[Below you’ll find the introduction to, and then a few excerpts from the transcript of, a 37:31 minute episode (EP184) of Business Lab, a podcast produced by MIT Technology Review’s Insights. The guests are from the company Shure and the Perception & Cognition Laboratory at Yale University and although they only refer to it indirectly, they discuss the importance of presence in communication via technology. You can learn more about the research they discuss, and listen to audio clips from the study, in the podcast episode or via the online article:

Walter-Terrill, R., Ongchoco, J.D.K., & Scholl, B.J. (2025). Superficial auditory (dis)fluency biases higher-level social judgment. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 122 (13) e2415254122, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2415254122

–Matthew]

The power of sound in a virtual world

In the digital age, sound is proving to be the greatest connector of all, says Erik Vaveris, vice president of product management and CMO at Shure, and Brian Scholl, director of the Perception and Cognition Laboratory at Yale University.

By MIT Technology Review Insights
January 26, 2026

In an era where business, education, and even casual conversations occur via screens, sound has become a differentiating factor. We obsess over lighting, camera angles, and virtual backgrounds, but how we sound can be just as critical to credibility, trust, and connection.

That’s the insight driving Erik Vaveris, vice president of product management and chief marketing officer at Shure, and Brian Scholl, director of the Perception & Cognition Laboratory at Yale University. Both see audio as more than a technical layer: It’s a human factor shaping how people perceive intelligence, trustworthiness, and authority in virtual settings.

“If you’re willing to take a little bit of time with your audio set up, you can really get across the full power of your message and the full power of who you are to your peers, to your employees, your boss, your suppliers, and of course, your customers,” says Vaveris.

Scholl’s research shows that poor audio quality can make a speaker seem less persuasive, less hireable, and even less credible.

“We know that [poor] sound doesn’t reflect the people themselves, but we really just can’t stop ourselves from having those impressions,” says Scholl. “We all understand intuitively that if we’re having difficulty being understood while we’re talking, then that’s bad. But we sort of think that as long as you can make out the words I’m saying, then that’s probably all fine. And this research showed in a somewhat surprising way, to a surprising degree, that this is not so.”

For organizations navigating hybrid work, training, and marketing, the stakes have become high.

Vaveris points out that the pandemic was a watershed moment for audio technology. As classrooms, boardrooms, and conferences shifted online almost overnight, demand accelerated for advanced noise suppression, echo cancellation, and AI-driven processing tools that make meetings more seamless. Today, machine learning algorithms can strip away keyboard clicks or reverberation and isolate a speaker’s voice in noisy environments. That clarity underpins the accuracy of AI meeting assistants that can step in to transcribe, summarize, and analyze discussions.

The implications across industries are rippling. Clearer audio levels the playing field for remote participants, enabling inclusive collaboration. It empowers executives and creators alike to produce broadcast-quality content from the comfort of their home office. And it offers companies new ways to build credibility with customers and employees without the costly overhead of traditional production.

Looking forward, the convergence of audio innovation and AI promises an even more dynamic landscape: from real-time captioning in your native language to audio filtering, to smarter meeting tools that capture not only what is said but how it’s said, and to technologies that disappear into the background while amplifying the human voice at the center.

“There’s a future out there where this technology can really be something that helps bring people together,” says Vaveris. “Now that we have so many years of history with the internet, we know there’s usually two sides to the coin of technology, but there’s definitely going to be a positive side to this, and I’m really looking forward to it.

In a world increasingly mediated by screens, sound may prove to be the most powerful connector of all.

This episode of Business Lab is produced in partnership with Shure.

Full Transcript

[snip]

Brian: The fascinating thing that we’re seeing from the lab, from the study of people’s impressions is that all of this technology that Erik has described, when it works best, it’s completely invisible. Erik, I loved your point about not hearing potato chips being eaten or rain in the background or something like that. You’re totally right. I used to notice that all the time. I don’t think I’ve noticed that recently, but I also didn’t notice that I haven’t noticed that recently, right? It just kind of disappears. The interesting thing about these perceptual impressions, we’re constantly drawing intuitive conclusions about people based on how they sound. And that might be a good thing or a bad thing when we’re judging things like trustworthiness, for example, on the basis of a short audio clip.

But clearly, some of these things are valid, right? We can judge the size of someone or even of an animal based on how they sound, right? A chihuahua can’t make the sound of a lion. A lion can’t make the sound of a chihuahua. And that’s always been true because we’re producing audio signals that go right into each other’s ears. And now, of course, everything that Erik is talking about, that’s not true. It goes through all of these different layers of technology increasingly fueled by AI. But when that technology works the best way, it’s as if it isn’t there at all and we’re just hearing each other directly.

Erik: That’s the goal, right? That it’s seamless open communication and we don’t have to think about the technology anymore.

[snip]

Brian: … But in reality, the audio signal is so multi-dimensional. And as we’re getting more and more tools these days, we can not only change audio along the lines of clarity, as we’ve been talking about, but we can potentially manipulate it in all sorts of ways.

We’re very interested in pushing these studies forward and in exploring how people’s sort of brute impressions that they make are affected by all sorts of things. Meg and Erik, we walk around the world all the time making these judgments about people, right? You meet someone and you’re like, “Wow, I could really be friends with them. They seem like a great person.” And you know that you’re making that judgment, but you have no idea why, right? It just seems kind of intuitive. Well, in an audio signal, when you’re talking to someone, you can think of, “What if their signal is more bass heavy? What if it’s a little more treble heavy? What if we manipulate it in this way? In that way?”

When we talked about the faculty meeting that motivated this whole research program, I mentioned that my colleague, who was speaking from his home recording studio, he actually didn’t sound clear like in real life. He sounded better than in real life. He sounded like he was all around us. What is the implication of that? I think there’s so many different dimensions of an audio signal that we’re just being able to readily control and manipulate that it’s going to be very exciting to see how all of these sorts of things impact our impressions of each other.

[snip]

Brian: … I hear tell that the current generation, when they send photos back and forth to each other, that they, as a matter, of course, they apply all sorts of filters … to those video signals, those video or just photographic signals. We’re all familiar with that. That hasn’t quite happened with the audio signals yet, but I think that’s coming up as well. You can imagine that you record yourself saying a little message and then you filter it this way or that way. And that’s going to become the Wild West about the kinds of impressions we make on each other, especially if and when you don’t know that those filters have been operating in the first place.

[snip to end]