279. Blasting Super Loud Sound At Spacecraft & Satellites!

In Episode 279, the hosts learn all about Direct Field Audio Testing, or as one of this week’s guests put it, “Blasting super loud sound at spacecraft and satellites!” This episode is sponsored by Allen & Heath and RCF.

Many listeners will be familiar with Maryland Sound International (MSI), the sound company best known for its work on large-scale events like New Year’s Eve in Times Square, the U.S. Presidential Inauguration, and many more. Fewer know of their sister company, Maryland Sound International — Direct Field Audio Testing (MSI-DFAT), which specializes in turning touring and sound reproduction expertise into creating portable, on-demand acoustic testing labs for spaceships, satellites, and other aerospace devices, replacing much more expensive reverberant chamber facility-based testing. If you thought concert PA systems were loud, wait until you hear about pummeling spaceships with 150-plus dB SPL levels to make sure they’re safe for launch and orbit!

Guest Alessandro “Alex” Carrella, VP Strategy & Growth at MSI-DFAT, has a degree in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Naples (Italy) and was awarded a PhD in Structural Dynamics at the ISVR (University of Southampton, UK). He’s now completing his EMBA at the Universite Louvain-la-Neuve. Alex was a lecturer in Structural Dynamic at the Dept of Aerospace at the University of Bristol. From 2011 to 2020 he worked in different roles to develop testing solutions for the aerospace industry at Siemens (formerly LMS) in Leuven (Belgium). He has become a referent point for the space industry for vibration and acoustic testing, and has been a leading figure in advancing DFAT practices is an active member of the space testing community. Alex has joined MSI-DFAT to lead its international operations and is now shaping MSI’s future as VP for Strategy & Growth.

Guest Bradley Hope, U.S. Business Development Manager at MSI-DFAT, holds a wealth of experience in acoustic and vibration test engineering and enterprise-level customer relationship management, within the global aerospace industry. Trained under the guidance of vibro-acoustic specialists at Siemens Digital Industries Software, coupled with his passion for business and intrapreneurship, Bradley brings deep commercial expertise to the MSI-DFAT team. Having collaborated closely with clients on a range of complex projects across PLM, CAD, CAE Simulation, and Test Engineering, he possesses a strong understanding of the unique requirements and consistent evolution of the space, aircraft and defense industries. Bradley is enthusiastic about supporting the customer-partners of the Maryland Sound International-Direct Field Acoustic Test (MSI-DFAT) company in its Direct Field Acoustic Noise testing campaigns.

Episode Links:
MSI-DFAT | Direct Field Acoustic Testing
MSI-DFAT on Instagram
“NASA’s Successful Quantifying of Comedy Timing” by Penn Jillette and Teller
Episode 279 Transcript

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Transcript

Episode 279 - Bradley Hope and Alex Carella of MSI-DFAT

Note: This is an automatically generated transcript, so there might be mistakes--if you have any notes or feedback on it, please send them to us at signal2noise@prosoundweb.com so we can improve the transcripts for those who use them!

Voiceover: You’re listening to Signal to Noise, part of the ProSoundWeb podcast network, proudly brought to you this week by the following sponsors:

Allen & Heath, introducing their new CQ series, a trio of compact digital mixers for musicians, bands, audio engineers, home producers, small venues, and installers that puts ease of use and speed of setup at the heart of the user experience.

RCF, who has just unveiled their new TT+ Audio brand, including the high performance GTX series line arrays and the GTS29 subwoofer. Be sure to check it out at rcf-usa.com. That's rcf-usa.com.

Music: “Break Free” by Mike Green


Andy Leviss: Hey, welcome to another episode of Signal to Noise. I'm your host, Andy Leviss, and with me, as always, my co host, the Carmen to my San Diego, Mr. Sean Walker. What's up, Sean? 

Sean Walker: Sup dawg, how are ya? 

Andy Leviss: I'm, I'm good, hanging in there, you know, settling back in, in, in, you know, the home front, getting the home office back up and running. 

Sean Walker: Yeah, you finally, you finally get to play best engineer in the house today, huh? 

Andy Leviss: uh, Nope. Nope. We're both home. So so, so, so for our, for our guests who don't know, my, my, my partner is also a sound engineer and I always tell people quite honestly that, that she is far away the better sound engineer in our house. So I'm the second best. 

Sean Walker: That's funny. That's, that's a high bar. You're pretty good at it, bud. 

Andy Leviss: I, yeah, I fake it well. 

Sean Walker: Yeah, there you go. Fair, 

Andy Leviss: Step one, get a podcast. 

Sean Walker: people believe whatever you say. Okay. So speaking of podcasts, I had a lot of people last week reach out, uh, or over the last couple of weeks via, you know, DMs, texts, carrier pigeons, cans on strings, whatever. 

They've been asking about like, as freelance engineers, do they buy more gear? Do they, how do they like make some more money? Basically, I think is the premise of all the questions. Like how do they make more dough? So I've, I've been thinking about it. And I just real quickly, before we get into today's episode, the, the two thoughts I had, as I was thinking about hiring engineers myself, and then also like, you know, moving around the But like, I would, I would say to them all, think about yourself like you're a little business, like you're a little company, right? 

Would you buy from you? You know what I mean? So like, if you're thinking about, hey man, this job has to get done, like here's the show that needs to get done, would you buy you? Or would you buy somebody else? You know what I mean? And if you wouldn't buy from you, why? And then fix that. So I don't think, I don't think like buying a bunch of gear or trying to, you know, bring consoles or microphones to shows and build a sound company, like that's not going to work. 

None of us sound company should be like, Oh man, I can't wait to pay you for your microphones that I don't need, that I've already got in stock to go. Like, this is what I do is rent gear. I need you. Right. Just get gooder. You know what I mean? Just do, do better, more efficient, faster, less complaining, more, more ass kicking, less whining, not that you're all whining, just that like, that's what we need, more ass kicking, less whining, and do a better job, you know? 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, like, that's the thing. We've, a bunch of episodes lately we've talked about, like, you know, having gear on hand or, like, buying gear for yourself. But Don't, you're not doing that to get hired, you're doing that to make your life easier once you're already hired. 

Sean Walker: Yeah dude, you're doing it to play with your own toys on your show when you want to, you know what I mean? Like your RUIOs and other things where you're like, no man, this is just the shit I need, these are the tools I'm gonna bring in my tool belt as a contractor to get it did better than the next guy, you know what I mean? 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, but I'm not hiring the guy because he brings the snap on truck with him to fix my house, I'm 

Sean Walker: Hell no! 

Andy Leviss: to fix my house. 

Sean Walker: Hell no, I, I, I expect they're bringing the tools they need to do their job, whatever that means, right? I don't expect as a sound company they're bringing consoles and speakers, like that's my job, but if you've got little tips and tricks that you need, you're like, like you said, RUIO, a few plugins, whatever, you know what I mean, whatever your thing is. 

Take bring it with you and that's cool, but I'm probably not gonna pay you for it But I will pay you an appropriate day rate for somebody executing at that level if that makes sense, right? So like if you're a you know, let's just make some real broad generalizations but if you're a few hundred dollar a day kind of engineer and you level up you can be a Few hundred more dollar a day engineer, right? 

You're not going to convince your sound company to like, rent your mic package for 200 bucks. It's not, you know what I mean? Unless they're straight out in the middle of festival season, in which case, you probably don't have what they want anyway, you know? 

Andy Leviss: Yeah. I dig 

Sean Walker: Okay, rant over, on to our, on to our guest 

Andy Leviss: well, well, so, so, as I, as I get ready to introduce our guest, Sean, I, I owe you an apology, I may have lied a little bit about this episode, because I promised Sean we were going to talk about blowing shit up. We're not actually talking about blowing shit up, but we are talking about blasting really loud sound at spaceships. 

Sean Walker: I'm out, we're not blowing anything up, I'm going home, back 

Andy Leviss: we're, we're, we're blasting loud sound at spaceships, which I think is a pretty 

Sean Walker: Alright, alright, alright, 

Andy Leviss: It's like, we want you back. we've, we've got, uh, we've got, uh, two, two lovely gents from MSI DFAT, uh, Bradley Hope and Alex Corelli here, who, why don't you guys introduce, uh, introduce yourselves and tell us a little about, about, uh, what exactly you, you do and, and how you got there 

Bradley Hope: Alex, you go first. 

Andy Leviss: right under the bus. Thanks. 

Alex Carella: I'm under the bus. That's me. So, I'll, um, I'll do that. Um, thanks for having us first. You know, it's really fun to be here. You definitely, um, keep it up. And it's going to be nice. It's going to be a fun half an hour, 40 minutes that we're going to spend together. Um, I work, um, at MSI as, um, I have different hats. 

Um, engineers, manager, a bit of everything. I'm in Europe. I'm in the States. I'm, um I'm traveling around and, um, I got here in 2021, so it's coming up to four years in a few months. Um, I was in academia before, I was a prof and, um, then I went to work in a big corporation, 300, 000 people, big stuff. And then I landed, I started to work on this, um, space business. 

I was in the space, I was, um, making systems to test spacecraft. And then I got to know Bob and you know, Bob is the owner of MSI and, um, we hit it off and, um, we'll, um, we haven't started to, to work together since 2021. That's how I, um, that's where I come from and, um, how it started and how it's going. 

Bradley Hope: Yeah, and I'm Bradley. And I'm here with Alex because I used to work with him in some capacity at that 300, 000 person company. So I've always been doing business development, sales, marketing. I'm a creative who loves the technical side, although I'm not an engineer, audio engineer. I love learning about it every day. 

It's a great business. It's a cool business. And Alex was the product manager. And when, uh, when he reached out to me, I immediately just said yes, because it was a no brainer to work with him again. So here I am. 

Andy Leviss: Nice. And, and so for those who don't know, uh, so MSI DFAT is, you guys were saying before, it's like a sibling company of MSI, Maryland Sound, that lots of folks will know, like, you know, they've, they've had the sound contract for Times Square New Year's Eve forever and ever and ever, 

Alex Carella: Oh wow, yeah, 

Andy Leviss: scale shows. 

Alex Carella: all true. 

Andy Leviss: and I guess, so I guess that's the first obvious question is like, how did they end up going from that into, you know, Into trying to, trying to shake spacecraft apart. 

Bradley Hope: Bob likes to say he's now done both sides of the dark side of the moon from Pink Floyd to Artemis. So they started, they started decades ago, uh, and developed core competency and all the complex logistics that go into doing a live sound event. Think about just a super loud rock concert, or, you know, they did a lot with Josh Groban even, and his voice is so perfect. 

You need to make the audio sound perfect. And if it doesn't sound perfect, it's not going to translate to the audience. So there's a lot of stress and a lot of pressure that goes into that. Um, and they've done some really cool, really cool jobs that they still to, to this day do. The ball drop in Times Square, the presidential inauguration. 

Actually, if you, if you look at January 6th, when they were storming the Capitol and you Google search some images, you can see the MSI logo getting tossed through some windows, breaking glass. So we don't just break spacecraft. We also break windows at the 

Andy Leviss: Yikes. 

Bradley Hope: Um, but in 99 or 2000, Uh, the, the spacecraft industry, the space industry, they, they had some engineers from NASA and other organizations. 

They approached the company because we had these low end frequency subwoofers and they wanted to recreate a rocket launch. And the traditional way of doing it was using these really expensive, big echoey reverb chambers. There's a few of them located all over the U. S. You gotta, gotta travel away to go get to them, but there's some out West. 

There's some at, um, some at NASA, Lockheed at Boeing. And using a speaker based approach, I think Bob blew up millions of dollars worth of the speakers when he first started out trying with commercial off the shelf units 

Sean Walker: Okay, now you have my attention. 

Bradley Hope: yeah, right. 

Andy Leviss: Okay. Okay. So there is some stuff blowing up. We're 

Sean Walker: Just lightin shit on fire, I'm in, let's go. 

Alex Carella: And 

Bradley Hope: break speakers, breaks, breaks. We're in the business of breaking stuff. This is test engineering. Yeah, 

Sean Walker: Love it. 

Alex Carella: the smell, the smell was, you know, you opened the door of the test and there was all these burnt, you know, smoked stuff. Yeah, it was vile, it was vile. 

Andy Leviss: Just picturing that scene from Apocalypse Now. Ah, smell of napalm in the morning. 

Bradley Hope: absolutely. So yeah, so they kept playing around Bob's trends with Matt Polk. Um, Matt Polk descended from president Polk, but he's also a super smart. Um, audio engineer developed these line of speakers called the MP series. That's our noise generation system today. And we incrementally approve on it each year. 

We got a bunch of different models. Uh, some are in development today. They're coming out soon. Can't talk too much about them. Alex might fire me, but, uh, yeah, it's been, it's, it's been a fun business. I think for Bob and Alex and all the guys that have been involved, 

Sean Walker: Okay, so you started by using brands that we all know and, you know, love or hate or whatever and just smoked them. So you were like, we gotta figure out something that's got more horsepower and is more durable and you made your own? Or you teamed with, is it Polk from Polk Audio? 

Bradley Hope: you got it. You got it. 

Alex Carella: That's it. 

Sean Walker: How does a consumer hi fi brand get into the pro audio smashing spacecraft business? 

Alex Carella: Oh, the step is very small, isn't it? Yeah, very, uh, he's a speaker. So Matt Polk is a speaker of speakers. No, Matt Polk is really somebody that, um, he wakes up in the morning and And he can, he can design a speaker, you know, he has, he reasons in terms of, um, acoustic powers. And, you know, he can, he can make horns and he can do an amazing. 

So when it was posed, um, the challenge. It's like, look, we're not getting the levels that we need to get. So, you guys know that loudspeakers are made for, you know, you teach us that they're all very good in providing the sounds in the region, the frequency region that we want to hear. Clear and, and there is a frequency region, which is really bad, is that sh frequency, you know, those mid, you know, hundred to 300 earths, which we don't like. 

It's not a er, is not a, a tweet. It's not clear and need these, that, that horrible sound that we want to avoid when we listen to entertainment, music. Well that's exactly the frequency where satellites and launchers make most noise. So, you know, the, the things that we want to excite most the, the play, the frequency range we wanna make most noise is what the loudspeakers for Hi-Fi. 

And, you know, high fidelity loudspeakers are less keen to play. And the music that we make is really bad music. It's actually noise and it's so, so that's why Matt has to come up with a, with a different, you know, to shift from these beautiful sounding devices to something that sounds like shit. You know, this should be really bad because they have e 

Andy Leviss: going to make a, the, the taint of the frequency curve joke until you just said that, but now I'm gonna. 

Sean Walker: But something that's got a lot of horsepower there, right? That's got a lot of output in that, in that band. Right, 

Alex Carella: And, and a lot of 

Sean Walker: is no longer a concern. Output's where you're at. 

Alex Carella: Exactly. Just make it loud and horrible sound, but has to be loud and loud. I'm 

Sean Walker: been to my shows before? You watching me? 

Bradley Hope: You do great over here, Sean. 

Sean Walker: Nice. I'm in, let's 

Alex Carella: you're setting up for a jobs, guys. You know, you, this is your CV coming out. 

Sean Walker: Yeah. 

Alex Carella: So yeah, we have a, a horrible a hundred and twenty five, two hundred fifty bands that are. Over 130 dB sometimes. So, um, it can be really nasty. We have a, there is one spacecraft, one launcher that has a 145 dB at 500 Hz. Actually, no, it was 143. Yeah, it's gross. So it's 143. I beg your pardon. It's Hz. That's a lot of dB at that frequency. 

Sean Walker: At a frequency nobody wants, dude, I cut all that out of my drums. 

Alex Carella: And that's why Matt Polka had to do some magic there. 

Sean Walker: Yeah, right? Totally. 

Andy Leviss: It's like, just do everything wrong for what you know. 

Alex Carella: Exactly. Forget everything you knew about making it sound good. 

Bradley Hope: I think for the lay person too, it's something you really have to experience this firsthand in order to truly comprehend exactly what we're talking about. Um, well, we have a little circle set up at our lab and in Baltimore and we run tests every day. There's nothing in the test circle and we just go crazy. 

Running, uh, whatever levels we can try to hit. And even when you're not standing, like we have some people who will put on the protection and everything and go stand at lower levels in the circle and you'll feel your organs reverberating, but you know, you'll be in the control room and it's still pretty powerful. 

So 

Alex Carella: There was a guy, an academic, that wrote a couple of papers. Very interesting. He went with his team to measure the noise level at launch sites. But not at launch site, like a, um, a mile away. So it was a, you had a, a circle that, you know, four points at a, a mile distance from the launch. Uh, and they measured the noise. 

We're talking of a lot of db. So we have, I think the, the overall, the power, the, the sound, uh, sun power was over 200 db. Um, the sun pressure 

Sean Walker: From a mile away? 

Alex Carella: from a mile away. 

Sean Walker: Holy 

Alex Carella: There's a paper, we put it on our LinkedIn, you know, we write, it was actually, and we spoke to the guy, the, the, the guy was very nice, very, uh, open to, to work and collaborate. 

It was, um, we had really good chat. 

Bradley Hope: Professor Kent G of BYU. 

Alex Carella: He was, um, it was interesting and, um, 

Sean Walker: that's from a rocket launch? 

Alex Carella: yep. It's a rock alone. Yeah. 

Sean Walker: 200 dB from a mile away? 

Alex Carella: Yep. There was, um, the son was, and so imagine what's happened on, on, on the faring of that, imagine the sun pressure and the SunPower that you, um. You have that at the, at the fairing where the satellite is sitting. You want to test it before you leave to make sure you can withstand it. 

Otherwise you might, uh, you might figure out too late that something was not done right. 

Sean Walker: Dude, totally. 

Bradley Hope: So actually it's not even that external noise environment that we're most interested in recreating, although we, we could try, 

Andy Leviss: That's just the fun side effect. 

Bradley Hope: well, there's constraints to, there's constraints to speaker designs, right? You get into physics based issues where you can only push speakers so, so loud and so high. So we really are, we're, we're doing is recreating the inside of the. 

The fairing of the rocket most typically, and it's a very diffuse field. It's a very uniform field. So every point measurement you do around the sound field should be basically the same. And that's not easy to do, but somehow they figured it out here. So yeah, it's, it's, it's wild. We've tested everything from telescopes to landers to, you know, all the different satellites that, you know, Provide internet access. 

Yeah, exactly. Human space stations might be on the docket here coming up soon. 

Andy Leviss: like. And like the, the whole, the whole goal basically is just like, put it through all the forces and like sound levels of what it's going to go through in launch or in orbit and make sure it holds together. 

Bradley Hope: so yeah, that's correct. And, and there's different types of tests and different things that they do along the way to making a spacecraft in this journey. So an acoustic test is just one test in the, the overall series of what they call environmental tests. So they'll put it on a shaker table and they'll shake the satellite. 

They'll put it in a thermal vacuum chamber and bake the satellite. And there's electromagnetics and all sorts of other things that they try to take a look at to see, will this thing hold up in the actual environment of being in space, as well as getting to space and now even coming back from space. So acoustics is typically, but not always, the last in the series of that test campaign. 

And so, like I said, the traditional way of doing it was you'd have to ship the spacecraft all the way, you know, from the East coast to the West coast, just to fit it inside of these fancy reverb chambers. And if you go inside, they have these big Echoey walls and these horn driven systems and you need special nitrogen gases and skilled personnel and it's a big capital investment, it's a big operating cost, so. 

That's why DFAT, Direct Field Acoustic Testing, it's a really, Alex likes to say it's a business driven technology because we're eliminating or providing an alternative for the need to have that reverb chamber. So instead we take our speakers, we'll load up our trucks, all the roadies, they go all around the country, we'll setup wherever this satellite's getting manufactured in the first place. 

stack up our units, do a quick practice run, blast the The test article with the sound and then load out. And typically that results in a big cost and time savings for the customer. 

Andy Leviss: Okay. So, so you don't have like a lab that like you're bringing to, it's like you're, you're taking it, taking a touring rig and going to them. 

Bradley Hope: We are the lab. It's 

Alex Carella: got Robbie, 

Bradley Hope: Test from anywhere. Right. 

Alex Carella: So, 

Sean Walker: that's awesome. 

Alex Carella: uh, So there's something, um, interesting, um, I'll try not to be, uh, too technical, but, um, one of the things 

Andy Leviss: go for it. We have nerds listening. You can get technical if you want. 

Alex Carella: No, no, I'll try 

Andy Leviss: you if it gets too technical. 

Alex Carella: No, this is interesting because, um, you know, one of the things of the acoustics and the test that Brad was talking, um, about, the environmental test. So the shakers and, uh, the vibration test, they stop at a certain frequency, right? So shakers are these big, big loudspeakers, basically. 

Basically is like a big Magnet with the coils around it and they move up and down and, you know, instead of moving air, they move this mass and then you put something on it and you, you know, you can sit on it and you get shaken. Um, so that's what the shaker do. They excite, but they have a frequency limit at about two kilohertz. 

If really, I mean, the mass has to be, 

Andy Leviss: And you're talking, you're talking like the, the smaller ones like we would put on like a drummer's stool? Or are you talking a bigger version? 

Alex Carella: no, we have bigger version. We have like, you know, we can put a few tones on it. So as, 

Andy Leviss: Gotcha. But same idea. 

Alex Carella: well, same Id, exact same id, so same thing. So they stop about two kilohertz, right? And so anything above that. Now, one of the things that we use acoustic for is called workmanship. So, um, I dunno if you've, you know, if, if you spoke ever about this with your, with your guests, with other guests. 

But, uh, one of the things that, uh, acoustic high frequency, do they, they. Things come loose. Screws and everything that was not attached properly, that's where they come loose at, you know, those frequency above two kilohertz. So they do the vibration for one part of the range, the frequency range. Acoustics, one of the things that we do for workmanship. 

So you, you put it in this, uh, acoustic field and if nothing comes loose, it's a good sign. So otherwise you start seeing screws and things coming off and like, uh, maybe we should go back and do something. So that's, uh, that's one of the things that we do with acoustics. It's called workmanship. 

Sean Walker: With the intensity that most of us build rock shows and corporate shows. The fact that you have to test to see if a satellite's gonna fall apart is mind blowing. I, the, holy shit, like, can you imagine if you had to test and see if your rigging was gonna fall apart when you flew a PA? Like, oh my god, dude! 

Ha ha ha 

Andy Leviss: I mean, in theory, somebody's done that at some point, although I don't think to the level these guys are doing it. 

Sean Walker: Ah, fair enough. I guess we are the end user, right? Instead of you guys being the R& D part of it. 

Alex Carella: the loudest thing you guys ever, ever witnessed? 

Sean Walker: Uh, the loudest thing I've ever witnessed was being in person at NASCAR. It was un freaking believable, visceral loud. 

Bradley Hope: I'll say I'll back that one up. I've never been to a NASCAR race, but I've been to Roush Racing in North Carolina and they, they had a little car demo. And when you get right up next to those things, it's like, holy heck, man, that 

Sean Walker: it, dude, it makes rock shows seem like frickin AM radio, dude. It's visceral loud. Yeah, totally, dude, totally. 

Alex Carella: what was the level? Do you, do you have an idea? 

Sean Walker: I didn't measure 

Bradley Hope: By the guess, 130. 

Sean Walker: in head, head, headset on still too loud. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah. Oof. 

Alex Carella: Yeah, we get to 145, 147 dB in a frequency range, which is probably loud. 

Sean Walker: Yeah, man. That just hurts my feelings, bro. Like 

Alex Carella: You come to Baltimore, you know, we'll put you in the circle and then you can tell that you've been in there. 

Sean Walker: I'm your huckleberry. 

Andy Leviss: I was going to say, I'm torn between I don't ever want to and let's see if I hop in the car now. 

Sean Walker: Yeah. Right. 

Andy Leviss: cool. 

Alex Carella: do you know what? I just, I just asked my friend, Chad GPT. Uh, about the noise level and he says, the noise level at a NASCAR race is incredibly high, often exceeding 100 and 130 dB. And I would be like, nah, that's low, that's not high. 

Andy Leviss: like amateurs. 

Sean Walker: pretty fricking loud to stand there being it's it's loud, 

Alex Carella: Yeah, 

Andy Leviss: funny. Like, like y'all are talking about like the, the sound level, like, you know, miles away, like if you ever seen Penn and Teller wrote, wrote a story in an article about how NASA has perfected comedic timing, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'll send it. 

Bradley Hope: a new reference. 

Andy Leviss: send it to you in an email and I'm gonna link it in the show notes. 

They, they got invited to go to like the VIP area at a space shuttle launch back when the space shuttles were still launching. And they're saying it's like you watch this thing and like you're, you know, they're like 3. 7 miles away. And they're like, you know, you watch it and you see all this smoke and all this fire and everything going. 

And you're like, wow, that looks like you feel the heat even like almost four miles away. And you sit there and you watch this all and it's weirdly dead quiet and just exactly as you turn to the person next to you and say, you know, that's so hot. It seems like it should be louder and as you say louder, they're like, you don't so much hear as get hit with the wave 

Alex Carella: the wave comes and 

Andy Leviss: on that time. 

And they're like, they're like, we can never do comedic timing that is better than the space shuttle launch. 

Sean Walker: Funny 

Alex Carella: sounds fun. You 

Andy Leviss: It's a, it's a, it's a longer, better essay than that because I am no Penn and Teller, but I'll link to it in the show 

Alex Carella: it's, it's, send us the paper. I love 

Bradley Hope: see, I'd love to see Penn and Teller if I got the chance. Fantastic. 

Sean Walker: Totally. 

Andy Leviss: Um, yeah, but now that I totally derailed us with that stuff. 

Bradley Hope: Well, and, and, and that's not a, That scale, right, the decibel scale, it's not a linear scale, so it's really helpful to have that reference, you know, 130dB for a NASCAR, but every 3dB, you're effectively doubling. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah. So we're like, yeah, that's a bunch more doublings. 

Alex Carella: 20 db 20 DB is, uh, 10 times more. 10 times the power, the, the sound pressure is 

Andy Leviss: Yeah. So, yeah. So we're somewhere, yeah. We're like, what, like 15, 20 NASCAR races simultaneously. 

Alex Carella: a lot of, is a lot of, uh, but it is interesting that you, you, you experience that also. The frequency range is different. We, we are more in the lower frequency so that, you know, you fill it in your stomach, you know, you're sitting there and, um, you, you, your, your body. Shakes. You feel it inside. You have to come to Baltimore. 

We'll film you when we do that. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah. Oh dude. I would totally put that up. Yeah. We'll totally put that up on the Facebook 

Sean Walker: Yeah, dude, I'm totally in. Let's do 

Alex Carella: Deal. 

Andy Leviss: Forget Nam, we're going to Baltimore instead. 

Sean Walker: No, we'll do both, dude. We'll hit Baltimore, find a brown note, then we'll hit NAMM, clean ourselves up and frickin make the rounds, dude. It'll be 

Andy Leviss: I mean, that was going to be the next question is if we have we tried to find the brown note. 

Alex Carella: I've seen a, a Meatbuster episode. Do you remember Rogers Wanker trying to do that? 

Andy Leviss: Yep. 

Alex Carella: Yep. No, we didn't. 

Andy Leviss: it. The Meyer folks set up a big ring of subwoofers. 

Alex Carella: Yep. Nah, I didn't find it. So, um, no, we never tried. We'll, uh, I'll ask the guys in Baltimore. Maybe, uh, we can give it a shot. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, like, do we have, do we have stuff that'll go low enough for that? 

Sean Walker: Do you guys have a bunch of low frequency elements or is it mostly that lower mid range that you're focusing on? 

Alex Carella: Now we have, um, lower. So we're now, um, actually coming up with something which is below 20 Hertz. Is, is, is huge. He's 

Sean Walker: Yeah, dude. Also, also with the, the Matt at Polk doing, leading the charge with that or that's internal. 

Alex Carella: another MP. 

Sean Walker: Partying 

Alex Carella: does all the design, so he comes up with all the, the, the way, um, the, the driver has to produce and has to go and, he's all out of his brain. 

Sean Walker: too. That's awesome. How cool, 

Alex Carella: Yeah, we 

Sean Walker: cool to work with somebody that can just like see it in their fricking noggin and make it happen. Like you got to feel blessed. Did you just be like, Hey man, I think we need something to do this. He's like, Oh yeah, man. Give me five minutes. 

Alex Carella: yeah, he goes, give me five minutes, then he comes back, he's like, okay, we tried, and, um, you know, it's one of those experimental things, and then he's like, oh, oh, damn it, I got it, that's why, and then we, and then, then he goes, and then he works. 

Sean Walker: totally. Like hair on fire. He's like, I'll be back in a minute. Like mad scientist style. 

Alex Carella: Dammit. 

Andy Leviss: It's like, I haven't solved the speaker yet, but I did invent Flubber. 

Alex Carella: It did work. Yeah, Matt is a great worker. 

Bradley Hope: yeah, it's not as common, but we do get outside of the range of human hearing, actually. So, we have our typical speaker models, we call them the MP21s, that's our low, our subwoofers, essentially, and then, We have MP150s. 

Andy Leviss: 21 inch driver I'm assuming from the name or, 

Alex Carella: Well, 

Andy Leviss: was it the 21st version? 

Bradley Hope: very intuitive. No, I'm glad it's so obvious. And then, uh, 

Alex Carella: code names. 

Bradley Hope: yeah, yeah, it was actually made in, uh, 2020. 

No. Uh, and then we have, we have some high frequency stuff that doesn't get used quite as often, but I think it goes up to 30 kilohertz if I remember correctly, past 20. So 

Andy Leviss: is it, is that like for testing for anything in particular when that does get used? Or it's just, if they ask for it, we got it. Or, or, or is that the, you, if you tell us, you'd have to kill us. 

Bradley Hope: Alex, what are the, what can we talk about in those 

Alex Carella: just injure you. No, no, but there are applications, there are defense applications that require to go up in frequency. 

Andy Leviss: Understood. 

Alex Carella: There are. So, um, we, we have, um, so if you, uh, you were asking before how we got into this and, uh, it's basically the, the DNA that we have, uh, and Bob is, uh, that's the imprint that, um, he has given. 

And so the guys, um, you know, Bob is making loudspeakers for, um, and, and concert and consoles and he's producing, uh, Frank and what's, what's his name? Um, uh, for Frankie, for Frankie and. 

Bradley Hope: Frankie Bailey. 

Alex Carella: Frankie Valli. That's the name. Sorry. So he's producing all these artists and this guy from NASA calls him up and says, look, we have a, we have an idea of using loudspeakers. 

And Bob goes, sure, let's do it. And somebody else comes, look, we have a, you know, a test that we're to do with 30 kilohertz. Sure, let's do it. Oh, you know, we have a frequency below 20 hertz. Absolutely. Let's do it. So that's our, that's what we do. So we are acoustic engineers that, um, that push the boundaries of whatever that is out there. 

So, um, that is our DNA. So that's when they call us. They call us also for the everyday tests, you know, the, the usual thing, but mostly they, they know that when they have an issue, you're the MacGyver of sound, you know, when, when, anytime there is an issue, that's when they, uh, we have to solve it. That's why we got into gear, Matt Polk designed and, you know, we execute and there is, uh, that's, that's basically MSI DeFi. 

That's, 

Sean Walker: My new, uh, I'm going to need some of those MP 21s for my shop, 

Bradley Hope: yeah, there's a great book for anybody who has a business hat on like me. It's called On the Origin and Evolution of New Businesses by a guy named Amir Bideh. And I think that the MSI DFAT story should be included in the next iteration of that book. 

Andy Leviss: So was this like, when it started, I, I don't think you answered this already, unless I'm, um, just dad braining and, and not catching it, but like, was this something that like, somebody came to Bob and MSI and were like, hey, you make loud sound, can you do this for us? Or was like, he looking to expand the business and was like, I bet I could chase after that market. 

Alex Carella: The first one. So, uh, the idea, if you go back into the literature, the idea of D FAT, you know, is Directly Using Loudspeakers, 1966, um, that was the, the first one that came up with these, but, um, the, the, the power and, um, the physics, so the coil and the efficiency of the speakers were not good enough to make enough noise, and so they had to step back Um, and so they started back again in the end of the nineties, there was a technology that evolved. 

And, um, and so when these, uh, NASA guys, they, um, called up the biggest producer at the time was MSI with a, with an inventory of hundreds of boxes. Um, then The power and the sound pressure we could produce was, um, was decent. It was not enough. It was 135 the first test. And there was one thing missing was to make that sound field what the space guys needed. 

So, um, you know, in a music you play and, you know, you play what you want. In our business, we have to play what they want. So the space guys, they have, um, they measure these, um, these profile in when they launch and we have to play back. So we don't, we cannot play what we want. We wanna play what they want. 

So we have a, we have a way of, uh, uh, looping back the microphone, reading into a control system that then makes the noise that they want. And at the time, this was not good enough, you know, was a, was it The beginning was first manual. So imagine back in the nineties, you know, end the nineties, beginning of 2000, and only in the past. 

Three, four, five years we developed these very complicated, mathematically complex, um, it's called MIMO controller, and so we have input from 24 mics, and we adjust our drives, we split these columns of speakers that go up and down. 40 feet, 50 feet. We can split them vertically, we can split them horizontally, we can do a lot of things with, uh, with drives and the way we send the signals. 

And eventually what comes out is the exact same sound that happened in a, in a chamber or up there in a, in a fadding. But it took a while to get there. 

Sean Walker: You know, the best part about having to play back exactly what the space guys want is on your side, you get to build the space guys what you want. To give them what they want. It's a real synergistic situation 

Andy Leviss: Heh heh 

Alex Carella: Oh, I like that. That's, 

Sean Walker: Yeah. 

Alex Carella: that's a good business 

Sean Walker: I got to do it your way, you're gonna pay me my way. Good talk. See you out there. 

Alex Carella: That's why, that's 

Sean Walker: if you guys know this yet. I don't know if you know this yet, but the space program has a lot more fucking money than the rock and roll program does. 

Bradley Hope: We're hoping. Now 

Sean Walker: totally. 

Bradley Hope: now there's, I don't know if anybody keeps up with the, the industry, but there's the whole department of, of government efficiency. And actually, so in March each year, we're one of the Artemis suppliers, the missions back to the moon. And we go to DC and the primes are all there and NASA's there. 

And then we go over to Congress and we start talking with the politicians about the manned mission spending. So we're crossing our fingers and we're hoping that All the funding remains intact after Doge comes about. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, I'm, I, yeah, I mean, that'll be interesting to see considering there's, without delving too deep into the politics of it, there's somebody who's very invested in space with, with at least for the time being a fair finger in, in things to some degree and see whether, whether that encourages spending your way or if he tries to like, I can do it better and cheaper. 

Bradley Hope: We have a big question mark and hopefully in March we'll have less of a question mark. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah. Hopefully less of a question mark and more of a big check. 

Sean Walker: Yeah, big checks. We like big checks. Those are the 

Alex Carella: right? 

Sean Walker: Yeah, those are the best. 

Andy Leviss: And we cannot lie, 

Sean Walker: finally got a dad joke to land, Andy. Good work, 

Andy Leviss: I've, I've, 

Sean Walker: You've just been swinging for the fences for years, 

Andy Leviss: I, you know, um, see, cause otherwise if I needed to land a joke, my next question was going to be like, okay, but what does Steely Dan sound like on these rigs? 

Sean Walker: Oh, God. 

Bradley Hope: When they do the simulator or the practice runs before the simulator, I think they do play a little bit of fun stuff. Thunderstruck, whatever you 

Andy Leviss: Nice. 

Alex Carella: we had a project in Europe and these guys from, um, so one of the things that we test overnight because we make so much noise that during the days, the guys, you know, we would, we would make a lot of too much noise for the guys working upstairs in the offices. And so we would work overnight and test. And then somebody in our guys like, you know what? 

It's three o'clock in the morning, let's do it. How about if we play Thunderstorm? Let's do it. Thunders from ACDC. That's who did it. That was the wildest thing we ever had. 

Andy Leviss: I was, I was going to say, I was about to say that if I, if I ever worked there with y'all, I'd be the guy like having to get on the mic every single time. For those about to rock, we salute. 

Alex Carella: You can do that. You can come and do it. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, it'd be funny like the first three days and then by the fourth day they'd be like nope, nope, Andy's not getting on the microphone. 

Alex Carella: Yeah, it was fun. We also have fun. You know, these guys and there is, um, you're talking about the bills and the cost and, you know, the check and you have a mission. So, but when you load your satellite, there is a, there is a very tight launch window. You miss that, you're done. You know, you have to wait for the next launch window. 

And, and every time you wait and every time you do that, there's a lot of money. You burn a lot of money, but a lot of cash. 

Sean Walker: What makes that window? Like, what makes it the launch 

Alex Carella: the orbit that you have to put it in. So there is different things that plays into launching at exact the same time, you know, at a specific time. And so when you miss that, then you miss a lot of money. 

And so the idea of not having to Um, to have this uncertainty because sometimes you have to get on the road, you know, everything can happen on the road, you know, you're on the road, that's why it's called you're on the road. So, um, that, that, that, um, uncertainty, that, um, the risk, there is no money. They that gets, you know, there's no price tag. 

The things are at home. Everybody go home. The old engineers go to their families and all the tools are in the toolbox. And if anything happens, you know, you can pick it up and then you can fix it. You can do anything you need to do instead of flying a crane, you know, across the country and, and missing, you know, oh, dammit. 

We have, go back to, you have no idea the risk, uh, the, the cost of a risk. And, um, 

Bradley Hope: That's a really good point. 

Alex Carella: And so, 

Bradley Hope: And also, 

Alex Carella: fat check is, um, not fat enough. 

Bradley Hope: also Alex likes to make an analogy from time to time, comparing our company to, we talked about NASCAR, you pull into, you see these guys pull into the pit and the tires get swapped out in like 0. 2 seconds, right, and our crew kind of operates in the same way. I'm a guitar player, and You could have, you know, whatever guitar you're playing, but the guitar player is what makes the sound kind of come alive when you're playing the instrument. 

So you need really good operators. Sean was talking earlier about, you could have like all this equipment, but customer doesn't go and buy your equipment, they buy you and your skill set. And we have unparalleled, the best team they have. We have guys who, not only did we invent VFAB and we've done over 230 tests, but we have guys from, Lockheed and Maxar and, um, people from all these different companies that have all, all sorts of experience that learn every time that they do one of these tests. 

So. Um, I think we have the best guitar players, so to speak, on our 

Sean Walker: That's awesome. 

Bradley Hope: Yeah, 

Andy Leviss: So, and like, what's the skill? Like when, when you're going out to do one of these tests, like how many, how many people, uh, I mean, I assume obviously depending on the size of what you're testing, it varies a bit, but like, like how many, how many trailers, how many people are, are like typically going on one of them? 

Bradley Hope: that's a great question. And it all depends on the size of the test object. We test anything the size of a microwave to over the size of a school bus. I think some of the tallest tests that we're looking at are over 60 feet tall. So, that depends on, you know, all of that translates into equipment, which translates into trucks, and you gotta add in fuel costs, and, you know, our truck drivers go out, our crew flies out and meets everybody on site. 

For You also have to consider the size of the facility too. Like where are you running the test? Inside, outside, if you're inside, you have ceiling heights and things that you might hit on the top end or the sidewalls. So all of this is painstakingly detailed in all of these engineering reviews. And sometimes I, I'm like, thank God I'm not an engineer because I really don't want to sit in those. 

I like talking to people. I don't want to sit in the meetings where you're going over dimensions of. Floor plans and stuff like that. But yeah, so, but that's the whole point too, right? It's. We've traded out this static reverb chamber. You can't change the size of this building once it's built, but you can change the size of our speaker wells. 

You can always add more cowbell. 

Sean Walker: Yeah, totally. That's awesome. 

Alex Carella: Now, the other things I, I just came back from, I was studying on the plane, so I went, I went to Italy, side of Italy, there was an Italian space agency and the Italian research center, aerospace research center, and they just bought one. And so we need to make it also easy to, for them to use, you know, you know, the, you know, these guys that we work with, they've been using it for forever, so they know, you know, And they're very, um, good at it, and they can do a lot of stuff very quickly, but we also had to think of how to make it very easy for people that don't do that for a living. 

You know, these guys are space guys, and so all the riggings and all the way we put it together is all made, um, and it looks really pretty easy. You know, you see it and people think, oh my god, you know, how many days, just a question you ask and it's done. But we made it really ergonomic, so people can just put it together, you can assemble the subwoofer on one side, you can assemble the three ways on the other side, the tops on the other side, so everything comes up together and all the cables are all wired and all put together in bundles, there's these molds with all the labels and stuff, and it comes really, you know, also not specialists will be able to do that, and that's what, you know, when we sell systems, that's what we do. 

Bradley Hope: Yeah. 

Sean Walker: How long does that take from like, cracking the truck door to being able to do your test? 

Bradley Hope: For us, it takes about four or five days. So, you know, we got to load everything up at Baltimore and send it out. Once we get to the site, it's a day of loading things off the truck, setting up microphones, cabling, connectors, literally looking at the floor and putting tape on the floor and where we're going to set the speakers. 

Then we have these. You know, the base frames, the leveling systems, especially as you get to vertical heights in excess of 40 feet, you can't have these things like tip over onto a spacecraft, you have a multi, right? You can't have a multi million dollar spacecraft get damaged because you don't have the right leveling as you gain vertical height. 

So we have all these structural supports and everything. It takes our crew a couple of days to get basically a semi circle. Completed, and we wheel in the test object, uh, uh, uh, a structural unit, like a mock up unit of that usually, on a dolly. We'll do a practice run, reopen the circle, by then it's like day 3, and then we'll actually wheel in the actual test article on day 4 and 5 and do the real runs. 

Sometimes the customer likes to check the data, that might take another like plus 10. You know, hours or so. So you're looking at like, you know, in total four to six days, just depending on the size of the overall setup. If I installed it at a customer and sold a system and they had to learn how to do everything themselves, you know, honestly, the first couple of times would probably take them much more time, right? 

There's a learning curve there, but it's not the craziest thing in the world. And we have really good operating procedures and we help our customers onboarding and we have, uh, the best team to train them up and they catch on in no time. 

Sean Walker: Dude, how cool. That's awesome. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, and so you said it's, it's like a circular rig, so it's basically like, just like a big spaced array. 

Bradley Hope: Yeah. I don't think it has to be a circle. Actually, I think that's really one of the main benefits of how we design these, our, our noise generation systems is we, we separate out the cabinets by the frequency range. And there's also like different dimensions too. So you can kind of play around with the way that the circle is configured. 

You can expand the diameter, contract the diameter, increase, decrease the height. You might not even need a circle. You could put stuff suspended overhead or mounted on the floor. You could angle things different ways. It all depends on how you're trying to direct and localize the sound around 

Alex Carella: We've done a lot of, um, work. One of the things that, you know, um, there are one of the things that get tested on their own are solar panels, uh, reflectors and antennas, you know, the round thing, which are 2D basically. There is no third dimension, they're very thin. So in that case, there is no reflecting surface. 

And so you can put a more novel, you know, if you don't have a space, you can, you can put the novel, but, uh, there are limits to, to the way you put microphone. So there is a, there's minimum distance. We've been working with NASA for a long time. They have, uh, they have come up with a, um, a handbook. Handbook is a, is like a little book that helps people to, to work with, uh, with a specific technology. 

And so we, um, you know, there, there are some guidelines in there. That you cannot, uh, you can do a lot of things, but, um, there is a, there's a minimum things that you need to, to be careful and to make sure that you, you observe. 

Andy Leviss: just picturing Grover in a NASA spacesuit saying, don't push the red button. So you weren't my brain, you guys. Like 

Bradley Hope: that you don't think about right away too. And, and maybe, maybe you learn after doing 200 tests, but you know, there's, there's minimum distance. Oh, like minute, like where you place the microphones, the min distance from the mic to the speaker wall, you know, how, how you suspend or what the boundary conditions are for the test article in the side of the circle. 

There's all sorts of stuff that you That our team has learned, you know, over the years that we, we, we do a technology transfer and share this with our customers. So they all, uh, they all learn it. 

Alex Carella: There's one funny thing we do with our, so, these loudspeakers, they're like, um, each, each stack is, what is it, like a 2, 000 pounds? And, so, we, we, we wheel them in, so they come off the truck on these carts, and they have wheels. These nice chunky walls. And so when we set them up, we remove the carts, right? We don't leave them on wheel. 

We have in this base that are stable and have a, they have a little, uh, levers we can, you know, that'd be exactly flat. It doesn't matter. Sometimes the floor is not flat, but you don't want something which is 20 feet, 30 feet tall, which is not on a flat. So we adjust them and we make it really flat, really horizontal. 

So what do we do with those carts? So you have, um, this is like, what, 500 pounds, 400 pounds cart, steel and, you know, what we do, we put them in the back of the speakers to be ballast. So instead of chucking them in the room, we reuse them to be ballast in the back of the column, of the stack. So, um, we've been thinking of a lot of things that you wouldn't normally do when you do a concert. 

It was like, you know, you probably, you know, just throw it there and somebody will pick it up. But no, we reuse everything. Um, we'll bring our own generator, you know, we'll come on site and, you know, usually when we leave, it's cleaner when we arrive. We get paid for clean service. 

Andy Leviss: So in Bradley, you were saying like, so like how you arrange them depends on like exactly what you're testing. So it's not like you're just, the goal isn't just blast the thing with sound broadband, shake the crap out of it. Like you, you can do like more precise. Like it might be like, just like. Peg this part of it and that sort of thing. 

Bradley Hope: Well, actually one, one thing I would highlight on your question is why, why do you have all these microphones in the first place? And that kind of ties into this MIMO controller that 

Andy Leviss: Hey, Bradley, why do you have all these microphones in the first place? 

Bradley Hope: Yeah, right. So we have many, many microphones. I think there's like 30, 32 microphones. They're divided up between response and control, but basically during the test run, they're human ears. 

They're listening to the test at all these random points throughout the test volume. And the controller in real time is making these adjustments every three or five seconds. If there's any change or any difference, it's got to correct that. And stay within the tolerances or stay within the levels. So, um, and it changed, it's a, it's a changing acoustic profile over time. 

So that's not very easy to do. So actually the guy who invented MIMO control, uh, Marcos Underwood, he's on staff with us, so thank you, Marcos. But, um, yeah, it's, it, it, it's. It can sound really simple, but you're not just blasting noise at this thing and crossing your fingers at it survives. We get into a thing that we call narrowband response limiting and notching. 

So, You know, when you start to excite a structure with all this acoustic energy, it has natural resonances. There's frequencies and things where it starts to get super excited at different levels. And that's when the screws and the bolts and things start going loose and breaking. And so you might have, you know, some insight into the structure that maybe it'll get, A really bad response at some level, at some frequency, and you want to avoid those. So our control system is the only one in the world that does it extremely precisely. So you can preserve most of the test envelope while mitigating away those super harsh resonances. And so from a safety perspective, that's really important. And, you know, from a data accuracy perspective, customers love that. 

And yeah. 

Andy Leviss: And is that like, it's like, this, this is a range or whatever that we know it's not going to hit in, in real life? Or is that, okay, we know it's going to break here already. Let's find out where else. 

Bradley Hope: Yeah, well, maybe they did, you know, pre test simulations, and so they might have an idea from a simulation based perspective of how the test article might respond, or maybe they ran, um, tests on different mock up units that weren't the actual flight unit, and so they might have some insight from that, you know, or you could just observe during real time during the test. 

And also notch things out probably during the actual test run too. But by the time you get there, usually you have some level of insight. So, 

Andy Leviss: like, why are you notching that out? Is it just because like, that's something that they don't care about because it's not going to hit in the wild? Or it's like, we already know, For whichever of those reasons that it's going to break here. So let's see where else it's going to break. 

Alex Carella: Let me, um, add something. So, NASA doesn't like that. NASA is, uh, very, uh, careful and, you know, you don't, you don't want to false, you know, you don't want to cheat, right? However, the guys that own the satellite, they're very careful. So, they want to be careful. It's like a, it's like a policy, right? So, we don't, you know, we have it. 

So you put it there and then if that happens then you can decrease it. But we don't do it deliberately. We don't do it to cheat. You know, if you know, at the end of the day, that's what we test, right? We want to find out what things. So there are cases where you start vibrating something so high, and then we like a, like a, It's like a bunch of buttons, you know, that, um, that you were saying before, don't touch the red buttons. 

You have no idea how many red buttons there are when we do a test and everybody can pull it if they see something going wrong. And so we have these aborts in the control level, at the noise level, you had all these. So if, when, when these guys start seeing, so there is, there is a, there is a bunch of guys and there is some lawyers in there too, that, um, they, they look at the data. 

And if the data start getting too high, these vibration levels, then they just call it a stop and then abort. They press a button, everything starts down, you know, finish immediately. And then the next time, then we can set up, you know what, let's put a limit. And if that's going that high, then we'll limit at that specific frequency. 

So these are all things that we do for safety and not to cheat, also because otherwise they wouldn't get the launchers to approve it. Now every time that there is an event, so there is, you know, when you come to a space, imagine that there is two camps, right? There's the launch authority, so the guys that own the launchers, and then the spacecraft authority. 

And the launch authority says, oh, you have to do this, and the guy says, no, but you know, it's going to break, why don't we do this? And then the They talk, and if there is a notching or something, you limit the vibration, then the guy's going to tell, Oh, why did you do that? And why are these frequency? And then they have to discuss a lot. 

And so we try to avoid it, but it's just a safety feature that is there. You know, it's one of those things that is a parachutes, and you pull it only if it's really necessary. Does it make sense? 

Sean Walker: Totally. Totally. I hope you look at those guys when they're just going back and forth and just go, hey, fellas, the decimal point is moving to the right as you speak, so hurry it the fuck up. I gotta go. I got shit to do today. 

Alex Carella: You know what guys, we got it done. You know, just don't worry. It's fine. 

Sean Walker: Yeah, yeah. Come on. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. 

Alex Carella: He didn't break, is he? 

Sean Walker: Uh Yeah. 

Andy Leviss: just ruin everything. 

Sean Walker: Got it. So it's just basically a CYA feature then, so as people are going, Hey man, that's going to break my thing and then I won't get the project. Like stop trying to break my thing right there or whatever. 

Alex Carella: Exactly, we pulled the brake. 

Sean Walker: Yeah. Yeah. All right. Cool. That's pretty sweet dudes. 

Alex Carella: um, we like it. Everybody like it. Everybody happy. 

Sean Walker: new way to do audio that isn't so like, you know, every day for the rest of us. That's freaking awesome. You guys. 

Alex Carella: So we have fun. We have a lot of fun. So, um, you guys come and see us and you will see. 

Sean Walker: Oh dude. I'm in. Let's go, Andy. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah. I mean, I was just down in DC all of last week. I'm like, I should have done a field trip. 

Sean Walker: Yeah, you should have you fucked up 

Andy Leviss: well, I mean, I, I had an eight week old with me. I couldn't really bring the eight week old to get loud sound 

Sean Walker: could 

Andy Leviss: Yeah. I. I'm figuring out enough other ways to not break the 8 year old. I don't need that. 

Bradley Hope: every year, or maybe every two years, I guess it depends on how much Alex and me want to work really, really hard. Uh, we'll do a masterclass and we'll teach people, you know, how do you actually run one of these tests? So you guys are welcome to come. It'd be in New York in April. 

Sean Walker: I'm in. 

Bradley Hope: um, maybe we'll send you the link. 

So if anyone's listening and they want to come, you're welcome to come. 

Sean Walker: Yeah, dude. New York and April. I'm in. Let's do 

Bradley Hope: Yep. There you go. 

Sean Walker: Heck yeah. That'll be super cool. 

Andy Leviss: like on the list of like certifications people collect. That sounds like one of the more like, less practical but awesome ones. 

Sean Walker: Yeah dude, we could just turn limp biscuit, break shit up to like 11 on that mother 

Bradley Hope: There you go. 

Sean Walker: breaking shit That's awesome. 

Andy Leviss: So, you know, that's around what episode 300 

Sean Walker: Yeah, we broke Andy. We broke Andy for episode 300. We found the brown note, Andy. Sorry, dawg. 

Andy Leviss: Alright, so we gotta dig in before we let you go, like, what's, what's like the coolest thing you've experienced working, working doing this stuff? Or is it just like every day is cool, so there's no like coolest thing anymore? 

Bradley Hope: Uh, no, there's a lot of cool stuff. I'm usually not behind the scenes, sadly. I'm usually at the trade shows, but, uh, I get to, I get to wear a lot of different hats in my role. And I get to use my creative juices in my brain and work with a lot of different types of people from. All different aspects internally, externally, all different types of titles and no one day is the same. 

So, you know, we get to, I get to get some really cool stuff, uh, like time lapses of the setups and teardowns and really cool photos or videos or testimonials from customers on things like we recently tested the Nancy Grace Roman space telescope optical assembly with L3Harris and before that we did the wide field of view instrument with BAE and. Get to see the pictures of the speakers around the test articles and everything or go on site and every once in a while and See it in action is really crazy. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, and we're gonna link in the show notes, like on top of the photo that's, you know, gonna end up in the, in the episode, you know, artwork, we're gonna link to y'all's Instagram because there's some 

Bradley Hope: There's some good shots You know, I do rock climbing every once in a while and I went to this place in Detroit. I'm from Detroit. It's called Dino It's like the newest coolest rock climbing gym and their rock climbing walls are only they're like 30 30 feet tall, right? but you look up at it and you're like I'm scared. 

You're going to, you're going to, you're going to put a brown though in your pants going down, rappelling down. So, uh, 

Sean Walker: they're like, what do you do for a living? You're like, I build things this tall for a living. 

Bradley Hope: yeah, the speaker wall is, you know, at least that tall. 

Alex Carella: Brad, Brad, I'm 

Bradley Hope: sometimes don't do it justice. 

Alex Carella: Brad, you're gonna, you know, you said a lot of cool stuff but you have to tell, you know, you have to say that, um, I, you know, Leviss, he's he's pretty cool. He's pretty hot. He's like, cool stuff. 

Andy Leviss: you cooler things to do then. 

Sean Walker: Yeah, right. I mean, thank you for the compliment, but we, we, you gotta get out more, bud. 

Andy Leviss: we, we said brown note, not brown news. 

Alex Carella: It was pretty cool, though. It was, uh, 

Andy Leviss: literally this was like Bradley reached out via email. 'cause we always tell everybody like, if you think you like have something to talk about on a cool episode, shoot us an email signal two noise@prosoundweb.com. Signal the number two noise. At ProSoundWeb. com and Bradley Rusciato was like, Hey, so like we blast loud sound at SpaceCraft. 

I think it'd be cool to talk about it. And I think we, we hit the reply button 

Sean Walker: Shit. Yeah, dog. You're in. 

Andy Leviss: Yeah, we were like, say no more, say no more, save it for the podcast. We're sold. 

Sean Walker: Yeah. Right. Totally. I don't even think we asked any questions. We were just like, I want to know what day. 

Alex Carella: it was cool. It was cool talking to you. 

Sean Walker: Yeah, dude. It was awesome. Thank you guys for coming to hang out and chat about blowing shit up. We appreciate you. And, uh, thanks to Allen and Heath and RCF for letting us yap about nerd audio stuff. That's the pod y'all. See you next week.

Music: “Break Free” by Mike Green