Our modern relationships doomed. Well, I'm very excited today to have a guest, Rabbi Manus Friedman, talking about ancient wisdom when it comes to love and relationships. So welcome Rabbi Friedman. Thank you so much for being on. Thank you for the opportunity. Well, I'll be candid with you. I've been following your channel for a bit a while and I must say, I really appreciate your perspective, your voice, but most importantly, you're speaking from a place of what, as I said, ancient wisdom. And I don't believe I was at a point in my life to listen until I got to this place in my life. And my audience and my demographic is mostly divorced people over 40 years old. And I'm curious to know why do you think the divorce rate is so high for first marriages and even higher for second and third marriages? Our modern marriage is doomed. That's a... Well, modern relationships are a very powerful way of putting it. Yeah. Yeah, they're doomed. Really? Why is that? Because they're not the real thing. You can't fool Mother Nature. Oh, I got to hear more. Please tell me more about that. Okay. So the reason marriages are failing, and we need to know this, by the way, no marriage is ever a mistake. Okay. Every marriage is meant to be. Okay. Every marriage is a soulmate. Okay. The fact that it ends in divorce simply means that being married to your soulmate is not easy. Indeed. People assume if it's my soulmate, and it's gonna be easy, smooth, enjoyable, natural, right? Yeah. But how many people are in conflict with their own soul? Indeed. So a soulmate may not be any more comfortable to you than you are with yourself. Well, do you believe... You said something a moment ago, in conflict with our own soul. I've observed in just my studies that most humans show up with childhood wounds and traumas and adult traumas that have gone unhealed in their life. And I think to some degree, they anticipate or desire a relationship to be the healing force. And yet by doing that, you're giving your power away to another person. Do you have any thoughts on that? That I think is getting right to the heart of the problem. Okay. That being intimate is giving away some of your independence or some of your uniqueness or whatever. And nobody wants to do that. So here's where we're in conflict with our own soul. Okay. Our soul hates being alone. For no particular reason. Our human nature, physical condition, loves being alone and wants to be totally independent. Really? Have you ever heard somebody say, leave me alone? No, I can see it. Okay. Now I'm kind of leaning into that. I see that now. You know, there is this propensity for autonomy. And I can understand that. Coming back to the soul though, the soul wants closeness. It wants connection. Is that right? Yes. The soul wants to stop being me, but my human nature is only me. Okay. So for example, people get married and then they complain that they're being stifled, that they need more elbow room, wiggle room. They don't have enough of me. Hmm. The purpose for marriage is to get past the me and become a we or us. You said something in a video I watched that I really appreciate. And since again, my demographic is that over 40 crowd, that divorce crowd that where we experience a lot of relationships, but very few actually enter into marriage. You said something that really, not just triggered me, but excited me with the idea of, you have to love the idea of marriage. Like you have to want it, not passively say, oh, if I meet the right person, I get married or if the right person, but there's this true desire. Can you explain expand upon that? Because that totally hit me right in the heart. And it's desperately lacking. People don't respect marriage. They don't believe in marriage. It's like kind of an addendum to a love affair. Okay. If you love each other, you're supposed to get married, but it's not marriage that's interesting. It's only the person or it's only the love that I'm getting from the person. So here's a very necessary important condition for marriage. Okay. You marry someone, not something. Okay. If you objectify the person, it's pornography. That's true. So are you marrying the person that you love or are you marrying the love that comes with that person? Too often today, we marry the love and then we're annoyed that this love comes with a person. True. I love you and therefore I have to put up with all of you. I just want the love. So we get married and we're blissfully happy and it's incredible and we make a big party and we invite all our friends. And two weeks later, we discover that the person you love has an opinion. I didn't marry you for your opinion, please. Keep your opinion to yourself. Just hand over the love because that's what I married you for which means I didn't marry someone, I married something. Oh, I got you. Well, what's interesting I've noticed in my practice is that a significant percentage of people are not marrying in midlife. They're experiencing, we hear terms like situationships or casual relationships, friends with benefits, those sorts of things. I'm noticing that that's become the most common relationship is a casual relationship. I believe that is dooming relationships. Casualness is dooming relationships. Do we have thoughts on that? I think you're right. You're calling it casual, they're calling it meaningful. Well, one person's calling it meaningful maybe and not the other. They're calling it, they finally found a meaningful relationship and it's not marriage. You're saying, well, if it's not marriage, then it's casual. Well, because in many cases and not always, it lacks a significant commitment. It lacks an all in. There's this, I feel like there's something about the all in, rich or poor, sickness, all the way the vows, at least the way I heard it growing up.  And relationships that are casual are not all in. In many cases, not always. Yeah, so you have to wonder, what does it mean for better or for worse? Not for worse, I'm not staying married to you for worse. Yeah. So as soon as we fall out of love, it's over. Yeah. So I don't understand what people mean when they say we're making a commitment. You're in love with each other. Yes. But you're gonna get married to make a commitment. What are you committing to? To stay together without the love? No way. Okay. So what are you committed to? We're gonna stay together as long as we're in love. Okay. So what's the commitment? Well, I, so you said something, well, I wanna piggyback on that for a moment because I remember watching a video, matter of fact, today, you said, you know, media misleads, that is misleading regarding love. I believe you said love means a desire for closeness. And that really struck me. It's a, is it a call for closeness or is there something deeper to that? Oh, it's the pleasure of closeness. Okay. So you meet someone and there's something about them that appeals to you. Well, you want more. So now you're in love. You want more of that person. You want more of that pleasure, which is not sensible. Pardon me? That's sensible. It's real. Yeah, yeah. This is something you like, you want more. Well, I've observed coming back to what we talked about wholeness. Given that there's a significant percentage of people that have wounds and traumas and disappointments in their life and frustrations, that they want that closeness.  They want some connection. They want sex. They want some because they're not able to show up whole. They only want some of the good things and not willing to commit to all of that. Do you have any thoughts on that? Yeah, the real, real marriage or real intimacy means not only I can tolerate the parts of you that are different from me. Okay. Not only can I tolerate the opinions you have that I cannot agree with or the needs that you have that I never even heard of. Okay. Not only can I tolerate it, that's what I love. Hmm. Because the reason for getting married is to bring someone other than me into my life. So I don't want to marry my clone. Okay. I want to marry someone who is not me, which means. So is it that you admire parts of the other person that may not be a strength within you, like someone has a certain quality that you admire that may not be a good, may not be a quality that you fully have adopted if you will, is that part of it that you see the things in them that you like that might be deficient within yourself? Oh, the things that I admire in the other person, that's easy. Okay. I admire it, of course, I want it in my life. Yeah. But I want the person I marry, even the parts I don't admire, I don't understand and I don't share. Okay. Because that's what makes her not me. Hmm. I see. I often think of, I don't know if you've ever seen the movie when Harry met Sally, but there's a woman who's a little bit neurotic and at the end of the movie, Harry says, I love the things about you that are neurotic. In other words, he fell in love with the things he didn't like as well as the things he did like. Which means he loves the person. So I want your take on something about sex today when it comes to the dating process, particularly because in the past, at least it was always reserved for marriage. And today it's almost in our environment, if you haven't had sex by the third date, you're not going to get a fourth date. Do you have any thoughts on how sex fits into this whole equation? Yeah, I remember this comedian saying, no decent woman would have sex on the first date. Okay. I hardly know you. On the second date? No, I hardly know you. On the third date? Oh, now I know you. What do you know? He says, all you know is that he can show up where you agreed to show up. Exactly. So yeah, it's funny. Yeah. We used to reserve sex for marriage. But another way of saying it is we used to reserve sex for intimacy. But back in the 60s, the wise social engineers decided that why does it have to be so serious? Why not just have free love, which meant recreational sex? Yes. Don't make it so heavy. Don't make it so serious. It doesn't have to be a commitment and it doesn't have to be an emotional entanglement. In other words, it doesn't have to be intimate.  Yeah. And it grows more and more distasteful the more you do it. So you say, today's relationships are doomed. Yeah, they're also sexless. Mmm. The statistic today is that even couples living together are not intimate. They just don't. If they have sex once a month, it's enough. I've been told that's called a sexless marriage even if it's once a month. Yeah. I don't know if that's true. That has become the norm. And the excuses, you know, we both work, we're tired, we don't have time, we don't have energy. No, I think it's just the failure of sex. Sex is not that appealing without the intimacy. Well, I've also, you know, in my work, I talk about differentiate between physical intimacy and emotional intimacy. And particularly, I think when you take the emotion out of the equation, either you can live without it or not. But if, until the emotion is part of the equation, you know, sex, like you said a moment ago is just an act, maybe for pleasure. Why do couples have such a hard time building emotional intimacy in relationships? Do you have any thoughts on that? Yeah, that takes us back to what we started with. Yeah. Having an emotional intimacy means getting past the me, the me monster. Okay. I gotta do it my way. I gotta be me. You don't understand me. I gotta validate myself. I gotta take myself very seriously. I put myself first. All this pop psychology stuff. Okay. It's telling you that you should never compromise on your me, on your capital I. All that means is that you're going to live alone for the rest of your life. Cause if you can get past the me, you're alone. You're just me. And that's what, terrible. Well, to some degree, and I speak only here in the United States, we're rather a self centric population. It's a very me population to some degree. And I think even in the dating process, it's not what I can give, it's what I can get.  And it seems to me in the dating process today in particular, it's more about what can I get from the other person? A real relationship involves a giver and a receiver. Yes. Which is more selfless? Which is more ego less? The desire to give or the ability to receive? I think sometimes receiving is much harder for people. I think a lot of people they desire to receive, but yet they reject receiving. They make it, you know, they're afraid to receive. I think that might be the harder thing to do. It's because we see particularly for women, I see so many women who are givers and they're people pleasers and they're always trying to convince someone and the other person is unable to receive. And women are unable to receive, which is totally unnatural. Can you expand upon that? Cause they all think they can. Or many do, I should say. Yeah, but there is a very widespread resistance to being receptive because it does intrude on your ego. Being receptive means surrendering. Oh, that's... Taboo. Oh yeah. People run the other way. So what are you surrendering really?  No, you're just surrendering your ego, which you can do without. But we're so afraid of that. Well, let me ask- We have a problem loving. We also have a problem letting yourself be loved. Yes, I would agree with that. I would very much agree with that. Well, I think surrender, I think for some, especially if they've been in a relationship where the man was the predominant leader of the relationship and he chose to end.  I can see how a person might feel that way. So this leads to a question I have for you about gender roles in relationships. Certainly throughout history, it's always been the man is the leader and the woman, for lack of better words, the follower. What are your thoughts on that for today's relationships? Well, I think it's true, but misunderstood. Okay. The woman's ability to be passive is more challenging. Scarier and demands greater strength than the desire to give, which is not so scary and not so personal, not so vulnerable. So I think the key word is the fear of vulnerability. We're terribly afraid to be vulnerable and yet we desperately want to be. Because without that, we don't get past our ego. Well, I would say this is true for men in particular too. I think men have a much harder time to be vulnerable, to be authentic, to be transparent because as a little boy, I was raised to stuff my emotions. I was told that violence equals masculinity. I was told that, you know, if I shared emotions, I'm a weak human being. And so many men stifle or are stoic in relationships. And yet I believe at the same time when you're vulnerable, that takes true courage. Yeah. So that's one of the new discoveries in psychology is that vulnerability doesn't come from weakness. It comes from strength. And the strength is I don't have to be me. I can be bigger than me. Not only that, I don't wanna be me that is so limiting, it's so confining, it's so tiny. I wanna be bigger than me because it's the only way to achieve some significance. Being me is not significant. I did it my way. But what do you think everybody else does? Everybody does it their way. You can't help but do it your way. It's not an accomplishment, that's something to be proud of. If I could do it your way, that takes a little talent. Interesting. So, well, I've noticed that as people age, they become set in their ways, you know, like of the older we are. And maybe because we've had to adapt to life, you know, whether it's been on our own or feeling like your own, that it's scary to try something new. I heard Jay Shetty share that, you know, a happy relationship is where two people can learn something new together and at the same time be of service together. Do you have any thoughts on that? Be of service to each other? Well, both service to other, but also to be of service to humanity, to give more outside of the me, if you will. Yeah, I think it follows.  And then I can include a country in my life. I can include humanity into my life. But the first step is, is there one person you can include in your life? Or is that asking too much? Yeah. So, well, it's interesting because I've been watching some shows like the Jewish matchmaker and Indian matchmaker. And I'm finding it fascinating for a variety of reasons. But what I appreciate most is the family is part of the decision-making process in this union. It's the siblings in such a part of the conversation. We integrate more than just the surface. And I really, I'm really enjoying these shows, but more importantly, the recognition that the dating process should be more than just the I or the me. It should really be more about the we beyond the person, but also what comes with the we. Do you have any thoughts on that? I agree with you 100%. People say, you're marrying the person, not the family. No, you're marrying the family. Who are you kidding? Of course, you're marrying the family. And if you don't wanna marry a family, you don't wanna marry anybody. Well, when we think of marriage though, and again, I'm probably hyper-focusing on relationships because I do believe people aren't marrying. They're entering into a union that I call casual, but they're not really going that all in peace. And this is something I really try to encourage my audience, my followers, if you will, to recognize that if you're not all in, you're only gonna have a part-time experience. You're gonna have maybe part-time intimacy. You're gonna have part-time connection. And quite frankly, there's gonna be a lack there. I think because my audience is women, they tend to want commitment. It seems like more so than men. So why do you think women want commitment more so than men, and why are men less likely to commit as they age? I think men have a much weaker ego, a much more fragile ego. Okay. The need to prove ourselves is so deep because we live with this fear of not accomplishing anything. Yeah. And at the end of life, I have nothing to show for myself. That's so scary. Yeah.  The guy says, when I was young, I was determined to be the best at everything. Okay. I got a little older and I realized that's not gonna happen. And I decided I'm gonna be the best at least one thing. Okay. I got a little older and I realized I am not gonna be the best at anything. So then I wanted to just be good at something. Okay. Now he says that I'm really older. If my wife writes on my tombstone, he was okay, I'll settle for that. That's a funny story. Well, I want to kind of come what it shows. Yeah. We're terrified of amounting to nothing. Women don't have that fear. Interesting. So the women want a meaningful relationship because they're so ready to give themselves completely to the relationship. They just can't find somebody who will match that willingness. Interesting. You know what? Now that you say this out loud, that really resonates with me. That seems to be aligned with what I experienced working with women in the dating realm. So as I come to a close, I'd like your take on something. And that is how can people meet a really good partner in their life? How can they meet that person that really is their soulmate that they could most likely go the distance? Because the dating apps, if you will, and I'll just put up my phone here, I think has bastardized the process of meeting people. Do you have any thoughts of how, right? For my audience, how can they actually meet that soulmate partner? Because that's the question they always ask. How can I meet the one? So I've been telling people who pray because they wanna get married. Okay. And I say, what exactly is your prayer? And they say, I ask God to help me meet someone. Okay. He was a ridiculous prayer. You're always meeting. You wanna meet someone? Yeah. Why can't you ask for what you really want? Okay. You really want to be married. You don't wanna meet someone. If you're looking to meet someone, you don't wanna get married. You know that famous line from the piano man? From what? The song, piano man. Oh, yes, yes, yes.  Yes. There's loneliness and there is aloneness. Okay. If you're lonely, you wanna meet someone. Yeah. But to cure the aloneness, you have to marry someone. So...  So I think it's important for people to know living together, dating is not a relationship. It's not a meaningful relationship. It's no relationship at all. It's a roommate. Don't call it a relationship. Don't treat it like a relationship because it's not. And when people say, I can't believe my boyfriend cheated on me. Okay. He's cheating with you. He's not married to you. So if he can have... Interesting perspective. Yeah. If he can have a good time with you, why can't he have it with someone else as well? So they treat dating like it's a marriage. It's a monogamy. Yes. Could you cheat on me? Because we're not married. So don't get sanctimonious about living together. Okay. But here's the problem.   So you have all the disadvantages of a marriage and none of its advantages. So... Okay, then I'm gonna... Married. If you wanna get married, it's what you gotta do. Okay. Put marriage first. You wanna be married? Then say so. Don't say I wanna meet somebody. Okay. Don't say, if and when I meet the right person, I'll get married, then you don't wanna get married. Yeah. Put marriage before the person. You wanna be married, give me a date. By when? When do you wanna be married? Well, when I meet, no, no, no, no. On the calendar, you wanna be married in four months? Six months? Within the year? If it's more than a year, you don't really wanna get married. Interesting. Pick a date. And just enough time to find a caterer and a haul. Now, do you pick the date before you meet the person or... Yes. Okay. And from the time, huh? When you meet your date, you take out your calendar, first date and say, I am scheduled to be married in June. Okay. And the women say, oh, you can't do that, they'll run away. Yes. Exactly. If they can't handle being married by June, you don't wanna spend your time with them. You don't wanna waste your time on them. You wanna be married and they don't. Then get rid of them. Yeah. I think the greatest tragedy is a couple dating for three years and then the guy decides he's not gonna marry you. I agree, I agree. That is cruel and unusual punishment.  So if you wanna be married, then plan a marriage. Don't ask to meet somebody. Ask to plan the marriage. I love, you know what? I think, and this is a great place to close because I really needed to hear this from you. I wanna share this from a personal perspective. I needed it for both personally, but more importantly, this actually amplifies what I've been talking more about. And part of this is because of your teachings. I've really adopted the invitation. If you don't love the idea of marriage, then don't go out there wasting other people's time. Absolutely true. Yeah. And Rabbi, the purpose of marriage is to never feel alone again. That is not gonna happen by living together. It's not gonna happen by having a date.  It won't happen. So marriage is still the best idea. It's a divine idea. And it's the only way we get to be bigger than ourselves. Yeah. I love this. Rabbi Freeman, from the bottom of my heart, I wanna thank you so much for allowing me to really get your perspective. And I do believe this is ancient wisdom that has a lot of value. And I'm going to promote this over and over and over again, particularly the importance of marriage. So I just wanna thank you so much. By doing this, you are part of the solution, not part of the problem. Ah, well, thank you for saying that. I appreciate it. All right, well, thank you. I'm just ending the.


Trying to keep these basic videos real short and put out a couple of weeks again longer than I mean for them to be But today we're going to learn about creating directories. So I'm going to say MK dir that means make directory so I can make a directory and I can call it My folder and That folder now exists I can move into that folder by typing my folder I use tab to autocomplete and now I can make a folder inside this folder I can go make new folder And I can move into that directory Now you might try to make a few folders deep So let's say I want to make a folder called tests with a folder inside it called one with a folder inside it called Bob So I can say make directory test one Bob So this is going to give me an error so it cannot create this file. No such file directory exists So you're going wait, what do you mean that there's no such file or directory? Of course, there's not I'm trying to create it Well by default it's thinking that you want to create a Bob folder inside an existing folder called test and one But test and one don't exist yet. So what you can do is type in make dir dash p test One Bob and the B means or the P means creates all the parent directories So now we just created three folders one inside the other so I can go it's Test one Bob so I can go inside test if I want I can go inside one if I want and I can go inside Bob if I want and again, I can move up out of these directories like so and I can move all the way down into some of them. Let's say I want to go there. I can go like so So that is creating directories and directories inside directories, you can also create a bunch of directories So let's say I wanted to create five different directories Inside this directory not one inside the other but all inside this test folder that I'm in I can say make A, B, C and D now you notice there's spaces in there So it's going to see each one of those a separate folders So I can do that I can list it out and you can see that I created those four different folders What did what if you wanted to create a folder called? A, B, C, D would spaces in there first off You shouldn't ever really put spaces in a folder or file name. It's just annoying especially from a programmer side of things But if you wanted to you could so I can say make dur A, B, C and D and you see I'm putting inside quotations Now if I list it out you can see that I've created a single folder called A, B, C, D So I can try to move into that. So again, so now if I want to move into that I need to either put quotations around it or backslash out each space That's that's why you really one of the reasons you really shouldn't be putting spaces in folder file names Auto completion kind of helps with that, but it's it's rather annoying. So now I'm inside the A, B, C, D folder Moving back out of that. I could also do C, D, A, B, C, D with quotations So it's either put it in quotations now that there's spaces in there or put a backslash before each space If you know another way of doing that be sure to comment below and let me know Thanks for watching. Please visit my website filmsbychrist.com. That's Chris the K Be sure to like subscribe share this video comment below. Let me know what you think Let me know if there's anything you want to add to this any questions you have and if you want to become a supporter Please visit patreon.com forward slash metal X 1000 if you visit my website, there should be some links there Thanks for watching as always


Being healthy isn't just about exercising and eating right. In fact, on studies done on healthy people, there's specific habits, specific practices that they tend to have in common. That's what we're going to talk about in today's episode. Seven habits of truly healthy people. I like this because everybody's like workout, diet, but there's way more to health than just those. Yeah. And these ones you'll find actually move the needle even further. Yes. And the studies are now out there to prove it, which is quite interesting. I like this conversation. It's we started it, I guess, a couple of days ago in a qual. We were kind of alluding to this, right? Like, like how much time we spend in the gym. And I made the point that like, you know, I'm in a place in my life right now where I'm trying to spend as little time in the gym as possible to give me the greatest return so that I can allocate the rest of my time and resources to probably the, all these other things that we're talking about. I don't think that I don't think I really understood that when I was younger or I was so blinded by my insecurities or chasing vanity so much that totally I didn't care where I think just where I'm out in my life now. I think I pay more attention to these habits and I consider this all part of my health. Yeah, these are the most overlooked like hands down. They're not the most promoted, you know, the vanity stuff and I mean, even strength on some level for like I'm PR-ing or, you know, there's a lot of effort in that direction. But really, nobody's talking about these behavioral changes.  But the way that marketing and media portray looking a particular way, you would think that that was all health was, right? That if I were to say to someone, you know, what would a healthy person look like and they would probably pick out somebody that would be like a fitness influencer or back when we were younger, someone you would see on the cover of a magazine.  And look, we know this all too well in our space, right? In the professional health and fitness space, there are just as many unhealthy people in our space as there are in the, you know, the other spaces. In other words, the fitness and health space, which is supposed to be the space that's all about being healthy. There's just as many unhealthy people in our spaces are outside of it. Now, they may look different because they obsess over their bodies, but there's other things that have that have massive impacts on your overall health and humans are not just our bodies, right? We have a mind. Many people argue we have a spirit. We're also have relationships with people around us and in the data. By the way, this isn't just a speculating or, you know, saying, hey, this is this is a good idea. The data on all this is extremely clear. There's that one study that I brought up many times and there's many others that we'll talk about today that come that talked about how having poor relationships was the baddest smoking 10 cigarettes a day. Yeah, you know, so regardless of how you exercise and your diet, if you have bad relationships, then you might as well be smoking 10 cigarettes a day. And that when I read that study years ago, it made me think of all the people that I worked with in gyms and even myself to an extent, especially in the early days of training, how much I sacrificed relationships with people in the pursuit of looking a particular way. And then lying to myself and saying this is healthy when, in fact, it's not. Now, the the title of this episode, I were doing the seven habits of truly healthy people. And I think the idea was to talk about things that are less obvious, right, than what we normally would communicate, right? Course, we'd include fitness, right? Macros and lifting weights does not make this list. And so it's the other things.  Do you believe, though, even though the macro portion and the lifting weights portion is not on here? And that's a big component of obviously looking good. Do you think that somebody could follow these seven, you know, traits or habits and obtain a very healthy physique or a very balanced, say, body? Or do you think that these habits lead to you wanting to do that? That's it. You think that's what? That's 100 percent. As we go through these, what you'll find is as you're listening is that if you actually paid attention to these and made them priorities or really understood that these had impacts on your health and you pursued them, that your desire to be active, your desire to nourish yourself with food, your desire to care for yourself would improve and go up, which means you're more likely to exercise. You'd be in a higher energetic state. You'd be in a better clear frame of mind. And so, you know, for you to pursue more things that you can grow from, I think that would just be a natural fit. Yeah, I'm trying to picture somebody that I know that you know, exemplifies all these habits like really well and like trying to picture, do they look really fit? Yeah, you know what I'm saying? I don't know if they'll look like a bodybuilder or like some shredding. Not initially, yeah. But they'll probably, yeah. Yeah, exactly. In fact, the bodybuilder, we could argue is extreme, right? And not, you know, super healthy. I mean, health is so many different things.  And all of those have been pretty well established to have to be quite important. But here's what's interesting. If you ignore one of them or if one of them goes south, all the others are affected. So if you're listening to this podcast, you're probably well aware of physical health. OK, and we're, you know, we're fitness experts. So that's our wheelhouse. If your physical health, I'll use as an example, is terrible because of your lifestyle. If you have really, really bad physical health, your mental health is very likely to be affected negatively. We know that for a fact. Your relational health, the health that you have with the people around you is also very likely to be negatively impacted. And then your spiritual health could also or is likely to also be negatively impacted because of your terrible physical health. And I can say this for all of the other ones. So to try to parse them out and say, this is health, this is health. It's not that's not the story. It would be like taking an ingredient out of a cake and then saying, is it still a cake? It's not. Once you take the eggs out of the milk out, it becomes it's not a cake anymore. It's something else. So all of these are important, but we but media and advertising makes us believe that looking a particular way, well, that's what health is. And then the other stuff, you know, maybe not so much. And so we don't tend to value it. We don't tend to pay attention. Today's episode is brought to you by Haya Health, multivitamins for children that are not candy. This has the nutrients your kids need, no sugar, great stuff. Go check them out. Go to HayaHealth.com. That's H-I-Y-A Health.com forward slash mine pump. And on that link, you'll get 50 percent off your first order. Also, today's program giveaway is Maps Power Lift. Enter to win by leaving a comment in the first 24 hours that we drop it. Subscribe to the channel and turn on notifications. If you win, we'll let you know in the comment section. Also, this month's sale, Maps Anabolic and Maps Anabolic Advanced, both 50 percent off. If you're interested, just click on the link at the top of the description below. All right, back to the show. So what's what's number one on your list? Number one is to disconnect from all media and to make this a somewhat regular practice. What's interesting about this, and this has just gotten worse and worse is media is the people that design apps and social media platforms and your phone.  I mean, we grew up without them.  We looked things up without a phone or we talked about things without a phone. Now it's become such in such an important part of our life for such an integral part of our life that it induces, literally induces anxiety when people think, oh, my gosh, I forgot my phone and my phone's broken or or I lost my phone. You are inundated with information and apps and entertainment that is consistently and continuously engineered to be so irresistible that it has drug like effects on your brain, your body. And it's so hard to resist that, in fact, me saying this to people right now, people hearing me say, disconnect from all media. Think to yourself, could I turn everything off TV and phone for a full day? And what would that feel like? And I think a lot of people listening would think, whoa, that'll be a challenge. I'm going to have to schedule stuff like what's that going to be like? Because it's so it's so distracting. It's uncomfortable. It's uncomfortable. Yeah, I mean, it's it's a practice like you we learn growing up when we didn't have something readily accessible to entertain you 24 seven. And it's like I would just have this conversation with my kids and just what that does is it really helps you to form ideas better.   And we just don't take the time to not be inundated with input. And it's just it, I guarantee it will unlock something for you that you wouldn't have even thought of before. I think that's probably the most important take away from disconnecting from media is, yes, I agree, it induces stress and anxiety. And it's it's created to get a reaction out of you. It's created to be addictive, which is all are all negative things. But even more so, the positive, the healthy side of it is what it unlocks as far as what you can do with that time now. That's right. So instead of being anxious and angry and frustrated because we're just just productive, productive or yeah. Right. Now now I have this this free time to go put that, whether that be with my family or friends or learning or growing or improving. Just that is so I think that's the most important piece of just disconnecting from aside from what it's doing from the toxic side. Even just sitting quietly, you know, when they do studies on modern hunter gatherers, what they find is that they do have downtime. It's not like they're hunting and gathering all day long. They do have downtime and it looks like either with each other or quiet where they're sitting and there's nothing going on and they're just observing. When's the last time you stood in a line and you just stood there without reading or being distracted? Not long ago. But it was hard. I was waiting for coffee for 20 minutes. I was dying because I left my phone in the car. Yes. Or how many conversations have not happened? How many connections have not happened because of the distractions of media? So it's more than anything, it gets in the way. And the only way to know this is to turn it off. And then the obvious, right? The obvious is, you know, it's I can find alarming news or information at any time. In fact, I don't have to look for it. If I open my phone and go to an app, it's what's going to pop up. And that's designed to elicit a response in you. And 99.99 percent of the information that's alarming you are things that you can do nothing about.  Oh, gotta go get my kid. It's about something else somewhere. I can't do anything about it. You know, that's in fact, that's one of the worst things you can do to kids. By the way, this is bad for adults, too, but especially for children is to present them with a problem that they have no control of control or understanding of. It's a it's a terribly and do anxiety inducing thing. In fact, psychologists, psychiatrists, when people are stressed out and anxious, they used to tell people now they say turn off social media, but they used to say turn off the news. It was one of the most common things that they would tell people. So this should be a practice. I'll never forget, you know, I've told this story before, but it was such a boy did it hit me, man. I was with my kid and at the time I want to say he was maybe a year and a half old and he was playing by himself quietly and I was sitting on the couch while he was playing and I decided to not look at my phone. What I had done before that was when he was playing, like, oh, this is time for me to go on my phone, social media, work, check email, whatever. But I remember at this point, I put my phone down on the side, so I'm not going to do that. And I noticed that every so often he would look up to see if I was watching him and I had not noticed that while I was on my phone. So how many times had my kid looked up and saw dad and dad's not even here? Just head down, head down on his phone while I'm over here playing. So the impact is far reaching. So this can become a practice. And so you see this with healthy people, they will have this as a structured practice, well, they'll say things like, I don't turn on my social media until this time of the day or I turn it off at this time of the day or I have one day a week where I totally unplug or when I get home, scheduled hours for it. Yes, when I get home, I put my phone over here and then I only check it twice during the day or something like that. It's also one of those things that I've never met anybody who has decided to create some sort of boundaries or breaks with it. And have not all seen positive effects from it. I've never met someone who's like, hey, I decided to not open social media till noon every day, right? Not start my day with it. And it not improve. Like it's one of those simple things that you can start to build into your life that you see immediate return, 100% not had a client or a person that I've shared this with that has then gone and done it. And then reported back like, yeah, I didn't notice any improvement. I didn't like everybody sees significant improvement in their well-being, their attitude, their health, their productivity. Like it's a total and then for parents, you know, I remember I would get parents that would come in that would talk to me about their child's you know, issues with diet or an activity. You know, hey, my kids overweight. What can I do? And the parent themselves would have poor eating habits and want to be active. And it's like the best thing you can do, the biggest impact you'll have on your kids is if you improve your fitness and your diet. So why am I saying this? I just read a study. The average teenage kid is on social media or apps four to six hours every day.  I'm far more aware of just how much my teenagers are on it. And I'm far more likely to create boundaries and then have us all turn them off and be together. So the impact is pretty far reaching. Next up, this is a big one that is starting to we're starting to see a negative slide on this. This used to be a staple in every family, which is to eat dinner with your family. Like have one meal where you all sit down together and connect. Undivided attention. Yes. Yes.  But when they're a little older and they can do their own things. If we don't have dinner together, I could very easily go. Not seeing them. Not seeing my kids or in passing. But this is like a seated every day at this time. We all sit down and we talk and we connect and we meet with each other. It's a big deal. I think you're also more likely. Again, I'm trying to think of how these things lead into just being, you know, physically healthy or two. It's like if you're sitting down and making dinner or having dinner together, you're more likely to be making better choices to versus everyone's door dashing their favorite thing or drive through or snacking on junk or eating in front of the TV and you see their habits right in front of you in terms of like what they are drawn to, like food wise, like portions, you know, all that kind of stuff. And then obviously the check-ins from their day is like it's massively important. Like you stay into their lives. If they feel like you're not in their lives, this is where the big disconnect and a lot of problems come from.   How are my older kids with my younger kids? How's my wife with the kids? How are we all together? And the insight you get on it is incredible, but it's also just daily connection because again, like if you don't do this, especially if you have kids that are a little older, you can very easily go days without all of you sitting down together. Yeah, I think of this in very similar to how any therapist will recommend this for a marriage that has not created this space for themselves. Like a lot of times what happens, you have kids and it's kind of divide and conquer and then you stop making time for your wife or your spouse. Right. And so scheduling a date night every week is like one of the best ways to keep a healthy marriage. Right. And it's just because you have that scheduled time that you're going to connect, you might get busy all week and not really get a chance to just pass each other, but at least you know that dinner night you're going to have that. I feel like this is the same thing, but for your kids to your point, like once they get to a certain age, they really are. They're like sports and they got school and they got their friends, they got their things. And so really easily they could, you know, pass you by in the night. Whereas if you know that, hey, we have a dinner time that we all sit down at the bare minimum, I'm going to get that, you know, 30 minutes to an hour with my kids where we're going to be able to connect and talk and I mean, I could speak directly to this. This is the best time that I have with my family.  And it doesn't matter if someone's in a bad mood, whatever we all sit there, we all eat and then we make jokes or we see the, you know, the baby do something, we talk whatever, then we clean up together and typically we'll play music or we'll have conversation that would never have happened had we not all sat down at a designated time to eat and you learn things and you hear things and you talk about things and it's just, it's like, Hey, this is what we do and it's, it's amazing. And the data on this is pretty dismal, more and more family. I don't remember what the number is, but it's a pretty significant percentage of people don't have a single meal together as a family, which is, uh, yeah, really interesting, right? All right. Next up, this one is, I think a big deal. This has always been something that's been important. I think you got stigmatized for a while once it became a profession, but I do think that this, you don't necessarily need to do this in any specific way, but I think seeking a coach or therapy or a mentor, I think is incredibly important because, uh, and I can't tell you how many times I've experienced this. I know you guys, I'm sure have the same. When you have someone from the outside looking in, there are things you just simply don't know that you don't know. And that's when this becomes incredibly unaware of it. There are things I know that I don't know. And there's some value there too, but there are things where I'm like, Oh, I didn't even know that I didn't know that.  That's the goal here. So I'm hiring or working with this individual to try to grow, to try to become a better person. And the simple fact that you're, you're dedicated time to do that means you're better off than 90% of the people out there that don't. It does feel like it's less stigmatized, though. Don't you think? Yeah. I mean, I feel like that is. And I think in a, and I do think the biggest takeaway from this is, again, this is forced growth. You know, uh, if you're really good about doing this on your own, that's great, but having a coach, having a therapist, having a mentor, uh, you know, make insures that to happen, right?  And so I think that's the most important piece of that is less about, Oh, I had to go see this formal doctor and I'm in therapy or I had it. It's like, well, what it is one way to do it. Yeah, exactly. That's a way to do it. Non-biased, uh, observation. Yeah. What it, what it really is, is I'm, I'm committed to growing. That's what it is. It's like, I'm, I'm pursuing growth.  And I'm, I'm here to get better. And I think that is so important to being healthy. Like we have to constantly be evolving and getting better and improving ourselves. This is a organized way.  But no, that's obviously a reason why you would work with someone, but it's also like this, like, do you think you're, you're perfect self? Have you reached the zenith thing of what you think you could accomplish? If the answer is no, which it should be, because I don't think that's ever going to stop, then this is a hack is all it is. It's a hack. Even talking things out with a person who's listening oftentimes as you process things by simply talking them out, you tend to hear your own words come out of your mouth. Like, like there are ways that I grew up and things that I did as a kid that I didn't even think were that are everybody's flawed, 100%. So this makes a huge, huge difference in growth. And what's funny about this is when you look at the percentage of people that would be in a category considered highly successful, monetarily, family, you know, no jail record, that whole deal, well, you'll notice a good percentage of them work with coaches. Yeah, a good percentage of work with people that help them, you know, do the kind of stuff. The next one is, you know, it's funny that we have to say this, but it's to spend a lot of time outside and outdoors. What's funny to me as a father is watching my kids because you're, you know, you notice things in your kids and then you can say, oh, that's me too, that's got to be me too, right? Well, my kids are outside most of the day. They're calmer. Yeah, they're more present. They're more talkative. They're more intuitive. They go to bed and go to sleep really nice. It's just they're, they're better humans. And I don't mean that before they were bad humans, but it's like, it's almost like this. This is the funny thing. It's almost like we were meant to be outside. It's almost like we were meant to be outside. Yeah, I do. It's almost like we're supposed to be outside. I don't know, it's strange. Well, it's interesting to me because people, you know, we take this for granted.  First thing the vet would ask you is how often do you take your dog out for a walk? Oh, never. Dogs inside all day long. Oh, well, that's the problem. Yeah. Somehow humans. We don't. Yeah, yeah. My kids doing this or I'm feeling like this or I'm feeling anxious or I'm feeling depressed or I'm like, whatever. Nobody's like, hey, are you going short with you? Yeah. Are you going outside? Like what's going on? I mean, this, this one's been on my mind quite a bit. I mean, we just, before we sat down to record this podcast, we got outside to go for a walk in the sun. What a difference. And it makes such a big difference. And I still don't think I do it enough. We just got back from being down in Mexico. And it's like, man, it's just not that often where I have a day where pretty much from sun up to sun down, I'm outside in sun and water. And there's just something about the way I sleep, the mood that I'm in, like from that. It's like, man, I have to, this is, so this is heavy on me right now. Like even though I feel, I feel like I make a practice to get out more. I don't think I do it nearly enough of what I should do for optimal health. I think this is an area where, especially people that live in the city, like we do, like if you live in a city, this is probably an area where you could significantly improve your health by making this a daily practice. Well, for, okay, again, look at it from an evolutionary standpoint, for most of human history, what did it mean if you were inside the cave 90% of the time? Yeah. Why were you in the cave 90% of the time?   You talked about, we just went outside. We record this podcast in an enclosed studio for production purposes. And I can feel, I feel physically the difference when we're in here without going outside. And we did, what do we do, a 10 minute walk? What a massive difference. And that's not even, the funny thing is a 10 minute walk is way less. Yeah, that's what I mean. Like I could feel, just last week, like I said, we were just in Mexico and like, I haven't got that kind of like outdoor, you know, sun exposure and water and stuff like that. And then just the feeling is like, it compares nothing to how I felt the whole, the whole month prior. It's like, man, it's so important to do that. Totally. More. Next up, volunteer your time. You know, they show the, the, the payback that this gives people in terms of perspective, meaning. I remember when my kid had to volunteer, he was, had to, he was packing food and giving it to the homeless. And I remember his attitude was very different when he came home that day because it gave him a completely different perspective. And he felt, you could tell he felt good about the fact that he did something for other people. Brings a lot of gratitude, you know, for your own situation and it gets you outside of yourself because a lot of times we just get concerned every day with like everything involving just you and how I got to do this and this is this instead of now really focusing on somebody else, it's, it's liberating in a sense. Yeah.   This was so important to my journey because I had a lot of resentment and animosity towards my parents because of the how I grew up and then you get to a point where you realize like oh my god as bad as I thought it was it's been there's so many other people that have had it so much worse than me to the point where that's probably why I didn't communicate it a lot as I started to get older because I started to recognize that and go like oh my god like I almost feel ashamed to talk about my childhood like it was rough like how dare how dare I say that when there's people that have had it way worse and I think having that perspective really helps you to reframing that experience and that has now allowed me to reframe it have more of a positive attitude like okay now looking at okay what did I get from all those things and now being grateful for that I don't know if I've been able to reframe that had I not seen a greater perspective I think volunteering your time is a way to like hijack or get to there faster right like you get if you force yourself I think I think about my son raising him like when he gets to the age like doing some sort of a mission or volunteering his time I think is a quick way versus waiting until he experiences in himself somewhere naturally life it's like volunteering his time it's going to force him in those situations where he will have to see that it's also one of the one of the ways in life that you can experience the feeling of joy and joy was explained to me not that long ago as a feeling that you can have while also simultaneously feeling tired exhausted hurt sick joy is this this feeling that you have it's like you're out there you're building houses for people that need help you're exhausted you're tired you're dead but you feel joyful because you're doing it for other people I've been in situations where I've helped you know family friends who were sick and it was after work and I'm tired and I'm doing these things but the feeling I had inside would be described as joy and that's one of the best feelings you could ever experience not to mention it's a good thing for other people right it's a good thing for vanity to do this kind of thing next up to live well below your means it's we are needs quote unquote needs or wants boy they keep growing every single year right it's like no I have to have internet no I have to have all these streaming services no I have to have all these different things and it's really interesting when you when you really start to try to live well below your means how liberating it is because I think the other way is to constantly chase something that you're not going to get from getting more things and the only way to test that is to live well below your means and this is a skill this is why you see people oftentimes with money problems that could be solved by simply starting here and then you know having very counter cultural yeah it's very much not promoted enough because we're we're built off of commodities and buying things and you know being the next shiny thing like we're all sort of drawn to that but in terms of healthy practices and making sure that you know your basic needs are net do I say that basic means are basic needs are met I mean that's really the the main consideration everything else from there is like you know like obviously you can justify things but to have like healthy parameters in place so you're you're you're definitely making enough to to keep things sustainable is where you need to stay well I was so blown away the first time that I read the millionaire next door and the one of the biggest takeaways that I got from that book was when they this at the time it was like one of the largest studies on all the the millionaires in the United States and the most common thing was not the amount of money they made so you have so even remember you're showing us yeah like you're talking about like the top five professions teacher was in there which I mean teachers are notoriously underpaid most of them if not all of them damn near all of them unless you're some professor at like Ivy League school are making less than six figures yet these make up a great the greatest percentage of millionaires or one of the greatest percentage of millionaires in our country so what does that tell you about that so even these people that are you know chasing all these things that they want and they want all these materialistic things they would actually find a way to get more of that if they learn this this practice like this to be fiscally responsible over the top cars that were owned by some of the wealth billionaires yeah in this book they also did the top 10 cars driven and Toyota Honda yeah so it was like Toyota Honda it was I mean none of the ones you I think Lexus was probably the one nice car that you saw on there but you didn't see you know Rolls Royce and Ferraris and maybe you know Lamborghinis and things like that was any of that I remember I remember seeing this firsthand when I owned my wellness studio and at towards the end of my career I got to the point where I had very high high income high earning or net worth clients my name had gotten out there so people were like seeking me out and I'm training these people and I'll never forget like there was a significant percentage of them where you couldn't tell you couldn't tell they would drive up in 150,000 mile you know Toyota full runner and they'd wear like regular work and they were just like what and it was like now the things that they did do were things that they really valued but they didn't spend money on things that they clearly found were not important well that's the other thing that you you find out and this is why I think this is such an important about living below your means is and I talked about this a while back you were asking me like how I make decisions on purchasing something and one of the filters or you know that I use is that is this something that I feel like I need to go tell somebody else about or share or post or do something about and if so then I don't think I'm really doing it for myself I'm doing it to impress others and so if I if that's the reason which is I think why we do a lot of these things a lot of the things that we buy we buy to send a signal to others totally it's not really about fulfillment so I think there's nothing wrong with having cool cars and nice things I'm not at all against that stuff I love that stuff but you have to ask yourself do you love it because you get fulfillment and joy from it or do you love it because it's a signal to everybody else and the truth is unfortunately most of us are signaling to other people of like how much we've made or are you looking for a feeling that you'll never get from something that you buy and on top of that when you're constantly chasing that and you're playing that game it's you're constantly stressed you're always behind you're always in debt you're always trying to play catch up versus learning to live well below your means and then you have this you learn to build passive income and then you have this place where it's like okay now I have disposable income now I can go make those decisions now do I still want those things more often than not you don't but even if you do it's not a big deal anymore because you've been disciplined for so long that you've been able to set yourself up to where you don't you're not stressing about when you look at most people they say the I forget what the percentage is over 75% I believe is the number that don't even have a thousand dollars in their savings account more than half the our country don't even have a thousand but yet more than half the country is driving all kinds of nice cars you know the average person has a seven hundred dollar car payment but yeah it doesn't have a thousand dollars in the bank basic responsibility yeah so and and the amount of stress that that causes and and who you're really doing it for so having fiscal responsibility living well below your means I think it's such an important part to the the total health sphere totally and then lastly now this is a big one because the data and history shows that this is massively impactful but let's just talk about the data for a second so this last one is to follow a spiritual practice meaning actually practice the spiritual practice there's a difference between we look at the data on people who claim to you know follow this practice or be this religion and people who actually on a weekly basis attend a service or read their scripture or actually practice what you find with people who are actively spiritual is that they're significantly healthier they report to be significantly happier they're less depressed less anxious they stay married longer they're less likely to go to jail and then my favorite ones the more likely to volunteer their time give to charity and help others and that's that is strongly connected this again this is very checks off all our previous boxes now here's the other part of it and this was part of my journey with this and i'm not going to get into my own personals but this this this part was my journey this is something that humans have found incredibly valuable for thousands and thousands and thousands of years it's very arrogant for people now to be like well they were dumb all those billions of people over the last two thousand three thousand years whatever we're these you know our records show that spiritual practices have been around for a long time they're all dumb because now we know things and we don't need that but uh no this this what spiritual practices provide you with is a strong sense of purpose and meaning outside of the material built community and yes here's the deal if you want to meet other growth minded people a great way to do that is to follow a spiritual practice when people are also dedicated to the spiritual practice these are all people who tend to be growth minded and who look at things uh a little bit differently would you say too that it it builds um a level of selflessness too i feel like there's something greater than yourself like it and i think that's such an important like you think about all the other things at the top of the hierarchy yeah i think when um when you have yourself at the top of the hierarchy and it's all about me me me me me i think uh even if somehow you you gain all the power or all the money or all the fame and stuff like that you eventually find out that it's not what it's it's not fulfilling it's not worth it and so people that figure that out sooner and put something above themselves something chasing something that they can they'll never reach or they'll never get you'll forever builds that that purpose and selflessness well the myth is the the the lie i would say or the the belief that people have that's not true is that if you don't do that right if you don't follow a spiritual practice then that means i don't follow a spiritual practice oh no you do you do you're just doing it without uh being conscious you are worshiping the thing that you value most in the world it's usually money it's usually either power or fame honor maybe it's pleasure but whatever is your top value you end up is becomes your spiritual practice and your purchases your behaviors the relationships all point to that thing so one way or another you are going to follow a spiritual practice but what we're saying here is like intentionally do it intentionally find your spiritual practice your religion meet with people and follow it and again the data shows very clearly it has a tremendously profound impact positive impact on your on your health and i'll make the argument now all the things that we just said here if somebody were to disconnect from media in a structured way if they were to structure any dinner with their family on a regular basis if they seeked out coaching and therapy they spent a lot of time outdoors if they volunteered their time on a regular basis if they try to live below their means or have the attitude around that and they follow the spiritual practice i'll make the argument that they're extremely likely to also probably exercise and they probably also eat in a way that nourishes their body harbors agree look if you love mind pump you have to check out our free fitness guides in fact we have a fat loss guide on there it's totally free it's at mindpumpfree.com you can also find all of us on social media justin is on instagram at mind pump justin i'm on instagram at mind pump to stefano and adam is on instagram at mind pump adam


So we've learned that we can change the wavelength of our sound by Controlling the length of our strings. The reason we can do that so well is that we are forcing it to be at a node Wherever we sort of fix the string and when we have a woodwind instrument That's actually a lot harder because if I am going to be blowing to this supposing this is a Bad didgeridoo if I'm gonna blow into this then is this point here gonna be a node or an anti node How's that gonna work? And the actual answer is that that's quite a complicated issue and it depends on technique and skill So you should get someone to show that to you The speed of sound can't really be changed. So when we had a contrast ring We could use strings of different tension and different density and so forth and that would give us different speeds We don't really have that control over air the speed of sound in the air does depend on things like pressure and so forth But it's hard to change that dynamically when you're playing an instrument So really all you can do is try and adjust exactly where you're getting nodes and anti nodes by careful mouth placement and so forth But you can hear very clearly the difference between having open ends and closed ends. Supposing I close that end So I'm certainly not going to have an anti node the point where my hand is and if I make a sound You get a note and if I take that hand away and make the same sound Firstly, it's louder because I'm getting more airflow. Yes But you'll note that the frequency is different. It sounds different and in fact They're an octave apart Bum bum that octave means that we're having a doubling of the frequency Which means the two situations there where I have the hand over one end or not Somehow I'm getting twice the wavelength in one case So what's a good model for what the waves are doing inside that pipe?


It's been a while since I gave an update on my reference setups. Many changes took place including some reshuffling and price corrections. Economics and Wars still are making things more expensive, so prices had to be corrected. But in all three setups there have been changes. The main structure of the three setups still remain but where I started with one source per setup there now can be several. And some sources are used in two setups. I'll explain further on. By reference setups, I've explained this in earlier videos on my reference setups. If you heard this before, you can easily skip to the next chapter in the timeline. If not, let me explain. A reviewer needs a fixed setup of equipment to anchor his findings. At least I do. It is therefore important to limit changes in these setups to the bare minimum for it can make comparisons to earlier reviews difficult. At the same time, you need references that are relevant and especially digital audio technology still is improving rapidly. To be clear, the gear I use certainly is amongst the best in its price category, but it is picked also to be practical for me to work with. To make comparisons easier. Since I work from home, space is a premium. Money too, by the way. I can't afford to have a series of setups stepping up in, say, ten steps from low end to high end. So I have to go about this cleverly. This is done by using equipment in more than one setup, like the subwoofer in setup 3. That is more expensive than would be reasonable. But it does give a good impression of what adding a cheaper sub would do to this setup. The same goes for the network player I now use in both setup 2a and setup 1b. Still, I am very careful when replacing equipment, not to lose my reference. Time to go to the setup description, starting at a low end. In setup 3, the amplification is done by the still grade NAD C316BE. This class AB amp is at the most powerful, but combined with the right loudspeakers, it surely sounds great. The now as an MK2 edition out, I still use what now could be called the MK1. The loudspeakers are the Dali Oberon ones that are very friendly loudspeakers, placed on 80's target loudspeaker stands with stack audio over 50 isolators. The RLT5 subwoofer can add deep lows to them if the budget is available. It is connected to the loudspeaker terminals of the NAD using the rail supplied cable. The Ergon audio solo streamer is now replaced by the Wim Pro Plus streamer with iFi Power2 power supply. Including the power supply it costs €105 more, but is more versatile, supports more streaming services and sounds somewhat better. I use it mainly as Roon Endpoint, but it can be used with its own app instead. In the description you find links to reviews of the products I mentioned here. Connection to the network is made over Wi-Fi to a nearby TP-Link deco M4 access point that is part of the mesh network. Alternatively I could use a CAT6 patch cable to the necklace switch in the machine room on the third floor, over which later on more. Setup 3 is located in the studio on the third floor and the equipment is housed in a target rack from the 80's. The setup total price is €2,024 without the subwoofer or €2,923 including the sub. The rail is in a higher class but that makes it possible to use it with my setup 2 as well. A more matching Downey sub C8 costs €400 less and that would add up to €2,523. All prices are including 21% VAT, European sales tax. In for instance the US, prices are excluding sales tax, which would mean €2,085, approximately €2,285. Keep that in mind when comparing prices. Don't be mistaken, this is a very musical setup that has impressed many people it was demonstrated to. Setup 2 is split up in 2A, 2B and 2C. They use the same amplifier, loudspeakers, subwoofer, network switch and cabling. Only the digital front end differs. The Marantz PMKI Perl light that has served me for 15 years is now replaced by the Arkham Radia A25. I refueled it last February and was rather impressed by this powerful yet refined sounding Class G amp. It drives the acoustic energy Radiance 1 loudspeakers connected over Kimber 4PI loudspeaker cable. They are supported by the RELT-5 subwoofer that is connected to the loudspeaker terminals on the Arkham using the cable that came with the sub. The three versions of Setup 2 are placed in the studio at the third floor and the loudspeaker switch places with those in Setup 3 using the same 80s target loudspeaker stands on Stack Audio Ava 50 isolators. The network switch is the Opton Audio Ether Region with Opton Audio UltraCaps 1.2 power supply. The equipment is also housed in the 80s target rack. This set was named 2B up till now but I wanted a wider range of references in this class so it became 2C. The digital front end here is the Blue Sun Note 2i powered by the PD Creative Power supply. The Note already had two later iterations but the sound differences are rather small so I kept the 2i. Without the subwoofer but including the switch, rack, stands and isolators it will set you back slightly over 5000 euros including the sub is 5900 euros including VAT. This is a very good sounding Setup and the use of monitor loudspeakers combined with a sub makes it easier to place. If you use my loudspeaker placement system, first place the subwoofer using the subwoofer placement video and then place the main speakers following the advice for mid-range placement. In this Setup the Avisolo DMP A6 Master Edition with Beatnik LPS-A6 linear power supply is a source. It is connected to the amp of a Siltak London RCA cables and to the switch of a CAT6 patch cable. Compared to Setup 2C there is more resolution, the stereo image is a step deeper and wider, focusing is better and microdynamics are clearly better. Like 2C the stereo pair plus subwoofer makes placement easier especially if you use the high level input on this sub to connect to the loudspeaker terminals of the amp. Excluding the sub but including the switch, stands, cabling and isolators it adds up to 7251 euros including the sub is 8150 euros including VAT. Here the digital source is the Magna Mano Ultra MK3 Farad streamer running Rupee XL while the conversion is done by the Holo Audio Science 2 DAC aboard last month. This combo forms a very good source that borders on the quality of the Setup 2 bass. It has very good time resolution, stereo image, cymbal control and spectral balance. Lowes show fine texture and overall the sound is very relaxed. Without the subwoofer, which you don't want, the price is 8,820 euros with the sub it's almost 10,000 euros including VAT. Setup 1A and 1B also share the amp and loudspeakers. They are placed in the living room on the grand floor. The Airax 520 amplifier drives the PMC FAC12 signature loudspeakers on stack audio over 70 isolators and connected over audio Quest Robinhood Zero loudspeaker cable. The network connection comes from a ZIXL GS 1900-10 HP switch. The equipment is placed in a creative trend 3-3 rack. In 1B the same digital front end is used as in 2A. The Holo Audio Science 2 DAC connected to the amp over Grim Audio SQM cable and the Magna Mano Ultra MK3 Farad streamer running Rupee XL. It is connected to the Holo Audio using I2S over a 25 centimeter 10 inch 4K HDMI cable and to the ZIXL switch over the network Agusix Eno system. This setup is, as a setup, out of balance since the amp and the speakers are clearly of higher quality but it is impossible to have a reference setup in about any class and this setup has proven to let me judge any digital source between the Holo Audio Magna combination and the Grim Audio Mu2 I use in setup 1A. Setup 1B adds up to €53.332 but this front end would combine great with a €5000 amp and a set of speakers of around the same price. That would add up to a setup price of a bit over €20.000. In 1A the digital source is the astonishing Grim Audio Mu2 Roon Server amp player. It replaces the already extremely fine sounding Grim Audio Mu1 cordave combination. As I explained in my video why I am selling the Grim Audio Mu1, the Mu1 is an exceptionally good digital out only player, scaler and Roon server that makes any DAC sound better than with any other digital source, for as far as I have seen up till now. But therefore it doesn't bring you as viewer a realistic judgment of a DAC. See the link for more info. The Grim Audio Mu2, like the Mu1, has a Roon server and a scaler but instead of digital output it has an FPGA DAC integrated and thus analogue outputs. It also has a very high quality analogue preamp integrated. And it is now part of my setup 1. Obviously I can't use it to review other DACs. If my fonts would have been unlimited, I would have kept URLIC-HG2 to function here. But I digress. The Network Acoustic Mu1 Pro network filter only has limited effect on the sound quality of the Grim players, since they have extremely good de-jittering circuits. But since it is beneficiary on other streamers, I keep it in the setup 1A for fair comparison. This setup has an extremely high resolution sound, not digital at all or as I described earlier, it sounds like a studio tape recorder at 38 cm per second, 15 IPS for mids and highs. And like a high quality digital recorder for the lows. It's the best of both worlds. And therefore is my absolute reference. I know now that the original release of famous blue raincoat can sound clean without sharp s-sounds, of which several people supposedly in the know say it's in the recording. Not so. The same goes for URIC by the Knits. Maddox and Englishman by Joe Cocker and Adam Hartmutter by Pink Floyd suddenly sound musical and more open. For now every top and digital player will be judged against this formidable setup. I don't use the Roon server in the Grim. It is Intel i3 based, which is sufficient for somewhat around 4,000 to 5,000 albums while I have 2.5 times that amount. That calls for an i7 based server so I use an i7 based Intel Nock as Roon server. It is the power of Roon that the Grim players can facilitate at Roon. It might all be a bit much, so let's make an overview. Setup 3 uses the Veeam Pro Plus streamer with i5 power 2 power supply, the NADC 316 BE amplifier and the Dali Obron 1 loudspeakers. Optionally the Realty 5 subwoofer can be used. Setup 2C uses the BlueSound Node 2i streamer with PD Creative power supply, the Arkam Radia A25 amplifier, the Acoustic Energy Radiance 1 loudspeakers and the Realty 5 subwoofer. Setup 2B uses the Aversolo DMP-A6 with B-Technique LPS-A6 linear power supply in combination with the same Arkam amp, Acoustic Energy loudspeakers and rail sub. In setup 2A the frontend is the combination of the Magnum Mano Ultra MK3 Farad streamer with the Holo Audio Sion 2D DAC. Amp, speakers and sub again are the same. Setup 1B uses the same digital frontend as 2A, the Magnum Mano Ultra MK3 Farad streamer and the Holo Audio Sion 2 DAC. The amp is the Air Acoustics AX520 and the speakers are the PMC V12 signature. Finally, Setup 1A now has the Grim Audio Mewtwo Player Roon Server Scaler and DAC, which is combined with the Air Amp and PMC loudspeakers. Since our work on both the ground floor and the third floor, there is a comprehensive network setup. On the third floor in the machine room we find the NetGib ProSafe GS418 TPP switch that, using fiber optics, is connected to the Optone Ether-region switch with the Ultra Caps Ultimate 1.2 power supply in the studio and provides the network to setup 2 and 3. It is also connected to the Zigsol GS1900-10 HP switch downstairs over fiber optic connection. From the Zigsol there is a CAT6 to the ZIGO second come internet modem and router that is also situated downstairs. It is further connected to a TP-Link deco M4 Wi-Fi mesh network with one access point on each floor. In the machine room the Intel Noc 10i7 FNH runs Roon Rock on a 128GB M.2 SSD and has the music stored on an internal Samsung 870 EVO 8TB SSD drive. By the way, the only reason to use an internal SSD for the music storage instead of an external USB drive, as I did previously, is that it makes it easier to move the Roon server around. The Noc is connected directly to the NetGib switch over CAT6 patch cable. Next to the Noc is the Synology DS1819 NAS with DX517 extender. It mainly functions as a backup and storage for my work, but is also used for testing DLAS streamers. On the other side of the spectrum I use a 100 euro single drive NAS, the Synology DS119J. It holds a 3TB drive filled with music, which will be more than the average user will have and thus is more realistic for domestic use. But I can use the big NAS as well. The advantage of using a simple NAS is that it consumes less power than a computer and can do all kinds of things, like backups and make files available to, for instance, your smartphone on the road. But the cheap NAS is also slower, of course. The Roon Rock server shares its volume holding the music as Samba share so that alternatively can be used for self-indexing streamers like those by Sonos, Blue Sound and Orelik. It often helps to look at somewhat complex matters with graphics. That was the motivation for making and maintaining this series of videos. The complexity, at the same time, is diversitility, although I do understand it can be hard to imagine what setup variant leads to what sound quality. Talking about quality, although it looks very convenient for you to publish absolute quality ratings, things in audio aren't that simple. If you want to know a bit more about this, you could watch my video Q&A which device is better. Please let me know when things are not clear. But also realize that it's not always a matter of better or worse. There has to be a match with your requirements, wishes and other equipment. Please see the description below this video on YouTube for links to the videos and review views on equipment mentioned here. Which brings me to the end of this video. As usual, there will be a new video next Friday at 5 pm Central European time. If you don't want to miss that, subscribe to my 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 description below this video on YouTube. I'm Hans Beekhuyzen, thank you for watching and see you in the next show or on theHBproject.com. And whatever you do, enjoy the music.