WiSA Association Eyes 15-20 Certified Products by Next CES

Between three and five speaker systems are “queuing up” in the Sunnyvale, Calif., Simplay Labs test facility that opened for Wireless Speaker and Audio-enabled products last week, said Jim Venable, president of the WiSA Association. The test center is set up to qualify products including wireless speakers, soundbars, Blu-ray players, set-top boxes, TVs, AV receivers, game consoles, media hubs and other electronic devices, but only speaker systems are currently in testing, Venable told us. He said 15-20 WiSA-certified products are expected to launch by next CES.

The WiSA Association “learned by the mistakes other connectivity technologies made such as rushing products into the market only to see them fail because they had not created their own testing and compliance organizations,” Venable said. It’s critical for the success of the wireless technology that WiSA-enabled products “work out of the box” when consumers get them home, he said.

Companies submitting products for testing must be WiSA Association members, WiSA said. Transmitter fees for testing, according to the test center website, are $7,500 for the transmitter compliance test, $4,300 for transmitter resubmission, $8,750 for the hybrid compliance test and $4,900 for hybrid resubmission. Testing fees vary according to product type, configuration and what section of the product has to be tested, Venable said. On the receiver side, test fees are $7,500 for the center-channel, subwoofer, surround and dual output compliance tests and $4,300 for resubmission, according to the “configuration deceleration form” on the lab’s website. Consulting fees are $500 an hour, it said.

Venable said he couldn’t speak directly for Simplay Labs, but he anticipated the fee to be “somewhere in the sub-$5K range per receiving device.” But not all components of a 7.1 speaker system, for example, need to be tested, he said. “If all of the surrounds are basically the same speaker type,” which is typically the case, he said, “then only one needs to be sent to the lab for testing.” As members get familiar with the testing process, the association will make available a self-testing program, Venable said. It will be aimed at members who “have demonstrated the ability to consistently meet the Compliance Test Specification,” he said.

Testing takes three to four days per device, meaning a home theater system combining a subwoofer, surround speakers and center-channel speaker requires three to four days for each speaker category, he said. Testing on multiple devices can be done simultaneously, he said. Transmitter devices including TVs, Blu-ray players, set-top boxes, and gaming consoles are “more complicated” and require longer testing time than speakers, which act as receivers in a WiSA system, Venable said. Hybrid devices, such as soundbars, which include an integrated transmitter module, take longer to test than a speaker, he said.

Regarding future marketing of WiSA-enabled products, Venable said each member company will design its own launch plans for how it will market its WiSA-compliant products. The WiSA Association will partner with members “to assist in any outreach to help spread the word,” he said. The association will also have separate efforts to educate the industry and consumer about “what the WiSA logo means and the benefits to target audiences,” he said. At minimum, each WiSA-compliant device is required to display the WiSA logo somewhere on the product, he said.

Sharp demoed a WiSA-compliant Blu-ray player at the Home Technology Specialists of America meeting and the Azione Unlimited conference this spring, but the company hasn’t disclosed marketing plans for such a product to date. Sharp also demoed a WiSA Blu-ray player at CES with Pioneer Elite amplifiers and speakers but that development was being driven in Japan, a Pioneer executive said at the time, and there were no immediate plans to bring products to the U.S. Sharp officials didn’t respond to our request for comment about WiSA product plans by our deadline. Klipsch, which has also shown prototypes in the past, also didn’t respond to questions.