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I love lap swimming in the pool. It's great exercise. Oh my god.

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I love lap swimming in the pool. It is great exercise.

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Well, if you're a runner or a cyclist or you go to the gym,

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you know that forgetting your headphones totally sucks. So I did what a lot of people do and I

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popped over to Amazon where I found out there are a lot of solutions to my problem.

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We're going to take a look at some of those today, but once I ventured off Amazon,

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I discovered that underwater audio is a whole underwater rabbit hole. See,

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listening to music beneath the surface, it's not as simple as you might think. I mean,

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just like in the air, sound is a wave and it can travel through water. In fact,

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faster and further due to water molecules being packed more densely than air.

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But there are some problems. See, high frequencies basically don't go anywhere.

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Low frequencies go extremely far and the surface of the water can act as a reflector,

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meaning that if you do it wrong, you could be swimming around in an acoustic house of mirrors.

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So you can't just take a waterproof speaker, hook it into the pool and expect it to sound good.

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And that's even ignoring the obvious Bluetooth connectivity issues.

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On top of all that, humans evolved to hear above the surface of the aquatic zone,

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so the best underwater audio solutions have to take a lot of factors into account.

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Thankfully, my leap into the hydroacoustic pool led me to Renzo, who makes custom professional

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underwater audio solutions, along with a host of other very interesting things.

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And he happens to be local to us, which means I needed to come here myself to find out which

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method of listening to music underwater would be the best while I swim my laps. But please,

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be honest with me, are any of these any good? Some of them. Some of them. Yes. Okay. Why do you

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make bad ones? No, the ones I make are all good. Ah, yes, I see. Oh, perfect. I was talking about

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the underwater speaker part of it. Great. That means my last question for you is, will you help

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me segue? Of course. To our sponsor. This place is incredible, but from what I understand,

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it didn't always belong to you, did it? No, no. So why do you have this? Well, it's a long story,

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but my daughter wanted to do the synchronized swimming. That does sound like a long story.

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Yes. I needed somebody to cut pieces to make a sound system so that the coaches could work.

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But when you got this, it was just one three-axis CNC. Yeah, that the guy didn't even know how to

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use. Okay, you've got so much more than that now. Like this four-axis looks freaking incredible. What

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can you make on this? We do 3D sculptures. We do columns. We do piddlers. Okay, but why? For the film

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industry. Oh, okay. Well, where have I seen your work then? We've done skyscraper. We've done World

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of Warcraft. We've done Percy Jackson. We've done playing with fire. I have a list of different

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shows that we've done. This desk must have cost a fortune. Caused me nothing except sweat and tears.

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Looks awesome. Let's get to the audio solutions. And here it is, an underwater speaker, which

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we are actually going to get to after just one more side quest. Oh my goodness, Renzo, what is this?

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Those are some very high-end turntables. This is beautiful. What kind of wood is that? It's a veneer.

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It's a black walnut burrow. Affordable, right? Very affordable. They start at about $10,000 US.

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That's before you add a tone ARM and a needle. So before they make any sound, you're off 10 grand.

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But these are people that spend half a million dollars on their sound systems.

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Sure. You need one? No. I suspect that's going to make the underwater audio solution sound

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downright affordable. What am I holding right now? That's the soul of the underwater system.

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It's a piezoelectric transducer encased in epoxy resin. Right, because unlike a normal speaker,

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you wouldn't actually want to see the cone, which would vibrate the air. You actually have to vibrate

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this entire heavy mass in order to pass that along to the water? Or am I missing something?

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No, no. There's actually very little vibration. You don't see it moving, actually. There's not

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like a speaker cone that moves. Now, I see you've actually got two different ones here. This is a

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skinnier one? Yes. This is the US model, the DRS-8, and this is the DRS-8 II. The reason for that is

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because the Canadian laws only allow a certain voltage, so they put transformers inside the

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speaker. Whereas this one goes straight to high voltage? Straight to high voltage. Okay.

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It's not going to kill you. It's very little voltage. It's just speaker line voltage. Freedom.

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Okay, I'm ready. Go for it.

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It's not loud. It doesn't have to be. Whales are not loud, but you can hear them from one ocean to the

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other. The clarity is surprisingly good. I mean, I don't know what I was expecting, but

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not for it to be pretty decent. No, that doesn't sound decent. You take that. That sounds horrible.

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I mean, it's decent enough. It's like a kind of coke. My expectations were extremely low. For

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context, the solution that these are replacing was literally a coach grabbing their keys when the

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underwater speaker doesn't work and just wrapping them against the side of the pool. So I thought

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the bar was extremely low. The part I don't get, though, is those seem pretty bulletproof. So why

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did the systems fail so often? Well, that's only part of the equation. Those I've had for 14 years,

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and I've never seen one fail. Right. But you need to power them. So you need an amplifier,

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you need a preamp, they have microphones, they have, you need a source of sound. You need an

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enclosure. You need an enclosure. The enclosure is the magic of it, because it keeps everything

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from getting corroded with the pool air. Got it. And that is the special sauce that you've created.

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That's correct. And you provide these to, who, I mean, is the market for synchronized swimming

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speakers pretty big or small or medium? It's big. There's tons of clubs. And so the coach can not

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only play music, but can also use this to communicate to the swimmers under the water.

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That's correct. So cool. I cannot wait to try it. Let's go do it.

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The rope is so it stays at about three feet underwater.

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And then you just plug in your sound source, turn it on, and away you go.

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To get started, I'm going to need a few things. First, a pool. Check. Second, an

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ocean ear speaker with accompanying transformer. Check. Third, a Renzo to act as DJ for us.

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Big check there. And there's one more thing I'm forgetting. Ah, yes. A way to bring you guys

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along with us for the journey. This is the Soundfish 2 Mark II from Ambient Recording,

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and it's a hydrophone. Yes. It's not the most expensive one we could have gotten, but it's

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decent. Yeah, it's supposed to be a pretty good one. Okay. This is a big moment. I have not heard

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this yet. Okay. Hit it, Renzo. Okay. Above water. It sounds like it did in the shop. A little tinny.

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Okay. That's pretty cool. Obviously, it's not going to be competitive with a high fidelity

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speaker setup up here on the surface, but like, dude, you can hear it too, right? Yep. It's not

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very good. Like that was very listen toable. Of course, just because I can hear it when I'm

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stationary doesn't mean that it's actually going to be that great. Like I kind of do a quick

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lap swim before we compare it to something else. Because one of my big concerns is that

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at least one ear is going to be constantly coming out of the water when you come up to breathe,

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right?

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Okay. Couple things right out of the gate. First up, even though I knew this was supposed to

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happen, I was surprised at how consistent the volume was throughout the pool, no matter how far

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away I got from the speaker. The parts I didn't expect though were when I got to the other side,

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it kind of started to sound like it was coming from a different origin, like it was coming out of

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that corner of the pool. Then finally, I was really impressed at how quickly, once my ear is submerged,

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it just sounded like it's supposed to sound underwater. I thought that like having a little

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air bubble in my ear or something would make it sound really different, but it doesn't. It's still

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not the most high-fi thing I've ever heard in my life, but very usable. You can actually see

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how little it's moving. Like on a normal speaker, you know, you would see the water like

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freaking moving around like this, but look, it's barely moving at all. I noticed that even though,

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you know, low frequencies travel best in water, I'm really not getting that much bass out of it.

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What's the deal with that? Yeah, it's just the nature of the transducer. It's not designed to

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produce really low frequencies. There is a brand of speakers that supposedly does that,

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but I've never tried them. All right, crank it, Renzo. Dude, that's so weird. That sounds like it's

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coming from like over there somewhere. Okay, okay, let's see what happens when we go under.

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That is really cool, but it isn't the only solution. And this is one of the most popular

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bone conduction headphones. These are the shock's open swim pros. I have to confess,

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I have never actually tried bone conduction swimming headphones. It's very much a personal

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preference thing. I do not like them. Oh, these are already on. Yeah. And you can feel them vibrate.

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It's weird. But you can't hear them basically at all. No. Like here, check this out.

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When I put them on my ears. Whoa. Okay, that's pretty cool too. If you haven't heard of bone

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conduction headphones before, basically how they work is instead of vibrating your eardrums,

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it vibrates the bone in your face, which then vibrates your cochlea directly, bypassing most of

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your ear. Cool. On ear controls for power and volume. And I guess they just have an mp3 player

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built into them because otherwise how do they pair to something outside of the water? These ones,

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that's the big upgrade of this year is they can compare to your phone via Bluetooth, but they

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also have storage inside. So you can upload music to them directly and control it that way.

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The downside is you can't control that music via the app. You have to plug it into a computer.

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Okay. I mean, it's fine. So iPod grade technology. All right, let's go first one.

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Already I can tell that your experience with these is going to be heavily dependent on how

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well they fit you because depending on exactly where I get the vibrating pieces,

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they sound either kind of okay or like absolute hot garbage.

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I'm also surprised at how more different these sound above and below the water compared to

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the underwater speakers. I would have assumed above and below would be the same because it's

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right against your bone. As soon as I go underwater, here, try them. They sound like hyper bassy.

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Huh. Nice. Trick shot. We interrupt this fun video to show off the big Hexie beach towel from

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lttstore.com. It's big. It's orange. It's a best of gone. Get yours today.

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I already think they're too bassy as is. Below the water is really bad. You can EQ it probably.

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Maybe a little and to be clear, they're fine for listening to music and honestly,

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not really much worse than the ocean ears. No. It's just the inconsistency and obviously,

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for an application like synchronized swimming, this is useless because how would you get everyone

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perfectly in sync? You have to be all listening to the same source. This isn't our only solution,

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though, right? No, there's lots of other bone connection headphones, but maybe that's this

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kind of thing we should do in a roundup. Yeah, let us know if you want to see that in the future.

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Leave a comment down below. Yeah, with the headphones you'd want us to cover. But we do have one more thing to try today. And it's the worst one.

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Oh no. Actually, wait, there's one more thing I want to try. Do we have the underwater mic?

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I want to see if it can hear these. Okay, okay. Here it is above water.

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Can you hear it? I can hear it a tiny bit. Not much. Okay, okay. That's it. I was just curious.

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That bit at the beginning was only kind of a joke. We have the Monster S620,

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which is an IPX8 rated speakers, which means it's actually submersible up to a certain degree.

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And it's a pretty okay Bluetooth speaker. Let's see how it does underwater.

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Geez. Oh, well, this is terrific. It's all the downsides of absolutely everything we've

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tried so far. Bluetooth connectivity issues whenever it's underwater.

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And ask garbage sound quality to be clear. Monster never claimed that this was an

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appropriate solution for listening to music underwater. They're just saying that this speaker

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won't die if you accidentally drop it in the pool and it goes underwater. In fact,

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they even designed it to make sure that it doesn't go too far into the water by making it float. So

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good job, Monster, I guess. Just not a solution to the problem we're trying to solve today.

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You know what is a solution to our problem today, though? Our sponsor. If you guys enjoyed

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this video, we're going to have Renzo and Jeanette sites linked down below. You guys can go check

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them out. It was extremely gracious of them to show us around their shop and lend us these

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incredible products to try out. If you guys can think of any other esoteric technologies, by the

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way, that, you know, we wouldn't normally think to cover, leave a comment down below. And if you

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guys enjoyed this video, why not check out the one where we built a home theater in my pool? Kind

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of worked.