Harman Science of Sound Demonstrations at Rocky Mountain Audio Fest 2011

October 14-16, I will be  giving Science of Sound presentations for the Harman Luxury Audio Group (room #8020)   at the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest (RMAF) in Denver, CO. My demonstration will be repeated every 1/2 hour on the hour and half-hour.

Drop by and find out more about the science behind Harman audio product development and testing including JBL and Revel loudspeakers. I will be demonstrating our latest release of the "How to Listen"  software used for training and selecting listeners for product research and testing. Find out how discriminating and reliable you are as a critical listener.

Attendees will be given 30% discount coupons towards a copy of Floyd Toole's book "Sound Reproduction" (Focal Press), a book that describes much of the current scientific knowledge and perception of  the sound quality of loudspeakers, listening rooms, and their acoustical interaction with each other.  I will be raffling off a few copies to the best performing listeners.

I hope to see you there!

A Video on How We Measure Loudspeaker Sound Quality at Harman International

Part of my job at Harman International involves participating in audio dealer training and press events. This involves a 1-2 day field trip to Harman's R&D labs in Northridge where the visitors experience first-hand the listener training process, and participate in a double-blind loudspeaker listening test. Visitors usually leave our labs with a heightened appreciation and respect for the scientific efforts behind the development and testing of new models of Revel, JBL, and Infinity loudspeakers.

A few years ago, Infinity commissioned a video known as "Infinity Academy", aimed at  encapsulating  the 1-2 day training event onto a DVD. Chapter 6, the "Final Test," discusses listener training and the double-blind listening test, where trained listeners evaluate the Harman prototype loudspeaker against its best competitors. The goal is to achieve "best-in-class" performance, attainable only until  the prototype receives a preference rating higher than its best competitor. In the event that the loudspeaker fails on its first attempt, the listeners' feedback is used to re-engineer the loudspeaker, after which, it is re-submitted for another listening test.

The picture to the right shows three loudspeakers on the automated speaker shuffler in the Multichannel Listening Lab. The shuffler brings each loudspeaker into the exact same position within 3 seconds, so that any loudspeaker positional biases are removed from the listening test.

Chapter 6 can be downloaded in  MPEG-4 (H.264, 41 MB) or MPEG  (84 MB) formats.  The entire 6 chapters of the DVD are available here.

Sound Science - Loudspeaker R&D at Harman

The American artist Andy Warhol once said that everyone will eventually have their 15 minutes of fame. The closest I came was being on the cover of Test & Measurement magazine in November 2004. OK, admittedly T&M is not exactly People Magazine, but  1 or 2 pocket protector-wearing test engineers may have noticed the cover while shopping for a new digital oscilloscope or multimeter.

The title of the article is "Sound Science: Musical tastes differ, but tests show that listeners respond with the consistency of spectrum analyzers to loudspeaker performance."

The article explains the science behind loudspeaker R&D at Harman International and is written in a very approachable style for the audio layperson. You can read it here.