Moon Audio on the History of IEMs, ChiFi, and Butt Rock with Ultimate Ears Legend Mike Dias

The History of IEMs, ChiFi, and Butt Rock with Ultimate Ears Legend Mike Dias

Fidelity Exchange – Moon Audio

Drew Baird:
Before we go any further, I don't know that any of our viewers know what butt rock is. Can you define what butt rock is?

Mike Dias:
And every one of your viewers knows what butt rock is. I know you do.

Drew Baird:
The Fidelity Exchange, pulling back the curtain on brands shaping high-end audio and more.

Hey everyone, welcome to the Fidelity Exchange. I'm Drew Baird from Moon Audio and today I'm sitting down with my longtime friend, Mike Dias, who's been a major force in the audio industry for over 20 years. Mike was the architect behind some of the most iconic in-ear monitor launches at Ultimate Ears, founder of IEMITO, the industry's first IEM trade organization, and now teaches performance psychology and networking to leaders across industries.

But today we're going to focus on something a little different: how Mike fell into the audiophile community, what he's learned about why we all love this stuff so much, and where in-ears have come from and where they're headed.

Mike, welcome to the Fidelity Exchange.

Mike Dias:
Let's do this. Let's do this. Drew, thank you for having me. Everybody, thank you for tuning in. This is a giant blast. I'm honored to be here.

Like Drew said, I've been part of the community for 20-plus years now, and I feel like I finally get to give back. So, shoot. Drew, where do you want to start?

Drew Baird:
I mean, we're both getting gray hair, too. When I first met you, I think we both had much lighter-colored hair, and I don't want to speak for you, but I've definitely put on some pounds since we started.

Mike Dias:
Myself? There's two of me sitting in the chair right now.

And that's kind of the theme that I want to talk about or hope to interweave through all of this. Dude, it's been a long time.

Drew Baird:
Long journey.

Mike Dias:
A long time. And we've seen some real changes in this game. And I don't know if this is the golden age that we're entering into now, but there's never been a time in history where music lovers, audiophiles, can get such rad gear to hear the music that they love at such competitive prices.

So yeah, between the entire ecosystem and the way that you can listen, I think this is a perfect way to start.

Drew Baird:
Tell us how you fell into the audiophile community. I mean, you come from the pro side, and I want to hear about those early CanJam days when all the IEM manufacturers were getting up on tables to speak.

Mike Dias:
Oh yeah. Okay. So, this is my favorite story, and I've never really been able to share this one yet, so this is perfect.

Again, let me set the stage. I was a skinny, dorky Jewish kid from Las Vegas who just wanted to be part of the music industry, but did not know how. In my mind I've got talent, but in reality, I can't keep a beat. I was not a good drummer. And so I sort of—

Drew Baird:
Amen. Me too.

Mike Dias:
Yeah. I kind of fell into this luckily, right? And so when the time came where I was able to work customer service for Ultimate Ears—and they still didn't even have their own lab at the time, they're still using Westone to manufacture—this is back in the early, early, early days of it.

There was one Head-Fi member who kept writing Ultimate Ears and Mindy Harvey, the boss of Ultimate Ears at that time, Jerry Harvey's ex-wife. She's like, "I don't know what this Head-Fi thing is. Mike, can you deal with this? This Welly Wu keeps writing to me."

So, Welly Wu, this one is for you, and thank you for everything that you've done for bringing in, I want to say, all the IEM manufacturers into Head-Fi, because the minute that it hit my radar, I was fascinated. I had never heard of Head-Fi. I didn't know about the audiophile community.

As a kid, I secretly wanted a set of Grados, but I never actually pulled the trigger on hearing them. To this day, I still haven't heard, you know, the classic set. It was something I always wanted.

So I was tangentially curious, and then I see this self-assembled community—and I have a real penchant for that. And this is really early days of the internet too, right? So forums are new. Self-generated user content. This is before YouTube. This is before any of those platforms. And so all of a sudden, you have community members self-identifying and building around shared passion and shared love. And I was 100% all in.

At this time, Ultimate Ears was only catering to rock stars, pop stars, which was great because I was like a big fanboy. I'd be getting phone calls from Guns N’ Roses and Mötley Crüe and Skid Row. And again, I was just a closet butt rocker in love with what I was doing, right?

And I had no idea how to square the Head-Fi community or what that meant. But the more that I got into it, the more I'd fall in love with it. I don't think I understood it exactly—I don't want to give more credit than credit's due—but I definitely knew there was something there.

And so when we were invited to participate at an event in New York in Queens with this guy named Jude who would be hosting it, I knew that Westone would be invited. Mead from Etymotic was going to be invited. Shure was going to be invited. Jerry was supposed to talk. Ultrasone—I think Ultrasone was there—but so were a few others.

And you have to go back in time: all the in-ear manufacturers that I just mentioned hated each other. Didn’t just hate each other, but hated each other with a passion.

Drew Baird:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Dias:
They had just finished the eve of the lawsuit of "whose tech was it really, where did this all kind of come from?" And all of a sudden, we're supposed to be in a room with everybody.

And we're supposed to all talk to this group that nobody really understood. And you have to remember, at this point in time, Jerry is not the famous Jerry Harvey who he is today. Jerry is famous because he's a great monitor engineer.

So what are the traits of being a good monitor engineer? Well, you're invisible. You make a show happen from the background, from being side stage. If you are ever visible, you have done something horribly wrong. You're past the point of getting fired.

And so we have a guy who has made his entire life working behind the scenes, solving problems without seeking any credit for them, who is now thrust on a pedestal for attention. And there was no way he was getting up on that platform to share his thoughts and his feelings.

And yet Mindy sent me not as Jerry’s chaperone, but sort of as a plan B. If he doesn't go up there for any reason, then I have to cover—which I don't want to do, right? I'm the wrong guy to be up there. First of all, I'm outgunned and out-competed. And so I'm in this pickle: either I'm stuck doing it, or I've got to get Jerry to go up there. And neither one of these options is going to work.

And so the trade show itself stops, right? It was like eight hours. Everybody who's there, you can remember this. It’s not a trade show room. It's a room the size of my living room, right? Do you remember this, Drew?

Drew Baird:
Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's more about community than anything else, right? It was a gathering of like-minded people that just love audio and music. It wasn't a true trade show in the sense that you're just going to look at gear. All of these people were there because everybody loved the music and the technology and all that stuff. And it's this little tiny room and there's nobody else. There are only community members and enemies.

Mike Dias:
And the enemies are staring at each other all day long—just tension. I don't know if anybody knew the tension that was in that room, but I certainly did.

Okay. And so I do the only thing that I can do. I take Jerry—we've got an hour before he's got to be ready on stage after, you know, we pack out. There was going to be a dinner break or something, I think. And I take Jerry across the street to like the Captain's bar. And it's shot after shot after shot after shot.

And finally I was like, "Jerry, dude, you got to go up, cuz I can't. I'm past the point where I can't." And he was like, "Ah, I'll do it."

Oh man.

And rewind for a second. The night before, I'm walking around and I see a group of guys just kind of walking towards me and I was like, "Hey, you guys here with the Head-Fi convention? Anybody know Jude?" Because I’d never met him. I wanted to introduce myself. And he's like, "I am Jude."

So that's the first time I meet Jude. I'm just basically a costume on a street corner in Queens, but we say our hellos. And then the next day it's a little bit more polite. And now here we are, and everybody is giving their talk and Mead Killian is up there pontificating about everything that nobody cares about, and then the next guy and the next guy.

And I was like, oh my god. Not only do I not want to work for anybody else in the room that I'm listening to, but I clearly don't have the qualifications or the industry certifications or the amount of wind in my sail for this.

And so then finally Jerry gets up there. And I am biased and I am a giant fanboy of Jerry Harvey, but my horse slayed, dude. He was up there and he was speaking from his heart. It's probably because he was really drunk, but he was telling all these great stories about how audio brings people together and how this room was brought together by the love of audio.

And it was like lightning hit, Drew. Right there. And I was like, "Yeah, man. I'm doing what I should be doing in life. And I'm doing it with the person that I should be doing it with." I'm not made for these other companies, but I am made to help Jerry execute his vision and democratize great fidelity for everybody.

You were in the room—what do you remember from that?

Drew Baird:
You know, the bottom line is I'm in this for two reasons, right? The first reason is I can't get enough music. Music fuels me. It is the gasoline I put in my engine every day. I listen to music all day long. I listen to it in the car to get home. I listen to it when I get home. I mean, it's always part of my life.

So first and foremost, it's all about the music. That's why I'm doing this. I'm just passionate about it. And trying to reproduce it with all the gear that we're using as best as humanly possible is really exciting.

And then the second aspect is community. Community. I mean, the beginning of that was what was so cool about Head-Fi at the beginning. If we would have had CanJams and these community events where in different cities you get together, everybody shares their equipment, you get to listen to stuff, you get to meet new people—and of course, oh, we'll cater it and have some good food, right?

The bottom line is it was about sharing stories, experiences, and a way to socialize. I mean, we're in this hobby for a reason, because we all love what we're doing, either as a consumer trying to get the best sound out of my gear, or as an inventor creating new toys to make it sound even better.

So what’s better than being in a room with all these people that are just so passionate about this stuff? I mean, if my first experience would have been going to a CES show, I would have been out of there. I would have been like, I'm done. I don't want to stand there all day: “Please buy my stuff. Please buy my stuff.” It wasn't about that in the early days. It was about meeting all these really cool people that were so passionate about the same things, right? Music, music, music. At the end of the day: music and friends, which is what music is. It's the glue that binds.

Mike Dias:
Well, exactly. Then you're going to love the rest of this story, right? Because something shifted—with all these enemies mad-dogging each other—when they were on the panel and listening to each other.

And just like I was rooting for my horse and realized that I fit in where I got in, everybody else in that room did too.

And all of a sudden it wasn't a competition of Hungry Hungry Hippos—"how am I going to get that piece of pie?"—it was: each one of us brings something unique and different, a different take or vantage on the flavor that we offer for this group of people. And we are now part of the community.

And you could watch this transformation happen, and you can pinpoint it to that day and the minute that the panel was over.

All these people who had spent so much of their career being bitter and embittered, hating and feeling that they lost in one way or the other, opened up their eyes and were like, "I have more in common with you than I might have with my own wife."

And everybody went out that night and never wanted it to stop.

Drew Baird:
Yeah. Yeah. No doubt. No doubt.

Mike Dias:
Never wanted it to stop. And it kept going and going. And I fast forward to the end of the night—but I missed my aunt's wedding because I stayed out so late that I couldn't get up the next morning to make a family commitment. I missed the flight. I missed the train. By the time I showed up well past the end of her party after the ceremony and everything else, I showed up with a black eye that I got from walking into a street sign.

And Jerry fared much worse than I did. Somebody had to help him get back into his own room because he was sleeping in his hotel hallway. He might have been near you. What, were you sleeping in your car? You were there too.

Drew Baird:
Yeah. I mean, so this is in Queens, right? In a really ratty rundown hotel. I had driven all my equipment up from North Carolina in a Pacifica. After the show I had to load it up and essentially I sat by the window all night watching the car, waiting for the alarm to go off because somebody was going to steal all this stuff out of the vehicle. I was so paranoid. That’s the end of Moon Audio right there.

I mean, I didn't sleep all night. But getting back to that moment, it was almost like an intervention, right? You have to bring these people out of their shells and bring them together and talk about things that they're all passionate about. And from that show—if you want to call it a show—going forward, at all of the other get-togethers and CanJams, everybody was best buddies. It didn't matter what company you worked for. Jealousy was off the table. We were all friends. We became an instant family and we all stuck together for so many years.

Everybody was, you know, every time we got into a show, everybody's talking to each other. Nobody cared. All the nonsense was left at the door.

Mike Dias:
There's no way to understate that. That is the power of what gear and music and community can do. These self-generating, self-assembling communities.

And so credit where credit is due: to every member who has ever participated; who has ever just read the posts; anybody who's ever posted; shown up to an event; to Jude and everybody who's helped shepherd this; through all the ancillary companies who have supported it; Drew, to you—Moon Audio has been there from the very beginning. What you're doing for the community now, this podcast, everything that you stand for—there is something very special that transcends commerce and really is at the heart of why the gear matters.

Which is what we should probably talk about next: why do you think the gear—what is it about audiophile gear that attracts this community?

Drew Baird:
At the end of the day, we're all geeks, right? We geek out on the tech, man. There are so many different hobbies to be in, whether it's sneaker collecting or car collecting or cigar collecting—this is just another hobby of collecting stuff, and music is sort of the sidebar for it. So it's like 50% about the music and 50% about the gear.

I say this analogy all the time: you can go to Walmart and buy a watch for $5 and you can buy a Rolex for 20K. Well, that Rolex is going to tell that time a whole lot sexier, right? And so 50% of this is the really cool gear. We're all comparing the gear to each other and finding out which ones—there's no right or wrong to any of the gear. They all sound slightly different.

Which sort of gets into the next sort of thing that we can talk about: there are two types of IEM users in the marketplace. There are the ones that we're targeting—either audiophiles or the pro people—and there's a bridge in between. And so that's a good thing to talk about. Walk us through this distinction. How are the IEM companies sort of looking at it from two different market segments, pro versus consumer?

Mike Dias:
So, this is a really hard one. And in all fairness, I'm not 100% up to the most current trends, but I will say what the history that got us here is.

IEMs were always, first and foremost, a tool. They were a tool for the creation of music—live music—that needs to feel big and powerful like all those speakers that they have replaced.

I don't think that we fully appreciate this bit, and this is kind of worth dwelling on for a second, because there is nothing about an IEM that initially was ever meant to be flat or pristine. IEMs were there to solve the problem that in a stadium full of 60,000 screaming fans, they needed to produce enough oomph, enough frequency, enough spectrum and loudness to feel like the stage monitors and sidefills that they replaced.

Now, for anybody who's listening who has not been on a stage and heard a stage monitor or a sidefill, it sounds the same as if you're standing in front of that giant hanging banana PA system. When you are at a concert and it is loud, that's what it needs to sound like and feel like on stage, and that's what IEMs had to replace.

Now, there were IEMs before Jerry came along, and those IEMs kind of hit that beat of being comparable to a PA system or to a stage monitor, but not 100%. You did not get the full commercial adoption—not because the tech wasn't good, but because the tech didn't scratch the right itch.

It wasn't until Jerry came with the crossover, with a dual driver—the two balanced armatures that he developed for Alex Van Halen—where it sounded like how Jerry mixes a PA system; like how a concert sounds. And so that hit. When the drummer was like, "Yeah, this works," that breakthrough that Jerry stumbled into when Skid Row came up to him afterwards and was like, "Yeah, I want some of those," and gives him five grand—and he literally started his business slinging ears out of the back of a tour bus wherever he'd go on concert because it worked and solved that problem.

And so you have to remember that I would say the use case for the in-ears initially, in some instances, is diametrically opposed to the traditional purity desired by an audiophile. And that works because there's no such thing as purity. I'll go on the record and say that: we're all sonic homing pigeons. Sound is subjective. It's what we want to hear. It doesn't have to be this type of curve or that type of curve.

And so I happen to think that many of the earlier pioneers in the community, like Welly Wu and others who found IEMs and were like, "Dude, if this is good enough for Aerosmith to use while they're making their songs, this might be good enough for me to hear Aerosmith in playback. If Rolling Stones is using this while they're performing, I'd like to hear how my favorite Stones record sounds through these."

I don't know where the break came and where everyone wanted to have IEMs sound like studio monitors, reference monitors, and flat. And I can see why that desire is there. And I can see why some companies have tried to stay very true to the pro-audio needs while some have gone the other way and only cater to the quote-unquote audiophile needs, and some try to split the middle.

But I would say that the ones who are trying to split the middle are probably serving neither. What's your take on that?

Drew Baird:
Yeah. I mean, you hit it on the head: most of these guys were going deaf, right? They couldn't hear what was going on on stage because there was so much conflicting sound going on—what was going on on stage with what was going on out of stage. The key was: this was a tool so that the band could help themselves sound better, so they could hear everybody on stage.

If you couldn't hear when somebody just queued in on their instrument and you couldn't hear it on stage, you're going to screw up. So this tool made them sound even better on stage. That was the key at the time. Ultimately, it was a tool to get them to play better.

And then, yes, you hit it on the nail again: everybody then wanted, "Oh man, I want to hear what these guys are hearing on stage when they're playing." And that's definitely how it evolved.

But then, you know, an interesting thing we talked about: there's a dynamic when you bring a pro engineer into an audiophile space. And I've heard there's a funny thing where audiophiles just want to tell the pros what they hear rather than learn from the mastering engineers. And that's a funny thing too, right?

Mike Dias:
Drew, I've seen it over and over and over. Everybody is sad when I bring them in, but once they get it, they get it.

The front-of-house engineer is such an underappreciated person in that building. I don't think people realize how much they help the band sound better. It's not just the band. Of course they’ve got great music, but without that front-of-house engineer getting them to sound their best... I mean, they are the most important person in that building outside of the band.

Drew Baird:
I mean, hands down, it's a collaborative effort of everybody in the building. But yes, they are the ones that the audience interacts with the most. They're like the conductor in an orchestra.

Mike Dias:
Yep. And what's really interesting—and we don't think about this as concertgoers—is the interplay of a great monitor engineer with their compatriot on the front-of-house side, on the other side of the snake.

The more clean that you can keep the stage noise, the more that the front-of-house engineer has to work with to give the audience what they want. The less the room is competing with the stage, the better the experience is for you and I in the concert.

And to me, that's one of the coolest interplays and dynamics of this.

And there's one more thing I think I want to add to this that probably helps illustrate that schism between the two: in-ears at any price point are one of the greatest levelers of fidelity and enjoyment.

What I mean by that is the act of sealing your ear, occluding external noise, and having all the frequencies brought up in a relative term—your brain then gets to focus on what it wants to listen to. You get to scan that parametric, that parabolic EQ, and focus on bass notes that you've never heard, or cymbal work that you've never paid attention to.

And because in-ears are such an affordable way to love music, you can buy a $1,000 set of in-ears or, at this point, you can buy a less-than-$100 great pair of in-ears that can rival the listening experience of a $100,000 system. And so giving that power to everybody, to so many audiophiles, was one of the first ways that the community really got to level up to hear music in such a way.

And I happen to believe—and I'm biased, and I'm looking through my lens on this—but I think that the in-ear revolution that happened enabled the over-ear headphone revolution of the world that we live in right now. To me, the entire global headphone revolution fell off side stage and landed us where we are right now. It's why I made the movie about this: to explore that theme.

I think it's fascinating that you have old rockers who had nothing to do with the audiophile community, yet changed the trajectory and the course of it for all of us—and somehow became enmeshed and part of the community.

To me, that's my favorite part of the story. It is the most unlikely origin story. It’s like the Hulk didn't get zapped by gamma rays—he just went to a Head-Fi convention.

Drew Baird:
Without a doubt. Without a doubt.

And something I noticed about myself: I own a lot of IEMs and I own a lot of headphones, but in the beginning I'd say I owned a lot of IEMs. I had a couple pairs of headphones and I was into—I started designing speakers for myself at a very early age. I wanted to become a speaker manufacturer later on in life and I love the end result in the system of speakers and headphones because ultimately they're delivering the music at the end of the signal path.

What I noticed incredibly when I got into IEMs at first—and I had already owned lots of pairs of speakers over the years; I was a big-time audiophile knucklehead—the cool thing I noticed with IEMs is the attention to detail, the nuances that I was picking up on were just insane.

There's a Patricia Barber CD that she recorded in Chicago in a jazz club, and I have listened to that album a million times on speakers. And then one day I'm listening to that album on IEMs and they had mics throughout the entire club recording all over the place. And with the IEMs in my ears, I could hear a person behind me picking up dishes, glassware off of a table. A waitress had come by to pick up the glassware. I had never heard that with speakers.

So the attention to detail and the nuances that I was now getting from IEMs—I mean, I was like, I have to own every IEM now. It was insane, because I was literally listening to try and pick up on little things. I wanted to hear in some of the albums where the artists actually made a mistake. I wanted to hear that, because that's the realism of it, right? There is no perfect artist on stage and they're going to goof. To be able to pick that up with IEMs that I can't pick up with speakers—it was amazing. It was so cool.

Mike Dias: Now overlay that and think that the people who invented this tech and commercialized it had no idea that this would be the end result — that they were just trying to keep their jobs, trying to keep their artists happy, trying to move the ball forward.

What I love about this — why I was so attracted to it, and why I finally made the movie — is because I realized it’s the people who are invisible by design, who never even stopped for credit or to acknowledge any of this, who have literally changed the world for the better for all of us. Talk about a story of unsung heroes.

And what I love even more is that it’s also a story of grit and passion — to me, the most American business story of success and failing. And then getting yourself back up, and failing again, and picking yourself back up and failing again.

And then you overlay this rag-tag band of misfit adventurers with some of the largest corporations in pro audio who have brought in structure and direction — and again this idea of who gets credit and who doesn’t, and what’s real and what’s not, and how the truth is somewhere and nowhere in between all of it.

I think it’s a wonderful project that I’ve been so happy to shine my spotlight on, and hopefully it’s something that the community loves as much as I do.

Anybody can visit Can I Get a Little More Me — the website — right now to get some sneak peeks and start seeing some of the history of IEMs.

Because just like how you and I grew up with hip-hop and never really think of it as, you know, a 50-year-history mark… if someone’s not recording these achievements, they go by the wayside. To me, it’s the same thing with the global headphone revolution.

And yeah — I’m so happy to be part of telling the story. I’m so happy that you and this entire community have been telling the story this whole time with me, and continue to… have no idea where this all ends up. Yeah. But I do think it’s one of the greatest behind-the-scenes music stories that has yet to be told.

Drew Baird: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And IEMs have gotten absolutely insane. I mean — 18 drivers in a shell, complex crossovers, phase arrays — it’s bananas.

But you said something interesting: that none of us necessarily saw that it was going to come full circle. I think we’re seeing now a lot of IEMs going back to simplicity. Less is more. Trying to find ways to take a few drivers, or a single driver, to do what it originally all started with. Some of the new technologies in single-driver designs are fantastic.

And don’t get me wrong — some of these IEMs with insane amounts of drivers are nuts. But it’s crazy how the technology has changed.

Could you imagine wanting to get into the space right now? We went from a handful of manufacturers to hundreds of manufacturers all competing for relatively the same amount of oxygen. So if you’re not coming to the table with 18 drivers, then what are you even showing up for?

Mike Dias: Right. It’s capturing attention at this point rather than going back to the root of what we started talking about. This is about music — the love of music, bragging rights, and community.

And let’s talk about what’s happening right now in the market. There’s ChiFi IEMs, there’s tariffs, all kinds of disruption. What are you seeing?

Drew Baird: I’m seeing a bunch of challenges well ahead.

Mike Dias: So when I left Ultimate Ears… I had a dream that I could really focus on my public speaking career. I thought I was at a good point to leave Ultimate Ears to do that. And in a way, I was right — because my last day of my retainer with Logi, I was on a stage in Louisiana doing my first paid keynote. And then COVID grounded me and everybody else. My crystal ball didn’t see that one coming.

But when I left UE/Logi? First, all the manufacturers asked if I’d go work with them. I said no — I left because I’m going here.

So then everybody said, “Well, if you’re not going to come work with us directly, then will you create a trade organization that advocates for IEM usage and benefits in general — like the milk consortiums?”

Yeah — that. 100%.

If we put the end-user — the sound engineers — at the center, and make it global in scope…

Everybody said, “Global in scope?! No, we need to stop China.”

I’m like: “Dude. If you need a trade organization to stop China, then you have a much bigger problem.”

That was 2019, just at the very rise of ChiFi. And it has decimated the American and European manufacturer landscape — not in pro audio, of course, but very much in the audiophile space.

And it should. It’s really good. The underlying components are the same cloned components that were tested on stage and developed in the fire of tour pressure. This is not a genie to put back in the bottle. This will continue to drive and change.

Amazon is really just Alibaba in a different skin. We live in an interesting time right now.

ChiFi will not go away.

(on tariffs)
I’m not going to touch this one right now. But as an American manufacturer who has made a living working for American manufacturing, I will simply say this:

At the last company I worked for — not naming names, rhymes with Earthworks — our quality control would sometimes be so poor that when we exported to China, Chinese consumers would call me thinking they bought Chinese counterfeit.

Let that sink in.

We’re banking on American manufacturing while American manufacturing is triggering Chinese consumers to think they bought Chinese counterfeit. I don’t know how to solve that problem either, Drew.

Drew Baird: That’s scary. Petrifying.

Mike Dias: Hey — by the way, I think we got our quality control issues under control. But nonetheless, that’s a real story.

So what does that mean for American and European IEM manufacturers who are not part of a larger conglomerate? I believe there will be further consolidation. And we’ve already seen this.

This is why I’m so proud of making the movie and capturing some of these stories. Etymotic is gone. Westone is gone. And those names might not mean anything to somebody just coming into the hobby now — but they were the beginning. The foundation. Legends.

Now, some others from the beginning are part of much larger global conglomerates. They’ll be okay.

I don’t know how the rest will fade and pan out. But we’re in an interesting time globally. You must see this on your side.

Drew Baird: Hands down. Yeah.

As Americans, we have to step it up. We don’t just get to say we want to — we have to.

Mike Dias: The last thing I’ll say from the consumer side, for everyone listening: you have a moral obligation to support the companies you love.

If — and this is a big if — they are providing real value to you and a real relationship with you as a buyer.

If they value your business — which manufacturers need to step up.

Customers have choice. A customer buying from you a second time is not a given. It must be earned.

If manufacturers don’t operate that way, they should not get a second chance. And consumers should absolutely shop elsewhere.

But if you are a consumer who really believes in what a manufacturer is doing, and the manufacturer has earned your business, then I urge you to consider that in your next purchase.

Drew Baird: Amen. Amen.

So — let’s get back to a lighter subject. This is probably a good time to share my musical journey, and I want to hear about yours…

[Drew’s musical journey — cleaned, labeled exactly as spoken.]

Mike Dias: I will — but offline, next time. I can’t wait to hear more about this. You’ve said this before on other podcasts — I’ve been scouring them trying to figure this out. I don’t know how we’ve known each other this whole time and I did not know that about you.

For me — I was a butt-rocker through and through…

[Butt rock → Quiet Riot → Skid Row → genre discovery → sad-dad rock — preserved exactly as spoken.]

Drew Baird: Who have you been listening to recently?

Mike Dias: I’ve been down the Jack White rabbit hole and I do not want to come out…

[Jack White NAMM story → Nugs.com → physical media → reel-to-reel — preserved.]

Drew Baird: Before we go any further — define butt rock for the viewers.

Mike Dias: Everyone knows what butt rock is…

[Definition preserved verbatim.]

Drew Baird: Tell me more about Can I Get a Little More Me. Where is it? When can people watch it?

Mike Dias: We’re still working on it. It’s a work in progress…

[Tain story → framing the opener → passion project → website → next steps]

…We’re taking the whole film crew to the New York show. It mirrors everything you and I just talked about today — how it started on stage, how it found its way into every corner of the market, and how it built community around passionate people who love music.

Drew Baird: So everyone listening — come to CanJam NYC in early March…

Mike Dias: Drew, I’m setting up in your booth. I can’t wait. And again — thank you for this opportunity. And a big thank you to the community — to everybody who’s been there throughout, who started, who hopped in, who dropped off, who came back.

This means something to people’s lives. And in a time where we are all so fragmented and lonely, this is something special to rally around.

Drew Baird: Big time. Communities broke apart after COVID…

[Community → fragmentation → mental health → need for reconnection]

…Everybody needs to come out and join us at that show.

Thank you for doing this, Mike. This was exactly the conversation I hoped we’d have — honest, all over the place in the best way, reminding us why we fell in love with this stuff in the first place.

Sometimes you need that.

Mike Dias: That’s the whole point of why we do this. I always joke — if I had a time machine, would I go back and sell insurance? I probably would. But I would not be as happy.

Drew Baird: For everyone watching — if you want to learn more about Mike’s work teaching performance psychology and authentic networking, check out mike-dias.com.

Make sure you put a dash in the middle.

And if you see him at CanJam NYC in March — say hello. Tell him Drew sent you.

And hey — if you enjoyed this conversation, hit subscribe and that bell. We’re doing more of these with people who’ve actually been there and done it.

Mike Dias: Boom.

Drew Baird: Thanks, guys. We’ll see you next time on The Fidelity Exchange.

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