James Delahunty
12 Apr 2007 5:37
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) in the UK has slapped yet another consumer electronics company, this time for a possibly deceptive/untrue claim made in an advertisement. Creative has been ordered not to advertise its Xmod sound-enhancement system as a device that can take an MP3 track and process it to sound better than CD quality audio, unless of course, it can prove it to be true.
A complaint was filed by an audio engineer after he read Creative's claim in an email-distributed advertisement. The ASA judged that Creative has thus far failed to provide "evidence to show that the sound [Xmod] delivered was better than CD quality", but did say that the claim was "objective and capable of substantiation", meaning Creative has the right to prove it.
The engineer that complained about the advertisement also objected to Creative's claim that the device provided "an experience beyond studio quality". However, the ASA agreed with Creative in that case, accepting that the operational sound specifications, 24-bit quantisation at 96kHz, is within the range used by studio-specific equipment.
"We considered that the claim 'An Experience Beyond Studio Quality' focused on Creative's view of the listener's experience and noted it did not state that the product delivered sound beyond studio quality," the ASA said. "We concluded that the claim was unlikely to mislead."
Source:
Reg Hardware