GRETCHEN HASSE: This is one of the most recent acquisitions that you think was really worth the money, and why did you decide to get this?

MIKE WAXMAN: My speakers, my Genelecs. It was just time to, you know, I'm doing some mixes for some good clients and it was I had some KRK V8's which were really great speakers for me over the last seven years. These are brand new. These are only a few months old. I wanted -- I was having actually a problem with one of them was cutting in and out once in a while, and instead of trying to diagnose and trying to fix and call KRK and sit and trying to figure out what the problem with something's intermittent, which can be such a headache, just trying to figure out something that's working one minute and it's not two minutes later and then five days later it's fine for another month. It was just time to upgrade and get new speakers, and I called them out and I asked some friends that are in the industry, some big mixers that were using these speakers, these Genelecs, which ironically I wasn't a fan of the Genelecs before. I felt they were too colored, a little too pretty sounding for mix speakers. I think they didn't -- they weren't truthful. And I called around, I asked around, and I just spoke to everybody and their grandmother, which is what I do before I always buy gear, get opinions.

GRETCHEN HASSE: Mmm hmm.

MIKE WAXMAN: And then you got to listen. So I called the local audio guy down here, who sells to big studios like Hit Factory down at Miami, Mike Harris Audio, and I said, "Mike, I've already asked around, I already have some answers in my head, what do you think is the best most accurate, truthful speaker?" And then he says, "You got to listen to the new Genelecs." "Okay," I said. "Actually, about four people have told me that so far. Why?" He says, "Well, first of all, they have a new software thing that they tune to your room. It's not just the sound of the speaker. The speaker and the software and the special microphone analyzes your room, your situation, and makes corrections according to what it's hearing so they should be dead-on accurate." Well, they are. I own them. I love them. Costly; they're not cheap, but anything good in this business usually is not cheap. It's usually a couple of bucks, but you want to work with the big dogs, you got to have the big dog equipment for the most part. There's a couple of engineers that can get anything to sound good. I know that can work on a Mackie analog board and make it sound great, but that's not me. Anyway, so the Genelecs, they're dead-on accurate, I love them. They're tuned for my sweet spot when I'm mixing. I sit there and what I'm hearing is what I get when I leave the studio. Where the other speakers I was always guessing. I would listen to the NS10s, I would listen to my JBLs, stand in different places in the room, trying to make sure what's going on, which I still do because it's habit, and it's still good practice to make sure what you're hearing is true, but the Genelecs I'm finding very little coloration. They're about as dead-on accurate as it gets.

Please take a picture of these Sonys, the speakers. These are the best speakers ever made. They sound like hell but if I can make the mix sound good on those, then I know I'm good. The reality is a lot of people listen on their computers, so I want to hear what they're going to hear when I'm finished. I think I have the mix where it needs to be. That's my very last final check.

GRETCHEN HASSE: Is the crappy speakers?

MIKE WAXMAN: Yeah.

GRETCHEN HASSE: [LAUGHING]

MIKE WAXMAN: You can't get crappier than those little guys. Five-thousand-dollar Genelecs to thirty-dollar Sonys.