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  1. tonmeister2008

    Perception and Measurement of Headphone Sound Quality

    Orb There were some even greater left/right channel imbalances (see HP6) that listeners didn't specifically point out. In these comparative listening tests, listeners compared four headphones per trial and completed 6 trials per session. So they were re-seating the same headphones several times...
  2. tonmeister2008

    Perception and Measurement of Headphone Sound Quality

    Thanks Tom. The headphone market is huge and growing, so headphone listening is not going away.
  3. tonmeister2008

    Perception and Measurement of Headphone Sound Quality

    If you are listening to binaural recordings through headphones they are even superior to stereo imaging through loudspeakers, especially with head-tracking. Stereo is so spatially deprived.
  4. tonmeister2008

    Perception and Measurement of Headphone Sound Quality

    We are planning on testing more headphones and younger listeners to determine whether kids are buying boomy headphones for reasons other than sound quality. We recently ran 71 Japanese college students through a test where they compared a popular boomy headphone (HP5) versus a relatively...
  5. tonmeister2008

    Harman's How to Listen Software is Now Available For Download

    The link works for me as well (and I control the site)... stay tuned. Some good news: We are discussing moving this listener training application to our corporate web site with links to brands, and update the software and provide better support for users. It seems that there is enough...
  6. tonmeister2008

    Some More Evidence that Kids (American and Japanese) Prefer Good Sound

    Yes, she is very satisfied with her Bose, and doesn't want anyone touching or replacing it. It has all the pace and rhythm she needs, and it's easy to use. We've hired some senior Bose marketing people in the past year, so hopefully we can learn from their insights.
  7. tonmeister2008

    Some More Evidence that Kids (American and Japanese) Prefer Good Sound

    Funny you mention that radio. My current girlfriend has one in her bedroom, and it has become the source of many jokes and derision. I almost bought her a HK replacement for Christmas. Luckily, so far only the radio seems to suffer from performance anxiety :) Years ago, Harman developed a Bose...
  8. tonmeister2008

    Some More Evidence that Kids (American and Japanese) Prefer Good Sound

    I met him for the first time 3 weeks ago when he visited Harman. He seemed nice enough but I had nothing to do with who was invited, etc as the event was organized by our sales team. I've not done any serious controlled listening comparisons between CD vs High Res formats. But I tend to...
  9. tonmeister2008

    Some More Evidence that Kids (American and Japanese) Prefer Good Sound

    Speaking of High Res audio, on the weekend I downloaded some free high res samples here which are available as 24-bit 96/192k Flac files, as well as on Blu-ray. They sound pretty good at home on my current modest audio system. But a big part of the sound quality is the recording engineers'...
  10. tonmeister2008

    Some More Evidence that Kids (American and Japanese) Prefer Good Sound

    Yes, a bit grumpy as he is trying to use the research to advocate to record executives to support high res Blue-ray music. I agree that it would be a challenge to design a listening test to show people prefer high res over CD-quality. To my knowledge, no one has done this yet.
  11. tonmeister2008

    Some More Evidence that Kids (American and Japanese) Prefer Good Sound

    My results correlate very well with the research done by Toole et al at the National Research Council in Canada before we joined Harman. Many loudspeaker companies have read this research (it's published in the J.AES) and some have incorporated it into loudspeaker engineering guidelines. The...
  12. tonmeister2008

    Some More Evidence that Kids (American and Japanese) Prefer Good Sound

    There's been some reporting of this paper in the press by CEA and HomeTheaterReview.com today by Jerry Del Colliano who believes I should prove that High Res is preferred to CD. I'm not sure why that responsibility falls on my shoulders. Let' assume that one could prove this: would it matter to...
  13. tonmeister2008

    Esoteric Beethoven SACD set

    At Christmas, I bought myself this recent set from Riccardo Chaiily based on the glowing reviews. The tempos are brisk but the performances are inspiring. Current price is $42 on Amazon.
  14. tonmeister2008

    Best 10 min workout to boost energy?

    Only 35 calories? It's much more than that if you include all the house chores you have to do before she agrees :)
  15. tonmeister2008

    Any cyclists here?

    Nice bikes!! I'm a cyclist and have a Trek 5.5 Madone (carbon fibre frame) This picture is more about the background scenery (Lake Sherwood in Westlake Village,CA) but my bike is in the foreground.
  16. tonmeister2008

    How 'bout those Kings!

    I'm here! I'll be cheering for the Kings even though I'm a Montreal Canadien fan like Northstar. Last time the Kings were in the finals was against the Canadiens in 1993, the year I moved from Ottawa to LA. Let's hope they do better this time!
  17. tonmeister2008

    Airplay

    I just tried streaming some 24/96k music files from iTunes to my receiver which has AirPlay and confirmed that at the receiver it shows the files as being down-sampeld to 16/44.1kHz. Oh well, another example of convenience over quality, although I doubt I could detect the loss in quality.
  18. tonmeister2008

    Some More Evidence that Kids (American and Japanese) Prefer Good Sound

    All four speakers are subjected to the same software and hardware so any biases are constant. The music was not a statistical significant factor, and sufficiently neutral that the most accurate speakers were the highest rated, and the least accurate speakers were the lowest rated. The music...
  19. tonmeister2008

    Some More Evidence that Kids (American and Japanese) Prefer Good Sound

    But which end? :)
  20. tonmeister2008

    Some More Evidence that Kids (American and Japanese) Prefer Good Sound

    As recent as 2 years ago, Bose spent about 20x more money on advertising than any Harman brand. We have only recently begun spending money on advertising -- including TV spots -- Dr. Harman believed in word-of-mouth, and not a big believer in expensive advertising campaigns. There is finally...
  21. tonmeister2008

    Some More Evidence that Kids (American and Japanese) Prefer Good Sound

    Jack, I've explained before why we test single speakers versus pairs, and there is a section dedicated to this topic in Dr. Toole's book. In simple terms, listeners are most discriminating when listening to a single source. You add multiple sources and their discrimination is reduced. In stereo...
  22. tonmeister2008

    Some More Evidence that Kids (American and Japanese) Prefer Good Sound

    Yes, on the surface, I would agree with you that high preference ratings does not necessarily imply high fidelity, yet that is what the listening test results and objective measurements so far are telling us. Dr. Toole's loudspeaker research at the National Research Council up until late...
  23. tonmeister2008

    Some More Evidence that Kids (American and Japanese) Prefer Good Sound

    Come on now, do you really think that if you build products that are technically superior to their competitors they will naturally rule the marketplace? Don't you think that marketing, advertising, industrial design. distribution, and other factors unrelated to sound quality matter? What is...
  24. tonmeister2008

    Some More Evidence that Kids (American and Japanese) Prefer Good Sound

    I honestly don't know the break-down cost of the Infinity speaker but I could certainly find out. But the main issue here is that you have trouble accepting the untruth that there is a linear relationship between the cost of the speaker and its sound quality. To me that sounds like an...
  25. tonmeister2008

    Some More Evidence that Kids (American and Japanese) Prefer Good Sound

    The speakers were set up according to manufacturer's recommendations. I've read the manual. All speakers were subjected to the same source. If the source was bad why did the most accurate speaker receive the highest ratings, and the least accurate speaker receive the lowest ratings? There was no...
  26. tonmeister2008

    Some More Evidence that Kids (American and Japanese) Prefer Good Sound

    To be honest, the Harman listening results are from an earlier benchmarking test, and were not originally intended as part of these Generation Y listening tests. But I added the results here show that there is a correlation between preferences of trained vs. untrained listeners. The agreement...
  27. tonmeister2008

    Some More Evidence that Kids (American and Japanese) Prefer Good Sound

    I've left them out for the sake of visual clarity given how many data sets are plotted on one graph.
  28. tonmeister2008

    Some More Evidence that Kids (American and Japanese) Prefer Good Sound

    The speaker position was the same for all speaker tested. Off-axis response is a factor via the reflected sounds received by the listener, and for listeners sitting off-axis, the direct sound and the reflected sounds. The speakers were adjusted for equal loudness at the listening position. The...
  29. tonmeister2008

    Some More Evidence that Kids (American and Japanese) Prefer Good Sound

    That is true: speaker position was kept constant. For the Harman listeners, seat was also kept constant. For the groups of students, the listening seats were distributed around the speaker under test.
  30. tonmeister2008

    Some More Evidence that Kids (American and Japanese) Prefer Good Sound

    This is nonsense. Are you saying if speakers sound bad 30 degrees off-axis it's not fair to listen at that spot? What about listeners not sitting in the sweet spot? And to be fair, the speakers were tested with listeners sitting both on and off-axis. Also, in the case of the ML speaker, it...

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