Q&A with Steve Temme – Loudspeaker Industry Sourcebook 2024
Want to get to know Listen Founder and President, Steve Temme, a little better? Each year, Loudspeaker Industry Sourcebook features interviews with industry leaders in which they ask their opinions on current events, issues and trends in the audio industry. Read what Steve Temme had to say.
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Question 1: How would you describe the market and the industry over the past year? And how did your current business evolve in the past 12 months?
Temme: It’s never a good start to the year when most of your major customers announce massive layoffs and budget freezes in January! However, some of the best innovations are developed during challenging times, and this year has been no exception. Our perceptual measurement drive continued with our new enhanced Loose Particles algorithm for transient distortion detection. We also introduced AudioConnect 2, our portable and budget-friendly 2-channel audio interface, and the MDT-4000 audio measurement turntable, with high-end performance at a very competitive price. Also on a positive note, the return to normal component costs and lead times has relieved a lot of our manufacturing stresses and enabled us to return to full stock levels of all our hardware products.
Question 2: What are the perspectives for your business in the next 12 months?
Temme: Right now, I’m just hoping for a year that does not include a pandemic, increased trade sanctions, supply-chain issues, or a fire at one of our key component suppliers! Joking aside, from adversity comes innovation, and the challenges of the past few years have resulted in the audio industry overflowing with new technologies and applications which is keeping us on our toes with new measurement challenges. One example is the automotive industry – audio measurement is increasingly challenging due to the high channel counts and a vast amount of on-board signal processing combined with many different test requirements including, spatial audio, sound zones, hands-free communications, active noise reduction and more. Similarly, spatial audio presents some exciting measurement challenges as we continue to develop perceptual metrics to locate virtual sound sources and measure spatial audio reproduction accuracy.
Question 3: In reference to your supply chain and the geographical markets in which you do business, what, if any, changes have you made in the way you do business?
Temme: When I visited Shenzhen last year, I was surprised by how much had changed. I was one of very few foreigners, and since my last visit, Chinese brands had replaced most American consumer products – particularly in the automotive industry. Few of our OEM customers have resumed their pre-pandemic travel schedules, leaving far more responsibility for audio product quality in the hands of their contract manufacturers. This, combined with the drive to ‘buy Chinese’ has created a massive surge in factories using locally made, in-house, or even pirated measurement systems with minimal oversight. We’ve worked closely with our customers to provide new tools that help them ensure test integrity without resuming regular travel to China. This includes the ability to ‘lock’ a measurement sequence so that limits, test levels etc. cannot be changed and even the test steps themselves are hidden from the end user. This prevents the test sequence being modified, misappropriated, or re-created on a different test system with unproven results. We also introduced the capability to lock a test sequence to specific verified hardware keys, further ensuring end-to-end test compliance.
