Speaker Design — The Cooks and the Wizards

Some speaker designers approach their creations based purely on self-acquired knowledge and research, deliberately trying to distance themselves from existing trends and debates. Others, base their work on team efforts, industry partnerships, and sometimes market-oriented options. These are the people who I’ve started to categorize as the Wizards and the Cooks.

I promised to come back to Apple’s announcement of Beats1 Worldwide Radio as part of its Apple Music service. From one perspective, it is a great promotional idea—not much different from those great video ads Apple puts out. It will certainly stimulate awareness for traditional radio and Apple can afford to spend the money. So, no harm done. But that’s it.

"Bring your own music or we’ll have to play Norah Jones”: That’s exactly how I felt this week while watching that “one more thing” moment during Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2015 keynote presentation in San Francisco, CA, probably one of the most anxiously awaited moments for the music industry and certainly for every audio enthusiast.

Some audio manufacturers seem to be following the same familiar paradigm regarding file distribution and streaming audio as they have previously done with physical media formats. The problem is, in areas such as media players, servers, DACs and the like, the audio industry no longer dictates the rules.

Working in conjunction with the cross–platform PonoMusic World application, PonoRevealer enables real–time playback comparison of lossy and lossless versions transcoded from the same HRA parent. As I’ve said before; if you can’t hear a difference, it only means you are not able to hear a difference, your ancillary playback gear is subpar, or you’re refusing to admit that which you cannot explain.

Worldwide shipments of headphones keep on growing year after year and are already one of the top consumer electronics categories. The problem is, with all the excitement, it seems that many companies are not actually doing proper marketing research. Both in mass-market oriented designs and those models targeting high-end users the market is also being flooded with “me too” products.

During his review of the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest 2014, our colleague and audioXpress contributor Oliver A. Masciarotte wrote an amusing sentence: “Many engineers would debate the fact, but consumer electronics (CE) wags the tail of the pro audio dog.” I have often debated this... Exactly whose tail is moving which dog?

Why did Apple destroy the iTunes interface by removing Cover Flow? What makes Spotify successful? Why did Beyoncé's husband bought TIDAL? Why did record stores closed? Why did some folks decide they had enough and went back to vinyl? Will High-Resolution Audio (HRA) make a difference?

As you may have noticed, the ephemeral and ill-defined concept of "resolution" has been on my mind of late. Many consumers and yes, even some audio professionals, conflate bit depth with resolution. In a broad sense, this is understandable but it's sample rate that overshadows word length.

The marketing breakthrough for a new technology is not just about successfully launching another disruptive product. In audio, or any other industry, innovation needs to be supported with clear go-to-market strategies. Sometimes unexpected engineering issues don't work in tandem with the marketing plan after the big product reveal - but really bad is to lose the momentum after all the awards and positive press.