Alrighty, so it looks like Canada's Wonderlands Hotel is officially cancelled. It is no longer listed on the planet website. The documents have completely been removed. The planning zone has completely been removed. And they didn't renew their contract. So definitely a really bad sign in terms of Canada's Wonderlands Hotel future. There's no documents leading up to a hotel in the next couple of years. So if Wonderland is to get a hotel, it's probably going to be five years out at this point, unless they were to completely rush it, which I don't see being the case. I don't know if it's just because this area they gave up on. So for those of you that don't know, it was located right next to the highway as you enter from Jane. I think it is not Jane, Rutherford. I could be mixing them up. I think it's Rutherford. It is Rutherford. So where you would enter from Rutherford, it was located right there. It was squished into a really tiny plot. The homes in that little townhouse community gave them a little bit of a fight in terms of you can see into our backyard. So they had to redesign it. They took it from like 12 floors to 10 floors or 10 floors to eight, one of the two, something like that. So you could no longer see into the backyards. And then the pandemic hit, which led to what looks like the hotel not being non-existent. I don't know for sure if the pandemic was the reason. And if it was, I'm kind of disappointed because Canada's Wonderland is one of their biggest parks. They had the most successful Winterfest. So now they have a park that's open up until January with the most attended Winterfest event. It's the most attended seasonal theme park in North America. So regardless, you know that there's a possibility that people would want to travel and go to this park after the pandemic. And having a hotel for people to stay at is just something that makes sense. So it is shocking to see them give up on a hotel, even with a pandemic and them being so hard hit for cash, while also building like, you know, campgrounds over at King's Island. So I'm a little shocked. It seems like again, Canada's Wonderland is getting slapped in the face by the American company and used as a cash cow. And I really hope that's not the case. I really don't want to see Canada's Wonderland turn back into a cash cow like it was in the Paramount days, where they throw in smaller investments or investments that necessarily don't cost that much because they know the park's just always going to do well and they use it to pay off debts and buy their attractions for their American parks. I'm already starting to see trends like that. And it alarms me like I see Cedar Point and Carol Wins and the other American parks really getting these amazing food options.  And like just turning buildings that already exist into different food. It's kind of upsetting. I really want to see some of those food options we're seeing in the States come to Canada's Wonderland. I really want to see that food option that was teased to us specifically at the Yukon Stryker media event by one of the park officials to happen as well. So again, not seeing that food option that was teased to us coming to the park yet is really upsetting. Not seeing any upgrades to our food at all is really upsetting compared to the American parks. And just seeing like, you know, for example, we lost Yukon Stryker in 2016 to 2019 because Val were even at Cedar Point. We are suddenly seeing a hotel addition at Kings Island. Again, that would have been planned in the distance. So they didn't steal it. But just seeing that move forward just because the parks open is a little upsetting because regardless of what happens, Canada's Wonderland is going to open at some point later this year or next year. And the hotel wouldn't have been done anyways until two years from now, one and a half years from now. So the park would be open when it's done. So it's just a little upsetting because again, I understand controlling costs. But when you're seeing additions still happen, you have hotel renovations at Cedar Point, you have the lodging being built at Kings Island. It's a little upsetting. So I'm just really fingers crossed that what I think could be happening in Canada's Wonderland doesn't happen. I do know that investments will come. I think Winterfest is going to be so heavily invested in just because of the chain is shocked by the success that Winterfest in its first year had at Canada's Wonderland. So they're going to want to build off of that. I just know that with the success at Hoween Haunt, it's led to almost giving up on expanding Hoween Haunt. So they know that regardless, they're going to sell out in those two weeks that they sell out all the time in and the parks just going to be crowded, burnt to brim. So why invest in more? So again, I just really hope that Wonderland isn't turning into that cash cow. Anyways, with that being said, I just wanted to update you guys on some of my thoughts and opinions. I'm actually going to be working on a video that elaborates on what I've just been talking about in the last couple minutes in this video. As you can tell, I'm a little concerned about something that I've been noticing. So I want to go a little more deep into that. And yeah, again, we don't know for sure if it's canceled, canceled, but it's definitely off the planet website. And yeah, just wanted to update you guys. Hopefully you had an amazing weekend. Going to throw this video out the same day I recorded this. So it's going to be almost like a live video like a couple minutes after I recorded it posted. But yeah, thanks so much for watching guys and supporting the channel. And thank you to our Patreons, I'm going to put them on the screen right here. All of our new Patreons that have subscribed to our Patreon recently, thank you so much and supporting the channel. And if you would like, go to our Patreon and support us for even a dollar a month or head on over to amusementinsiders.com to check out our new merch and blogs and anything else that you want to check out over there. It's a brand new website, launched a couple days ago. So thanks so much. Have a great one guys. Bye.


Income tax 2023-2024, dividend income tax software example. Get ready and some coffee so we can do some income tax interpretation with income tax preparation 2023-2024. First, a word from our sponsor. Yeah, actually we're sponsoring ourselves on this one because apparently the merchandisers, they don't want to be seen with us.  Like our trust me, I'm an accountant product line. Yeah, it's paramount that you let people know that you're an accountant because apparently we're among the only ones equipped with the number crunching skills to answer society's current deep complex and nuanced questions. If you would like a commercial free experience, consider subscribing to our website at accountinginstruction.com or accountinginstruction.thinkific.com. Here we are in our Form 1040 example problem using LASERT tax software. You don't need tax software to follow along but if you have access to tax software, it's a great tool to run scenarios with. You can also get access to the forms, schedules, instructions at the IRS website, irs.gov, irs.gov. Starting with Adam Taxman just trying to avoid the denning tax man living in 90210 Beverly Hills. Back to a single filer to start off with starting with 100,000 W2 income standard deduction 13850 to get us to the taxable income 86150. Marrying that in our income tax formula within Excel 100,000 income 13850 standard deduction taxable income 86150. Letting the software LASERT calculate the tax starting at 14266 which we can see on page two of LASERT. Here it is. Now we're going to be looking at dividend income this time which is part of of course the income line item. But we also have to keep in mind the other impact of it breaking out qualified dividends and non-qualified dividends. Because that can have an impact on the tax calculation which is something we don't often see when we're double checking because we're kind of reliant on the software to do that calculation. But if we want to understand the difference between qualified dividends and normal or ordinary dividends, we've got to dig into the tax calculation. So you can see before we add the dividends we have our normal progressive rates. So the taxable income within these thresholds as we've discussed before are being taxed at these rates. Now with the dividends if they want to incentivize investments say in United States companies they might try to give a favorable tax rate. Well how can they give a favorable tax rate if some people are taxed at higher rates than other people's? Well that means they're going to have to come up with a whole other progressive tax system which will basically always result in the dividend income for qualified dividend being lower than what it would be under ordinary income tax rates. And so it gets a little messy once again in this tax calculation area. That said let's go back to page one. We're looking at the dividend income so that's going to be on line three A and B where we have the qualified dividends and the ordinary dividends. Note the structure here that the dividends that are going to go here on 3B will include the qualified dividends. In other words the ordinary dividends if the ordinary dividends is $1,000 and the qualified dividends is $800 then it's not like we have $1,800 of dividends. It's that $800 of the thousand are qualified dividends. Why would it be structured that way? Well that makes it so that this outer column we can add up and still add up to taxable income whether the dividends be ordinary dividends or qualified dividends because they're going to be taxed either way. The problem is that we then have to break up this number 86-150 between the qualified dividends and the other income. In other words the income tax at ordinary income rates and the income taxed at the qualified rates and then apply the appropriate tax on the table which again is something the software will typically do. All right so usually you'll get a form. It might not look exactly like this because you're going to get it from financial institutions but the name of the or the numbering of the cells will be the same. The primary two cells we will look at is 1A and 1B where we have the total ordinary dividends and the qualified dividends. Let's go back on over and let's say that we go to this trustee drop down and we go to dividends and I'm just going to say this comes from let's just say like e-trade or something so we're going to imagine that's the institution that we're the financial institution we're investing with. They give us a 1099 summarizing the dividends. Let's say that the ordinary dividends is in box one $1,000. Let's just use that example qualified dividends was $800. All right so what happens we pull it over then to our form 1040 and we can see that it populates in the qualified dividends 800 but the total is 1,000. It's not 1,800. It's just the 1,000 and 800 of that 1,000 is qualified. We can see here that they give us a nice little worksheet as well. Then I can see that there's nothing included in terms of Schedule B yet. Schedule B will be imported if certain conditions are met such as for example you have over 1,500. So notice that both qualified and unqualified the 1,000 is being included in the 1,100 for the adjusted gross income. If I mirror that in our software on this side we can say okay and let's first put my actual tax. Here's my tax calculation right now 14266 and now let's make the change. I'm going to go here and let's say last time I added interest let's add another section to my general income tab for dividends. So I'm going to move the total down. I'm just going to say let's move this down and let's say this is going to be dividend income and we'll make that black and white.  I'm going to make this then blue and so we're going to go to do making it blue and bordered. And then I'll move this down one more space here and I'm going to say total dividend income and let's make this pull this out. So I'm going to say this has come from E trade and we said the total is 1,000 and I'll put the qualified over here like we did with the interest. So I'm just going to put the qualified was 800 just so I can note that in my data input. So let's just put that there and then I'll sum this up equals the sum. Actually I need to put this in the outer column. Let's put this over here equals the sum. So I'm not including this 800 here because the 1000 includes the 800. And then my total income is now the 100 W2 the interest income nothing's in it down to the dividend income. So now we have another 1100 that pulls into page one. There's the 1100 in our formula. We still have the 13 850 standard deduction gets us the taxable income 87 150. If I go back on over here, we can see that we have the 87 150. If I then go to page two, then we now have the tax at the 14 430 calculated by the software 14430. And so I can look at the difference between that to those two and say, okay, what's the difference between the tax? It's 164 dollars. What what did I change? Well, I put another thousand dollars. So I put another thousand dollars in. So the tax rate that I had is this divided by this on that thousand dollars, right? If that thousand dollars got taxed at the 15% or 16% basically and so and what really happened is 800 of it, right? We had 800 got taxed at the fat favorable rate, which I believe is going to be 15%. And then and then the rest of it, the 200 got taxed at ordinary income, right? So I can say, okay, let's make this a percent home tab number percent 15%. That's 800 times 15. And then the 200 if I go back on over and look at my my summary, my marginal tax rate, the highest tax rate is the 22%. So 22.22. This is this times this. And so this plus this is going to be my 164. See, so normally I don't recalculate that to show that, you know, because I'm just doing the data input. But when we're discussing with a taxpayer, what does it mean to be a qualified versus non qualified?  And if you got taxed at ordinary income, the added amount of tax of income you had would be taxed at the highest bracket 22%. But the qualified dividends will typically have a favorable tax in this case at the 15%. Now, here's your tables that will help you to kind of determine that. But the general idea would be whatever your highest tax bracket is, if it's going to be a qualified dividend, you'll typically get a benefit for it. So if here's the filing statuses, if your income is below these thresholds for the filing statuses, they're going to have to drop it down to basically zero. So you don't get taxed on them because your your marginal tax rate is fairly low. Then if you go to these income thresholds, then you have a tax rate over 15%. And therefore to give you a beneficial tax bracket, they're going to have to drop it down to 15%. Instead of your ordinary income, marginal or highest tax rate, that's going to be the general idea. But of course, internally the software basically does that for us. So if I go back on over, we can see on page number two, then now the calculation of the tax is a bit more complex, right? Because now they're going to have to break out. You can see this 800. I won't go through the whole thing. But they basically are breaking out the 800 so they can apply the tax at the 120, 15%.  So there is that. Now if we bring the dividends up above the 15,000, we'll have to add the schedule B. So let's just do another one and say let's say we had another one for, I don't know, B of A. Let's say this was 16,000 and let's say 15,000 of it was qualified. So if I go back on over, now we have the qualified dividends up to the 15,800. The total dividends are at 17,000 and we now have the schedule B that has now been populated. Part one, as we saw before, is interest. Part two, ordinary dividends. The IRS wanting to know who you got the money from. Note that although the dividends could still be fairly low in dollar amount because you need to do this over 1,500, they are dividends, which is kind of like interest. It's the earnings that are being distributed to you. And therefore, even if you have a fairly low amount of dividends, that means you probably are holding on to a significant amount of stock because usually they might put the money back into the business. A lot of companies don't give high dividends because they might be reinvesting it. So having dividends and interest, even a fairly low dollar amounts means that you've got significant investments generally, right? So in any case, that pulls in over to the first page. If we were to mirror that in our worksheet over here, we'd say, okay, here's another B of A. And we said this was dividends. We said 16,000 and 15,000. Is that what we did? Or is that too high? I went too high there, didn't I? So 17. That's what I did. That's what I did. So that comes out to 17. Go into page 1, 117,000. 117,000 minus the 13,850 gets us to the 103,150. Page 2, calculating the tax now at the 16,900. So now we have the 16,900. Now note that you could have some of these other boxes sometimes come into play like total capital gain, unrecap 150, section 12, ordinary dividends under section so on, non-dividend distributions. So you can, and then the foreign taxes sometimes comes into play as well, depending on your investments. So usually the data input is fairly straightforward in software for that. And the most common one is probably going to have this, if I say, let's make another one for like Vanguard, Vanguard and say we had 2,000, all of it's here. And then we had capital gain. Capital gain distribution is a common one. And that's going to be generally the idea is that possibly you have a mutual fund, for example, and the mutual fund actually sold some of your stocks because they're managing the mutual fund. You didn't sell the mutual fund, but the mutual fund is holding on to stocks and bonds. And within the fund, they sold something and they had a capital gain, which now they're distributing to people that becomes taxable. So now we have to say, okay, what if like 500 was in there? Then I can go back and notice you down here, most software actually has the line items. So this is 2B, 2A, 2B, 2C that line up to the boxes so that at least you can plug that information into the software and then work backwards to try to understand and make sure the software is doing the data input correctly. So software is quite useful with that, but oftentimes you're going to have to explain what's going on to two people and you want to double check the software. And so if I go back on over and say, okay, now the tricky thing with that is that now I had to put it in place here, it's actually creating a schedule D or it's pulling in or it's coming into the capital gains. So now I've got basically capital gain distribution, which oftentimes is reported on the schedule D if you needed the worksheet. We'll talk about that later. The reason that becomes an issue with data input though is because oftentimes you try to organize all of your worksheets and you're trying to organize when you're double checking your numbers, the dividend worksheets from the interest worksheets from the capital gains distributions and so on. And it's difficult to do that when you have capital gains on the 1099 div because when you're trying to double check your capital gains, then you have to take into account, oh wait, there's this added thing that's on the dividend which was a gain distribution on the dividend when you're trying to double check your numbers, possibly populate in that information into Excel to double check your numbers. So remember that the 1099 div, the 1099 interest and the capital gain distributions often are done by the same financial institutions because people have their investments in cash in the checking account where they might have interest, bonds and stocks also possibly with the same financial institution and the interest represents income from bonds and money and holding CD savings accounts, the dividend represents income from capital gains. You might have one statement that basically has all that stuff included within it. Also, if you have flow through entities like a partnership or an S corporation, then even if you don't do the partnership or S corporation, you might just say, I will input the K1s or something like that if someone else does the partnership or S corporation. We have courses on partnership or S corp if you want to look at that in more detail, but it's a whole thing in and of itself. We will touch on some of the stuff for a sole proprietorship with the Schedule C. But if you have a K1, then again, entering the K1 is usually fairly straightforward because all the boxes line up pretty nicely, but then you again could have income related to dividends or capital gains and whatnot that are flowing through from a different source other than the normal 1099 div. So that's the general scenario with the dividends.


Okay, you guys asked for this. How do the Galaxy Buds compare to the Apple AirPods Pro? I'm also going to add two more headphones, the Huawei Free Buds 3, and this Anker Soundcore Liberty 2 Pro. Okay, so we know the AirPods Pro price of 249, comes with a wireless charging case, has a brand new design, has ear tips now, so it fits better.  It also has the ability to have, it also has noise cancellation, and pass through, and you can actually change that by tapping and holding on your earbud there, and pass through is really good. Out say, active noise cancellation is solid on here with the Apple AirPods Pro. Now, in terms of app features, not much, but Apple keeps things simple and easy. You can change your noise cancellation in the volume settings of your iPhone. Now, the Galaxy Buds Retivo 129, came out early in the year, changed a lot of things. It's got a nice small pill-like case, comes in multiple colors, that gives you wireless charging, USB Type-C, fast charging there. Battery life is about 15 to 18 hours, about five to six hours per use from the earbuds.  I do like that. The application itself, the Galaxy Wear app, gives you some functionality. You can go through some EQ presets, you can also have pass through if you want, because it's got a really tight pill, there's no noise cancellation on here by the way, and it can focus on voice. Those things work out pretty well, I'd say. And again, the fit and feel just really nice and solid. Now, number three here, the Huawei FreeBuds 3, they have a very interesting style. They kinda have a similar style of the original AirPods, and which means of course they are open, which would mean that while you're listening, you still have a lot of sound coming in. It does have active noise cancellation as well, and touch controls on the side. All of them have touch controls, if I would say. Now, the case comes with wireless charging built in. It do have about 20 or so hours on the case and about five hours of listening with them. It's got the brand new Kirin A1 chip, so connectivity is seamless. That's something you see with all three. They have seamless connectivity to devices. The Kirin A1 chip works best of course, directly with a Huawei device, but you can still connect via Bluetooth on your smartphone. Now, the app itself, there's an AI Live app that gives you some functionality. You can go in, you can remap the buttons on there, and of course you can change your active noise cancellation on and off, but nothing too extensive. Now, the Soundcore Liberty 2 Pro from Anker does compact with a lot of features. I do like the case feel and look of it though. The case has wireless charging as well, so all of them have wireless charging, but the case gives you 32 hours of battery life, mutual, a lot of battery life, and you do have eight hours per use. Four noise canceling microphones on here. You've got something that also has an app that gives you some really cool features. Now, the app goes a long way in.  Now, when it comes to active noise cancellation who has the best, I gotta give it to Apple because two of them don't. The Galaxy's and the Soundcore don't, and the Huawei, it's an open back, active noise cancellation just won't work for you there. So it just doesn't work well. Now, in terms of battery life, the Anker takes the bait right there because Anker does well with batteries anyway, this has 32 hours, which is really, really cool. And the fit of both the Anker and the Galaxy Buds work out really well. Now, speaking of audio, which is the main thing here was why you buy it through wireless Buds. How do they sound? Now, we talked about the AirPods Pro when my other video, when I compared it to the Sony WF-1000 III, so go check them out. The Sony's are way ahead. To me, this is one of the best wireless Buds you can pick up. And the AirPods are good. They have a little muddle bass there so it kind of leaks into other parts. You can still hear things well and vocals do come out well. They don't go as high. So if you're listening to a podcast or documentary, they work out really well with that. But if you're listening to audio or someone singing, it doesn't really get the highs as much as you like. I use Michael Jackson's Beat It to listen to and I also use Rocketman as my listening test for all four of these. Now, the Galaxy Buds, on the other hand, when you're listening to them, you have to turn on one of the EQ settings. That's the best way to listen to them and that's how they are built. Now, what I would say though, the highs come up really well. I'd probably have one of the best highs out of all of these. And there's not much in terms of bass. That's where it's problem-wise, but I do like a flatter profile because I think that's just a better representation of the audio you're feeding in. If you have bass, the bass comes through, but it's not hefty in there. So it doesn't muddle a lot of the sound that you're listening to on them. And I like that because it's really clear and really comes out quite well. The Huawei Free Buds 3, I thought sounded good, but the open back design really took away from the listening. I really had to push them in and they do fall out when you actually have that kind of design. So you shake my head, it doesn't work. So I had to push them in and the active noise cancellation doesn't do much because again, I'm getting a lot of outside noise. So I couldn't give it a fair assessment because I could hear other things while listening to music. And yeah, they're open back. If I want that, then that's what you go for. While the Anker Liberty 2 Pros are quite interested because you get some really nice sound profiles you can play with. You can map your own sound, which is really important. If you like that, you can go with that. But I decided to go with a flatter profile. They have a flat profile there that works really well. The bass is a little high, not as high as the AirPods Pro, but I like the sound stage it creates. Again, the fit is also pretty good. So the highs come out well, the mids are really good on this. This is really, it's really good on the mids I think and the lows are just fine. But the sound profile is really good and then it works out really well. For its price point of 150, it's pretty solid. So when it comes to sound, I had a mixture here. I would say my number one A and one B are probably the Galaxy Buds and the Anker. My number three would be the AirPods Pro and my number four are the Huawei Free Buds because I couldn't really hear as much because of the open style. Now finally, microphones, because of course you guys want to hear about that. All of them have built-in microphones and if I were to rig the microphones in terms of order, the Galaxy Buds come in at number four. They are okay in a quiet setting like this, but outside or if it's just even some more noise, it gets muddled. Samsung, please fix that in the next generation. My number three will actually go to the Anker Soundcore. The Soundcore has good noise-canceling mics but they tend to have that noise-canceling feel to it. So if it's a noisy area, it actually is beneficial but if it's quiet, it doesn't. So I think they need to work on that or maybe there's something they can do in software to actually change some of that. Now my number two, surprisingly to some people, are the AirPods Pro. Now the AirPods Pro sound good. Don't get me wrong, the mic is really good on them and I have really no complaints but I had some calls with a bunch of people and they told me that they preferred the sound of the Huawei Free Buds 3 and it does a really good job. I was able to have really good conversations, people could hear me quite clearly. I'll call it a 1A and 1B but the Huawei Free Buds have been here. So there you have it guys. This is how they all pay off. If I were to rank all of them, which are the best in this list here, the Huawei Free Buds are number four. Open back design doesn't really work for me and it doesn't work for a lot of people. You tend to lose a lot and the active noise-canceling doesn't work there but my number three is gonna be quite interesting if people are gonna fight because are the AirPods Pro? Yes, the AirPods Pro have good improvements from the original AirPods which I thought were trash. So for me it's a step above but and the audio is improved but the model bass still comes in, it's really bass rich. So when I'm feeding tracks and this is what you guys have to listen to is take tracks that have no bass and feeding and you get bass into it. That's not what the track was built for. Now the tracks that do have bass that it becomes enhanced, I feel like this is something that beats taught them. That's just how I feel with it. But I put them at number three, it's good improvement but not there. My number two are the Galaxy Buds. The Buds have a much more flatter feel so there's really no bass. So people who like bass will not like that but the highs really come out well. Vocals are quite clear, very crisp sound. The sound stage is really good on them and really solid. And my number one are the Anker. Now the Anker Soundcore Liberty 2 Pro have really good sound. The EQ settings do a wonderful job. I went on a flat profile. I could really enjoy my listening here. You've got 32 hours of battery life, you've got wireless charging, you've got a decent microphone on there. I think a lot of it just says, look, this is solid and it's priced at 150. So it's basically the second cheapest here and it does a really good job in a lot of segments. So there you have it guys. That is how I see how the Galaxy Buds, the AirPods Pro, the Huawei Free Buds and the Anker Soundcore Liberty 2 Pro stack up. If you have any questions or any comments, let me know. If you disagree with my ranking levels, yeah. Leave me a comment down below. Otherwise don't forget to like, share, subscribe and always enjoy your entertainment.


Since I bought new loudspeakers for my SETA1A I had requests to describe the sound quality. Running them in took quite some time and now that they are, it might be time to fulfill that request and describe the sound quality of my SETA1A. Yes, I deliberately said SETA1A and not PMC Fact 12 signature, for it is impossible to judge the one without the other. Of course, the PMCs must be able to deliver the sound quality and not, or as little as possible, reduce the sound quality. But if one of the components preceding the loudspeakers reduced the sound quality, the loudspeakers can't improve that. So, rather than describe the loudspeakers, I will describe the sound quality of the entire SETA1A. But first, some remarks. My SETA1A was gradually updated. That was partly planned. I knew that I wanted a DAC for reference that was of clearer, higher quality than the Mitraic Brooklyn DAC with Farron & Hipster's power supply, to be able to review higher end DACs. And I knew I needed a better amp and speakers to do so. The air amp and PMCs were also quite some time on the list to consider. I didn't expect to replace the fantastic Auralic RSG2 network player though. I had been saving for quite some time and after a long while, the plan came within reach. But when I reviewed the Grimm Audio Mew 1, I was blown away by the refinement in sound quality it offered. I broke open the budget and bought it, so postponing new speakers. Back to now, all components are thoroughly run in, which is important. If a dealer damage you a product in this price bracket, fresh out of the box, it might be time to look for another dealer for it will not sound even close to what it will be able. The easiest product to break in was the Grimm Player, that sounded already quite good after a few days of 24-7 continuous playing. The Cort Dave took over a week of continuous playing as did the RSG2. The air amp wasn't run in 24-7, it was played only when I was awake and stayed switched on during the night, not running music. During daytime music was playing, while during the evening it was playing the TV sounds, since it can function in processor playback mode emulating a power amplifier that was fed by the AV receiver left and right channel. This way it was playing 15 hours a day at levels varying from 50 to 75 dB SPLA. That's over 100 hours a week and still needed about 4 weeks to fully flourish. The PMC loudspeakers took about 2 weeks using the same drill. That means that we are still talking 200 hours. Now of course it's not that only after 200 hours they started to sound good. Right from the start you can hear the promise of good sound. But sibilance was badly controlled, the stereo image was messy and especially the tonal balance was far off. After the first week things started to fall into place and after 10 days I thought we were there. But then they surprised me by refining further up to the point they are now. So perhaps there's even more to come, but the real progression has stopped off now. Let me first give you a proper description of my setup 1A and start with the Air AX520 amplifier that now drives the PMC F12 signature loudspeakers over AudioQuest Robinhood 0 loudspeaker cables. The amp is connected over Grim Audio SQM XLR cables to the Core Dave DAC. That in turn is connected to the Grim Audio Mu1 digital player over a Siltek HF3G ASEBU cable. The connection between the Grim and the network is over an AudioQuest Diamond CAT 7 to the SOTM SNH 10G network switch that is connected over a CAT 6 cable to the internet router. Rune on the Grim Audio player is controlled using an Apple iPad Pro and a Logitech Harmony remote that also controls all other components in the setup. Again, just to be sure, this is a description of the sound quality the entire setup offers, another review either since I have not compared it with other setups in the same price category under the same conditions. But I had other people whose opinion I value listen to the setup. Okay, buckle up, let's start with the complete absence of loudspeakers. Then the deep black background. Then the tonal balance that remains the same at all volumes. The lows are very clean, deep and controlled. The mids come with enormous resolution, leading to voices that lack almost any sign of electronic playback, unless it is intentionally added to the recording and then it's clear that is the case. The highs are just as clean and offer the same resolution. The spatial information is very good, leading to a stereo image that is very deep and, depending on the towing of the loudspeakers, can be wired to without losing center staging. Another impressive property of this setup is its micro-dynamics. The ease to produce a single note that is only momentarily accented, which makes the music sound very live. It's all about music of course, and the way music is recorded depends largely on the monitor loudspeakers in the studio. I have mentioned the works of Floyd E. Tool on the subject already several times. He claimed he can hear from what period the recording is based on the sound of the recording, because with music producers there is a fashion of monitor loudspeakers. 70 Steely Den is JBL 4311 for instance. It also means that there is no ideal loudspeaker for the consumer market since that should be identical to the monitors in the studio. The best choice is to get the speakers that are in the middle of the spectrum, not the dull ones and not the bright ones. The only way to test this is to play lots of music, and that's exactly what I have done. I own a lot of compilation albums from the 50s up till now from the Dutch and Anglo-Saxon culture. A limited selection of French and Italian, Spanish and Brazilian music and even some music from the Middle East. Then some jazz, fado and of course classical music. I love Chopin and Beethoven piano music, Shostakovich and Mahler's symphonies and also Jordi Saval's work. Over the last week I have played an eclectic selection to notice that at least 85% of the music I played sound convincing. That leaves only 15% of the albums that don't convince. For instance Ennismoor by Colin Blunstone that has a strange distortion on the voice. But that's audible on even my setup 3. Most other albums sounded more than great. It's wonderful to hear White Room on Cream's album Wheels of Fire, or Writers on the Storm by the Doors on LA Woman. Albums from the 70s that still sound amazing and reveal so much more detail than I had heard before. Completely different sound wise, the Charles Nauvour, Les deux Guitars on the album with the same name. That must be a 60s recording, completely different sound character and again sounding fascinating. Perfect darkness from Finch's album with the same name is again a very different sound signature but is just as convincing. Renee by Talk Talk on their album It's My Life has a very nice intro that demonstrates deep lows with accents in the mids. That is followed up by a very nice recorded characteristic voice. Fireweed by Patrick Watson from the album Wooden Arms starts with a very wide and deep soundscape, followed by a very deep bass. Then some jazz. Keith Jarrett never let me go on standards volume 2. The impulse response on the right hand is fantastic, as is the double bass that sounds as it should be, not boomy, all notes being about as loud. For classical, let's start with Aaron Haylert and Stephanie McCullum playing the overture from Le Profet by Jacomot Meyerbeer on the album Le Profet works for four hands. Piano is a difficult instrument to record properly, for it has an 88 key range, over 7 octaves and a great dynamic range plus a fierce attack when played very loud. This recording has it all doubled since it's a guts for a man piece. The set-up plays it effortless at realistic volume. Staying with piano, Chopin's Nocturne by Fazil Sy, a far more amiable sound as it should be for Nocturne's, which means night pieces. Here the piano sounds warmer but keeps the lively attack that makes a piano a piano. Wagner, the master singer from Nürnberg, by the Chor und Orchester der Bayreuther Festspiele, on the Daniel Barenbaum, is a completely different recording. Full orchestra, lots of copper, strings and percussion, bombastic and therefore popular by Hitler's propaganda team, but also impressive and overwhelming and that's what Settler 180 delivers at home. There is so much more music I enjoyed on this set-up it was very difficult to stop listening. So addictive and I considered becoming a member of Audio Files Anonymous. Let me name another track I enjoyed a lot. Heart of Eyes by Joe Jackson from the album Body and Soul. It starts at a low level with the theme on a trumpet and flute, then piano is added followed by a bass drum, snare, bass, more copper and voices and then it grows and grows into an Augustic vinyl with hi-hat, bass and snare keeping the pace. Really addictive. The very high resolution of this setup clearly is the accumulation of all components. The Grimm Audio Mew one with its fantastic scaler and extremely low jitter clock that is transferred to the Core Dave over AES-EBU. The very high time resolution of Rob Watt's Timerlined Reconstruction Filter that is transferred to the Air AX520 amp designed by Charles Hansen and known for his extremely high resolution. And finally the original design of The Fact 12 by PMC founder Peter Thomas that was further developed into the signature version of this by his son Oliver that is now head of design. He made the crossover almost completely insensitive to vibrations and thus further increasing the loudspeaker's resolution. Something to notice is that The Fact 12 signatures are very easy to place, especially for a loudspeaker that is specified down to 26 Hz. I had questions on the low efficiency of 84 dB 1 Watt 1 meter. But as long as the loudspeaker has a decent impedance and phase behavior, more than amplifiers of sufficient quality have no problems handling that. This speaker needs 5 dB more power than the average loudspeaker, which is just under par duple the power. On average playing recorded music will ask a few watts, 2 watts is often more than enough. With this speaker you need less than 8 watts for normal listening levels. It's only when playing very loud that you need lots of watts. The Aereco 6 AX520 amp delivers 125 watts in 8 ohm, 250 watts in 4 ohm. Although specified at 8 ohm, in the lows the PMCs rather are 5 ohms, meaning that the amp will deliver around 200 watts. Anyhow it's more than sufficient for the PMCs, which brings us to the end of this video. As usual there will be a new video next Friday at 5pm C European time. But if you don't want to miss that, subscribe to this channel or follow me on the social media so you will be informed when new videos are out. Help me reach even more people by giving this video a thumb up or link to this video on the social media. It is much appreciated. Many thanks to those viewers that support this channel financially. It keeps me independent and lets me improve the channel further. If that makes you feel like supporting my work too, the links are in the comments below this video on Youtube. I'm Hans Beekhuyzen, thank you for watching and see you in the next show or on the HB Project at home. And whatever you do, enjoy the music.


Lie from Palo Alto in the heart of Silicon Valley. It's theCUBE, covering IO. Brought to you by IO. Now, here are your hosts, John Furrier and Peter Burns. Okay, welcome back everyone. We are here live in Silicon Valley. This is theCUBE on Sand Hill Road at the Rosewood Hotel for IO Conversations part of the data center as a platform conference here and our next guest is Mark Musselman from Vapor IO and Bruce Taylor, Data Center Dynamics. Guys, let's jump into it. You guys are leading a panel on a panel around strategic co-location, data center in the future. What is the big trend that you guys are seeing right now? Because the data center we all know is people want to get out of that business. But ultimately, what does it look like? What does it look like going forward? At least customers want to get out of the business. Customers want to get out of the business of managing data centers. Sure, they do want to get out of business of managing data centers. But there's so many options now, right? Do they want their own co-location? Do they want to create a private cloud that's managed by someone else at some level? Maybe it's just infrastructure as a service, but it is not in their facility. Then they have all the public clouds. I think it's gonna get, it'll be more complex for a while and then it'll simplify as the software catches up and as the technology and networking catches up.  You're gonna have Amazon, you're gonna have Azure, you're gonna have software, you're gonna have any number of providers that accumulate to give you the best experience and bang for the buck. They call that hybrid cloud right now. That's kind of what everyone's kind of talking about. They are. Yeah, Microsoft has something called Azure Stack, which is basically run Azure by yourself and then also burst out to their public cloud. But they're not there yet. They will be later in the year. We're waiting for that to see what proprietary books they have into the stack, but that's the whole other conversation. That's a concern, right? But that's the complexity part of it. To simplify it, you have to be able to be unmanned.  So you have to come up with telemetry that lets you instrument as well as monitor and maintain all of these applications that are gonna get more and more distributed. So actually take the software that used to run the data centers and then move that out into a distributed set of data centers. That's the complexity that's trying to be automated. That's right. Okay. So the dynamics and impact to the customers would be? Well, I think one of the things that we just began to touch on today in the panel is that where strategic decisions are now made corporately has changed radically. It used to be that the CIO and the CTO were kind of the holders of strategic IT. And what's happened now is that's moved way down the stack so that people down at the development level, at the DevOps level, and at the systems admin level and architecture level are actually making strategic decisions because it's workload-centric. It's application-centric. It's no longer a huge, monolithic, physical billion-dollar decision you're making about your data center. You're making these micro-decisions all the time, right? And that's only gonna increase. And it will increase to the point where it's actually all done in software. Let's build on that for a second. So that in fact, there are people who won Nobel Prizes for this analysis. In fact, generally speaking, we institutionalized the work around the assets, right? Right. That's kind of, it's not particularly cars. Yeah, exactly. So we have an asset and we figure out who has claims on that asset. We do have to share it. Okay, we're gonna institutionalize the work to make sure everybody gets their claims. When the asset is a fungible, heavy-duty, cat-backed thing that leads to one institutional form. Now, the CIO was the king of those assets. But now, as data become recognized as an asset, and the question is how does it get shared? How does it get utilized? How does it get deployed? It means that because it's so shareable and it's not necessarily limited to one group of person, that those decisions naturally start to move down in the organization to where the data is being used. Right. Is that kind of the underlying dynamic here? Right. Absolutely. I think that that's the, you know, the CIO, Gardner calls it what, the bi-modal CIO, bi-modal IT, I call them bipolar. What's really happened is that every enterprise is somewhere on this continuum. Some are way up the scale, you know, in hyper-scale data centers, very purpose-built, very vertical in nature, very granular in how capacity decisions are made. Right. It's down not just at the rack level, but the half-rack level and on. And yet there are enterprises, and I shouldn't say this, but I think of Google versus Century Tire, right? Their needs are entirely and utterly different. And my guess is that Century Tire is still thinking about their data centers as depreciable assets, 15-year term, right? Major investment where the rest of us are thinking, how granular can we get this? How what's the smallest increment I can possibly buy in order to run this app? I think you're right about how it was the CTO and CIO, and now it's kind of further down where it starts. You have a systems architect that knows that he needs to deliver a real-time analytics application, right, and so he's got to figure out where to run Kafka, Cassandra, Spark, and HDFS in order to satisfy a need for the business. And where he picks that, the CIO and CTO don't really care, and certainly no one above them. They just know they have to create this new application. It's probably microservices container-based. So where can you do that? Does he go and buy it as a service? Does he go to Google and get TensorFlow as a service? Or does he run TensorFlow open-source himself in a colo? You figured that out, but just be on time. Well, so let me try to make that a little bit explicit, you can tell me I got it right, Mike. When the execution of the decision can move down the stack, the need for governance becomes much more crystal clear. When we had an asset, and we were making decisions about that asset, the governance decision was embedded in the asset. Now we're talking about distributing decision-making out, and it becomes that much more incumbent upon the business to offer very clear, streamlined governance models. And that seems to be one of the drivers behind this continuum of data center, because the decision about how to source your technology needs is very, very closely tied to your overall governance model, the governance model you should use, because are you gonna do it through contracts, or are you gonna do it through normal, HR coercive kind of methods, but you gotta start doing it. And one of the reasons why people are using third parties is because it forces that governance conversation because you're embedding it in a contract. At least I think so. Do you see that as well? Yeah, we definitely see that. You need the SLA, you need the governance, and you need a way to turn up and turn down, I think is the big thing. And you need to buy in, you need to buy one piece of gum. You don't need to buy the Costco case of gum, but you also have to have all of those things in place. Well, it's fantastic to have a developer, so the Chinoff group, Jim from the Chinoff group was talking about this earlier about how the business conversation on security drive down. So let's go to the DevOps guy, the guy who was racking and stacking servers, worried about top of rack switches versus this and the other things. So they had there, when they call them pets and cattle, it's an analogy, whatever it is. But that guy now has to have invisible infrastructure. He's composing solutions. So that need is to actually access a fabric of resource and independent of what's underneath it. Deprivision, compute, storage, networking, to run a specific workload. That's the discrete unit I think you were referring to. So that has to have everything embedded. Is that kind of where that? Exactly, that's to build on your point for a second. Governance is gonna happen in software. It's not gonna happen by heavy handed HR and policy emails. It's gonna be embedded, it's gonna be part of AI, it's gonna be part of everything that we do. The RFP will go away, the SLA will go away. And the sooner the better, frankly. But certainly within a five year time horizon, 90% of all capacity decisions are gonna be embedded in rules in software. You know, I'll push you on that a little bit. I'm not, no, no, no, I'm going to, no, no.  So that, so for example, many years ago, I sat down with the CEO of a large pharmaceutical company who was making a decision about whether or not to buy SAP. This was many years ago. And he ultimately decided to buy it and his exact quote was, I'm sick and tired of process arguments. So by buying SAP, he poured SAP on his business and that became the process model for his business. The similar type of thing is gonna happen here. But where we can use software from an administrative management function or standpoint to start providing or pouring some of this governance over the organization. But there is still a lot of very subtle things we have to think about when we think about data as an asset and how the business uses data and how the business treats data. And those have to be a little bit more explicit than just bringing into software just kind of spread peanut butter across the organization. No question, I agree with that 100%. However, when SAP lost the battle was in 2007, right after that cost really became the driver. And if cost is a driver, doing it, automating it in software is the answer. Well now cost is one driver. Now revenue generating, this is where the agile thing comes in is interesting. So cost was a 2007 problem or indicator of where you were. Now it's agility. So now it's the, how do I drive revenue from my business? That's interesting around how you make a DevOps infrastructure as code. So the question to you guys is, for this new cloud trend, we were having this debate in our office last weekend on our show, our Cube show for Friday, Cube's day on our podcast. Will every net new application, whether it's net new for the enterprise, net new meaning not legacy and all cloud native apps eventually run in a cloud? Yes. Absolutely. Without a doubt. Yeah, that seems like a no brainer. So that's, I think everyone's kind of realizing, okay, but not necessarily Amazon per se. Amazon for some stuff, but the new cloud could be this kind of co-location, facilities outsourcing, hybrid cloud or ultimately off-prem in a way. Well, there could be, but not 100% off-prem. But I'm trying to get to is, if every application new net application goes to some sort of cloud model, what does that look like and what's the impact of that? Well, there could be, you could see a kind of a fragmentation sort of in cloud and hosting where there's very specific providers that are AAA rated in a certain area.  Maybe someone's better for that than Amazon. In other words, it's not gonna be defined by the way the hardware is deployed. It's defined by the way the stack is deployed. For service. Absolutely. And maybe someone is the best at hosting machine learning applications and ML and GPU. And maybe someone's has a great cryptography solution that people wanna, you know, host there, but it's all gonna be public. It's all gonna be cloud. Well, look, with hooks to something. Well, the business side. This industry's on an inexorable march to public infrastructure. It always has been. Because when you go to public infrastructure, digital technology has shown that the larger your market, the more you're gonna make money. And by having it look more public, more and more and more, you increase the number of applications that you have access to. So we're trying to take out with some as asset specificities, get to public infrastructure, increase the size of our markets. And that is unassailable. We're gonna get there eventually. It's multi-tenancy squared. I mean, that's the way they're gonna have to do this. Even if you're a niche guy coming up, right? Or a Colo provider trying to transform into more infrastructure as a service, it's all, you have to harness multi-tenancy. And that's where software-defined networking comes in. But even two years ago, you'd have a conversation with the CIO about the different options. And it was, do you wanna own the hardware? Do you wanna Colo? Take the hardware, blah, blah, blah. It all centered on the hardware. It was, the market was segmented by where the hardware was. And you've just introduced, you're amplifying this notion that it's not where the hardware is. It's the quality of the services that end up being provided. Where a medical service in the cloud is gonna have a different security, processing location, administrative cost, everything else, compliance, and you're gonna buy that assortment of services. That's right. Great, guys, great stuff. Last minute, I just want you guys to just talk about the impact of the customer. If you're an enterprise buyer and looking at their data center, what should they be thinking about right now? What are the things that they should be doing? What steps do they need to take to be safe, secure, and on the right path? Well, I think there's more options than ever. And the proliferation of open source has only expanded that. So if you look at where we're headed, even with things like OCP, Open Compute Project, Open 19 that LinkedIn is driving, there's a commoditization, there's a push towards open source, and there's more options than ever. And so I would make sure that you're on top of all of those options and understanding. You don't have to buy proprietary software for everything anymore. You don't have to buy proprietary hardware anymore. You probably can get everything on a lease, right? Then to not do that could be a detrimental effect on your business, yeah. Great. There's any comments ahead of that? I think agility drives a great deal of this, right? The requirement now is on 90 day cycles, not on 10 year cycles, right? So the more that people understand that and begin to move in that direction, one of the things that I often say is if you don't now have a DevOps team in your organization or contracted to you, you're dead and you just haven't gotten the memo yet. Okay, man walking in the data center. That's a good show format, including Netflix, next to Game of Thrones and House of Cards. So guys, thanks so much for sharing the insights here in theCUBE. We're here live for the IO Conversations, live at Silicon Valley for a special CUBE presentation for data centers and service event and we'll be back with more after this short break.


Hi guys, welcome back to the channel and if it's your first time to come across the channel, please consider subscribing. Press that notification bell or hit that notification bell. We will be updated whenever I upload a new video. For the returning subscribers, thank you so much for coming by this channel and the new subscribers, please support this channel by subscribing. By the way, don't forget to hit the notification bell. It will be the one way that you'll be updated when that happens. Today's video, we want to look at what are the advantages of working in a company as a security guide in the Gulf. It's quite very important. It's a very important question for most people that go to undersmed or go to undersmed this. Yes, there are always options as you move when you look for a job outside in the Gulf. There is having your own visa, there is having what you call this visa. There is that option of being recruited or working under what you call a company sponsorship or a personal sponsorship. After a given period of time, then probably you can change to a new job wherever you want to go. But in today's video, we want us to try to look at what are the advantages of working in a guide in the Gulf. In the Gulf country, it may be Qatar, it may be Dubai, it may be Abu Dhabi, it may be generally the UAE, it may be Malaysia, it may be Omar, it may be Saudi Arabia, it may be Kuwait, it may be Bahrain, then it may also be Oman. Those are part of the Gulf countries we are talking about. So we want to try to see what are the advantages really of working in this, advantages of working under some governments for our company sponsorship. One, normally accommodation is very free. You have accommodation. You don't need to pay for it. So that means if you don't need to pay for accommodation, that means you can save some money that can enable you to other business in one way or the other. I think that is most of the reasons that in one way or the other. So you have that accommodation. Everything is provided.  They will give you the mattress, they will give you the bracket and everything. And everything will be cleared. We look at other bills will also be cleared in one way. You don't have to pay because it is also, it is all under what you call the company responsibility. In position two, we look at transportation. Transportation is also free. You just want to have to put on uniform to go to work or go to duty every day. Because this time the company cuts are picking you from the location to the accommodation. Then from the accommodation to the location. Maybe otherwise that you have other personal work that you don't do or other personal areas that you go to risk which are outside what you call the duty time. But for the duty time and for the working period of the duty time, the company vehicles will be provided and transport will be provided to you to any area of destination of your location at no cost. Even if it's far mile away then probably all the costs are being paid by the company. Unlike when you are an individual where you need to book over or need to pay monthly at a given taxi or given over, certainly can try to pick you up every single month. Unless you have to buy for your own car which has to be done through what you call financing. Then also we will talk about vacations and what it is for when you go to, that is also another advantage, when you go to a good company that really is cares and it has a straight line of doing things then you probably that you'll be having your vacations and holiday well sits without even a hassle and you'll be able to enjoy those holidays with your family or anyone that you have to go to or wherever you have this at that time because it is also spirited under the contract or under the rules that govern what you call private companies or I mean especially that every employee is supposed to be given an annual leave or supposed to be given vacation and holiday and depending on how much people this person has worked in that company which is very good that it ends when you do to let you work and just balance up your mind to the new work. Then still when you go to some good companies or you go to maybe very small but also we talk about good companies that care about their employees you'll find is what you call laundry machines laundry which is free they do follow your laundry you only have to put on your uniform your laundry will find you then also we talk about cooking gas in those companies also they provide what you call cooking gas among other and remember this is that cooking gas you don't need to buy you only have to go and cook and prepare whatever you're going to eat at that time after preparing then you have to move on and move to nearest level or you go to your duty which is quite very important you don't need to spend otherwise in this we are looking at scenario where you don't need to spend and it's your salary to provide something you know what is so hard in life is that when you touch when you touch a small portion of what you have in your heart to buy something that you think should be provided for you provided to you for free you feel a little bit down and you feel like you're not either working or something is wrong then you find to some companies there when you go to some company you some sponsor they will give the employees free wi-fi and what you call uniform you're given free wi-fi you can access you can talk you can call friends you can call family that is for free then still also we have what you call free uniform that is being given to as part of the requirement that suppose as part of the requirement an employee is supposed to come so that means that you don't need to buy uniform you don't buy uniform and there are some people probably I'll straight speaking that someone has never gone out of the accommodation from the day one of when he gets the contract until when he finishes of the contract the only place he knows he knows the bakala where he can go get something to eat and a time at a little time for that then then still something something else still we have to talk about is uh we talk about what you call paperwork and company documentation are very easy for example when I talk about a little things that when you under the company most of the time this paperwork is being done by the company and you don't need to hustle you get your reasons permit is being done by the company you get your your cut ID or reasons IDs in a country that will be it's not but it's not a hustle you only have to to submit your required documents your passport and your certificates or any document that is asked of you from your country in your region you came from your country and everything will be done for your company you only have to receive whatever is being given to you after all the process meaning which is becomes a hustle pre uh compared to personal reason what we call a free visa uh where he has to do everything by himself or at one point of time or he has to include the personal sponsoring with a visa to do sometimes a little bit hectic and very very very disturbing especially if you have other things or have other things to do it goes beyond what you call your personal time so you find under the company everything will be done for you and everything will be smart provided to you without even a hustle then to some companies there is what we call a free water free water and electricity that is very important for something that i need to let you in this Gulf countries when you talk about electricity and talk about water yeah it is always abundance it is always there all the time you can access the water you can access the water you can access the electricity without even a single delay which is quite very very good at very understanding one or the other so meaning that you don't need to pay for it you are provided with the wrangling water provided with bathing water you are also provided with that electricity you can use it whatever you have to do either it can be cooking or it can be in any sorts which is pretty very nice other than being an individual paying what you call bills and water bills and electricity bills so it may become a little bit inconveniencing or a little bit down because it infringes on what you have as your end of month salary uh so when it's a company you know all the costs are being paid by that then still last one we look at what you call the what you call easy career development in case it is a very good company is what you call career development those career moment we talk about we talk about promotions we talk about inland advertisement promotions or inland courses that may be offered by some companies especially if we're talking about big companies because what happens and what if you know they can take you to greater horizons or they can take you to something that is a little bit bigger so you find that you can courageally yourself you can grow or you can get even bigger opportunities if the cost is available and you're willing to take up the courses that becomes a very good advantage hope i'm telling you something that is very important find those opportunities check with your human resources find those opportunities if the good companies that have those opportunities take up the opportunities leave the rest take up the opportunity it is very good for career development and just improving yourself every single day improving and getting to another horizons or which are bigger horizons so hope i've tried to share something for you hope you know the advantages of coming under the company which is pretty very good by the way don't forget to subscribe to this channel don't forget to hit the bell icon it will be the only way that i'll be motivated to make more video thank you so much for coming to this channel remember my name is Meks from the Meks equation those who are new here please consider support this channel by subscribing thank you so much see you again in the next video


Hello friends, welcome back to the channel. In today's video, we're going to go through some of the best solo terror builds that we've got from the Teal Mask. With the introduction of the Teal Mask, we had about a hundred new Pokemon added to Scarlet and Violet. I've been through all of these Pokemon and picked out the select few that I think are going to be very good options going in for soloing terorites, specifically five and six star terorites for farming high cost items, terror shots, or even herbomistica, if they're the sort of items that you're going to need in your games. Of course, like all of our other terror video build guides on the channel, all of the Pokemon that we feature in today's video will be in the description below. If you want to take a closer look at the actual move sets with EVs and all other information that we go over in today's video, like I mentioned, these are going to be specifically for farming through five and six star terorites. It's not to say that they won't work against seven star terorites, but you have to be a bit more catered for seven star terorites as they kind of interact a little bit differently than other raids that were kind of used to just in the base game. So first Pokemon we're going to start off with, probably no surprise to a lot of you, is going to be Ogre Pond. It is a very flexible Pokemon because it has access to its masks. It's going to have the wellspring mask, the half flame mask and the cornerstone mask, which give it the ability to turn into a water grass, biograss and rock grass Pokemon. Obviously without any mask attached, it has its default form, which is going to be its teal mask form, but it then opens the door for you to have a held item. On most cases for the Ogre Pond, I would say if you're not holding a mask, I'd say probably just chuck on a shell bell item because it just means that the recovery options for Ogre Pond are a lot easier and you're not having to rely on something like synthesis that we've got on this set. So Ogre Pond obviously here is going to be a grass and water terotype because it is holding the wellspring mask is going to be locked in terra type wise because of that mask as well. So anytime you hold a mask with the Ogre Pond, if it changes its secondary typing, then its terra type will also be locked as well. So that's something that we don't really have much of an option for. Now the moveset that we've got for this Ogre Pond and this is to really cater for any form of the Ogre Pond that you're going to be taking into the terra race, whether that be the teal mask form, the cornerstone, the half flame form or this wellspring form. It will work with each individual one. The EV spread is pretty straightforward. We've went for 252 HP, 252 attack with an adamant nature and we have the moveset, synthesis, focus energy, sword stance and Ivy Kudgel. So the basic premise of this moveset is going to be turn one, go for that focus energy. That's going to boost the rates of critical hits and because Ivy Kudgel is a high critical hit rate move anyway, you're pretty much guaranteeing after a focus energy that this move is always going to land a critical hit after the focus energy go for three sword stances max out your attack and then you can just start spamming with the Ivy Kudgel and depending on the mask that you've got, it will depend on the typing Ivy Kudgel as well because if you're holding the wellspring mask like this one is Ivy Kudgel is going to be a water type attack, half flame mask is going to be a fire type attack in the cornerstone going to be a rock type attack. So like I say, we'll change our secondary typing, but it will also dictate the typing of Ivy Kudgel as well. Synthesis is there just for a line of recovery if you need it. Like I say, if you're going for the teal mask form, which is its base form, you can put a shell bell item on there. So it takes the less reliance off using the synthesis throughout the battle, but a very, very strong set. And I think the ability to change the masks, not have to worry about changing terror type as well because that changes with the mask makes it a very, very strong option to farm through five and six star terror. It's very, very easy. A nice thing about the critical hits as well is if you've got that focus energy and your opposing Pokemon starts to boost its defenses because of the critical hits, you're kind of going to ignore all those defense boosts. So you don't even need to worry if your opponent's sitting there going for iron defenses, bulk ups or anything like that. The critical hits are going to just ignore those the full time. So if you're hitting super effectively and on top of the added bonus, when you do tracelize as well, you're going to be doing massive damage once you've maxed out your attack with that sword stance and upon going to be probably one of the better Pokemon that we've got access to from the Teal Mask. The next Pokemon we've got available to us is going to be Victory Bell, one of my favorites from the Teal Mask. We've went for the terror typing on here of grass. You can go terror typing poison if you prefer, if you need a poison type to just run through potential poison grass type Pokemon or any other poison weak Pokemon. We've opted for the Expert Bell as the held item on the Victory Bell again, level a hundred and the move set for this Victory Bell is going to be Sunny Day, Acid Spray, Growth and Giga Drain. Chlorophyll is the ability here and the EV spread is 252 HP, 252 Special Attack and a Modest in Nature. A basic premise of this is going to be use that Acid Spray three times, which is going to lower the Special Defense of opposing Pokemon by two stages every time you use it. So maximum of three, get that Special Defense right down to minus six, then use your Sunny Day and then use Growth. Because Growth under Sunny Day is going to give you a two times boost to your Special Attack and Attack stat. Every time you use it, a post to just a plus one when the Sun's not active on the field and then after you've used that three times under the Sun, you're going to have Max Special Attack, which then plays into the part of using the Giga Drain. Because you've used Acid Spray three times already, you should be at a stage where you can terasalize and then just do absolutely devastating damage to your opponent. Really nice options here with Victory Bell. One of my favorites like I say in a really nice set, if you did want to go for a Poison Terra type, you could change the Giga Drain to Sludge Bomb. You could keep the Sunny Day if you want it just so you've got that kind of combination with the Growth just to get set up a bit quicker. But Sludge Bomb and Terra Poison is definitely an option on Victory Bell as well. But if you do that, then I would say probably change the Expert Belt to a Shell Belt item so you've got a line of recovery. I feel like you don't really need it too much on this set because the Giga Drain is going to be recovering health every time you do big damage anyway. So in that respect, that's why we have got the Expert Belt just to give us a bit more damage but that is the Victory Bell. The next Pokemon we're featuring is Clefable. It is a Fairy type Pokemon and the Terra typing on this is Fairy as well. Again, we're holding the Expert Belt on this Clefable, level 100 with a move set of Moonlight, Fake Tears, Calm Mind and Moonblast. Eevee Spread is going to be 252 HP, 252 Special Attack with a Modest Nature. And we've got the Ability Magic Guard for this actual particular set. It's probably the best one that we've got available to as Cute Charm is not really viable going into anything. Magic Guard gives you a little bit of protection against kind of chip damage, anything like a burn damage, poison damage or anything like that. You're only taking damage from actual attacking moves. If you go unaware which is the hidden ability then you're kind of conflicting against what we're trying to do with the move set so it really doesn't work that well. The Moonlight is there for a line of recovery of course if we need it and ticks off the necessity to have something like the Shell Belt as the held item so meaning we've got a bit more power with that Expert Belt there. Fake Tears is an option for lowering that special defense on opposing Pokemon. It's going to lower it two stages every time you use it but unlike Asset Spray it won't work through the shield so once that Pokemon, the opposing Pokemon has its shield set up you're not going to be able to utilize fake tears like you would have done without the shield there so you're then going to be relying on boosting your own stats so something like Carmine that's going to boost your special attack and special defense by one stage every time you use it. Get that set up, get it to plus six if you can. You probably don't need to every time you do it. If you've got three fake tears set up already probably three to four Carmines is going to be enough before you start launching those Moon Blasts off which you're going to do big damage to your opponent but that is the Clefable really nice option as well. It gives you a really good fairy type option with decent bulk, a decent ability as well and a good line of recovery with that Moonlight option on there as well. Next Pokemon is again another one of my favorite Snorlax. I really love this as a raid Pokemon and normal is one of those weird types that you probably think well it's not really hitting anything for super effective damage but I feel like Snorlax is going to be one of those Pokemon that you can take into a bunch of different raids against a lot of things that are going to be a little bit awkward to maybe take down but Snorlax is going to be bulky enough to get set up do good damage throughout the raid and kind of just tank hits in the process while you kind of beat out those maybe sometimes more difficult raid Pokemon that you can kind of come across in the games. You have went for the normal terra typing on this Snorlax you can change that if you like I just feel like getting the most out of our normal type of attacks is probably the most beneficial option on the Snorlax and we're not giving ourselves any more weaknesses than we already have. Shellbell is the held item for a line of recovery of course that's going to be quite important on the Snorlax.  The Bellydrum there is obviously to have a way to max out your attack very quickly and because of the sheer amount of bulk that you've got with the Snorlax you're going to be able to soak up hits no trouble at all and retain that health back through the Shellbell item very very quickly and I think overall Snorlax is just a very reliable pokemon to have as an option. The next pokemon we are featuring in today's video is going to be Glyscore again one of my favorites and a ground flying type pokemon so you could have the option to go flying terra type on this but I just feel like we haven't got a massive amount of great ground terra type pokemon in the format that can do the sorts of things that Glyscore can do so that's predominantly why we're choosing going for the ground terra type over the flying but like I say it is an option on there if you would like to do that. Shellbell is the item of choice for a line of recovery of course we are level a hundred because one of the big drawbacks of Glyscore coming into scholar and violet is that it's lost access to roost so it doesn't have that option for recovery now. Shellbell is going to be really necessary for making this thing work. Now we haven't got any pp on there because I have been EV in it but don't worry about that. The moveset generally is going to be sword stance screech great combination screech loss the defense of the opposing pokemon by two stages every time you use it so lowering that defense stat sword stance going to boost your attack by two stages every time you use it so you pretty much want to use three screech three sword stance that bottoms out your opposing pokemon's defense stat and maxes out your attacking stat with that sword stance then you can use the earthquake or dual wing beat whichever one you would like to utilize. We've got hypercutter there as the ability of choice you can go with toxic heal as the hidden ability and put on a toxic orb but I don't feel like it's going to be recovering you as much as you would be with the shellbell it does give you nice immunity to status conditions of course things like sleep that can be a bit annoying with yawn and things like that but otherwise I think the hypercutter just being able to avoid your attacking stat being large especially after you've set those sword stances up is really quite valuable. EV spread we've gotten the glide scores pretty straightforward we've got an anime nature with 252 HP and 252 attack and that is pretty much the glide score we've went through what the screech the sword stance does and then you've got your main attacks is pretty straightforward setting this one up but a very good pokemon nonetheless and very strong when it's in the right situations. Next up is mana buzz the dark and flying type pokemon. Terra type for this mana buzz is going to be dark type expert bell is the hell item level 100 and the move set we are going for is going to be roost fake tears nasty plot and dark pulse and the EV spread is going to be 252 HP 252 special attack with a modest nature and the ability overcoat so great pokemon in particular because of the overcoat ability it's going to give you immunity to powder type attacks so things like spore stun sport and other kind of powder moves you're going to be completely immune to so you don't need to really worry about those going into terrarium it's going to give you a bit more freedom as well against specific pokemon that you might be going up against the roost is there to give you a line of recovery great option on the mana buzz just remember when you are using it you are going to be grounded for the rest of that turn so if there is the threat of ground type attacks coming out you will get hit by them just to keep that in mind not that it's going to really matter too much with what pokemon you're going to be taking mana buzz in against but it could be something that comes into play and might catch you out just to be aware of that fake tears is going to be the option that we use to reduce the special defense on opposing pokemon by two stages every time you use it it won't work through the shield though so you've got to get these up before the shield goes up nasty plots going to boost your special attack by two stages every time you use it so pretty much you can see the line of thought that we've went through with this one a little bit like the gliscore but just more down a special route and then dark pulse is going to be a big damage option on the mana buzz now the mana buzz not really seen as an offensive kind of pokemon but it's no slouch honestly it is actually very good as a red option especially because dark types i don't feel like we've got many good dark types that can do this sort of job of luring the defenses on the opposing pokemon setting itself up being able to do good damage while also kind of taking a bunch of hits at the same time mana buzz known for its good defensive capabilities so i think it just compliments this pokemon it might not be hating as hard even when it's set up as some of the other pokemon in the format but i think the the fact that it has that longevity can sit on the field for a long period of time to allow you that time to set up to have the recovery with the roost as well and then just chip away at your opponent and i think just a really nice option overall something that i did want to include that was in the tail mask that i thought would be beneficial especially against some of those more tricky raid pokemon that you are going to come up against next up is koma or and i couldn't do this raid video without including koma or it has a bunch of options but the one that we went for in this video of course it is a dragon fighting type we've went for the terra typing dragon because again we don't have many options for raid pokemon that are going to be taking advantage of that dragon typing and specifically going up against five and six star terroids that have that dragon typing i think koma or is a very good option with what it can offer level 100 shell bell as the item line of recovery there move set is going to be sold stands screech drain punch and dragon claw we've got the ability bulletproof there you can go soundproof and of course overcoat as well is an option on the koma or i just like bulletproof because it gives us nice immunity against a vast array of different moves ev spread 252 hp 252 attack and an adamant nature as well on here again a little bit like the glide score where we're going to go for those screeches to lower the defense of the opposing pokemon by two stages every time you use it set ourselves up with the sword stands get ourselves to plus six attack stat and then just use a combination of drain punch if we need to for recovery or just take advantage of that dragon claw that's going to be hitting for very big damage especially after we do terastalize but that is the koma or and i do think a really nice option going into those specific dragon type terrorists next up is a fire type option we've got from the teal mask and it is going to be nine tails fire type we're going with a terror type of fire as well just to get the benefit from that base typing in the additional stab boost that we'll get on top of that shell bell is the item of choice we've got a line of recovery level 100 with a move set of sunny day nasty plot fake tears and heat wave and we've got the drought ability as well which summons the sun to the field for five turns as soon as you kind of hit the field with an av spread of 252 hp 252 special attack with a modest nature basic premise is going to be to go for those fake tears from turn one to turn three law the special defense on the opposing pokemon by minus six and then you're going to set yourself up with those nasty plots nasty plot going to boost your special attack by two stages every time you use it and then take advantage of the sun being on the field if the sun does run out before you start attacking you can then set it up again with another sunny day and then start utilizing that heat wave which is going to do absolutely huge damage coming off a pretty high special attack in stat that nine tails does have so that is the nine tails a really nice option of a fire type that we've got from the teal mask something i think you can take advantage of going into five and six star terror aids especially if nine tails is one of your more favorite pokemon next up is going to be polyrath and it is a water and fighting type you can again on this one go for a water terror type if you prefer but i prefer the fighting terror type on this just because we can go against a lot of water type pokemon that maybe have a different terror type in the raid and with that water absorbability that polyrath does have access to i think you can really take advantage of that and it's got some nice synergy there as well we do have the shell bell item as a held item just to make sure that we are getting as much health recovery back as possible i think the one drawback with polyrath compared to some of the other bellydrum users that we've got in the format is it's not as good defensively so it really does rely on having good lines of recovery throughout the battle especially because this set is going to be relying quite heavily on bellydrum it's not going to be something you're going to be taking in to every single terror aid but it does give you some nice options against some specific pokemon that have that fighting weak terror type that you maybe don't have access to already so level 100 once again and a move set of raindance bellydrum liquidation and drain punch with the ability water absorb like i say anytime you get hit by water type attacks it will even after your terrasilize it will recover your health rather than you take any damage from anything have an ev spread of 252 hp 252 attack with an adamant nature the basic premise of this move set is going to be going for that bellydrum turn one you should be able to get it off and then going for the drain punch turn two liquidation is an option there if you need it you can also go for the raindance to boost the power of liquidation as well and liquidation also has the added effect of having the chance to lower the opponents defense stat as well making your attacks hit that little bit harder so it's pretty straightforward the polyrath but that is the build and a decent option to take in against specific fighting weak terror raid pokemon and the final pokemon i was kind of toy in with the idea whether include this or not but i do think it gives you a nice option of a terror bugs type pokemon if you're looking for one it's generally a little bit better than laur ticks as well in regards to its base stats so it's not a slouch i think you do need the shell bell as a line of recovery on it though because without it you're going to struggle a little bit even though we do have access to synthesis is one of the move options on levani but a bug and grass type so it does have a very unique typing of course a bug is the terror type that we went for level 100 with the shell bell and the move set that we went for is synthesis gives you recovery if you need it throughout the battle and then we have that nice combination of sword stance and screech is so complementary to each other and we went for lunge you do have access to ex scissor but i guess lunges probably a little bit better because it does law the attacking stat of the pokemon every time you use it so you've got that added bonus to kind of give your defenses a little bit of a boost going forward in the terror aid chlorophyll is the ability there but you can really change this for anything on the levani it's not really going to matter too much ev spread is 252 hp 252 attack and inanimate nature but this is probably more for those of you that are really struggling to find a solid bug type that you're wanting to use in terror aids it gives you decent options against certain psychic terror types or dark terror types the bug type would come in handy for and just a different option of course if you are a big levani fan then this is the raid build for you i guess so that is all of the builds that we're going to feature in today's video as always all of the builds that we have featured will be down in the description below if you would like to take a closer look at those to replicate them in your own games or just have a look at some of the options that we featured in today's video of course i would love to hear what options you've been using to have more success in your games of course a lot of the pokemon that we featured do have a lot of different options on them these are just some options that i feel are quite optimal for going in and farming 5 and 6 star terror aids that i hope are going to be useful for going up against even some of the more tricky terror aids that we do come across even in pal dayer and keep it calm me so i hope you have a lot of success farming these raids in your game to just get these higher cost items that we only have access to in terror specifically terror shards and of course the herba mistaker as well thank you so much for tuning in friends if you have found today's video useful please drop a like on it it does really really help out and if you want to stay up to date with all of our pokemon scholar and violet content do subscribe to the channel thank you once again for tuning in have a great rest of your day take care of yourselves more importantly than anything else and i'll see you all in another video very soon so until then take care of yourselves and bye