Before lighting fixtures and power management became hot categories in custom integration, the big buzz was about the impact of wireless audio – something that spawned the Wireless Speaker and Audio (WiSA) Association.
With multipurpose media rooms becoming the norm, we spoke with WiSA (Wireless Speaker and Audio Association President Tony Ostrom about the state of wireless audio and especially in surround sound settings and other applications as well, in this week’s CE Pro Podcast episode.
Ostrom had been a guest of the podcast a few years ago, and it was a good time to update the industry about happenings in the Wireless Speaker and Audio Association front.
During this latest conversation, he tells us about the latest news at WiSA, how this year’s CES went, WiSA E products and explanation, spatial sound, surround sound, and certification process.
For starters, Ostrom reminds listeners about the role of WiSA in this category, particularly when it comes to ensuring interoperability among wireless technologies, as well as control and communications.
“The Association manages that part of the equation,” he notes.
“We work with members to make sure they have all the tools to understand what that interoperability needs to be, and all the tools along with us to test for interoperability. Now we help bring a lot of products to market to help build the category in general.”
In terms of members that WiSA works with to bring forth wireless audio solutions to market, the WiSA roster has well-known names on board. Manufacturers such as Bang & Olufsen, Dynaudio, Hisense, Klipsch, LG, Nvidia, Optoma, and Savant are among those with a connection to the CEDIA channel.
WiSA Has Flurry of Happenings in 2024
The first half of 2024 has been busy for WiSA, including the work done to roll out WiSA E technology.
“This CES and this year have really been about us launching the latest in multichannel audio transmission technology, which is WiSA E,” Ostrom says.
“Imagine you have a space and there’s a TV in [there], or projector or set-top box or some type of source, and that source is transmitting multichannel audio to speakers in that room,” he continues.
“But then imagine that you can also pick up a tablet and do something on that tablet and access that same system… Then later that day maybe grab a couple of the [WiSA E] speakers take a pair of speakers to your deck or out by the pool or park and use them for audio.”
Ostrom says they demonstrated the ability at CES – with users being able to listen to what they want, with whatever speakers I want, with whatever source I want, when I want.
“That’s WiSA E,” he says. “Now the key to that is we did that without adding any hardware to any of those sources and without leveraging an existing Wi-Fi network – the Wi-Fi in those sources is leveraged to create their own network.”
Hear more from WiSA’s Ostrom to learn more about WiSA E and certified products’ ease of implementation, setup process, capabilities, and more by listening to or downloading the podcast episode above.
Find past episodes of the CE Pro Podcast by subscribing to the CE Pro YouTube channel or our Apple and Spotify podcast feeds.