Meet the Team

With Meet The HARMAN Luxury Team, our goal is for you to get to know us better. In each edition we feature a different member of the team, and this month it's George Short, Senior Principal Acoustic Engineer.

How would you describe what you do in your current role?

I have always taken a special joy in embracing challenging product requirements and adapting them into elegant features.   My current role with HARMAN Luxury Audio is to add my diverse background, knowledge and experience to the team, to continue our tradition of developing, designing and manufacturing best-in-class audio products.

What did you study in school? Did you always imagine yourself doing something like what you’re doing now or did the fates just take you in that direction?

I began at university studying sound recording and electrical engineering, while flying a mixing board; set painting and speaker building when time allowed.  Eventually I earned an undergraduate degree in physics and a graduate degree in electro-acoustics. It never occurred to me to be in any other industry other than audio.

How did your career path lead you to HARMAN?

I have been privileged to work with many HARMAN alumni over the years. Eventually, mutual connections and meeting the team brought me here.

Any other advice you would share with people just starting out in this industry?

Our industry is driven by passion. Every day, our work brings joy to millions of people’s lives, including our own. I have found it is essential to occasionally disconnect from viewing our work as product and results, and reconnect to it as experience. Whether it is a new release film, live performance or favorite jam, we need to remind ourselves of why we do it, and to continue to build appreciation and respect for how fun this is.

What are you most proud of in your life?

That I have been able to contribute to both the sum of human knowledge and the advancement of our industry, whilst pursuing my passions in life.

When did you realize you had a passion for music or audio? Was there any one band, song, or movie that did it for you?

My earliest memories are setting up my parents' very modest stereo speakers as giant headphones, that I could lie between and listen to at very low volume so I could experience the dynamics and be enveloped in the soundstage. I was listening to my older sister’s favorites; David Bowie, Elton John, Peter Frampton. This was in the 70s in Rochester. At night we could get Toronto radio, CFNY, and I still remember the day Canada unleashed Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson and Neil Pert upon an unsuspecting Western New York universe. Rush hit us like a brick wall flying in a hurricane. We just weren’t ready. Spectacular live performers, cool lyrics and great recordings. I was 100% in.

What current technology impresses you the most?

Object-based audio programming rendered in real time. It delivers the theater soundscape experience as the director intended and is approaching full immersion. Also, how great mountain bikes have become.

Favorite music genre?

I still love the art-rock era of the 1970s and 1980s, a blend of great musicianship with diverse influences and backgrounds, mixed with emerging technologies, and emphasizing the value of the ability to perform live.

The desert island question, of course. If you were marooned for eternity and could listen to only three albums, what would they be?

Yes “Fragile” (full length version), with their cover of Simon and Garfunkel’s “America”; Genesis “Seconds Out”, and anything and everything from Led Zeppelin, but if I had to pick one it would be “Physical Graffiti”, the first album I ever bought, paid for with a gift certificate I won in a pinball tournament.

You have the floor. In closing, tell us anything else you want us to know about yourself.

I pursue life with a beginner’s mind, never drawing conclusions from assumptions, always seeing the best in everything first, and appreciate and respect a job well done. I like to fix things. I was Virginia Tech’s fooseball singles’ and doubles’ champion for three of my four years of eligibility. My wife, whom I adore, has spent some of her career as a professional organizer, and I still don’t understand how she has learned to tolerate my embracement of chaos. When I was in my 30s, I appeared in Bike Magazine. More recently, one of my loudspeaker designs was inducted into the CEDIA Hall of Fame.