Harman International Industries, Incorporated, announced today that Dr. Floyd E. Toole has received the CEDIA Lifetime Achievement Award for 2008. The award recognizes leaders who have exhibited outstanding creative and visionary leadership in, and contributed to the growth and advancement of, the residential electronic systems industry.

Dr. Toole joined Harman International Industries, Incorporated, in 1991, and retired in 2007. He held a number of positions at the company, most recently as Corporate Vice President - Acoustical Engineering, and as Senior Vice President of Acoustical Engineering for the JBL and Infinity brands.

"CEDIA and I both share a long-time commitment to advancing the science of audio reproduction, and being named the recipient of the 2008 CEDIA Lifetime Achievement Award is an especially meaningful honor," said Dr. Toole.

Dr. Toole studied electrical engineering at the University of New Brunswick, and received a Ph.D. at the Imperial College of Science and Technology, University of London. In 1965, he joined the National Research Council of Canada and in 1991, he was employed by Harman International. He created and directed the Harman Research and Development Group, a central resource for technology development at Harman International.

A focus of Dr. Toole's research at Harman International was on the acoustics and psychoacoustics of sound reproduction in smaller rooms, such as those in consumer's homes and listening environments. Most notably, he established methods for objective and subjective evaluations that have been used to correlate the relationships between technical measurements of audio components and listeners' perceptions. This work was directed toward improving engineering measurements, creating objectives for loudspeaker design and manufacturing, and developing techniques for reducing variability at the loudspeaker/room/listener interface.

Dr. Toole has taught and developed curricula for a number of courses at CEDIA, and is a coauthor of the CEDIA publication Recommended Practice for Home Theater Design. He has published several papers and articles, and his new book, Sound Reproduction, was published in July 2008. Among his many additional achievements,

Dr. Toole is a Fellow of the ASA and AES, and is a recipient of the AES Silver Medal.

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