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Apple’s “secret audio lab”!
- Thread starter RobL
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What's not to love, reliable, compact, and reasonably accurate.
paulcc
Member
Maybe Apple will buy Genalec?
Please god no.
Yeah, Samsung bought Harman... look how well that worked out.
And, Harman bought Roon...
Keith_W
Major Contributor
I was told (by a friend who shall remain anonymous, who knows a retired senior engineer at Harman) that Samsung was interested in Harman's car audio business, not their other businesses. Apparently Harman was given assurances that their other products would remain untouched, and that Samsung would not gut Harman out. I have to admit I don't know what Samsung have done to Harman - has it not worked so well?
To be fair to Samsung, I don't know to what extent the slipping in customer service and corner cutting in Harman's products and designs of the last decade are coming from Samsung or from the US based C-suite. And yes, it is widely known that car audio is the cash cow at Harman.
Info is obviously dated. Valid at the time when Samsung bought Harman. It is a lot more than car audio.
... populated by Beats? Don't forget that was Apple's audio reference as of 2014.
paulcc
Member
Yes, that is a scary thought.
What’s generally interesting is that I see a lot of Genelec in these kinds of research or multichannel applications and rarely see Neumann or even Meyer Sound. I suspect in nearfield, the coaxial design is good.
Possibly... could also be rather random too. At SF MOMA they have Meyer in most rooms when they have an audio feature and then they have Genelec in others. There was no obvious reason for either choice in most of their applications though the use of MM-4XPD in certain particularly live rooms made sense.
beeface
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If 75% is/was infomatics, and we were to assume a decent chunk of the remainder is consumer-level JBL, car audio licensing, etc., I wonder what percentage would be left to brands like Revel and Mark Levinson?
Now I'm trying to imagine what fraction of a percent of Samsung's revenue would belong to a brand like Revel's hi-fi sales. There's gotta be a few zeros after the decimal point.
I don't think SF MOMA is in any way consistent in audio quality, nor do the room setups in my humble opinion support that. While I always enjoy the exhibits, I always thought their focus on audio experiences kinda hohum.
Alice of Old Vincennes
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Esteemed brand to a small world. Samsung will keep and continue to support. Revenue is a rounding error. Sophisticated customer is not.
Keith_W
Major Contributor
Apple's lab makes you wonder what kind of research is going on. They have the budget to make Dr. Toole's lab at Harman look like a backyard operation by comparison. The more I delve into Toole's book, the more I realise that the science is not settled in many respects. An example is his chapter on reflections - ample data on side reflections, and woeful evidence on front/rear/vertical reflections. This is not a criticism of Toole, it is a criticism of the evidence that was available when he wrote the book. The studies he references are very few, the number of participants very small, and it looks as if the authors who published those studies were limited in budget.
That array of Genelecs in a spherical pattern in an anechoic chamber could easily be reconfigured to study the effect of these reflections! Sadly, Apple are secretive and they don't publish their findings in the AES for the benefit of the rest of us. Or do they?
That array of Genelecs in a spherical pattern in an anechoic chamber could easily be reconfigured to study the effect of these reflections! Sadly, Apple are secretive and they don't publish their findings in the AES for the benefit of the rest of us. Or do they?
I repeat my comment about Beats and Apple... simply caring about mass preference rather than fidelity.
California Academy of Sciences is nearly all Meyer Sound, although I did see one with JBL.
Meyer Sound definitely has a level of reliability and *serviceability* that is pretty incredible in my opinion. My new gear have been bulletproof, but I have bought random used ones that needed service and it’s easy to get replacement parts, etc.
I can see how it’s not a luxury Devialet experience “we send you a box and will it ship it to France for inspection.” Instead, it’s a “pretty sure it is ____. Can you measure the resistance across these three pins on the Phoenix connector?” You really work with people who know what they are doing.
And the economies of scale to deliver a product to the consumers that is unlike any other.
Exactly. Apple studies require you to sign a NDA.
Research and Development - Spatial Audio Technology - Yamaha Corporation
During its long history, Yamaha has accumulated original technologies in the field of acoustic musical instruments based on its seasoned production skills and sensitivities about sound creation that have been passed down from generation to generation.
www.yamaha.com
Yamaha has been doing this kind of stuff for years. But the pro division isn’t the same division as hi-fi.
Agreed... I wasn't referencing them as an example of excellent deployment, but rather as an example of how large organizations may or may not place as much thought into these selections as we would if we were asked to make the choice. Meaning the choice of Genetic over Neumann, or anyone else may be more random that we would think.
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