Scan any production studio, and you’re likely to find three important letters: JBL. Peek up at any concert hall in the world, and you’re likely to find one of Harman’s brands. And, if you find yourself seated in a new Lincoln motorcar, you may be treated to a Revel sound system.
Harman‘s name looms large in the world of audio, and we were treated to a rare, behind-the-scenes look at the research that occurs when building the world’s most sonically accurate (and neutral) speakers, headphones, and professional reference systems.
From AKG Acoustics to AMX to Crown Audio to Harman/Kardon to Infinity, Harman has built up quite the portfolio of noise makers. Their product line spans the entire gamut, from in-car to home theater to recording studios. To keep pace with the flurry of advancements – not to mention the way music is captured, mastered, and distributed – the company employs some 12,000 folks in R&D alone. A healthy chunk of that braintrust works out of its Northridge, Calif. headquarters, which is where we spent time seeing (and more importantly, hearing) some of the magic that you end up touching at home, on the road, and at that Coldplay show you’re seeing next week.
The science of sound
Sean Olive, Acoustic Research Fellow at Harman, was our lead throughout the tour. This guy knows more about the science behind sound than most of us would ever care to understand, but he’s a vital part of the culture. Prior to his arrival in 1993, for example, the company refused to devote time and resources to advanced user testing. Sales and marketing folks simply gave a thumbs-up to whatever they felt sounded best, and then fate took over.
Turns out, however, that the untrained ear isn’t ideal for directing a multi-billion dollar operation. In fact, testing that has occurred since found that trained listeners – folks who understand timbre, distortion, and roll-off – are nearly four times more likely to select a more sonically neutral speaker in a blind test than your average Joe/Jane in marketing.
Olive made no bones about the fact that human testing is both costly and time consuming. It’s expensive to find trained ears to listen to multiple products. It takes a long time to A/B test a product until it’s just right. Harman sees its mixture of data and human inclination as one of its key competitive advantages.
Olive’s own work has led to a patent for predicting which loudspeaker is preferable, with machines alone able to do so 86 percent of the time. We asked why Harman would invest the money to even poll humans with a solution that accurate, and Olive’s reply was simple: “We need to cover that other 14 percent.”
The takeaway? Even in a world dominated by advanced robotics, and even in a company that can predict sonic accuracy nearly 9 times out of 10, its obsession with perfection precludes it from removing the human element.
We aren’t so different, after all…
Olive pointed to a 2010 study from Stanford that essentially concluded that up-and-comers actually enjoyed low-bitrate MP3s more than CDs. “That study,” he said, “generated a lot of questions on whether or not musical preferences were changing in a big way.” Curiously, said study was never made public, so it limited Olive on how deep he could dig, but it inspired him to launch a study of his own across America, Canada, and Asia with both trained and untrained listeners.
One of the goals was to see if millennials genuinely preferred crappier audio. In his testing, he found that most people gravitated to quality when exposed to more than just a compressed MP3. In fact, he noted that one of the biggest surprises in his work thus far is that “most people generally agree on good sound – on what sounds natural and right.” He likens the phenomenon to tasting good wine. Generally, across a broad enough sample size, people will gravitate towards quality wine and rate lower-quality wine as less than ideal.
That’s not to say there aren’t quirks, however. He mentioned one automotive manufacturer that was certain Japanese vehicles should have their in-car systems tuned to emit less prominent bass. In testing, however, he found that Japanese citizens had no ill-will toward the lows-lows; rather, many in Japan opted against adding subwoofers in their homes due to the insanely high population density. They just didn’t want to disturb the neighbors. That’s a highly specific social norm that didn’t actually translate to their expectations in the vehicle, where they felt fully free to thump without annoying anyone nearby.
Going back to the millennial study, he found that the group did indeed prefer lossless, uncompressed audio over MP3s, but left to their own devices, would boost the bass and treble levels higher than natural. When polling older generations, they tend to lower bass levels and overcompensate on treble to account for natural hearing loss.
The circle of confusion
Given the near-endless amount of variables in play when formulating a response to “Does this sound good?,” one has to wonder how engineers at a place like Harman have any hair left. In our tour, it became clear that the company was incredibly comfortable using science and data as the bedrock of the decision-making process. It also leans heavily on the mantra that neutrality trumps everything.
Beats, as an example, has sold a truly staggering amount of product with a sonic curve that most audiophiles and engineers would say is suboptimal. In testing, however, Harman has found that benchmark audio curves that are more neutral and natural are preferred in blind testing. Point is, Beats is a marketing machine, and people are inclined to think highly of something that is well-promoted, expensive, well-designed, and celebrity-endorsed. To boot, most Beats owners don’t have 40 other audio products to compare, so you adapt to whatever it is you have.
One interesting factoid about Harman is that it makes public much of its research. The company is quite proud of its efforts to elevate the audio industry as a whole, going so far as to point out that the Beats Solo 2 has a far more natural soundstage than the original Solo. So, yeah, rival companies are using Harman’s data to improve their own gear, but one can surmise that a rising tide lifts all boats.
The next frontier
The world of sound is ever evolving, and Harman knows it. Most recently, it’s expanding into the car, which is arguably the next major technology battleground. It just scooped up Bang & Olufsen’s automotive division, and it has a ten-year exclusive partnership with Lincoln whereby it works hand-in-hand with the automaker’s designers to create the ideal sonic solution inside of the cabin.
It also knows that we’re all individuals, and preferences will vary wildly from person to person. Rather than creating lines of product for certain genres, it has settled on a more sensible solution: build the most neutral, accurate speakers on the planet. Ideally, we’ll be smart enough to realize that hearing what the mixer and producer intended is actually the best way to enjoy musical art. But, even if we want to boost one frequency while quieting another, at least we’re starting from a place that’s free from preemptive tweaking.
Source: techradar.com