Executive sign-off and showroom loudness dominated pre-Harman product voicing

Evidence

In fact, a widespread practice in the industry has been that a senior executive would have to sign off on a new product, whether they were good listeners or not. Simply sounding “different” on a showroom floor was considered to be an advantage, and sounding louder was a real advantage given that few stores did equal-loudness comparisons. Some managers even had imagined insights into what the purchasing public would be listening for in the upcoming shopping season. In certain markets a prominent product reviewer might be invited to participate (sometimes paid) in a “voicing” session to ensure a good launch of a new product. The final product may or may not have incorporated the advice, and it is unlikely that the deception would ever be discovered. — Toole, Floyd E, Sound reproduction- the acoustics and…, 1051

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

• CANDY: Paid reviewers silently influencing product releases is a fun, gossipy industry tidbit

Related

• Audio industry product sign-offs relied on executive taste, not blind testing (similarity 0.84)
• Even expert engineers are biased by non-auditory factors in loudspeaker evaluation (similarity 0.81)
• The variety of loudspeaker sounds in the marketplace originates from uncontrolled subjective evaluations (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Unscientific voicing practices caused arbitrary variations in loudspeaker sound #expands (0.85) — Toole, Floyd E, Sound reproduction- the acoustics and…, 1052
• Professional and consumer loudspeakers historically prioritized opposite design goals #complicates (0.75) — Toole, Floyd E, Sound reproduction- the acoustics and…, 194
• Excess upper-frequency gain makes the Harman curve sound bright on binaural content #complicates (0.72) — Toole, Floyd E, Sound reproduction- the acoustics and…, 1864