“Apple has reportedly hired Tomlinson Holman as its new audio chief, according to a tweet by Leo Laporte Wednesday morning,” Darrell Etherington reports for GigaOM.
“Laporte said he had it ‘on good authority’ that Holman ‘is joining Apple to run audio,'” Etherington reports. “Holman is the brain behind Lucasfilm’s THX sound, and the world’s first 10.2 surround sound system.”
Etherington reports, “Holman is currently a film sound professor at the University of Southern California, and he has received an Academy Award for Technical Achievement. He spent 15 years as the corporate technical director for Lucasfilm, and all of the company’s THX patents stem from his work and research. Holman also has experience designing loudspeakers and amplifiers in addition to his work in the film industry.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: iPod Hi-Fi 2.
MDN Take: Nope. wrong.
Think not only a revamp of audio in all of Apple devices, but a new home entertainment system tied in with Apple TV and the Cloud.
I’m not saying they will but, if Apple ever decided to strike into home theater market they could decimate another industry clearly asleep at the wheel.
I recently bought a fancy and expensive Pioneer Elite receiver. It’s technical specs and features are quite sophisticated. But from a user experience it was a total disappointment! The initial setup took almost a week before I got everything preset the way I wanted it. In the end I became enraged by the utter stupidity of a product that was clearly conceived by engineers that had not for a minute considered the end user experience. I felt like it was design by tech head fro the mid eighties. What I got:
A poorly written and poorly illustrated 100+ page manual
An unfathomable remote control with over 50 buttons (Man, you know there’s a thing called software – ever heard of it?)
An ergonomically brain dead rear wiring panel
A feature set that required extensive preprogramming to get the various components and speakers to function
The rear panel was very difficult to route because the wiring connecting screws are so close together you can’t even get your fingers in between them to tighten them down properly (every audio component makes does this and it’s just stupid). What makes it even more difficult is that you typically want to route all your wires in a book case or rack that has narrow places to route the wires.
I eventually got the receiver to work exactly as I wanted it all by myself (I had to pat myself on the back). But the experience left me so pissed off that I may never buy a system like that again. I’m not just dissing Pioneer. Every audio component manufacturer copies what the others do like blind sheep. Every single one of these turkeys deserve to be put out of business.
One other thing. Because these manufacturers don’t understand software they continue to design 50 different receiver versions instead of one, which reduces their ability to buy components in quantity and makes the product more expensive. Apple, on the other hand, would design just one version. And Apple’s design would just work right out of the box.
Apple, go for it!
Sounds good to me!
Audio Genius? Hardly. Tom Holman is a marketing hack, and not an engineer, the cinema equivalent of Amar Bose. THX was a bad joke on the movie business, and you’ll note has mostly disappeared. They should take Holman’s Oscar away. Most of Holman’s ideas are long since discredited – read Dr. Floyd Toole’s book surround sound where he guts Holman like a fish. If Apple has been swindled into thinking Tom Holman’s vision is important, they need to take their beer goggles off.
Wow.
Holman is an audio carney-barker, a blowhard self-promoter in an industry of big egos. I have difficulty imagining what kind of “science” this grossly unscientific marketer can bring to Apple. Most engineering at Apple toils in anonymity, for good reason. Holman’s bio says he’s responsible for Audessy, another so-called audio advance that most acousticians agree doesn’t work.
I haven’t read the book to which you refer, but I took the THX training seminar from Mr. Holman in 1991. He made no claims about personally inventing the various components of the THX certification program, but he led us to an understanding of motion picture audio recording and reproduction processes that made total sense then, and still does, now. Of all the presentations I’ve attended in 40 years in the audio / video business, that one was–by far–the most worthwhile, and I’m betting that he wasn’t teaching courses at USC named “Hack Marketing 101”
The world of audio (and video) stretches from somewhere south of the eccentric hobbyist who builds his own design tube amplifiers to the multibillion dollar Hollywood entertainment industry. There’s plenty of legitimate room in there for different viewpoints.
Even if Mr. Holman is the marketing hack you assert, it would still be a good thing for additional attention to be put into improvement of the audio and video quality of Apple’s products; Mr. Holman’s greatest asset might be his roladex of contacts in the crazed audiophile branch of electronics.
Totally agree with you on Bose, however. A decades long blight on my industry.
All highs, no lows…must be Bose. It still saddens me to this day – and I haven’t worked in the home theater industry in many years – when people buy into the marketing machine of Bose. Consumers unnecessarily spend (read: waste) many, many hundreds of dollars or more on inferior audio equipment manufactured by Bose. There are many audiophile, audio, and home theater companies which make better sounding components than Bose at a much lower price point.
Jealousy is a truly corrosive emotion. Get professional help.
I seems that every audio expert, consultant, installer and engineer seems to think his first job is to poop on every other audio expert, consultant, installer and engineer. I now make a bet with myself to see how long it will take them to do so when we invite them to make proposals for our company.
Your and idiot and don’t know about what you speak of. THX was responsible for theaters having to step up the game in the audio arena and they carried the game to the home theater industry.
“Your and idiot”? R U serius?
I’d be THRILLED with iPod Hi-Fi 2! And wireless surround audio from Mac & iOS devices wouldn’t be too bad either 🙂
iGooglaphonic….
I’ll be interested to see what comes from this.
Holman doesn’t look at one component in isolation, he scrutinises the entire system. In the case of THX movie sound, his solution started with the way that the audio tracks are used and went right through to the style of loudspeakers listened to, in many cases embracing unorthodox approaches.
Anybody familiar with Apple will instantly recognise that this sort of approach is exactly how Apple works. Apple’s approach is also controversial and there are any number of people who criticise what Steve Jobs does too.
My guess is that Holman’s contribution will not be confined to surround sound ( which is what he is particularly famous for ).
Jobs hired Holman to do the sound system in his new house.
Tomlinson Holman – May the 4th be with you!
I have an original Hi-Fi and I’m in love with it, have been since day one, except more so as time has gone on because 1) they’re hard to find 2) the sound has only gotten richer with time. I’d give anything for a 2nd version. I think it’s one of the best, even to this day. An EXCELLENT balance between all ranges.
Boy do I agree with you – have three of them and use all the time – hit the remote and instant great sound! I wouldn’t be without them. Excellent sound and ease of use and stylish.
This. Is. Huge.
T_homas
H_olman
X_periment
Whatever gets me native surroundsound decoding on my mac is fine with me. One thing I miss about moving to the mac for gaming is no 5.1 surroundsound. Really wish there was an onboard or software decoder.