At CEDIA Expo/CIX 2025, amid the noise and energy of the show floor, Harman Luxury Audio Group’s Jim Garrett joined Convo by Design host Josh Cooperman inside the Volkswagen ID. Buzz “Podcast Van” for a conversation about the state of the audio industry, design integration, and how technology continues to reshape the home environment.
Garrett, senior director of product strategy and planning for Harman Luxury Audio, oversees the direction of high-end brands such as Arcam, JBL, JBL Synthesis, Revel, and Mark Levinson. This year, he noted, was particularly unique for Harman as the company co-exhibited with its parent, Samsung, resulting in one of the largest booths at the show. The collaboration reflected a broader industry trend toward unified ecosystems in home entertainment and control.
“They’ll tell you exactly what’s on their mind,” Garrett said. “They’ll tell you how much they love it—and how you can improve it.”
He emphasized that open feedback from integrators helps Harman refine designs and address real-world installation challenges. “This is a team effort,” he explained. “They don’t win without us, and we don’t win without them.”
That feedback also underscores one of Garrett’s biggest priorities: reconciling performance with aesthetics.
“Technology should be there, but it should be invisible behind the scenes,” he said.
Garrett described the industry’s ongoing effort to minimize what he called “wall acne”—visible control panels and speaker grilles that interrupt carefully designed interiors. Harman’s development of thinner, hidden, and even invisible loudspeakers mirrors how lighting design evolved from bulky fixtures to discreet, minimalist accents.
The conversation also turned outdoors, where Garrett said entertainment has increasingly migrated. Harman is partnering with Samsung’s weather-rated Terrace displays and JBL Professional landscape speakers to deliver audio and video that blend into gardens and patios. Whether indoors or outside, Garrett observed, entertainment spaces have become gathering hubs rather than isolated theaters—spurred in part by lifestyle changes from the pandemic.
“A lot of people don’t really know what good is because they’ve never heard it,” Garrett said. “CEDIA is about awareness—showing what’s possible in performance, design, and simplicity.”
For both Cooperman and Garrett, the takeaway was clear: technology in the modern home isn’t just about sound and vision—it’s about experience, invisibility, and connection.
