In a world of limited budgets and even more limited time, we content-producer-types are always wondering, “Will they hear that?” After all, with the rise of streaming media and the personal mp3 player, it seems obvious that ordinary people just don’t care about sound.

Yeah, I’m biased, but I think there’s more to it than that.

First of all, high-resolution sound is gaining ground, too. Home theatres have brought super-hi-fi into many homes. SACD may never be a household acronym, but there’s more high-rez listening going on all the time. This isn’t a one-way slide into mediocrity. Even with low-fi systems, we can’t say that consumers wouldn’t like them to sound better. Portability and convenience will cover a multitude of sonic sins – but only if there are virtually no alternatives providing the same benefits. We should realize that an mp3 player is actually a sonic improvement from the previous carry-around format: the cassette player.

It’s true that humans will put up with a lot of trash in the channel if the content is compelling enough. We’ll watch grainy green streaks on grainy blackness if the newscaster says it’s live video of the beginning of a war that will involve our neighbors and families. We’ll listen through almost any amount of static to hear our loved one’s voice from far away. But the flipside of that observation is that the clearer and more pleasing the audio, the fewer demands the listener will place on the content. More of them will “stay with you,” regardless of what you’re saying, if you make listening effortless.

So all of that, I think, argues for getting the sound as good as we reasonably can.

In the business world, our messages are not going out to the potential customer in a vacuum. He or she is unconsciously comparing your message to hundreds of others. The classic example is the radio or TV commercial that was preceded by someone else’s commercial, and will be succeeded by yet another commercial. If your spot in the middle doesn’t sound as loud and clear and compelling as the ones around it, that’s a reflection on your brand. What sounds “acceptable” on your office playback system may fall a little flat in the competition of the marketplace. Especially considering the bang-for-the-buck that good audio delivers, it’s probably not wise to say, “Oh, they’ll never hear that.”

I’ll close with a very pithy quote from hi-fi pioneer Dr. Sidney Harman.

Then, as now, it was very clear that the way in which audiences perceived a picture was enormously influenced by the quality of audio. Provide seven or so identical pictures with incremental improvements in the audio and a voting audience would invariably declare one of them as “the best picture.” That one was, without exception, the picture with the most enhanced audio.

What customers can hear is a lot more than they consciously know, or can articulate.

Copyright 2011 Dan Popp