A new CEDIA Recommended Practice, RP1 Performance Facts, outlines how manufacturers can more accurately display their product specifications. Casey McGuire explains how it works and what it means for integrators.

While shopping at the grocery store, people understand that every product they buy must include a nutritional label. It’s not always read, but it’s there to explain the product’s nutritional values.

It lists the calories, fats, sodium, cholesterol, carbohydrates and protein content of the food, to name a few. Now, some people have no clue what to do with that information, but the information is there.

Every piece of food, no matter what country you’re in, has nutritional facts because there’s an international standard. They don’t tell you whether it’s good or not; they just tell you the information.

This is something that CEDIA Fellow, Connected contributor, acoustical consultant and speaker manufacturer Anthony Grimani noticed. He immediately thought of the AV industry. Why are there companies that don’t disclose all the details about their products? Some even make misleading claims, influencing the end user and integrator’s purchasing decisions.

It can be frustrating. Why don’t product specs in the residential AV industry truly divulge how a product performs? Yes, it’ll explain what material something’s made out of, or its maximum power rating, but how does it actually perform in the settings integrators want it to?

So, Anthony pitched a solution that is now called Performance Facts to the CEDIA Board of Directors. They liked the idea and RP1 was born..

RP1 Performance Facts is a set of recommended practices that were developed starting in 2019. They aim to standardise and provide clear performance data for audio and video equipment used in home cinema, media rooms and any other residential custom integration projection. Targeted towards manufacturers, it defines a comprehensive set of functional and performance specs that are requested of manufacturers to disclose so that AV system designers can properly engineer systems.

“RP1 product specifications starts as a set of documents targeted at the engineers working for manufacturers of speakers, amplifiers, projectors, etc. The Performance Facts product data that comes out of the RP1 type testing is intended directly for integrators/system designers so that they can ensure the requisite performance of sound and picture quality as defined for each project,” CEDIA technical consultant David Meyer says.

“I will be recommending anyone who engineers AV systems to get to know RP1 to give some context on what to do with the specs. It will provide a more solid foundation for applying design practices like RP22 Immersive Audio and the upcoming RP23 Immersive Video. Every spec has been identified and discussed ad nauseum by the R10 working group of expert volunteers, and they settled on each for good reason.”

What really kicked off Anthony’s push for justice was when he was asked to design a commercial audio system based on the CRS6 Four from SpeakerCraft.

SpeakerCraft made and advertised a speaker for a residential space with minimal specs listed. When they entered the commercial market using the same speaker, the specs brochure was different; there was much more data available.

The exact same speaker was pictured in a luxury bedroom, providing surround sound in an enclosed, intimate setting. In the commercial brochure, the speaker was depicted next to a large, echo-y office building. There’s no way it could work ideally in both settings. On the specs sheet, the commercial brochure boasted a frequency range lower limit of 70Hz, while the residential brochure stated that it went down to 37Hz.

“Why is it that the same company, when they’re presenting products in the commercial space, are giving the designer more information,” Anthony says.

“In the commercial speaker, there’s an actual real frequency response chart, which is a really important piece of information for an engineer to design from.”

Anthony expressed his frustration when companies were giving the wrong information to different markets, and is urging companies to disclose and distribute the correct information for designers.

“These manufacturers have the information, they’re giving it to the professional and commercial contracting firms, and they’re not giving it to the residential space,” Anthony says.

“I presented this whole rationale for why we have to educate our design teams, the people that work at integration firms, deciding what speakers to use, what amps to use, where to put them and how many to use, based on this kind of true engineering information.”

It’s just a recommended practice; it’s not mandatory. If a manufacturer decides not to publish, that’s their prerogative. But the theory is that those that do will become more appealing to system designers as they can better predict suitability.

“Some designers might even go as far as excluding products from candidacy unless adequate specs are made available,” David says.

“For manufacturers, seeing the list of specs and reference standards in context could assist them to improve their products to optimise the specs they do publish, making it a win-win.”

Anthony has suggested a possible solution for the relationship between manufacturers and designers to grow stronger: “Let’s make a list of what we want, not just ask manufacturers to divulge more information. The nutrition facts are always arranged in the same order, so wherever you are across the world, you’ll notice the order is always about the same.

“Let’s make a list of the things we want manufacturers to provide, let’s tell them how we want them to measure it and let’s organise it in an equivalent layout.”

The official RP1 specifications document is soon to be released, but people who have companies both inside and outside of the committee group have made the recommendations and are putting their products to the test and are sharing the information.

“Some manufacturers are already testing and disclosing many — but perhaps not yet all — of their products’ specs according to RP1,” David says.

At this stage, it’s mainly brands that are deeply involved with the development of RP1, such as Grimani Systems and PERLISTEN Audio.

“There has been some hesitation from the market to go: ‘No, they won’t want to do that. They’re going to reveal their information’. It’s like there’s no lies, there’s no judgment, it’s just information,” Anthony says.

He wants to preface that CEDIA isn’t determining what is and isn’t a good products, the committee just wants manufacturers to share the correct specs about their products, otherwise it’s just hurting the designers and their clients.

“We’re just saying, tell us what your product does, there’s no need for adapting,” Anthony says.

“Bottom line is that there’s no judgement anywhere expressed in here. It just says, tell us what it is.”

With all this potential kickback from the manufacturing side, why do it? Well, there are two sides to the story. Firstly, manufacturers want to justify why their products are good and to offer an explanation for the differences between entry-level, mid-level and high-level products. Secondly, once integrators know what to look for, there’s a chance that they might avoid some products altogether. There’s a greater chance that integrators will use a solution where all the information is readily available.

“This is good for the industry, it’s good for you, you’ll learn some stuff you may not have known about your product, but more than anything, it will raise the bar of our industry,” Anthony says.

“Manufacturers are going to provide real information that designers can use to design real systems for clients so that when they’re using it, they’re just happy.”

A peer review copy of the speaker document will be ready for the CEDIA Expo in September 2025, with others to follow in the coming months.