Podcast

Posted on

[Podcast] Audeze CEO Sankar Thiagasamudram

Sankar Thiagasamudram is the co-founder and CEO of Audeze, a maker of high-quality headphones, which are all the rage with audiophiles and music professionals. Sankar, who started his life working for a high-end 3D graphics company, is an engineer by training and audiophile in real life. He co-founded the company with Alexander Rosson. They were pioneers in putting (a proprietary) planar magnetic designs with extremely thin-film driver materials and powerful custom magnets inside their headphones. I experienced the Audeze magic when I got EL-8 as a gift from a friend.

I recently caught up with Sankar to talk about their new gaming headphone, Mobius, and more importantly about Apple’s HomePod, computational audio, the headphone boom and how head-fi changing our expectations of music. He shared his tips on how to buy headphones, his thoughts on other headphone brands including fashion/luxury headphones such as Master & Dynamic.

You can listen to the podcast on Soundcloud or download it from the iTunes.

Posted on

The OmShow Podcast: A conversation w/Chris Michel, Entrepreneur & Photographer

Chris Michel, the founder of Military.com and Affinity Labs, is a well-known entrepreneur and investor. He is also an accomplished photographer and someone whom I call my photography guru. He is one of the quiet success stories in Silicon Valley, and his journey is chock-a-block of lessons. Michel sits on the boards of Dale Carnegie, Catchlight, Kixeye, and 3D Robotics.

His photos have appeared in the National Geographic, the Smithsonian, the New York Times, the BBC, Outside Magazine and others. His “Flying Emperor” photograph was the 2nd place finisher in the 2014 Wikipedia Picture of the Year. We share a love for Leica and its beautiful lenses and often go out to make photos. 

After months of arm-twisting, I finally convinced Chris to sit down and tell me his story — his journey in life, his time in the U.S. Navy, his move to Silicon Valley and why he loves photography. We dig deeper into the meaning of life, accomplishment and how to reframe ourselves in a world that is framed by false proxies of success — money and fame.

There is so much I learned about him during this conversation, even though we meet for coffee every two weeks. I was moved to tears, and so inspired by our tête-à-tête. Have a listen –you will be glad you did.

March 2nd, 2018, San Francisco

You can subscriber to my occasional podcast on iTunes or listen to the show on the SoundCloud.

Posted on

The OmShow Podcast Dropbox like its hot

In the new podcast, Chris and I talk about Dropbox, its amazing story and its challenges ahead as a public company. The company filed for an IPO recently. We discuss how not all storage is equal, and the best way to extract premium dollars from a storage operation is to combine it with more useful applications. Dropbox, so far, hasn’t succeeded in its ability to get its 500+ million registered users to buy into its app attempts so far.

Some previous posts that I refer to in this podcast:

Posted on

What’s (really) wrong with Facebook

Chris Albrecht (a former colleague) and I had a conversation about Facebook, why both of us were off the service and what is wrong with Facebook and its corporate moral compass. And then it got caught in a media kerfuffle, thanks to one of its advertising executives made light of Facebook’s role in the ongoing investigation of the Russian interference in the US elections.

You can listen to this on the SoundCloud or subscribe on iTunes.