Directed Electronics and Klipsch are Bullish on WiSA Technology But Say No Products in the Pipeline

LAS VEGAS -- WiSA, the Wireless Speaker & Audio Association that launched last month, demoed wireless audio systems at CES last week, including an Aperion Audio system already on the market, but no announcements were made of upcoming products incorporating the fledgling technology. That includes no showing of a TV accessory that would carry a wireless signal from a TV or Blu-ray player to a standalone speaker. Such an accessory is a bridge product the association hopes will be an interim step toward its ultimate goal: wireless audio connectivity between TVs and speakers.

Klipsch showed a prototype of a WiSA-enabled home theater system at CES but the product isn’t one the company plans to commercialize, Mark Casavant, senior vice president of products for Klipsch, told us. The system, constructed with hand-built components, was one Klipsch also showed at CEDIA last year, before the formation of WiSA. “It was an R&D effort to test the chip technology and to validate what we believe is the best wireless multi-channel system available,” Casavant said. The customized prototype, built around the company’s G28 speaker system, performs well, he said, “but we're probably going to develop another system for production that will be a variation of it,” he said. It’s “possible” the company will have a WiSA-enabled product in 2012, he said, “but at this point we can’t confirm it.” More news will come at CEDIA in September, he said.

For its part, Summit Semiconductor, supplier of the chipset for the Aperion WiSA-based system, has 20-30 WiSA projects in the works, Tony Parker, Summit’s vice president of product marketing, told us at CES. “Some are ODMs that are building products that will be platforms,” he said. Customers will be able to create different industrial designs “using the same internals,” he said. Summit is working to build reference designs that allow clients “to get products to market quickly since they don’t have to spend the money on R&D,” he said. Summit’s plan is to give its ODMs schematics and printed circuit board design files so they can “go build the product wherever they want,” he said. Products will be tested for WiSA compatibility to ensure that the system passes the interoperability test, he said. WiSA, working with parent company HDMI, is using Simplay Labs for testing (CED Jan9 p1).

Parker emphasized the scalability of WiSA technology based on potential features built into the circuit board and the quality of the speakers themselves. Consumers can choose what quality of audio they're looking for in terms of wattage, price point and cabinetry, he said. For TV makers, WiSA compatibility offers a differentiating feature, he maintained. Assuming consumers are educated about the value of a WiSA logo, “they'll look for that logo [on TVs, Blu-ray players and game consoles] knowing that they're interoperable,” he said. “If I buy a 60-inch TV, am I going to buy a $150 home theater system to go with it?” he asked rhetorically. “Probably not.” Consumers at that level are looking for a higher end brand to match sound and picture quality, he said. “At the low end, the big box guys will continue to make soundbars that just get the sound out,” he said, “but our technology scales from the low end to the high end quite nicely.” The technology can be built into a product that sells for under $500, he said, “and at the higher end the same tech can deliver an experience that hasn’t been available in the high end space before."

A Summit circuit board can accept a range of connectivity options for a 5.1-channel audio solution -- from S/PDIF and Toslink to HDMI at the high end -- along with a headphone input as well, Parker said. “We're partnering with Silicon Image on their HDMI chip so we can have three inputs and one output for HDMI,” he said.

Cost is a limiting factor of WiSA technology in the early stage, manufacturers told us. Polk has “nothing in the plan right now” for a WiSA-packed product, Stu Lumsden, director of engineering, told us, citing “prohibitive costs in the early read on this.” He acknowledged that Summit is working hard to bring costs down to a “wider array of packages,” and he “wouldn’t be surprised if we're looking at this in the coming months to see where it can fit in our roadmap.” Lumsden said it’s unlikely that Polk would have a WiSA product in 2012.

Summit is working on solutions for soundbars and for an audio hub “that will be a third of the cost” of existing applications, Parker said. Cost savings come from using Silicon Image’s text-based on-screen display showing source selection, inputs and volume settings “so you won’t need a graphics interface that costs additional money,” he said. The bill of materials for the board and module are “about $30-$35, not including plastic casing, he said. For a product that will be sold at Costco, the BOM translates to about $75 and about $130 for a “major retailer,” he said.

Looking ahead, Casavant of Klipsch sees WiSA-enabled speakers at the pinnacle of its wireless speaker offerings. “We're absolutely committed to wireless,” he said, noting that the company’s entire subwoofer lineup is wireless and the Gallery G17 wireless speakers introduced last summer are compatible with AirPlay over Wi-Fi. The $550 speakers will be in Apple stores soon, he said. “We're open to Bluetooth for compact devices,” Casavant told us, saying the G17 line is also DLNA-compatible, although the company pulled back on DLNA announcements because DLNA operability through Android phones “is not ready for prime time.” AirPlay is currently the best route for sound and user interfaces for portable world, he said, calling AirPlay the “most robust and best sounding for smart devices."

WiSA, Casavant said, “is a different animal.” Uncompressed audio, plug-and-play setup that overcomes “the most dreaded task for a home theater owner -- setting up the speakers properly -- is done automatically in the WiSA world, he noted. Companies will have to sell products on those features “to overcome the price premium,” he said. Because of its “high sound quality,” WiSA is getting “a lot of attention and people will be clamoring to get on board,” Casavant predicted. “We want the list to grow because we want it to be a standard,” he said, especially among TV manufacturers. When that happens, “it will get interesting,” he said. Regarding a timetable for possible inclusion in some TVs, Casavant said, “We've heard 2013. There’s going to be development time."

Like Klipsch, Polk and Definitive Audio parent company Directed Electronics is an Advisory Board member of WiSA. Polk’s Lumsden told us participation in the association is valuable for the light it sheds on an emerging area of the loudspeaker business. It would be valuable as a loudspeaker company to know what type of signals “will be more common in the sources that speakers interact with,” Lumsden said. “We're at the end of the pipe,” he said. “We'd prefer not to be in the business of installing a lot of electronics that do switching and other things that really don’t add value to what we do, which is to make things sound good.” Getting a handle on what form signals are being transferred in, “and having an advisory say in that, is a good idea, too,” he said.

To date, it was difficult to evaluate wireless connectivity for audio because there were no standards, Lumsden said. “It’s a complex equation” that depends on which bands the system operates in, how it works, interference issues and building materials where the speakers will be used. “There are lots of things to learn and find out,” Lumsden said, noting that a product cycle with electronics inside is from 9-14 months “once we lock down the features.” Determining features depends on predicting what’s likely to happen in the near future in the marketplace, he said.

Wireless speakers are an “inevitability,” mostly because of convenience, Lumsden said. Standardization on the testing and certification side will help Polk experiment with “lots of different wireless solutions,” he said, citing “everything from wireless subwoofers in 2.1 situations to multi-room solutions. “These things are all going to have to play well together,” he said.

Calls to WiSA founding members Sharp and Pioneer regarding their plans for incorporating WiSA technology into Sharp- or Elite-branded TVs or Blu-ray players weren’t returned by deadline.