As noted in the most recent Noise Floor podcast, Sean Olive recently announced his retirement from Harman on both Bluesky and X. Fellow Harman researcher Todd Welti is also apparently leaving (or has left), according to some of Sean’s posts (I don’t have independent confirmation on this though).
Here is the official Harman announcement…
This comes at the same time as the release of their new book with Dr. Floyd Toole, the 4th Edition of Sound Reproduction: The Acoustics and Psychoacoustics of Loudspeakers, Rooms and Headphones.
Harman is also supposed to be getting the rights to several other noteworthy audio brands to add to its existing portfolio (which currently includes JBL, Harman Kardon, AKG, Revel, Infinity, and Mark Levinson, among others) via its acquisition of Sound United from Masimo Corp. As part of the new deal, Harman should pick up the Denon, B&W, Marantz, and possibly some other labels.
End of an era. There’s still so many questions to be answered. Do we know if anyone’s continuing his work? Glad I was able to meet him at CanJam NYC this year at the very least.
It’s hard to overestimate the impact that Olive, Welti, and Toole have had on the field of audio. They conducted some of the most important recent work in the industry. And the surprising part is they were also willing to share most of it through their articles, seminars, interviews, books, and white papers.
The impact they’ve had is really inestimable, and will be resonating with us for a long time to come, I suspect. (Sorry couldn’t resist a little audio science humor there.)
Some new videos with Dr. Olive. The first is from a recent Harman podcast, and it covers many of the highlights of Dr. Olive’s career and work at Harman.
This next one was for a society of Spanish acousticians, so it starts out in Spanish. Most of the video is in English though. This is on the Harman headphone research. (There is also a Spanish language version of the video here btw.)
More recent videos with the Doc from Soundstage Solo.
