, you end up with cancellations within the tube and there's all sorts of things that you have to deal with and it, it's easier with certain things.

Like it's easier to combine a low end and a mid range.

Like if you're doing like a three way system and you're.

You have, you know, like a lot of the dark matter stuff.

If it's a three way system, we have three bores, which is more difficult physically, especially with some ears that are smaller.

But if you have to, you can combine the mids and the lows easier than combining the high frequencies.

You run into.

Into more issues and you know.

Yeah, so it's driver interaction is something you have to deal with now.

If you can isolate them with their own bore, it actually makes life a lot easier.

Yep, yep.

Interesting.

That's great.

So.

So we've gone from.

So I interrupted you and took you down a detail area.

Oh, that's fine.

We had spoken about the.

You'd started off at Etymotic, ended up at Westone when the parent company bought Westone where from there.

So, you know, basically they just decided they were going to shut down any new development and they were.

They basically they trimmed a lot of people at that point.

So, you know, they still exist, you know, and there's a lot of good people there.

I still w. Well, but you know, they haven't really done any new development since some of us left.

It's basically just the existing models right now.

So they're.

They're just kind of continuing on.

So at that point I was a free agent.

You know, I did some work for Zach.

I almost went to work full time for cmf.

But you know, we.

It didn't quite work the way, you know, it's complicated.

And Zach's actually the owner.

Zach, the owner of ZMF is one of the partners in Dark Matter.

In fact, building we're in.

The building we're in used to be ZMF's building Zach before they moved to the new one.

Yeah, they outgrew the building.

They moved to a much larger building and we moved in to their old building.

So they're about a mile down the road.

That's handy because I'm still designing headphones with Zach, which is fantastic.

So just instead of working as a full timer, you're freelancing with them, are you?

Basically, yeah.

Yeah.

It's so it's.

You know.

But I put a decent amount of time in per month on that too.

I just, I don't know, I kind of like doing all of it and I'm really bad at turning things down.

So what happened with Dark Matter?

Is that Tal Cosin, who founded De Koni with Sam Roney and a third partner.

Tal was my boss when we got bought out by Lucid.

When Edamoto got bought out by Lucid, Tal was eventually brought in and he left Dekoni and sold his stake in Taconi and came.

He moved down to Texas from New Jersey, and he ended up being my boss.

And we worked really well together.

And we had always kind of wanted to do.

Do things our way because even though we enjoyed our time there, and like I said, there are a lot of good people there, it was, you know, it was a corporate structure and they had an idea of what they wanted to do and that was fine.

But, you know, Etymotic had a certain ethos and Westone had a certain ethos, and we didn't try to make them into, you know, this amalgamation of both of them.

But we also had limitations on what we could do reasonably, you know, within that structure.

So we kind of always dreamed of doing our own thing.

And then Tal left to go back to Dekoni at some point.

And then once I was let go, I called Tal up, and I think he was in Japan at the time, if I remember correctly.

And I said, hey, you know, I'm not there anymore.

I've been, you know, I think it waited about a month, but I put some thought into it.

I said, I think.

I think we can make this work.

Here are my thoughts.

And then he's like, great, I'm in.

So basically, there's four partners in Dark Matter.

It's Tal and Sam from Tacony, me and Zach.

So it's.

It's kind of like the Avengers of audio companies in some ways.

It's a bunch of industry veterans that kind of went together.

You know, the day to day really is me and Tal, we do more of it.

Tal's, you know, he's in Dallas still, so, you know, we're just outside of Chicago, so we're not in the same space.

You know, I'm actually in the shop.

You know, we got a couple people that came over that were also let go from Westone.

One of them is our main lab guy, Alex, who also worked at 64 audio at one point.

So he worked at 64 in Westone.

We call him our mad scientist.

He's really clever at finding solutions to things.

You know, I'm more on the design end.

He's great on the fabrication end, which is.

Which is great.

I mean, you need that.

And then we pulled one of our artist relations person came over as well.

Which is great.

That's a nice lead in to something I wanted to ask you about which is that we lot of people probably that don't yet know about Dark Matter Audio.

I'm guessing is has the emphasis so far been mostly on pro musician work?

Yes, we have probably not done.

Not probably.

We haven't done enough to try to appeal to kind of the hi fi, high end audio side of things so far.

You know, we have a lot of kind of contacts and we have a lot of, a lot of folks know us in the pro audio industry.

I mean Tal was a, you know, he was a live sound engineer for years.

In fact he still does sound for Roseanne Cash on occasion.

He did that a lot last year.

It's a little bit less this year, but he's still doing it.

You know, he knows a lot of folks in the industry.

Rochelle, who's our A and R person, knows a lot of people in the industry.

Like that was a more obvious path for us, you know, especially on the custom side where in the pro audio touring space that's in high demand.

So we will be branching out into the high end audio space and I think that will even get easier as we eventually introduce universals and things like that.

But as a smaller, we kind of have to take one step at a time as we go.

And I was going to ask you if.

Because I know right now on the website it's all custom only.

I was going to ask you if there was any plans for that, which obviously there is.

Yeah, yeah, that's down the line.

There are a couple of things ahead of it.

But yeah, down the line universals are in the path.

Okay, fantastic.

That's great.

So let's dive deeper into the, into the whole process if you're happy to Dave, which is I'd really love to share with people the process and the cycle of developing a new iam and we'll focus on custom for now because that's kind of the bread and butter and maybe we'll do another one of these conversations down the track once you've got a universal.

Talk about what you mentioned before, that your job is sort of the designer and then you've got Alex in the lab.

Is the kind of the production and manufacturing side of it or the fabrication I think you called it.

What's the genesis of designing an iem?

Do you just come up with an idea of we need an IEM with Signature X sound Signature X and then you just go and start making it?

Or is it more about Coming up with the idea of we want something to a certain price or we want something with a certain driver count, where does it begin?

So I don't usually begin with driver count.

At Edemotic, we were for years just a single driver company.

So I worked the majority of my career trying to design as accurate of an earphone as I could with a single driver.

And I would actually still say that objectively, the ER4SR is still the most measurably flat earphone on the market.

I believe there are some other ones coming out of Asia that are similar to that.

I haven't measured those.

So I have to say of the things I've measured, that was the flattest.

It's possible something else has surpassed it.

But you can make a really accurate earphone with a single driver.

But, you know, in our space, particularly in Pro Audio, it's a little bit.

I would say it's less about accuracy, but our stuff still ends up being more accurate than a lot of the other Pro Audio stuff I've measured.

So I can't.

And don't stray too far.

Basically Etymotic.

And I don't know how much you're familiar with this.

Stop me if you are.

You know, we developed our own target curve and this was long before the Harman curve came out.

This was derived off of actual measurements made on human subjects with Pro mics at the ear canal.

And I say we.

I didn't do it.

That happened before I ever got to Etymotic.

So I don't want to take credit for other people's work.

But.

But Mead Killian did it.

In fact, Mead passed last week.

So this is kind of fitting.

The founder of Etymotic, he just.

He just passed.

So, you know, I would be remiss if I did not talk about the work he did because that really, you know, was pioneering work in the.

In the IEM space.

And, you know, we had our own target curve, which is similar ish to the Harman curve, except that it's flat in the base.

And then the Harman curve rolls off a little bit at the high end, which is understandable because I think a lot of people like that.

It's not accurate, but the Harman curve is, as I always tell people, it's not an accuracy curve, it's a preference curve.

So there's a little bit of a differentiation there.

But we always had that as a starting point and we always tried to get to as close to that with dark matter.

I still use that as a starting point because that is Fundamentally a natural, naturally natural sounding curve, but each model deviates it from it in a strategic standpoint.

So, you know, when we're designing for Pro Audio, we might say, okay, we want one, you know, like we have our DMA4, which is, it's fairly flat through the mid range, so it's great for vocalists that want to hear all the mids.

You know, it's fairly detailed in the high end.

It's got a bass boost with a low corner frequencies, you know, so it's a nice balanced sounding headphone for, for somebody that wants something like that, you know.

And then our more popular One is the DMA6, which is actually similar in the bass as the 4, but it actually is knocked down a little bit in the mids and it's a little bit reduced in the highs because that's what a lot of Pro Audio guys and gals want.

You know, they, they want that kind of, you know, they want a little bit less mids often and, and often, especially for folks that deal with hot mixes, they want a little bit less on the high end too.

So, you know.

And then the 8 is in some ways similar to the 6, but it has, you know, it's got quad bass drivers, so it's got the same mids and highs, but it's got dual the bass driver.

So it's got more bass and more bass headroom, which is a lot of times what drummer or percussionist wants.

So they're all kind of, you know, especially once you get above the first couple models, they're, they're more structured towards a specific sound signature that somebody wants.

Now all of them will sound good with music, but again, you know, it might be what somebody is looking for with their particular music, you know, presentation.

A lot of the, the Pro Audio customs that I've measured from other companies, I'm not going to name any companies, I'm not going to name any models just because like, that's not cool.

But you know, a lot of them are, you know, they're designed to be, you know, not what I would consider flat in that they don't have that 2.7 kilohertz resonance that we all know and love.

But they're actually flat.

So it's very V shaped and you know, a lot of folks are used to that, but that's not really what you want, I don't think.

And you know, it doesn't sound good for certainly for hi Fi music.

And there's sort of been this belief and I know I'm kind of Bouncing all over the place.

But there's sort of been a belief from a lot of people that use customs on stage is that I don't, I wouldn't listen to music on these, but this is what I need for live performance.

And you know, we kind of make the argument that, I mean, you haven't like, you know, once you experience, you won't want to go back to that and then you could still use them for music.

And by and large, that's the feedback that we've gotten from most people.

You know.

Now there are sometimes, you know, a lot of our stuff tends to be boosted in the sub bass and tends to have a low corner frequency because, you know, in live sound, 300Hz ish area, 300 to 500 is a real problem area.

So usually, you know, the, the front of house person is cutting that down.

But there are some folks that are used to like, even the west tone stuff tended to have less sub bass, but it had more mid bass.

And some people like that kind of warmish sound.

So, you know, we'll probably, you know, we still offer a model that's based on a Westone model for that very reason.

And, you know, we may end up making a dark matter model that suits that particular use case scenario.

So when you're talking about how we develop, you know, particular models, it's very much based on what does our end user need to do what they're doing on stage.

And you know, a percussionist requirement versus a guitarist requirement versus a vocalist requirement aren't always the same, which is why there are different models.

So all about where they go to want to focus in on the mix that they're either monitoring or hearing played back to them as they're playing the instrument.

Is that the idea?

Typically, yeah.

And live, you can always EQ a little bit.

I mean, doing massive Eqing can sometimes be a little bit challenging.

Most time people are using parametrics and if you start pulling up big swaths here and there, it can kind of be a little bit difficult.

But if you're just, you know, you can nudge anything up a little bit, up or down.

But a lot of times people want something that sounds, you know, natural to them from the go.

And it can even be challenging if they already have an EQ profile for an existing manufacturer's IM that's different than ours because sometimes people don't want to go through the rigmarole of changing it.

But that's kind of, that's what happens when you change for something.

Particularly if you have something that is severely V shaped or whatever shaped that is different than ours, then they're going to have to do that.

And it's the same if somebody went from ours to somebody else's.

It's just kind of part of the process.

Yeah, it makes sense.

Just want to clarify a few things for anyone that's watching or listening.

I actually don't know how as the time I'm recording this, I don't know how exactly I'm going to share this conversation.

But for those that might be watching or listening, you mentioned a low corner frequency.

I'm assuming what you mean there is where the bottom end, like the 20 Hz trace disappears off the graph is the low corner, is that correct or is it different?

So it's different.

And you know what, I always talk about corner frequency without explaining it.

And usually if Tal's here with me, he will stop me and make me explain it because I've done this on just about every interview.

So, I mean, from an engineering standpoint, when you're talking about filter design, the corner frequency is the point where it is either 3dB up or 3dB down.

So let's say it's flat from 700 down to 300Hz and then the bass boost starts.

The point where it goes from that flat area to 3 decibels up, that is where the corner is.

So, you know, we're trying to keep that corner frequency, that ramp, you know, under 150 hertz, sometimes under a hundred hertz because that keeps it clean.

You know, I tend to like bass that is kind of flat until you want that low end emphasis.

Like if the timp drums come on, if you're listening classical, all of a sudden you hear it, or if the low kick comes on, you can, you can hear it.

If you're listening to, you know, EDM music or anything like that, you hear that lower bass.

But I don't like it when it starts getting really kind of woofy and muddy as the bassist is moving up the bass or even as male vocals start getting into the lower area of their range or since as a guitar player, you know, the lower end of the guitar can get a bit woofy too.

That's a personal preference.

That's not a right or wrong because we're talking about a deviation from accuracy here anyways.

And that's, you know, that's why we have that other model and we may end up with some other models for people that specifically want that.

Because it's not only what, you know, one thing I've had to learn as part of this, you know, it's.

It's not only what I like and Tal and I have sort of similar tastes, but it's what, you know, what people are looking for and what helps them.

I think, you know, as you get into hi Fi stuff, fewer people will like that mid range, that mid.

Sorry, that mid base bump.

I mean.

And that's kind of borne out if you, if you're a follower of the Harman, you know, target.

That's also a fairly low corner frequency bass boost for that exact reason.

It kind of keeps things clean while ending while adding a little bit of a foundation to things that I think people kind of fundamentally like.

I often think for those, for those that are familiar with it, I often think of the original Meza Empyreans as a great example of this.

They had such fun, enjoyable, like round, full, meaty bass.

But their, their low corner frequency, now that we know that term would have been somewhere in the range of 200 hertz.

It started to lift up into the bass and, and so when you then put them up against something, you know, like when they then released them as elites later on, they pulled back on that, they dropped it down further and you could really hear the difference where the.

In comparison, the Empyrean suddenly sounded a bit thick, a bit lacking in clarity and resolution.

But they're also very fun.

So like it's one of those things that I think it splits and divides people, but the majority go for the lower frequency lift, I think.

And if I can share a non dark matter story, but it's a ZMF story is ZMF just released the Ori 3.0.

I've just received them, but I haven't listened yet.

Well, one thing you know about those is they come with different bass plugs.

And that was a point of discussion between Zach and I when we were working on it was, you know, when you pull the bass plug out entirely, you get a much more robust bass presentation.

And it's fun, but sometimes you want a little bit more accuracy.

And then you can put the solid plug in or you can go to the middle ground and put the one that has the hole in it.

And that was intentional for that exact reason, is that it can be fun and with some music you like it, but with other music you just want to kind of, you know, you wanted a little bit more kind of tastefully, you know, reduced bass or something like that.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Dave, one of the other technical things you mentioned before that I wanted to understand better is you mentioned a 2.7 kilohertz resonance, I think you said.

Can you tell us what that one's about?

Yeah.

So basically, if you are in a really reverberant room in a diffuse field, and this is what they call the diffuse field curve actually is, and you put a flat signal, you know, into your ear, there is a resonance to your ear canal.

So by the time it actually, that flat signal gets to your eardrum, it's going to have a roughly 15 decibels bump at 2.7 kilohertz.

Okay, is that ear gain or is it different to ear gain?

That's ear gain.

It's mostly the canal.

You know, there's actually a really good graph that everyone uses.

Etymotic released it years ago.

Again, I didn't do it.

It was long before I got there.

That shows the, the individual components of the ear and how they contribute.

Because if you're listening to speakers, then it's not just your ear canal, it's also your pinna, it's also your shoulder.

There's a whole bunch of biology that contributes to it.

But with IEMs, the pin is out the window.

With headphones, the pinna matters.

But with IEMs, you're basically, when you're putting something in your ear canal, especially with a deep ceiling, you're changing the quarter wave resonance of your ear canal so you lose that peak.

So you have to put it back in.

Because even if you're listening to something, you know, a flat signal, which no one listens to, test tones, I hope.

But you know, even if you're listening, if you want something flat, your brain is expecting that there because it's used to that amplification there, it's used to that gain.

So that's effectively what it is.

Now.

2.7 is the average 2.7.

2.8 kilohertz is the average human response.

Not everybody has that same peak there.

You know, some people it's lower, some people it's higher.

And that's the downside of having something that has a very pronounced 2.7 kilohertz peak is that if you don't have it there, you know, you might not be super happy about it.

In which case, you know, for our product line, like a DMA6 or DMA8, where it's actually reduced there probably fits better for some folks because it feels like, you know, it's a little bit, it's not really rounded off, but by being reduced, it.

It's a little bit averaged out.

Yeah, certainly for my ears.

The tuning of the DMA6 is spot on in that regard because I've actually just realized there's a brand new product on the market that does.

It's a true wireless IEM that measures both.

It actually does a photographic 3D scan of your head and neck and also a frequency sweep of the ear canals with and without the tips attached and generates a personalized sound curve.

And I did a measurement of it before and after the, the tuning and mine has this lovely deep cut in that, that sort of ear resonance area.

And so I've now understood that I'm actually quite sensitive to that zone of, of resonance.

So that would explain why the DMA6 is such a good fit for me.

To me, they're about, you know, there's no such thing as perfect because there's, you know, different songs have different mixes and stuff like that, but track after track.

The DMA6 is one of the two best IEMs I've ever listened to because it just sounds natural and balanced throughout.

And that now makes a lot of sense as to why I'm hearing it that way.

That's great.

I'm glad, glad it's working for you.

It is.

It is indeed.

Cool.

Okay, so that's what the 2.7 kilohertz resonance is, is.

We've all got that.

And my understanding is that there's multiple resonance issues and, and changeable frequencies in the ear canals, not just based on the resonance, based on length, but also then the tightness of the bends and where the bends are placed in a person's ear can now change it at all.

Do you even try to account for any of that stuff or do you just go with the big picture stuff and let the rest work itself out?

We definitely are targeting averages because really the only.

Yeah, I mean, human biology varies from person to person.

I mean, what those wireless IEMs are doing with DSP is really kind of the way to do it.

I don't, I can't speak to how accurate their measurements are.

You know, back at Etymotic, we, we were actually the market leader in OAE scanning, otoacoustic emissions scanning, which is basically where they send two tones down the ear canal and you can tell by the reflection off of the tympanic membrane whether or not it's functioning properly.

We had talked, you know, a number of times of trying to incorporate that into an earphone where, you know, you're actually taking threshold measurements and then, and then, you know, working it into a curve.

But you Know, it's, we never quite got there, we never did it.

And that's a lot of, a lot of technology, a lot of expense, a lot of R and D. Well, and.

A lot of size too.

I mean, the problem is that, you know, particularly on stage, you know, for pro musicians, they don't, they don't want, first of all, they don't want Bluetooth.

You know, they want a wired solution that's going to go to the belt pack because it needs to work with the infrastructure that's there.

You know, over time it may change, but it's, it's a pretty slow moving train in that regard.

So you have to work with what people are going to adopt.

Yeah, but with, with true wireless, I think you will continue to see more and more sophisticated solutions.

Yeah.

And that's probably a nice segue back on track because we've again, and this is me doing this as well because I keep asking you to talk about really detailed stuff.

If we come back to the sort of.

We talked about the genesis of a product and where it comes from and what goes into it.

Once you know the product you're aiming to produce, maybe for a certain type of musician or as you maybe start targeting more of the hi fi world, you might think, okay, we want, we want something that's tuned towards this style of listener.

What's the next step in terms of defining maybe how many drivers you need to produce that sound?

Coming up with the, I guess it's the design, it's the layout, the crossover points, what goes into that?

Is it instinct and understanding over your years of expertise or there's certain things that you know, well, if I want to do this, I need this many sorts of drivers and if I can add an extra piece in there and then just let you run with it.

One of the other things I was really excited to talk to you about was your choice of drivers working only with BAS versus branching out into dynamics and electrostatics and planers and piezo electrics.

What's your approach to all of that when you're coming up with a new iem?

I mean, so it's a combination of what you said in that there's certainly an experience level and a familiarity with a lot of the drivers that are out there kind of knowing what works for a particular application.

I've long said it's not about the driver count.

It rarely is about the driver count, it's about the driver count implementation.

I will say in the Pro audio space in particular, there is a bias towards higher driver Counts being better.

Interesting.

Why would I get four drivers when I could get six drivers?

Because six drivers are obviously better.

Which is funny because nobody buys speakers that way.

If you think about it, speakers, which most people have been buying longer than they have been buying IEMs or often even headphones.

And nobody buys headphones that way.

These are single drivers.

You know, it's not how people shop, but in iems people do shop that way.

And look, we do anywhere from two to eight drivers currently.

You know, I'm not going to do a 40 driver earphone unless there's a reason to do a 40 driver earphone.

You know, like in the 8 driver that we have, we wanted that quad bass because we wanted the output.

We wanted a lot of headroom so people could EQ it.

So there was a reason to have those quad drivers.

It's actually difficult in some ways for us compared to the six in that those are big bass drivers.

So they don't fit in everybody's ears.

And we've unfortunately had to turn a few customers away or talk them into a lower model because we simply can't physically fit them in their ears.

So there are definite downsides of doing higher driver counts from a manufacturing standpoint.

So it's really whatever you need.

And usually whatever you need to accomplish a specific design, you.

And usually it boils down to people wanting more output.

So pure SPL we're talking here, like getting loudest in that particular frequency area.

Is that what you mean?

I mean sort of, yes.

I mean, that is definitely a piece of it.

The other piece of it is, like I said with Etymotic, I can design an accurate earphone with a single driver.

But what I can't do is design a significant bass response with that same single driver because I simply can't get, you know, the output at the low end of that.

And also I, you know, it's difficult.

There's certain changes I can do acoustically within a single bore, single driver design.

But the nice thing about multi drivers with a crossover point, particularly when you're talking about like three way crossovers or whatever, is that it allows you to kind of sculpt easier.

Like I can, you know, if I'm, you know, if I'm, I'm doing a low pass on the bass and I'm doing a band pass on the mids and I'm doing a high pass on the highs.

It allows me to dial in the crossover points and kind of sensitivity match different drivers so that they fit together.

And I might want to use, you Know, if I'm using a dual pad, like in the case of the sixes, there's a dual bass in there and I use a dual six to, you know, to run that sensitivity to, you know, an equivalent level.

And we actually use a dual high in that one as well, because it all matches up to sort of the right levels that we want to get with the output that we want, with the frequency response we want, because not all, all drivers have the same frequency response.

And then often when that happens, you will go, you know, if you want minor tweaks to the design, you can go back to, you know, the vendors, particularly the BA vendors.

You know, a lot of consumers, I don't know if they realize it.

I kind of don't think they realize it.

There really aren't that many people that make BA designs.

I mean, Sonyon are the two I know about.

They're the two heavy hitters.

And frankly, they're the ones we use are those two brands.

And you know, the thing is, is that not only are there only a few, you know, manufacturers out there, because BAs are difficult.

Setting up an assembly line for, you know, for the, you know, the tolerances required to accurately make a BA is challenging, which is why so many haven't sprung up.

I mean, if you look at dynamic designs, moving coil designs, there are thousands and thousands, probably tens and twenty thousands manufacturers out there because they're easy to make.

It's just not true with bas.

And likewise, there are, if you went to any BA manufacturer and said, I want you to make a ground up custom model, the quantities would be so high and the cost would be so high that nobody's really doing that either.

What you can do is you can get a custom configuration of the model.

And we actually were supposed to get an exclusivity on it.

And there was a little bit of a sour feeling over that because they ended up selling it to everybody because everybody liked it most.

You know, most manufacturers nowadays, if you give them a custom configuration, they'll keep it a secret.

But it's not really ground up.

Nobody's doing that.

So basically you're starting with kind of what's available and then you can kind of tweak it to your needs from a manufacturing standpoint.

Standpoint, they can make adjustments to it, little bits here and there.

And then beyond that, it's what fits with what.

And then it boils down to a combination of the driver.

And I will say this, there is also a perception that it's all about the driver.

And that's not really true either.

That's kind of like saying I put this jet engine in this plane and then I put the same engine in another plane, but the shape of the plane is different, the wings are different.

It all matters.

And when you're dealing with, with IM design, you have to deal with not only the driver, you have to deal with the tubing diameter.

The channel diameter really matters.

Are you using acoustic dampers to not only protect against earwax, are using it to shape the response?

Well, where is that placed?

Is there a channel after the damper that makes a huge difference.

You can cheat the length of where the damper is placed post driver, but once you terminate it, any length difference after the damper makes a huge acoustic difference, like really, really significant.

And you know, if you're combining multiple drivers to a single tube, if you need a damper there, where does that damper go?

Can you use the same value?

You know, so there's a lot of considerations, you know, so that, you know, the channel length, the channel diameter all makes a difference.

You know, you may want different things for different drivers.

And then of course, there's the crossover design.

Where are your crossover points?

How are you doing it so that it's not obtrusive?

Because bad crossover design is really awful.

We've all heard bad crossover design, whether.

You know, it's like those, those out there might be going well, I don't know if I have, but like for me, a bad crossover design creates incoherencies in the sound where it doesn't all mesh together nicely.

Maybe harshness in the sound because there's too much contrast between one sound and the next sound that comes after it in terms of frequencies and that it can be horrible in a number of ways is my understanding of it.

And people may not know that's what they're hearing, but if it doesn't sound good, it's a good chance that's what they're hearing.

Yeah, phasing issues, all sorts of problems.

So it's basically.

That's a very long winded way of saying that there are myriad factors when you're designing that all factor into what it's going to end up when you're done.

And certainly doing it for a while helps a lot because you kind of have, have that intuition that you spoke of into how it works.

But at the end of the day, engineering still involves reading data sheets.

It involves getting samples, testing them, seeing if they fit as is or if you need to modify them.

It involves.

I designed some PCBs to make my own kind of crossover workstation where it's just a bunch of variable capacitors and resistors and I can do, do, you know, up to a four way crossover where I just sit there and dial the, the knobs until I get what I want and then I take it and I validate it into an actual shell.

So I don't, you know, I'm not sitting there, you know, soldering little, little tiny parts.

Yeah.

Which I do because, you know, that something that I do.

But, but at first, you know, having something that allows me to kind of dial it in speeds things up a lot for me.

I can usually get to where I want to be somewhat quickly.

You know, once I decide on, you know, I kind of figure out certain things.

Yep.

So if, if we dive a little bit into the, the specific drivers, as I understand it at the moment, Dark matter Audio I think is all balanced armature.

Is that correct?

And if so, is that a deliberate choice that you just like having the one driver type for whatever reason?

So it's actually not true.

Okay, I haven't read everything properly then.

That's okay.

Our DM2H, which is our two driver model actually is a hybrid design that uses a moving coil.

And I actually like moving coils in the bass, you know, I think they can sound great.

In this particular case, I think, you know, it's got a nice bass boost, it's pretty organic sounding and I think it's good.

I'm not at all opposed to hybrid designs.

At some point may do an electrostat.

I've certainly played around with, you know, the electrostatic drivers that are on the market.

They're very low output.

So I don't know that, you know, I don't know if folks realize just how low output they are.

So if you have a super sensitive IEM and it's got electrostatic electrostatic drivers in there, you might not even be hearing the electrostats.

They might actually be buried.

And there's other things, particularly in customs that really matter with those electrostatic drivers.

They need a large tube, tube size and they need to be isolated.

They get really unhappy if they, you know, if there's any sort of combining of signals and they don't always play nice with other drivers.

So you, I mean it can be done certainly.

And they're actually Pretty cool.

So at some point I might do it.

That would probably be more of an audio file kind of product because.

Because I'd probably have to knock down the sensitivity of the other drivers and I'd still probably be doing a quad package or something like that.

I mean, if once you start going more than two dual packages with those, you run into other problems.

Again, I've seen people talk about eight or six, maybe I'm wrong, but heavy numbers of those.

And one of the things that, again, without talking about any specific companies, one of the things we're trying to avoid is not doing something simply because it looks good on an ad sheet.

And that comes back from my history of Edomotic, is that I want it to be scientifically valid with whatever we're doing and I want it to exist for a reason.

And again, if there was a reason to do a 16 driver earphone, I'd make a 16 driver earphone.

I'm not going to paint myself in a corner and say I would never do this or I would never do that.

I will say we haven't released an electrostat because an electrostatic tweeter because I haven't been happy with, with what I've, you know, what I, what I've messed with so far.

It hasn't, hasn't gotten to where I'd like it to be.

And if it ever hits the market, it's because I'm happy with it.

Yeah, okay, that's good to know.

Connected to that.

And you mentioned the size of the, the sound tubes with the electrostatics needing to be large.

One of the things I wanted to ask, and I think I mentioned this in the email to you, was I noticed on the DMA6 that when I look at the left earpiece and the right earpiece, the three holes to allow the driver sound to come out are in quite different places.

I had a chat to a guy recently who is.

He does 3D ear scans here in Australia and is making some ear protection products that allow you to put in different attenuators.

And he was talking to me about the fact that he's found that one of the things he wants to do is try to find a straight line through the ear canal for the sound for his ear attenuation.

And it made me wonder, is there, and I'm guessing there is, what is the logic behind the placement of those three holes and the fact that it changes, where does that come from when you're designing a custom.

So we would all love to have straight lines going through the earmold.

That's very hard.

And straight lines actually play into part of that answer.

So basically how we do the process is people will either send in physical impressions and we have a digital scanner here and we will scan them, or they'll send digital scans they got elsewhere.

And then we'll just take those in and we bring them into a program where we do the layout.

And the challenges of it are.

First of all, part of the reason for the asymmetry is that your ears are probably not symmetrical.

I don't remember what your molds are.

I know mine aren't and they're not that close.

I have much more of a bend in the canal in one ear than the other.

Same.

And practically speaking, when we're doing this, there's a couple of.

There's more than a couple.

There's a few things we need to look out for.

Is that one we need to have, you know, dealing with, you know, kind of the different canals.

We need to have a.

We have to have like in yours, it's a three bore model.

So we need to have three straight shots with a defined length because we put in our acoustic dampers from the outside as opposed to from the inside.

And the practical advantage of that is, I mean, from a manufacturing level, it's nice because we don't have to put them until later in the process, which keeps them, you know, cleaner.

When we're doing, you know, when we're going through polishing and lacquering and all this stuff, it keeps dust and debris and lacquer out of there.

You know, we can plug them, but it's still better not to have them there.

But the other thing is, is that it means that if, if somebody clogs their IMs with earwax, which does happen, that they can send them in and we can pull those dampers out and replace them without their, you know, if you put them on the inside, you actually have to crack the thing open and take, take everything out, which is challenging.

So it works better that way.

So we need a straight shot to where those go.

And the length varies depending on the model and the particular driver and stuff like that.

Because again, post damper, it changes.

So that's one reason is that we need that straight area.

So wherever we can get that straight length, that matters.

The other thing is leading up to that area, we have to make sure that we don't go beyond.

There's like, there's a certain minimum radius we need to maintain so that the tube, so that the sound channel leading up to that damper area.

And even post damper can be as, you know, as uniform as possible, maintain the proper dimension and not fold in on itself and be 3D printable.

Wow.

Okay, so basically it all boils.

And not only that, there needs to be a minimum wall thickness between.

Between the bores so that they don't break down as they're getting printed.

So for us, it's all about finding the most robust kind of path for those three channels to come down so that they're not too close to the edge, they're not too close to each other, they don't bend too much, and they're straight from a certain point on.

So that's basically why is that.

And again, if your ears were perfectly symmetrical, we could mirror the design and do it in both ears and it was.

Would be the same.

And some people's ears, they do end up the same, but in other people's ears, for whatever reason, you know, they have to get moved around a little bit.

Yep.

And.

And just for anyone.

What?

Yeah, yeah.

And just for anyone watching or listening, it makes no difference to me as a listener.

So if anyone's thinking about getting customs and they're thinking, oh, is that a bad thing?

No, it's not a bad thing.

I just happen to look at them and go, oh, that's actually distinctly different.

I wonder what that's about and what the thinking is behind that.

Because I knew there'd be a reason, otherwise they would have been symmetrical.

So.

Yeah, so there's no, no negative in any of that.

I just wanted to know what's behind it.

What are the intricacies to go into?

And I guess speaking of intricacies and knowing that.

I don't want to keep you for too long today, Dave.

What, what else.

Is there anything else that you think is an interesting thing for people to know?

Whether it's a thing that, That a lot of people don't know, or maybe there's a detail that, that goes beyond what most people know that gets into the.

The.

Into the real weeds.

Is there anything that you think is really interesting for people to know about making an iem, whether it be custom or universal, any kind of voodoo, black magic type stuff that you would love to share with.

With people that.

If only they knew, I guess, is what I'm saying.

Wow, that's a tough question.

I mean, I know.

Sorry, I'm putting on the spot.

No, I mean, we've hit a few things that I don't know if people knew already.

Gosh, I'M trying to think of what is.

Are there any things as you're putting together an IEM that you like?

People have no idea.

We have to go through this to make their IMs.

Oh, I doubt people know how much work goes into actually building a custom iem.

How much time is spent.

That's actually a good thing.

How long, what would you say, end to end is the process time?

Rough is fine.

We're not going to hold you to it.

Obviously, it depends.

Four to five hours probably.

I would say, all told.

And there's a lot of steps.

I mean, the most time consuming thing is all of the stuff that makes it British.

Okay.

It's all the, you know, sanding, buffing, all that stuff is, you know, we do it all by hand.

I would love to not have to do it by hand.

You know, it's a 3D printed process.

You know, we 3D print the shells.

But anybody that's dealt with 3D printing, even on a very nice printer like the one we have, it still needs a ton of post processing to make it look beautiful.

And other than that part, it's all hand processed.

I guess the one thing I would tell that people, I don't know if they know is how variable acoustic testing is on iems, because I think a lot of people look at curves as definitive.

And I can tell you that if I wanted to, I could manipulate a curve in the high end on the same rig very easily to get 10, 15, 20dB difference in the high end.

Wow.

Are we talking just things like insertion depth or is it beyond that?

Insertion depth makes a huge difference.

That is something that I've mentioned on the forums a lot and I think people get tired of hearing it because there was actually a thread on Head fi about what the best IEM tip and I basically was saying, if you're going to compare tips, you need to make sure that you're getting the same insertion depth or the variables are all off.

Now, it might be that that's the better tip for you because you can get a deeper seal.

It doesn't mean it's a fundamentally better tip for everybody because somebody might, you know, there were comments about, you know, I don't like the sound of foam because of this, because of that.

And I was like, well, a lot of times foam is harder to get a deep seal with.

So it could be that the material is different and you do prefer the sound of silicone over foam.

But if you're not isolating the variables, it's not necessarily a foam problem.

Or it could be, but insertion depth makes a huge difference.

The ID of the, of the ear tip itself makes a huge difference.

And that was something, you know, at Etymotic, you know, and Westone too.

The length of the ear tip installed, you know, made a huge difference on, you know, not only insertion depth in your ear, but whatever the stem length was and how long the ear tip was and the ID of what that ear tip was made a huge difference.

I mean, you know, you can create a large acoustic horn just you just with tip variability where you get this massive spike.

You know, you can get a pronounced difference based on just ear tip geometry.

So, you know, on universals, that makes a huge difference.

One of the advantages of Customs is that they always go in at a defined insertion depth and there's no tip to have to worry about, which is nice.

Yeah, you know, but, you know, one thing I've talked about elsewhere as well is that there seems to be this assumption that if you want good attenuation, you go with a custom because you can't get good attenuation on a universal.

And that's actually not true.

With a good sealing ear tip, you can get just as good attenuation on a universal.

But again, it's about insertion depth and it's about getting a good seal.

And likewise, if you don't have a good seal on a custom, you know, you're not going to get great attenuation either.

So, you know, I think there are a lot of misconceptions about testing.

You know, repeatability is, is always a challenge and, and that's one of the things we even have difficulty with here.

And I, I, I've tested literally tens of thousands of earphones in my life.

I've got a lot of very pricey and very good quality test equipment, but it's challenging with Customs because they're all different to find a repeatable test fixture.

Yeah, I was actually wondering how you go about that with Customs, because I'd thought about whether or not I could take a measurement of the DMA 6.

I've just got a basic, one of the clone couplers, the IEC 711 clone type thing, and I thought, I wonder if I can just put, put like Blu Tack or some other kind of putty around the outside and stick it in anything.

But yeah, what do you do?

Yeah, yeah, you can do.

So the thing is, is that, you know, first of all, funtac or Blu Tac or whatever you call it goes under a lot of names.

I'm pretty sure Etymonic would have gone out of business 20 years ago if we didn't have Funtak.

It was, we used it for so many different measurements and it's amazing stuff.

I use it every day here.

It's, you know, we have rubber canal basically, you know, we have series of custom canal extensions, you know, that, that fit on, on the gross couplers.

And I've got some B and K ones too.

I've got two, two Gros 45 Cas, one with high res couplers, one with standard, you know, Rao 45 couplers.

But I don't use those for testing IEMs.

I use those for testing headphones for IEMs.

I just use a coupler mounted in a base.

I do use grass or B and K, but mostly grass.

I have three of them on my desk right now.

And basically, you know, there's a series of canal.

Like we have a rubber canal extension that works sometimes.

I've got some modified flat plates that work pretty well.

But you have to use funtac with those.

You know, the typical canal extension works just.

It works fine if you understand what its limitations are.

And for customs, the, and really for anything, but especially for customs.

The problem is, is that, you know, with that conical.

You know which one I'm talking about, right?

Yes.

Yeah.

You know, it looks like the middle flange and then it's got.

Yep.

The problem is, is you're not going to bottom out.

So you're not going to get to the reference difference plane on the, you know, the coupler with that.

So you're going to have a volume in front of, you know, there's going to be a gap where the IEM ends.

Even with funtac, there's going to be a gap and that's going to make a significant difference in the actual response.

Now it can work, you know, for just getting, you know, you want to see that it works.

You want to see, you want to get the bass response, you want to kind of get a general idea of what the mids look like.

It works for that.

You know, I call it, it's the easiest thing to get a seal with, with Funtak.

I call it the big dumb seal.

When we're struggling, you know, it's.

Sometimes you just put it on and you check it, but with the high frequencies it's probably not going to be accurate.

You know, you may want to try to seek out a flat plate for yours, and then you can couple to it with whatever.

But even with, you know, universals, especially nowadays, you know, a lot of the things that are out there right now have larger boards because they want to put, you know, sorry, they, they have, you know, the sound tube on the outside is larger because they want to do three or four sound bores inside.

And, you know, that's understandable.

You know, that that can work great.

The problem is that when you take that, you know, if you have a 5 millimeter OD on the, on the, you know, the exit tube and then you have a tip on top of it, you're not getting to the bottom of that adapter either.

So that's probably going to, you know, give you a little bit of a, you know, it might send you down the wrong direction a little bit when you're testing it.

So it's, you know, this stuff is challenging because really on.

Okay.

And pull away from the reference plane.

You're to going to get different, you know, different measurements.

And that's fine as long as you understand it.

And, you know, it's the main thing for me with a lot of the published measurements I see is that like, you know, especially when you have compilations of measurements taken by a bunch of different people, you just don't know how it was taken.

And even as someone who does measurements myself all the time, like I've tossed and turned between, do I use the same tip for every iem so.

So that I'm roughly approximating the same insertion depth, acknowledging that nozzle size varies a little bit.

Do I do that, or am I better off to measure it with the manufacturer provided tips?

Because that's most likely what the first, like the person's going to put on first, and that's going to change the insertion depth depending on the size of that tip.

Like, that in itself is a huge area of variability.

And then there's my measurements versus somebody else's measurements versus somebody else's measurements.

That might have had different thinking processes, too.

It gets very messy.

Yeah.

Especially if the manufacturer did something very specific with their tip to achieve the response that they wanted.

I mean, by putting a tip that was designed for a different IEM, you might get significantly different measurements, 100%.

And that goes back to what you.

Yeah, that goes back to what you said.

Before I was going to say this at the time, which was I find, when you were talking about the discussion on Headfire, I, I find the perfect tip for me is different for every single iem.

So I'll get an IEM and I've got about five or six aftermarket tips and I'll generally try the provided tips, plus about three or four often of the aftermarket tips that I know work well for me until I find one that I go, oh yeah, that, that's actually the one that I most like the sound of.

And then that's going to be different for me and my ears to somebody else that's got different shaped ears.

So it's an impossible area to kind of batten it down as a perfect one.

Well, absolutely.

And not only that, but, you know, going from one IM with a small, you know, small OD exit tube, you know, or you know, to another one that has, you know, a larger od, you're going to get a different insertion depth which, you know, you might prefer a different tip because it allows you to get deeper or you might prefer a different tip because it presents, you know, the traffic treble differently in a way that you prefer, you know, adding the different positioning compared to the other im.

So it becomes a very personal thing and, you know, okay, aftermarket tips are great if you find the right one.

So I'm not, not badmouthing aftermarket tips.

No, definitely not.

You know, it's, it's just, you know, it's, it's kind of all part and parcel of this fun variable thing that we do.

And you know, it's, you know, it's, it's just there's, there's a lot of things to consider and that's what makes it so fun part of the journey.

Hey Dave, I've got, I've got one last question which is completely non objective and non scientific for you.

Having seen as many custom IMs as you would have no doubt seen in your time with Dark Matter Audio, is there an approach to design?

Are there any things that you think when people are going through and customizing their design and most companies have an option where you can go in and say, I want this color shell and I want it transparent or not transparent and then these sorts of face plates do you see designs come through and there are consistent things that you notice where at the end of it you go, that's a really cool looking iem or is it just so personal?

Like, I know for me, I find that I'm more drawn to IEMs with, like, a dark shell.

And I don't know if that's just me because I haven't had enough exposure to all different design types.

Have you seen lots come through and found that there's a certain thing that always tends to come up really well on a custom.

So I won't say it's always one thing, since this is subjective.

I would say that to me, it's always the balance of colors that I find.

I've seen some beautiful stuff come through, and I've seen some stuff that I've thought that is not at all what I would have chosen.

But that's okay.

I mean, that's the nature of custom.

Right?

It may absolutely reach someone else's taste, and that's great.

That's what we're here for.

It doesn't have to all match, you know, my taste.

I find clear usually works with most things because it's benign.

You know, it can fit with most face plates.

When you start talking about colored shells and colored faceplates, you know, to me, it's always about what the match is.

You know, I think anybody that knows me will tell you that I am a really esthetically picky person.

Okay.

Which is.

It can be detrimental at times.

But, you know, I.

There's certain things that I love, you know, like we have these.

These stone faceplates that we make, and I. I think, you know, there's some combinations.

Like, you know, I think we've even got a picture of it on our homepage.

But like a black, you know, shell with, like, the black and copper web.

Yeah, that looks really cool.

Like, to me, that is, like, one of my favorite combinations.

And then there's other ones that I think.

Think look great, too.

It's just, you know, but it's like, you know, with.

With a certain face plate, I wouldn't necessarily always want black or I wouldn't always want clear.

You know, like, I. I happen to like the aquamarine shell with, like, the pearl face plate.

You know, pearloid shell that we do.

It.

It's confusing.

Confusing because the body we call the shell.

But then we have a series of faceplates that are actually made from shell.

We got.

We get them from Hawaii.

It's not, you know, it's actual shell, which is pretty cool.

And so I like, you know, the pearl, I think, looks great with the aquamarine.

There's something about the combination.

So to me, it's all about color compatibility.

And, you know, you know, matching colors is really what it boils down to.

I like I like the pro tip as well of the clear, because I don't think I've ever ordered a clear custom.

But it makes a lot of sense that if you get the clear, kind of anything will go on top of a clear in terms of the face plate on top of the shell.

That said, the body's in your ear, so the face plate is the star of the shell.

That's true.

That's so true.

So it's, you know, it really boils down.

The face plate is what you want the world to see.

Yeah.

Actually, that's a good tip, too.

So start.

Start by choosing the face plate and then match the shell color to the faceplate.

Perhaps is another tip.

Yeah.

Cool.

That's how I do it.

Yep.

Beautiful.

All right, Dave, is there anything else that we've missed that you wanted to mention, or are we good to go?

Undoubtedly.

Once we hang up, I'll think of 20 more things I wanted to talk about, but at the moment, I can't think of anything.

Cool.

And maybe we can talk again in the future about if you do a universal.

Or maybe we'll talk on behalf of zmf, potentially.

Who knows?

I hope we can have another chat in the future, though.

That'd be great.

Yeah, that'd be wonderful.

Brilliant.

All right, perfect.

Thanks very much, Dave.

Thanks, Lachlan Ra.