To give customers an immersive experience when watching movies and videos, listening to music and creating content, ASUS knew its products needed top-notch sound.

ASUS turned to HARMAN Embedded Audio to equip its products with state-of-the-art audio. Since 2016, the HARMAN team has been working hand-in-hand with ASUS, designing loudspeakers for optimal performance in small formats and exhaustively testing and tuning until they achieve the perfect sound.

One of the world’s most iconic technology brands, ASUSTek Computer Inc. (commonly known as ASUS) puts a lot of thought into its products. From the company’s popular laptops and notebooks to innovative new offerings like projectors and all-in-one computers, every detail is fine-tuned for the best performance and user experience—and naturally, that extends to the sound as well.

Seeking to give its customers the best experience possible, ASUS partnered with HARMAN Embedded Audio, a business unit of HARMAN International, in 2016 to equip its products with Harman Kardon sound. Since then, HARMAN Embedded Audio has contributed to dozens of products, including the recent Transformer 3 Pro, Zenbook 3, Zen AiO, Designo Curved MX32VQ Monitor and ZenBeam portable projector.

“ASUS aims to build products with uncompromising quality,” said Morgan Yang, Associate Director, ASUS. “More and more, consumers and creators are looking for a great audio experience when watching streaming entertainment, playing games and creating content. All of these rely on high-fidelity sound to create immersive experiences. HARMAN is a global leader in professional and lifestyle audio solutions, and its brand and sub-brands are well known to consumers and audiophiles. Both ASUS and HARMAN aim to deliver high-quality products and provide a perfect experience to our end users. Collaborating with HARMAN enhanced our products and helped position ASUS in the market.”

HARMAN Embedded Audio’s involvement begins in the design phase. Because the speakers are a major component of any electronic device, and because their placement is so key to their performance, the design of the entire product can change quite a bit during this process as the engineering team settles on the best configuration. It is also during this phase that the team works out technical details such as the power required for amplification, which can influence the internal design significantly.

“When ASUS wants to kick off a new project, they will first send us some information, including industrial design details such as the layout of the product,” said Prince Wang, Engineering Lead, HARMAN Embedded Audio. “Based on that information, we will give them a proposal detailing how many speakers we’re going to use, what sizes and which type of cabinet. We also include design details like the amplifier output power, mechanical design, how to seal the box, how to absorb vibration and more. Based on our proposal, ASUS will often make adjustments to the design. Then we go back and forth several times, refining the design. After the design is complete, they’ll send us a prototype of the device. Once we have that, we start the sound tuning process.”

The HARMAN Embedded Audio team divides the tuning process into two stages: objective and subjective testing. The objective testing phase is focused on perfecting the acoustical performance of the product using measurable data like frequency response and distortion levels. During subjective testing, engineers perform repeated listening tests and continue to refine the tuning of the speakers until the sound passes their criteria.

“We do the tests in two different rooms: one is what we call an anechoic chamber, which eliminates sound reflections,” explained Wang. “In the chamber, we put a microphone in front of the product and do a lot of tests like frequency response and linearity, THD and more. Once we complete those tests, we bring it into a listening room where the acoustic engineers conduct the sound tuning. They usually spend one to three weeks in that room just tuning and listening, tuning and listening.”

By combining these methods, HARMAN Embedded Audio is able to ensure optimal statistical performance without neglecting the subjective elements that influence listeners’ perceptions in the real world. When the product has been tuned and adjusted for the best performance and sound possible, it goes before a panel of specially trained critical-listening testers.

In order to pass internal review and be approved for delivery to the customer, a new product must pass a blind test by a team of listening specialists called Golden Ears. Golden Ears receive years of HARMAN training in acoustical science, critical listening and psychoacoustics, which enables them to identify minute differences in sound quality, down to the relative levels of specific frequencies.

For the Golden Ear evaluation, HARMAN engineers set up the ASUS product alongside a benchmark product in a blind A/B-style test. The Golden Ears listen to a variety of sound samples including multiple genres of music, different voices speaking and other sounds, judging aspects like the overall balance of the sound, bass performance and voice quality.

“HARMAN procedures require that at least 70% of our Golden Ear engineers favor our product in order for it to pass the test,” said Wang. “Once a product passes the Golden Ear test, we’ll send ASUS our tuning file so they can update the device’s firmware. Then they listen, confirm the sound is good, and we send them the certification that allows them to use the Harman Kardon branding on their product.”

Although sales trends cannot be traced to one particular feature or improvement, ASUS has seen massive growth since partnering with HARMAN Embedded Audio. Based on recent figures for units sold in 2021 and projections for 2022, business is looking good.

“ASUS sold 11 million units in 2021 and we expect to surpass 14 million in 2022,” said Luke Lu, Notebook Project Manager, ASUS. “Products with Harman Kardon sound account for 45% of units sold. In terms of entertainment experience, our strategy is to work closely with HARMAN on speaker design to deliver the best experience for content consumers.”

The strategy outlined by Lu has paid dividends for ASUS. When you account for 45% of units sold featuring Harman Kardon sound, that’s nearly 5 million units in 2021 and about 6.3 million projected for 2022. In addition to great sales data, the products featuring Harman Kardon sound received positive reactions from customers.

“Based on our current user survey and the feedback from our sales teams, people are loving our products featuring Harman Kardon sound,” added Yang.