Signal to Noise and The In-Ear Monitor International Trade Organization

Transcript: Signal To Noise Podcast – Episode 213 (Mike Dias)

Chris Leonard: Welcome to the Signal To Noise Podcast on the Pro Sound Web Podcast Network. I'm Chris Leonard, joined by, well, two weeks in a row here. It's just me, Kyle and Sam are still on tour, and that's okay. Actually, Kyle is visiting Fall Out Boy tonight and Chad Olex. So shout out to Chad and the Fall Out Boys. He gets to reunite with his old tour. It's going to be fun. I'm going to try to catch Chad when he's in town in a few weeks. We'll see what happens.

And Sam's out with Volbeat. So if you happen to see Volbeat in town, go catch up with Sam. If you see Max on tour, go catch up with Kyle.

So anyway, also a special thank you to our sponsors, Allen & Heath, Rational Acoustics and RCF. They are all great people, great partners, great products. I encourage you to check all of them out and we appreciate their support.

So tonight, I have Michael Dias, who I've been wanting to get over a while, just like everyone we want to get over a while and stars align and we figure things out. Currently, he is the, dang it, I lost. What's your title at IEMITO?

Mike Dias: I'm the Executive Director.

Chris Leonard: The Executive Director of IEMITO. You're also the VP of Sales at Earthworks. We'll come back to what IEMITO is. And then formally, you're with Logitech for quite some time as well. So, welcome Mike.

Mike Dias: Chris, thank you so much for having me and a special shout out and a thank you to your sponsors who enable this great show. What you do for the community really means a lot to everybody. Thank you.

Chris Leonard: Awesome. Thank you. So, here's a couple of places I want to go tonight, a lot of focus on in-ear monitors. So, specifically, let's start there. What's the first time you heard the phrase in-ear monitors?

Mike Dias: Oh, this is a great story. So, let's clear some air first before we get here. I am not a sound engineer and I know that this is a show dedicated to sound engineers. So, when it comes to Signal To Noise, I'm more of the noise side of it.

I've always worked on the sales and marketing side for manufacturers. While I'm not a sound engineer, I play one on TV, all of my best friends are, and I really made a life and a career of taking care of sound engineers, of monitor engineers specifically. So, the first time I heard of in-ear monitors was, I was recruited to write the business plan for Mindy and Jerry Harvey at Ultimate Ears, when they were still selling ears out of the back of a tour bus.

I knew their intellectual property attorney, and he pulled me aside. He's like, "Hey, I've got a client I want you to meet, and I want you to write their business plan. They're in the middle of a giant lawsuit right now. They have a technology that can blow up if they end up holding the IP, and you're the guy for it."

I said, "No, dude, I'm not the guy for it. I'm your landscaper. I'm not the guy to write the business plan for your client."

He says, "No, no, trust me, this is all going to work out."

I was young, and I was dumb, and I went along with it, and I've never had to this day had such imposter syndrome, but I put on my best suit that did not fit, and I go to the top of the Stratosphere. The Stratosphere in Vegas has just been built, and I meet Mindy for lunch up there with the attorney. And I am incredibly nervous, and Mindy turns to me maybe five minutes into the sit down, and she says, "Hey, dude, relax a little bit. A lot of my clients, you know, wear [suits] to lunch, and they nod off a little bit and duck over to the bathroom to take care of themselves."

And Chris, that didn't make me feel any better. That didn't make me feel any better at all. But we hit it off, we really get on, and she explains to me what they're doing, what they need, and then she puts me in touch with Jerry so he can give a download. And at the same time, I kind of become a ghostwriter for Jerry. He publishes a lot of articles in Live Sound International and a few of the other trade mags. This is when Marty was still trying to tell everybody that he owns the trademark on the In-Ear Monitor term and that nobody even really had a name for what these were at the time.

Yeah, it really worked that way. I like that movie Almost Famous. I had a side stage vantage to watching this industry start, blow up and explode to what it is today.

Chris Leonard: That's interesting. What has it been like to see the... see that explode? What has that journey been like for you specifically?

Mike Dias: Well, I think it's fantastic for a lot of reasons. The first is, for a second, I don't want to dive too much into the benefits of In-Ears, all of your audience knows what those are. But you have to think about this for a second, that there was a world before In-Ears existed when it was just wedges. And you have to think about the way that music was changing, and imagine doing today click and track and hitting all the sequences without ears. Imagine doing all your TV promo without ears, and imagine the hearing loss that musicians, performers would have suffered, if not for In-Ears, right? So In-Ears absolutely changed the way that people tour, changed the way that people perform, and changed the workflow that engineers do their job.

That's not the most exciting or interesting part from my vantage point. From my vantage point, In-Ear monitors are like the McLaren race cars of the industry, the Formula One, like the best of the best, where the technology that is developed on stage, practiced and rehearsed into the toughest environments, then explodes and radiates out from the center. And I would argue that every move you've seen in the last 5, 10 years into the global headphone revolution, into the true wireless movement, into the AirPods and beyond, all of that originated from in-ear monitors.

And you can draw a very clear lineage from the technology and from the use cases. And I think that's fantastic. So to me, I love where Pro-Audio meets consumer electronics. And I don't think that that's that different. And just talking about this for in-ear monitors, I think you see this with all of the gear and all the manufacturers, with microphones, you name it across the board. To me, this is why the sound engineers are the unsung heroes of this untold story. And why music matters so much in the world, not just for manufacturers looking to be associated with the lifestyle of top touring bands and artists, and for their marketing cache, but for the testing grounds of proving out new tools and new technology that make everybody's life better.

Chris Leonard: That's fascinating. Well, so I think everything you just said there points to something I wanted to talk about is that the last time you and I saw each other, you were working on trying to document this story, if you will. And so I got to see you out at NAMM and I know you're working on a project and I'll let you talk about it. And I happened to get to sit back for a little bit and there happened to be a little special guest sitting there.

Mike Dias: You don't have to play cagey and you didn't just come and sit with me. You kind of saved my... you saved my arse. Let's be honest, you filled in and subbed it and delivered some real hits on that. But yeah, do you want to talk about it? And then I'll hop in and tell you the back story with them.

Chris Leonard: Well, yeah, I mean, you know, we've obviously been talking behind the scenes for quite some time, specifically with like "How We Got Loud" and the... which is for those who don't know, I had started a whole series about the history of live sound and things like that. And obviously the evolution of In-Ear Monitors is part of that. So we've kind of talked about some of that stuff. And I have a passion for knowing and knowing about the history. And I've also obviously saw the transition of wedges to ears and was a part of that whole process.

So yeah, you had texted me before in the day and you're like, "Hey, we're working on this thing, you know, don't really know what it is yet, but work on this thing trying to, for lack of a better term, thread the needle of the storyline of how In-Ear Monitors came to be and the effect it's had on both Pro-Audio and consumers and whole nine yards."

And you're like, "There might be a special guest, so make sure you come by." I'm like, okay, cool. And I thought I was going to come by and watch some other people tell their story, which I did. And then you're like, "Hey, you want to jump on the mic?" I'm like, "Yeah, sure. I'll talk about a huge fan."

Mike Dias: You didn't even know you were going to be on the mic?

Chris Leonard: Yes. I mean, you had alluded to, "Hey, maybe we'll get you on the mic." I'm like, all right, whatever. Meanwhile, I know you're interviewing people who are the people like Jerry or Marty or whoever, people who have the actual pioneers, not just a schmuck audio guy who happened to do ears for good people and cares about our history.

So yeah, I didn't know what that's like. Then, so I come into the room and Steve Wozniak happens to be sitting in the room, and I'm like, holy shit.

Mike Dias: The best boom operator I've hired yet.

Chris Leonard: So I'm just sitting behind Steve Wozniak, and Steve's sitting there listening to all this. I'm like, first off, I didn't know the correlation as to why freaking Steve Wozniak is even in the room. You want to get up here. I'm like, yeah, I got to tell my story in front of freaking Steve Wozniak. Then, but the cool thing is, is y'all needed a break and I got to hang out with Steve for like 20 minutes or so and like ask him a bunch of personal questions... but now maybe have you tell like, first off, A, what were you working on? Two, why was Steve there? And I think it's pretty cool as to why Steve was even there.

Mike Dias: Yeah, so there's two things that you and your audience need to know, Chris. One, I've seen a lot of things and I'm lucky because I have a very neutral attitude about it all, right? I don't think in terms of manufacturers and competition, we're all in this together and I have earned a reputation for being fair and accurate and just amongst all the manufacturers. Two, I like to drink and run my lip a lot and talk a lot of trash.

These two character traits lead me into a lot of situations in hot water. And I have always joked and threatened about putting this documentary together. I alluded to it earlier in saying this kind of idea of Almost Famous and being able to watch this explosion because it wasn't just an explosion of in-ears, it was an explosion of culture.

You have to think about the way that music is performed, but also the way that music is consumed during this last 15 years, last 20 years. We went from buying physical disks, physical units of music, to being able to stream anything we want anytime, anywhere on the devices that went first from the portable Windows CE platform, Palm Pilots, Rios, to the first iPod, to the iPhone, and to where we are right now. So not only was I dealing with all of the manufacturers and all the sound engineers, but on any given week, I'd be in multiple cities taking out buyers from Apple, Best Buy, Radio Shack, Costco, you name it, backstage to see their favorite performers live using in-ears and kind of connecting the dots between everything, right?

So during this giant explosion and during all of this, it became readily apparent to me that I was witnessing history in the making. I wouldn't say that I was part of history in the making. I might have had my finger or two on a bit of the pulse or pulling some of the strings, but I really got to watch and see all the people who were responsible for this.

And the truth of it all, Chris, is that they're all crazy. They're all the weirdest cast of characters you could ever put together. And they all hate each other, okay?

Chris Leonard: For the record, I've seen some of those behind the scenes as well, so I can attest to that.

Mike Dias: They don't just hate each other. It's like a dysfunctional giant family where they're all joined at the hip, all fighting for the same thing, and yet they all love each other too, okay? So everybody claims to be the first one to have invented it, or everyone claims to do this, or claims to have this artist with that. And everybody talks so much trash about the other behind their backs and to their faces that it's one of my favorite sports just to sit back and to relax and watch it and maybe just kind of lob one or two out there to see the bikes. And it's hilarious, right? Because the truth is they are all responsible for moving the needle, moving the culture and bringing us to where we are today. None of this would have happened without the contributions of all players included. But nobody can see that, nobody can say that, right?

Chris Leonard: And so—for the record, that's also true not only in-ear monitors. You and I talked about this a little bit in the short amount of time that I did spend deep diving into the history of live sound thing. There are three or four people who claim to have been the first to do foldback wedges, or the first snake, or the first whatever. And because we're talking pre-internet times and communication was reduced, sure, there was often multiple people trying these things at the exact same time that eventually once that person made it across the coast, and then you see this, you see this, you see that, and the other. So that's a common thread just in our niche industry in and of itself.

Mike Dias: It absolutely is. There's so many parallels into how these are all interconnected, right? And so it really is the work of the entire industry, and it forces outside of our industry, again, the contribution that Apple made to this, the contribution that RealNetworks made to this with streaming platform development. We could even say the contribution that Napster made to this and the contribution of society choosing to devalue music in a certain way, which here's what's ironic. As music becomes ubiquitous in a commodity based on streaming, in-ears, in fact, become more relevant because more tour dates and livelihood and generation of revenue from tour support goes up, right? So maybe the reason that in-ears are so used around the world right now, there's more than 300 manufacturers at this time and space, is because of all of the other factors that make in-ears part of the global revolution.

But so anyway, I always joked, especially because as I became friendly with each player, I could hear their truth and they were each 100% right. Okay? Jerry's version of the story is absolutely correct and Mead for Etymotic's version is absolutely correct and even Steven Ambrose... Well, maybe not that, but everybody's version is really very, very accurate, but it's not complete and it's not whole. It's real, but it's not the truth. And it turns out that I probably, again, as a student like you of history and of trying to understand and of keeping an open mind and ear, I probably have one of the best vantage points of what really happened and how it all kind of came together.

And so I was over at Clair last year after threatening and joking about this for the last 20 years. And again, I was running my lip and it's just a bunch of sound guys. And I was joking about how everybody hates everybody else or talks so much trash. And Marty's like, "What are you talking about? What are you talking about? I don't hate anybody. I don't talk trash about anybody."

And Marty talks more trash about everybody than anybody else combined, okay? And I'm like, "Yeah, Marty, you're right. You don't talk trash about anybody. But everybody talks a lot of trash about you."

Which I thought was hilarious, Chris. But I think I hurt Marty's feelings. So Marty, if you're listening, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt your feelings with that one.

But it was funny. And as it would happen right then and there, all of our friends from Shure put their arm around me and they're like, "Yeah, you got something. Whatever you need, let me know. We'll back this and make it come to life." I think they just wanted to kick Marty a little bit too, right? So I was laughing about that.

I was laughing about that again, but I still really think I was going to do anything with it. And then NAMM calls me up, and they're like, "Hey, we want you to do the keynote."

And I was like, "Yeah, I wasn't really going to go to NAMM."

They're like, "No, but we really want you to do the keynote. It's a little silly. We've got one of your videos, one of your talks from last year on homepage."

And so I threw it out as a polite way to say no. I was like, "I'll do it if you could get me a quiet room where I can film a treatment just to see if I have anything here." Because in my mind, when we're talking back and forth here, it sounds like a story, right? But that doesn't mean I'm going to... it can actually translate or be universal. I don't want to tell a documentary, a very therapeutic, he said, she said documentary. I want to tell a proper Hollywood, King of Kong, Fistful of Dollars documentary, right? And to really capture all of this. And something for more than just an audio engineer to consume.

Chris Leonard: Absolutely. Absolutely. Because if a tree falls into woods and no one hears it, does it really matter, right?

Mike Dias: Like this is a real story that deserves to be heard and told from everybody. And as you really think about the story, it's not about who invented in-ears at all. It is a love letter to the people who make concerts happen, right? To the unsung heroes behind the scenes. And more than that, it is a love letter to monitor engineers in specific. And larger than that, it is about the people who support the monitor engineers and take care of them throughout their career.

Mike Dias: ...And to me, that is a story that needs to be told. And I think, like Penn & Teller deconstructing a trick, general concert goers who don't understand any of this, don't know what monitor world is, don't know what sound guys do, the more that they hear and see this, the more that they fall in love with the illusion of what a show is, and the more that they enjoy their time spent there and understand the sheer amount of work, effort, skill, and human power that it takes to put the shows together.

So NAMM agrees, they give me a room, all the manufacturers are there, and like clockwork, nobody said anything negative about anybody else in the video.

It wasn't just sitting in front of the mic, let's be honest about it. I had a professional camera crew, the director of photography, some of the actual heaviest hitters in the room were the people behind the scenes running the day. And it's a little intimidating, we all work behind the scenes for a reason. We're a couple steps back from the spotlight for a reason and it's not in any of our personality to be in front of the camera with the spotlight on. And the minute it happened, everybody was deer in a headlight and everybody got the history right but none of the emotion, which is really quite funny about it. So it was enough, there was enough juice there, there was enough goods there, there was enough of the storytelling.

I don't know if you caught this, but we had German from Colombia who was there who just wanted to do it in Spanish. And then we had Motto from MSI in Japan who did it half in English and half in Japanese.

Chris Leonard: That's awesome.

Mike Dias: And it was awesome. And it speaks to the global impact that this trade has had, right? And I love it. I love the code shifting and the largeness of it all and the impact that this little tiny industry has had on such a global level.

And so lastly, you had asked how was [Steve Wozniak] there. And it turns out that he has always been a fan of technology, of what is new, what is happening, where things move and where things drive. And he is not just a lover of music, but he is also a musician himself. He is known for going to NAMM every year to see the innovations and to see what is new. And so I just reached out and asked if he would like to be able to sit and hear some history and parts of the story that he probably didn't know.

And he responded almost instantaneously and took it for the gift and the joy that it was. And he was a phenomenal sport because that room was so miserably cold and he stayed there. Steve and his wife were gracious enough to stay there all day listening to all of us talk shop and inside baseball. And I couldn't be happier with the way it all turned out.

Chris Leonard: Yeah, it was fun. I mean, it was, I only got to see you interview maybe, maybe two or three most outside of myself. So I didn't get to see too much of it. You know, we're all rather busy at NAMM. But it was fun. It's one of those things like, again, I know, you know, you obviously struggle at times to maybe try to get the right… Chris Leonard: ...question to pull something out of someone or they maybe had a hard time translating for you or translating out of you. Especially when you're not used to talking about this stuff in that way. I liked what you said about you had a hard time pulling the emotion. Like it's one thing to pull facts. That's another thing to pull the emotion out. And that there's a two-way street of art there on your side or whoever's side is like trying to pull it out of people and or just having someone be able to like go there. But probably the problem is like you sit someone down, you want them there instantly. It probably takes some time to actually get there. You probably have realized that now. Maybe that's maybe how you can carry forward in the future with these is like figure out how to like relax the conversation or relax things ahead of time and then sneak it in or something. I don't know.

Mike Dias: So there was a little show biz trick that we started to play after you actually. But when we say the first cut, everything is still rolling and then all the guard comes down and then we ask a couple more questions. And then all of a sudden, the whole thing has turned around and the gold comes out and then cut camera really is we're done.

And so Chris, I can't wait to tell you and your audience more about this. It's an all-star cast, not just of all the manufacturers, but of all the top touring sound engineers and everybody who's gone into it. We went back to LA to do a second pickup shoot recently.

Bud Thornton wanted to share a tribute of how he uses In-Ear monitors and why they are meaningful to him. We might not really think about this and we don't realize, but before he was an Academy Award-winning director, he was a sound guy. He really came up through the ranks that way, worked his way up to monitor engineer.

And so, he's not just a performer, but is someone who intimately understands the use case and the needs, what it takes to deliver a show from all aspects. And so, I'm really excited about this project. There'll be a lot more that I'll be sharing with the community soon.

We're just going to have one or two more takes as we move into edits. And I think we capture the human element. And I think we really share not just who invented the In-Ear Monitor, but why it matters and a lot of the human element behind it.

Chris Leonard: Yeah, it's interesting. And what I noticed quickly is the how it impacts people or the effects of it is way deeper than the surface. Like we said in the beginning, most people's instinct is, well, why do we have In-Ear Monitor as well? To save for a hearing. That's only a single thread in the grand scheme of it and or the impacts that it's had. So yeah, it's fascinating to see how many storylines or threads are going to come together on that.

Mike Dias: And it turns out to be quite a surprising ending, right? You think that, I told you, I know what I believe to be a lot of the points of the truth. But even in trying to do this research and to sit everybody down to listen, there's so many different… Mike Dias: ...angles that uncover it. To me, it is a very global hero's journey type story. And I'm excited for everybody to get to hear it and see it. And when they're using AirPods and consuming music in the way that they are now, and when they're going to shows, to understand all the people involved that made this come about and happen, again, I think it makes it that much more exciting.

Chris Leonard: Yeah. And I mean, we're just entering the space of spatial audio, right? And so that's the whole next phase of this thing that is bred.

Mike Dias: Spatialization, at least from a stage perspective, would not be possible if it wasn't for—and I guess the consumer side too, to a degree—but I mean, specifically speak to our industry. I mean, even though it's been out for quite a few years, it's still just barely catching on, quite frankly.

Just barely catching on. Chris, I want to pick your brain for what you do and the vantage point that you have and what you see this developing into. What are the current trends now that Atmos has become a standard? You were hearing it when you're consuming music and now it's moving back onto stage. What do you see and where do you think is going?

Chris Leonard: It's tough. I am somewhat removed from the touring side of things in that I don't actively tour. However, I'm connected enough that I see things daily. However, my observations would be that I feel like every year or even every month I see more and more tours talking about immersive in-ears on stage. Look, the most predominant being KLANG, right?

But obviously, there's other ways of doing it. But let's just face it, it's the predominant way of doing it from an in-ear standpoint currently. KLANG being incorporated into the DiGiCo boards was a huge, huge enabler of that.

Mike Dias: Yeah, for sure. So I still think we... I think the artists...

Chris Leonard: Some artists have recognized... I think we're still in a phase where people who we've moved past, it's a gimmick, right? So I think when that stuff first comes out, it's kind of gimmicky.

Mike Dias: Oh, my goodness, oh, I can take this thing and I can spit it around your head. Well, that's not practical. It's fun.

Chris Leonard: That's not practical, right? So I think artists and engineers are both still infancy of learning how to get its most effective use. And I think we're probably going to be in the same phase where... We kind of talked about this of that. A lot of artists, their first time into in-ears, it wasn't a good experience because they didn't have a good engineer getting them to where they need to be. Probably going to be a second phase of that here now where artists' first experience on immersive may not be the best experience, and it may put them off because they need the right person who knows how to mix in immersive things.

Mike Dias: ...Yeah. And that's a whole other skill set. It really is. And I think that education gap is real.

Chris Leonard: So, let's change gears. You mentioned at the top, IEMITO.

Mike Dias: IEMITO.

Chris Leonard: What is IEMITO? I know I butchered the acronym earlier, but tell us what it actually is.

Mike Dias: So IEMITO stands for the In-Ear Monitor International Trade Organization. And it really was born out of that same spirit I was telling you about earlier, of this "accidental tourist" watching the industry grow. I realized that while all these manufacturers compete, they also have shared problems that none of them can solve alone.

Chris Leonard: Like what?

Mike Dias: Like hearing health education. Like spectrum advocacy. You know, when the FCC sells off the 600 MHz band, that hurts Shure, that hurts Sennheiser, that hurts everybody. And so IEMITO was formed to be the "Switzerland" of the industry. A neutral ground where we can come together to fight for the things that matter to all of us.

Chris Leonard: And who is involved? Is it just the big guys?

Mike Dias: No, it's everybody. We have the manufacturers—and not just the big ones, but the boutique makers too. We have the audiologists, we have the hearing conservationists. It's really a place where we bridge the gap between the medical side and the pro audio side.

Because, Chris, you know this—most audiologists don't know what a monitor engineer does. And most monitor engineers don't know the medical science of the ear. They know how to mix, but they don't know the physiology.

Chris Leonard: That's very true. I've had that conversation with my own audiologist.

Mike Dias: Exactly. So we're trying to fix that. We're trying to create a common language. We're producing documents, we're doing panels at NAMM, we're trying to create a standard of care so that when a musician goes to get impressions taken, they get a consistent result. And when an engineer talks about "hearing health," they aren't just guessing.

Chris Leonard: That sounds like a massive undertaking.

Mike Dias: It is. But it's necessary. If we don't police ourselves and educate our own market, someone else will regulate us. Or worse, we'll lose the trust of the artists we serve. So IEMITO is really about securing the long-term future of the industry.

And I want to be clear, Chris. I wear two hats. I am the Executive Director of IEMITO, which is a non-profit. And I am also the VP of Sales for Earthworks Audio. And those are very different roles, but they both come from the same place of wanting to serve this community.

Chris Leonard: That makes sense.

Chris Leonard: ...it may put them off because they need the right person who knows how to mix in immersive things.

Mike Dias: Yeah, for sure. So I still think we... I think the artist... Oh, my goodness. Oh, I can take this thing and I can spit it around your head. Well, that's not practical. It's fun. But you know, that's not practical.

So I think artists and engineers are both still infancy of learning how to get its most effective use. And I think we're probably going to be in the same phase where... We kind of talked about this of that. A lot of artists, their first time into in-ears, it wasn't a good experience because they didn't have a good engineer getting them to where they need to be. Probably going to be a second phase of that here now where artists' first experience on immersive may not be the best experience, and it may put them off because they need the right person who knows how to mix in immersive things.

So I think that's where we're at with it. And then once that kind of levels out, then we'll see where it goes from there. But I see it more and more, even on tech riders or people talking about it.

Mike Dias: What's interesting to me is that... You know, everybody has two ears, right? So naturally, we hear in stereo. We don't hear in mono. But we don't hear in stereo either. We hear in 360 degrees.

And so if you're trying to create a natural environment, it has to be immersive. And I think that the technology is finally catching up to the biology. And that's what's exciting to me.

Chris Leonard: Yeah. And I think the other side of that coin is that the consumer is now being trained to hear that way too. With Apple Music and spatial audio and Dolby Atmos, the average listener is starting to expect that level of depth. And so the artist wants to deliver that on stage as well.

Mike Dias: Exactly. And that brings me back to my earlier point about the consumer electronics driving the pro audio world and vice versa. It's a feedback loop. The innovations that happen on stage with in-ears eventually trickle down to the consumer. And the expectations that consumers have eventually trickle back up to the stage.

Chris Leonard: So let's talk about IEMITO. You mentioned it earlier. What is the goal there? What are you trying to accomplish with that organization?

Mike Dias: So IEMITO is really about three things. It's about education, advocacy, and community.

First, education. We want to educate the market on safe use of in-ears. We want to educate audiologists on what musicians actually need. And we want to educate engineers on hearing health.

Second, advocacy. We want to be a voice for the industry when it comes to spectrum issues or regulatory issues. We want to make sure that we have a seat at the table when decisions are being made that affect our livelihoods.

And third, community. We want to bring together the manufacturers, the engineers, the audiologists, and the artists into a shared space where we can talk about these issues and solve them together. Because like I said, we're all in this together. We might compete on product, but we collaborate on survival.

Chris Leonard: That's a great mission. And how can people get involved if they're interested?

Mike Dias: They can go to IEMITO.org. We have a lot of resources there. We have articles, we have white papers, we have a directory of audiologists who specialize in musicians. And if you're a manufacturer or an audiologist, you can join as a member and help support the cause.

Chris Leonard: Awesome. Well, Mike, it's been a pleasure having you on. I really appreciate you taking the time to share these stories and to give us a peek behind the curtain of this documentary you're working on.

Mike Dias: Thank you, Chris. It's been a blast. And thank you for everything you do for the community.

Chris Leonard: Absolutely. And for our listeners, make sure to check out IEMITO.org and keep an eye out for Mike's documentary when it drops. Until next time, stay safe and keep making noise.

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