Julian: Hey everyone. Thank you so much for joining the Behind Company Lines podcast. Today we have Ethan Castro, CTO of EDGE Sound Research, a Future driven by Deep Tech Research, introducing the ResonX, the world's first embodied audio system that reliably combines audible, tactical, or two tactile and haptic audio all in one powerful system.

Ethan, thank you so much for joining the episode. I'm so excited to chat with you and get to know your background, your experience, and expertise and sound. And I think a lot of us kind take that for granted within audio systems and how, you know, the difference of performance really, I think impacts the quality of whether it's a service or entertainment.

So many different things that I think we, we take for granted with sound. And so I'm excited to learn about yourself and and get to know you. But before we get into all that with EDGE Sound research, what were you doing before you started the company?  

Ethan: That's a good question. Yeah. You know, sound is really taken for granted surprisingly even though it's one of those things where it's like, if it's off, you know, it's off.

But yet everyone like doesn't care about it until it's wrong. You know? It's one of those things. But yeah, I mean, but beforehand like right now I'm in my, my new studio. We just moved, so we're in the middle with a whole bunch of boxes. We have a whole gold set up that we're getting set up on here to do research.

But we, I really came from the music industry. My masters is in music industry administration. My, my undergrad, I was. I was coming out to LA all the time to do different various projects here and there. I worked with Disney on a couple of the different life to orchestra projects, orchestra, life to screen.

So I've done a little bit of everything. I used to work in like a video lab and so because I had video and the sound engineering background did a lot of weird AV stuff and then I was real technical, so I was really in a bunch of studios and a bunch of different capacities. Most normally just in the nerd capacity was definitely like my vibe right there, you know?

Yeah. And it just meant that I got to do a whole bunch of different things, got to see a whole bunch of different studios and really understand kind of like the issues and and you know, things that were plaguing really high end studios and really small end studios, you know, homies and people that I knew.

Kind of around the area. And so that's really what I did before I, I came to uc, Riverside that's down here in Southern California. And I started doing my PhD. And my PhD was in music. But then I had this wealth of information of what I gathered from the music industry, or just the sound industry and the entertainment industry.

And so I started bringing some of that in saying, Hey, one of the biggest things that's a problem is that, you know, we're spending so much money on these big speakers. . And I kind of knew from my background as a heart of hearing musician, I was born hard of hearing and I'm still super into music.

And the only way I was able to keep up with people in the audio industry was by touching speakers in order to get information directly to my fingertips, cuz every studio is different. Studio A is different. Yeah. Within the same studio. Each room is different. The musicians have a different sensation when they go into the performance concert hall, everything was always different.

So I brought that kind of idea to the university to research. How am I able to hear you hear everything correctly when I have deficiency? And then is that something that other people can take advantage of? And so, impetus of EDGE Sound research really came from my disability and in the research of trying to figure out is there a more direct path to be able to understand sound you know, from A to Z. And so that's kind of where it started here.  

Julian: Well, in regards to, you know, you're talking about there's a lot of this new technology and a lot of these stereo systems that are upgraded and such, but I feel like that's not at the root of the issue when you hear like a conjunction of sound that isn't necessarily I.

Doesn't necessarily harmonically go together. I think about like different songs I listen to or different movies and things like that. And I think when they do it well, it resonates so intrinsically and it's almost like a visceral experience. Describe that, that function with right. Yeah. Yeah. So describe to me like what you consider someone, an expert in sound when you are, say, developing sound in, whether it's audio in music or movie or any other medium.

What are you considering and what is, what are, where are people kind of missing? When they don't do it well?  

Ethan: That's an excellent question because it like how we were saying before, you know, people don't recognize audio until it's done poorly. But then also on the flip side is that because we kind of just said, okay, audio is this and kind of done with it.

I think that leaves a lot on the table. If you think of audio as, or just if you think of sound just as audio, you leave a lot on the table. When you think about what sound is, what music is what, everything that involves this auditory experience. It's literally a composition of. Right. I define music as a series of vibrations that come together and coalesce and disperse against each other, and that hits you in a specific way that gets you that feeling of like, Hey, I like this when it all comes together.

I like it when the song hits at that one spot. I like the way these instruments sound together. Your favorite bands, your favorite musicians are probably exploiting that. Essence of your body and trying to exacerbate all the senses that they can possibly grab when you go to their shows of your favorite artists.

They're not there just kind of sitting on stage doing whatever they're doing. They have all this stuff that's trying to hit you at the same time because they want to give you that experience of getting this idea across to you as much as possible. And so when we backtrack that a little bit even with Dolby Atmos and what everything's trying to do is it's inherently kind of limited.

It's really cool in the sense that you can now have a little bit more democratized aspects of spatial, but ultimately by restricting the fact that it's trying to shoot that sound to your ears and your ears only means that you're missing kind of this other aspect of information that you can give across to a listener.

For example if I want to recreate a car crash right in. Right. Yeah. Hopefully you've never had the misfortune of being right there next to a car crash is terrifying. But at the same time you're there in a car crash, you can tell there's a shock way that hits you. There's glass of flies around.

There's these things that happen. There's all these aspects of it, and your senses are putting together and saying There is a event that's happening. There's a lot of energy coming out of it. Yeah. And there's all these details that are a part of it. And so if you try to capture that with a microphone, the microphone can only capture so much of that information.

It's an overload for that microphone. But if we were to take that same information and try to compensate with it by adding all the other elements and reconstruct that event, not just the recording of it. , but actually reconstruct the event, then there's a better chance that we can make you believe that event is actually happening in front of you, even though it's not.

Yeah. , and that's the crazy thing that blows my mind. If you start thinking of sound, not as audio, but as the collection of vibrations that we can generate to be able to interact with the body.  

Julian: And what tools are you using to to achieve that experience?  

Ethan: Yeah, so the Revix that, that is kind of the company's main product here is and lemme see if I can take you on a little tour around here.

The Revix itself is able to turn any infrastructure into that sound experience so that way we can access both the audible and the physical sensations. So, for example, right here we have this table that are Lus designer Vincent, who's. be designed this table to be able to take advantage of the opportunity that we can deliver all the physical and audible vibrations at the same time.

So that little puck that's right there in the middle can actually shake this whole table. And if you're touching it or if there's water inside of it, you can actually see every single physical vibration and it can feel it. And because of the technology that we have on the back of it, because of the knowlEDGE and know-how that we have of understanding every single vibration, we can actually make this table feel like different textures.

So this table will feel. This table will feel hard and Jack, and this table will feel like there's wind blowing against it, that there's water in it, even without the water in it. And then when you see the water in it, you can actually see the representations of the waves in there. And it goes beyond that.

If we can attach it into any sort of infrastructure, just like this couch over here, we actually turn the whole couch into that same experience. So as you're sitting down in. In your living room, you're not just kind of thinking of saying one or two things as like a speaker. It's more like you're living in this new environment that if your sound designer, if your audio engineer can take advantage of these things, can actually transport you to a completely different environment.

Yeah, somewhere on Mars, perhaps, you know, , anything  

Julian: That's so fascinating. And it's so interesting. I was talking to another founder about how a lot of us are craving such new and unique experiences and experiences that make whatever we're involved in seem unique and, or not even unique but memorable and memory, as we know, is incorporating a lot of different senses.

And what was the big driver recently? Is there some kind of catalyst. That you've seen in the market where people are really craving these experiences. Obviously we think about Covid, but I think that's shortsighted in the sense that we've maybe as humans have been creating or craving this kind of experience long term.

What have you seen as a catalyst to, to drive this type of I guess disruption of technology?  

Ethan: Yeah, for sure. There was a breaking point. The breaking point was overstimulation and at the point where the internet when access became so easy. Think about this right when you were grow. Having access to your favorite song was a little harder than it was today to be able to say like, Hey, I want that experience that I'm looking for.

I'm crazy fucking at Lair, . Right. But, you know, it was difficult, but even like before the lime, before the Napster days, like you to go to a store and actually buy out the thing, have the material, have the technology to be able to go and reproduce that experience. And so if you want to see that band, that experience that you're looking for, you had to go out of your way to be able to get that today.

You pop it up with your phone right now and to be able to get that experience and at least the memory that you have will be able to fill in the gaps of what the phone speaker is unable to be able to. And so at least there's a little bit of that emphasis and there's a lot of memory that takes into place that fills in the amygdala of your brain or something like that.

Kind of, yeah. Fills in the gaps. But yeah the overstimulation we're all overstimulated. And I think the Covid era, I think a hundred percent showed that. Yeah. And so now everyone's looking at to say what's different? How can I access how can I be different from the consumers because my big powerful song is gonna be the same as your big powerful song, I think.

Right. So what's made a differentiate between that?

Julian: Yeah, I, yeah, it's fascinating. With the influx of just content overall, how much we're, I think a lot of people are becoming very conscious of the fact that things are either too similar or not dissimilar enough to be really unique. Or there's some there's some methodologies that actually work.

And, but within that framework you can be very creative. But re regarding Reson X and showing the technology and thinking about technology and software, what are some of the challenges of building not only software, but also having it communicate with technology and having that relationship actually give you the outputs here you want more?

So, you know, we talk to a lot of software companies in particular, but having a marriage between software and hardware is difficult to manage.

Ethan: And even to that previous point about the, you know, even going through Covid, imagine trying to build a hardware startup through Covid, , like, Hey man, can you come over here and tune this thing?

No, I can't cuz you might kill me. . . Yeah, that's a good point. Alright, so then can I do it myself? ? Yeah. No, I'm not trained in, in, you know, electrical engineering or software engineering. So we had to be really creative about how we could get, you know, you know, I had to send microphones to so the ee, the.

And say, all right, set up this microphone. And then thankfully we were working on technology on from the studio side of things to be able to do audio over ip. So that became kind of a known thing. Audio over IP is basically when you're sending uncompressed audio directly to another computer instead of going through Zoom server, and then you downloading that stream, which would be kind of like an approximation of it.

And it takes, there's a little bit of latency, but we were working on a software with Stanford called Jack Tripp that would able to do like computer to computer. Direct stream, almost like your file sharing, but the file was streaming and it was whatever audio you were sending into it. And so that means you can do uncompressed, high quality audio, you know, as many channels as you want directly to the computer.

It took a lot of bandwidth. But thankfully we were already, you know, well into that realm. And there's other new technologies that were being developed in the middle of Covid. So that was one way that we were able to leverage whatever we could. And it was free with research, right? So we were able to use that research to be able to say, , you're gonna set up your thing over there.

I'm gonna be over here with my headphones on my computer. Yeah. And trying to see if I can recreate that experience by touching a speaker and having on my headphones and yeah. It was just such a crazy experience trying to build a hardware. Yeah. Startup with no money. for Covid, and trying to explain that to investors.

And they say, well, that sounds real interesting. Can I try it? Well, obviously , no, not yet. And just go with it. And so it was really tough to try to convince or try to find some other reference point for people to do that, and even for our own team, cuz half of our team didn't even get to try it out before they started developing tools for it and yeah.

Yeah, having the software component was like a whole other. Ecosystem, then the hardware component. And boy I'm glad there's you know, organizations like yours that can actually grab developers and be able to have 'em all work on something like that. We're working with a group in Mexico from Morelia.

Yeah. The university over there who was working with us on some of the audio IP stuff. And so, but how could they know what it's gonna end up as? Because Yeah, the sound signal will always change via the hardware component of it. So if they don't have the hardware, you can't work on the software.

Julian: Yeah. What's been you know, seeing your background and experience obviously with within audio and being very much on the technical side. And then on the research side, what's been do you view, I guess, this progression of your entrepreneurial career as an evolution or just a necessity based on the needs that you're seeing in the market?

Ethan: I don't think anyone's ever asked me that. . I haven't had a chance to even consider that. Ah, I guess it depends on how you look at it. Yeah, because I, you know, as a PhD student, you're kind of told you know, do your research, find out your thing, write about your thing, and then basically go teach the bulk of.

Things, right? So in my case, music is, you know, learn, you know, do my Bach corrals write Your Counterpoint, which is like the very bare bones, the stuff that, you know, Bach and Mozart, and then were doing back in the day. It's like, you know, learn how to write like that so that way you can go teach it elsewhere.

And then you know, then have your little niche thing that you like to look at. And so my thing was already coming in as like a music producer and like pop music. And then seeing this as a need was like, okay, there's obviously a necessary thing here. And honestly, it was just for. looking at it from what I needed in the music studio.

And I had no foresight that this could be used for anywhere else, let alone the sports stadiums that we're in, let alone the whole gaming industry that seems to be craving in and all these other simulations in the Metaverse stuff. Not even thinking that, I was just saying, Hey, I need help in the studio, and I wanted to research what the mechanism behind it is.

I didn't think I would solve it. I didn't think I'd find a solution or an answer to it, but and so that kind of happened at a happenstance, but focusing on it I think would. would be the trick of saying that. Yeah. I kind of left the studio. I'm still in the studio and, but I kind of handed that off to some of the proteges and some of the very talented students that are around here.

Yeah. So I can focus on this cuz I know this is gonna be a bigger need that's gonna impact more people and it probably needs more of the attention at that moment. Yeah. And I think it's fascinating. I've always been kind of engineering mind growing up, but I've always been pulled to the music school. So to have something to kind of put together is.  

Julian: Oh, Yeah.  

Ethan: That's the answer, you know? Yeah. Yeah. I feel like I'm, yeah.  

Julian: No it's awesome to see, you know, founders and I think most founders have a similar experience which is finding something that not only they're good at, but that is so intrinsically motivating because of the need that they find that it takes it really allows them to give in that effort and take.

Have the founder experience, which is ours. You don't know when they're gonna end or diving into problems and projects that you don't have expertise in and figuring stuff out. And so, I guess what's been enjoyable for you to learn or what did you not consider that you would have to learn as a founder that you then had to be maybe introduced to or overcome as maybe a function of being a founder?

Ethan: Yeah, I mean, I, coming from the music background, I definitely was. expecting to be a CTO or like a technical person. And also what that means in startup world is very different than what it might have meant in Y year. Like being the CTO of like a big company. It was like, oh, you are kind of technical ish, and you just oversee the idea of some strategies of it.

Right? But not necessarily like, you know, , like, do you know how to do everything and can you solve the problem for other people? Because at startup mode, you're one of three people in the field who is gonna be able to actually address whatever challenges comes up into it. And so basically, not overnight, but like over a couple months, I had to basically get like a bachelor's degree of EE and software engineering and also audio specific, you know, technology, engineering and all this other stuff that was very highly technical, which I was loving because it was all the background and the mechanism.

Of all the tools that we were using. And so that was something that I was not expecting to have to jump up to so quickly. And then it turns out, once you get big enough and you have enough engineers and stuff then you don't do any of that stuff anymore. So I have all this information that I was like, Hey, this is really cool and I know how to hack stuff together, but I don't know how to make it well.

And then everyone else is making it well, and I'm just used with this like, use useless information. But but that's also, you know, that's one specific role like VP of engineering or whatever. But on the business side too, it's. Even though I'm responsible for making the technology work, making sure that there's a plan, making sure that basically what we're doing today is going to impact tens of millions of hundreds of millions of people down the road.

But also today, like I gotta manage, you know, the business. I gotta make sure that this place is paid for, utilities are paid for it, everyone's paid for all of our, you know, benefits are there. It's operational things that, you know, you don't think about or people that aren't founders don't necessarily have that mindset of like, Hey, I gotta sustain today.

Yeah. So that way I can change the world tomorrow. Yeah. Yeah. And. It's definitely like a humility balancing, I think.  

Julian: Yeah. What were you not good at that you're better at now as a founder?

Ethan: apparently I've learned through this process that I might have a little bit of ADHD along with the Tourette syndrome, that I have and it's pretty evident I think when you, right, and you can probably talk a lot to this too, but when you get to the point where you're, you know, notice of the grindstone any little what's it called?

Any little issue that you. It becomes magnified. So great. You're under so much stress, right? And you're under so much, you know, deadlines, timelines, and you gotta deliver it tomorrow or else. And if you have any sort of you know, deficiency, you have to let your team know what's going on so that way they can help you or else then you will fail.

Yeah. Yeah. And once you all get in a. Spot that you can't get out of, right?  

Julian: Yeah, no, I mean I I've talked to a few founders who just described the process of like not only delegating responsibility, but being extremely transparent. Because the more your team knows and the more you lean on one founder, actually yesterday I think was chatting about how.

Yeah. One thing he learned better at, or he's better at after the third startup is leaning on people and letting them take on some of the load. Even though, you know, I'm sure you probably would say the same thing, it's like you're somebody that probably sees a problem. You wanna do it yourself, you wanna fix it.

Ethan: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. You can't be perfect. You can't let perfectly the enemy of good. Right? Yeah. Because if you're working on, if you're working on futuristic technology you have the, you know, we have the vision of like, this is what it could be. Yeah. It could be that, right? Yeah. No one's even experienced this yet.

Yeah. So taking that ego and saying, I want people to experience this, but I have to settle for letting them experience this for the time, and it's still gonna blow their minds. But, you know, we're always working, you know, four, four or five years, 10 years in advancing. So it's always one of those gut richy moments for like, okay, I have to let it go.

And yeah.  

Julian: How do you give a compelling message to a technology that people may not understand?  

Ethan: it is so tough. The reason why I think the sports stadiums has been a blessing is because that's a major touchpoint where people are already going, people are already going and expecting a great experience.

And so the fact that we can go to places like that like sports stadiums or as well as you know, bars and clubs and places that people are looking for in experience and to just kind of call it it's an easy partnership because we are the, kinda like the, we are the experienced people. We can take whatever experience and be able to elevate it.

So we can say, Hey, bars and clubs put us on the dance. Put us on the seats, put us in the lounge area or whatever, and you know, the whole thing just sings to the people. And then you can either lower the volume in the places or, so it's a perfect little marriage between the two of them.

And that allows us to, to get people a touch point of realizing, ah, sound is entering my body in a different way. It's an educational point. So that then when they see it elsewhere, then when we have it elsewhere, then they can recognize, ah, I can expect that. From this name, from the Revix name, or from whatever we're doing.

Yeah. And throughout Covid, we very much realized that having experiential technologies and people not trying them, how would you know what VR is if you've never tried vr? Right, right. How would you know what this tactile the tactile glove or tactile suit is if you've never tried the tactile experience?

You know? So it's definitely one of those things where you gotta try to believe it. Otherwise it just sounds like we're screaming witch magic over here, went outside, take some herbs, and all of a sudden now you believe you're somewhere else. Like  

Julian: Yeah, it's crazy. Yeah. No, it. It's funny cuz just describing I like to ask that question because I was talking to another founder who was working with blockchain technology and describing it in a way that's not necessarily used for like crops and he had to reference the God what's his name?

The guy who did the fourth dimension video. I don't know if you're familiar with that. He just pretty much described the fourth dimension. It's an old God, what is his name if I remember it? I'll send you the video, but Essent. Describes in a way that you can really see that in, in the essence of what you know now.

There is something you don't know, but you can see the shadow of what you know, and that kind of, if you make that connection, you can see the presence of something that is maybe theoretical, but also could be. , you know, real in, in reality. Yeah. But shift. Shifting off that, tell us a little bit about the traction with Revix.

Ah, yeah.

Ethan: Are you getting into Multidimensionality Multi How Multimodality. Multidimensionality and able to Yeah, that's, yeah

Julian: that's a whole nother podcast. . Yeah. Tell us a little about the traction. Tell us, you know, what are the technology is now, who's using it, what are the partnerships you've built?

What are you excited about? Not only from this. You know, partnerships, but also what you're excited about in the new year.  

Ethan: Yeah, I mean, I guess like in, in all what's it called, like startup modes? It just the hockey stick starts taking off and I think we're just around that corner right now, which is a little scary cuz I'm like almost done with my dissertation.

I'm like trying to finish it. I was up to like, to 3:00 AM I'm like, okay, this is the only time I have to like write my dissertation and then burning midnight oil and then trying to work all day with the company. But, I think the most exciting, the things we've done so far so we've got into the Minnesota Twins Techstars Accelerator last February, and that's where we went into the stadium.

And so they challenged us to make a mobile lounge that we can put anywhere around the facility. And the fact that a baseball stadium, baseball, you know, America's old pastime is like, how can we make this as the newest thing possible? It's just amazing. Yeah. The fact that the twins. That is like just epic.

So good, great job for them. And big shout out to Chris Isles over there who's pu pushing that through. But basically we're able to take the mics at home plate. And so anytime there's a crack at the bat or top of the mit, you can feel that through your body. So it's like you're standing at home plate, but you can be up in the nosebleeds and feel like you're standing at home plate.

So it's like the most epic thing, of like a sporting event. It was just crazy. Yeah. So that was our very first appointment, which was like the most nerve-wracking thing. I was like, what if it doesn't work? What if it breaks down? What are we're gonna have to go back to . And then yeah. So that was exciting.

And that was definitely the blueprint of like, okay, this is possible. We can do it. It'll survive and everything. Good. And so, then we started opening it up. And so then we went into a speakeasy that's also over there. Very nice v i p speakeasy down in the, in Minneapolis as well.

Beautiful place, beautiful food. It's a sushi bar on top. It's just the best sushi, like all the whole Midwest, I guess. Flown in everyone. So good. And then downstairs credible speakeasy where the volume is low, but everybody gets that club feel when they're sitting down. And the fact that it's vibrating vibrates the whole.

So that was our deployment to see how we can work on that side of it. And we learned a lot from that deployment. And so now we've got a few new deployments now coming up. I don't know if I can say exactly what it is, but one is definitely in the hospitality chains with something that's definitely involved in the.

I, I think, no I can say that it's in the, it's in the Hard Rock Empire, but it's on the hospitality side of it. So I'm super excited to see to be able to announce that. I think when that's coming through, it definitely makes so much sense, you know, someone, yeah. Organization. So involved with music that says like, how can we take the guest music experience to the next level?

And super Cool. Yeah. Super excited about that one. And then another one is hopefully there's a few things in the iron, right? One of them was with hockey which also, you know, since hockey arenas are also basketball arenas, so we gotta do hockey basketball in the same one.

So that's pretty cool. And we have a like I said, conversation tomorrow with the nba. Tomorrow is, this is December, so, and we'll see what comes out of it. But yeah, talking with them to be able to do something here in la, you know, per chance, maybe somewhere in the crypto arena and be able to do the same thing.

Having the hockey NBA is a really good thing because, you know, we can basically do two sports for one. And then with our technology, we. Tuned back and forth. So that's just coming up right now. And then January we have, you know, we're going to ces, we have a whole series of shows that are coming up.

And and this whole time, honestly, we, I'm, so, I'm excited to be working on technology with some of, like the industry's greats Yeah. That the people that we're working on the original surround sound format or our advisors, people that are working on these crazy types of like, musical interfaces Yeah.

Are on our advising. All sorts of different people that are just really, you know, people I used to look up to a long time ago, people I didn't even know that I needed to look up to, that were responsible for the technologies that you and I have enjoyed for the last 3, 2, 3 decades are the people that are helping us, you know, carefully orchestrate this introduction into the industry.

So incredible. I think this is scratching surfaces so much, just so much red tape around some of this stuff. Folks so excited for these things that are coming up. And those are just the ones that are just sooner than rather.  

Julian: Yeah. I love that. I love that. And I would like to ask this question to, to get kind of where your perspective or where your mind is what are some of the biggest challenges that resonates or even EDGE faces as a company overall? Some of the biggest risks that you face today?  

Ethan: Yeah that's a good point. You know, probably one of the less known things about startups, and I'm sure you can talk to this a million times over and I'm sure you have, I think I've heard it from a couple other startup conversations you've had.

you know, p people don't know how tough it is. People don't know. Yeah. You see from the outside you're like, wow, look at your traction. That's awesome. You've done these great things. It's like, yeah, but those are the peaks. Yeah. , there's values with this too, and it's tough and it's rough and it's, you know, you're grueling hours every day.

It's not, you're not getting along every day necessarily. You have competing ideas of stuff. There's limited resources, limited time, limited people, limited effort that you can do in order to hit these peaks, and you kinda have to orchestrate. Cordal harmony together from the business side to the product side, to the technical side, to all come together to hit that stuff.

And it takes a lot of effort to orchestrate those jumps. And it can take a toll on people. And you know, and obviously we, and I don't, people don't know this, but we had to reschedule this call because we had one of those situations come up where, you know, the team was just so, so, you know, worn down to the bone where, you know, some people we break basically, and so.

Hear each other through, and we have to step in for each other. And, you know, so it's it's, there are some, it's really tough. It's a really tough time just on the logistics of making these things happen. Yeah. But and then on top of that, you know, it doesn't help that we're, you know, in the recession time of it all the investors are suddenly saying, yeah, you're right.

This is not a great time for us to apologize. It's like, hold on guys. Don't forget you don't invest. Yes, you don't make any money, but if we don't receive the investment that we were sup, you know, on track of getting from. , we literally cease to exist. , right? Yeah. Yeah. And it's a very different power discrepancy between the investors who are like, yeah, it's gonna be rough on me if I invest a, you know, now, versus like, it's life or death for us if you don't invest now.

Right. And you know, you know, we're building up this whole time, we're having these conversations and everything's leading towards it. And you're like, ah, but the market's a little scary. I don't want to do it. It's like, yo, literally ynk yanking a lifeline away from not just us, but hearing that from a bunch of our friends and startup community.

And you know, that's a scary time to be in too. And, you know, people are selling their companies for, you know, not pennies on the dollar, but for basic pennies on dollar relative to what they're worth. Right. Just to try to survive this. And it's like, man, this is. You know, in the long scheme of things, it's not gonna be fair, but it's what they had to do to survive today so they could change the world tomorrow.

Julian: Yeah. One thing we discussed before the show is the the experience of having a co-founder relationship. So 1, 1, 1 question I have for you for all the other co-founders out there who are sharing responsibilities and sharing, you know, I'm sure the mission, the vision what are some tips or advice that you would give to.

You know, a strong, solid and co-founder relationship that's in line to, to maintain kind of the trajectory, man.  

Ethan: Yeah. It's like how to have a successful relationship. , being married separately helps because you learn how to, what's it called? Like. Like live with somebody and coalesce with somebody, and depending on what your objective is with the startup, right?

Some startups are designed to say, Hey, I'm gonna take advantage of this opportunity in the ecosystem. Exploit it and sell it. Right? And then that's an, that's a objective with the easy exit, right? That's a thing. But the way that we have it set up is a little different where we are kind of aiming for the long run because we see that there's value in how to introduce this in stages and waves.

So we've got like a nice 10 year cycle going on. So we almost had to approach each other as if we were about to. Be married, because we're, yeah, pretty much going to be together for 10 years. And so we had to know everything about each other, the good, the bad, the ugly and then respect it. And that was the thing, you know, early on when you kind of start getting your fights or whatever, you know, some, it may feel respected, you know, you have to speak up, you have to express it.

And then, yeah, I found that a lot of that relationship building on the business side helped in my relationship and my wife, cuz then we started being able to communicate and then because of that daily communication, I was able to, That I could bring back to this one. So yeah, learning how to build these kind of lifelong esque relationships I think helped respect and demand respect.

Yeah. Yeah. And also appreciate all the nuances of the other person. And so it, for us, planning for the long game, in order to have a successful foundation, we had to get down to the nitty gritty of who. Who the other person was and what makes 'em ticking? What are they about? And spend more time to get to know them because it, you know, you have to know who you're getting in bed with, right?

Yeah. Yeah. If you have some dark thing in the side that you're just like, ah, it's fine, but they're really good at business. It's like, Hey, that is the thing that's gonna eat your butt. Doesn't matter how good they are, they're gonna be one little thing that they're gonna swoop in and it'll hit you from blindside.

So, yeah. So I guess. get, really know you're going in and the process. And it's a daily process. You have to also spend time continually every day to get to know them more and get to know your partner, you know? Yeah, a hundred percent.  

Julian: If everything goes well, what's the long-term vision?

Ethan: Long, long-term scary. A little bit ago we kind of hit a milestone of reali of technology that we realized that, you know, you know, the whole idea of the matrix, where it's , you can plug in, you can envision your. A couple months ago, we kind of hit a technical milestone that showed that on our trajectory here, that might be an actual outcome of some of the stuff that we're doing.

And so we kind of took a pause and said, Hey, hold on a second. If we do achieve this, there's a chance that people will forget that they're in the real world because there's so many sensory elements that we're researching and looking at exploiting here that we could actually we didn't have an ethical mindset about what we're.

We could actually get people trapped or not want to leave this virtual world that we're able to create for them. And so we had a very sit down conversation, a very real conversation of like, should we even do this? Is this a technology we should bring to the world? Ultimately, we said, if we don't do it, some other asshole or some research or some terrible company that is.

Meta down the road might do it anyway. Given that some of the researchers around their team, even though we beat them to the punch and we figured it out, they might figure it out later down the line and not care if people get stuck or not. And the fact that at least we care, that I think is at least something we're cognizant of.

And so definitely keeping that in mind as we go along. Yeah, ultimately we're looking at a world, things go right here. The world that you exist in is completely embedded that you don't have a speaker system, but really just everything around. Just logically makes sense to be able to recreate whatever you're observing in the visual environment.

Yeah, so computer speaker will just be the thing that is whatever's on your screen. So if you have a, a, you know, a video of a cat on your screen should actually be able to like touch your screen and actually just pet the cat and it would feel like there's a cat in front of you for all the senses and purposes.

And then on the personal side of it, you should actually be able to just wear your. and be able to be transported into a new world because your clothing will actually just be able to deliver all those vibrations of the whatever world we're building for you onto your skin. Incredible.  

Julian: It mi it reminds me of when you say doing it in a way that's less beneficial to people.

I'm not sure if you're a Batman fan, but there's a Batman Beyond villain named Shriek, and essentially he created the world through sound where people get addicted to this sensation of knowing or having this alternate reality that feels so viscerally. And so, that obviously scares me, but I'm happy that you have a more holistic perspective I gotta check in on yeah.

I'll send you I'll send you, I'll send you the clip, but but yeah, I know we're coming up to the clip to the end of the episode and I always like to ask this question for for my audience research purposes, but my own whether it was early in your career or now, what books or people have influenced you.

Ethan: This might sound weird. I I was a young karate student for a long time, and so, less, less, less book, more philosophy. I think the one book that kind of kinda wrapped it up a little bit was Zen in the Art of motorcycle maintenance, which I think most kids read in kind of high school, which teaches you about the metaphysics of quality and that kind of opens your mind to be able to ask the questions of what is whatever you're looking for.

The thing in that book is like, what is. Right. What is good to you might be different than what is good for me. What is good to a baby might be different from what is good to an adult. And, you know, depending on your perspective, you know, definitions of good is very different. So I think that's a good basis for all of Philosoph philosophical thoughts in the future that people can kind of grab onto.

But honestly, it was, I think the karate. Sort of like discipline and self-improvement kind of goal that is a good compliment to going on a philosophical journey because just like with everything, right, if you go on the philosophical journey, you don't have the discipline and the groundedness to be able to say, what are you learning?

How are you going to interpret it? How are you going to apply it to your life? And how do you practice it? Having all that discipline and practice even while you're going through a philosophical journey of trying to understand the world around you you could definitely get sidetracked and That's the, what's it called, the villain versus the hero difference there?

Yeah. There's definitely an element of having the discipline groundedness that I think has been instrumental at least in my understanding of the world. I mean, I've, you know, grown up with a couple of disabilities with the mental, the threat syndrome, the neurological, and also then my hearing loss.

You know, I mean, it's very easy to get dissuaded in the world and. The more kind of like, Hey gonna try to improve myself, and then, you know, then you start learning these things about yourself, about the world, and you can make new technologies.  

Julian: Yeah. Yeah.

Incredible. Yeah. Ethan, I've had such a great time learning about, you know, not only your background, your experience, but you're building and I'm sure we could go probably and we haven't even touched into music and I'm. Huge music buff. I love it so much. And I won't bore our audience with that.

We'll have to do that in person, . But I'd always like to give my guests the last last little bit to give us your plugs. Tell us where we can find you. Tell us where we can be a part of the technology. What are your LinkedIns, your websites, your Twitters? Let us know where we can be a part of the mission and even get involved.

Ethan: Yeah we say come join the Sonic Revolution. And it really is, we're changing every single thing you see around you that has any sort of sound emitting thing. We're probably gonna be touching it at some point in the next 10 years. So yeah, come be a part of the journey. Help us figure it out. EDGE sound research.com.

That's EDGE sound research.com. And then all of our socials or Instagram Ed sound research, Facebook EDGE Sound Research. Twitter's the only weird one because it doesn't fit EDGE sound Research in it, so, Official underscore esr. Don't worry about it. We don't even use to. Just hit us up on our Instagram and then you'll see all of our links.

We have a discord that we you know, also still have a very active studio site in. So people are recommending songs to us. We actually can reach out to the artists and then, hey, let's work together on trying to make some sort of you know, unique experience. And then we can kind of recreate some cool new experiences with these artists around the area.

And keep making new things for our community. So yeah, tell us how to, what you want and what you need. And we're basically building that every day.  

Julian: Incredible, man. Well, I hope you enjoyed yourself and Ethan, thanks again for being on the show.  

Ethan: Super. Dude, thank you so much again. You're such a natural interviewer and I can't wait to connect  

Julian: with the Let's do it.

Yeah.