> We are happy to offer a free beta version of this software to audio enthusiasts in the hope that they will use it to improve their critical listening skills and appreciation for high quality sound reproduction.
I'm sure encouraging audio enthusiasts to improve their critical listening skills is in Harman's interest, but from the perspective of a consumer that's currently happy with lower-cost products, I would say ignorance is bliss...
Also interesting that this software was apparently only published once in 2011 as a beta with version number 2.04, and then never received an update, or even another blog post.
Harman is one of the good guys in this regard. The research that they have funded has, e.g., resulted in a better method for subwoofer placement [1]. Considering the amount of woo-woo in especially 'high-end' audio, their approach is very refreshing.
> I'm sure encouraging audio enthusiasts to improve their critical listening skills is in Harman's interest [...]
I wonder if Harmon are so confident in their own products' superiority that they assume that a more educated audience will lead to a proportional increase in sales. Or perhaps they view education as important in its own right. (Given your point about this being the only publication of the software, perhaps neither!)
Turning ordinary consumers into audiophiles is a “market-opening” move. Effective luxury audio brands sell you on the solution, but the most effective sell you on the problem as well.
This is approximately the same time that Harman were re-launching the Lexicon brand stuff as "home theater" equipment rather than studio equipment, so they had every incentive to drive consumers towards "pro" gear (at an enormous markup).
no, its not that well planned. its basically just that harman happens to employ a small team of actual researchers who are largely left to their own devices as a legacy thing from the old days when it was a founder-owned company
When mp3 encoding was a new thing, I downloaded an AB tester to see what settings I needed to use. I blind compared compressed music of my own choice using the headphone that I would be using it on.
It turned out that a bitrate of 112 Kbps was completely transparent for me. In the meantime there were forum wars on whether or not 320 was sufficient or not.
The experience humbled me. I cannot hear anything near as much as the pros (apparently) can.
I did a similar experiment on myself. For songs I knew very well on good headphones, I could reliably distinguish up to 320 kbps on MP3 and 256 kbps AAC from the lossless copy. For songs I didn’t know as well, 128 kbps AAC was usually transparent.
My takeaway from the experience was that the bitrate didn’t really matter above 128 Kbps AAC. This was me paying super close attention and trying to find flaws in the encoding, not actually listening to music. I periodically rerun the test in myself as I get better equipment (laptop DACs are quite good now, for example) and get similar results. Age will be a limiting factor soon as it takes my hearing.
I've typically been on the side of aiming for accuracy in sound reproduction, but lately I've been thinking more about how the listener-as-musician generates a unique musical experience through equipment selection, equalization, etc. Essentially we are all musicians acting as DJs and audio engineers to alter the specific experience of every listening session to suit our tastes. I'm sure that listening to a reference system is delightful, but I think there is an inherent artistic value in low fidelity playbacks of the original recording as well.
Deep Listening practices by Pauline Oliveros are nice to pair with this. She takes a more mindfulness approach to listening with sound meditation exercises to train your listening skills not just through hearing with your ear, but actually using your mind to listen and notice the environment in all its complexity and subtly.
She would have people listening music in resonant chambers like caves. This would of course greatly affect sound and perception. What does this have to do with training human to recognize sound distortions?
The Harman targets are averages, and useful reference points. If you know that you want a q 2.0 -4.5dB at 3KHz, you can start by adjusting any system to the Harman target curve and then applying your own preference -- and this will be much easier than developing your own complete target curve.
I'm sure encouraging audio enthusiasts to improve their critical listening skills is in Harman's interest, but from the perspective of a consumer that's currently happy with lower-cost products, I would say ignorance is bliss...
Also interesting that this software was apparently only published once in 2011 as a beta with version number 2.04, and then never received an update, or even another blog post.