B&O to Ship First WiSA-Certified Speaker Next Month, Bows Installer Program

DENVER -- Under a banner reading “Evolving home theater” at a CEDIA Expo news conference Thursday, Bang & Olufsen said it will begin shipping the industry’s first Wireless Speaker and Audio-certified speaker products late next month. B&O and the WiSA Association jointly announced the news, which WiSA Association President Jim Venable called “historic” for an industry that has long sought a high-quality wireless audio solution. Venable said WiSA expects five to 10 companies to demo compatible, certified WiSA-enabled products at CES in January.

The WiSA evolution was several years in the making among a group of companies that sought to standardize on a wireless interface that would transmit uncompressed 24-bit 96-kHz audio to up to eight channels, Venable said. “So many have attempted to deliver on this,” but ended up not following through with an acceptable high-quality wireless audio solution, Venable said. He called B&O one of the most “iconic” companies selling high-quality audio products with innovative design.

Product details weren’t given, but the posh B&O contribution is likely to stand at the top of the first-generation WiSA product pyramid. In the early days of WiSA, when Summit Semiconductor, supplier of the WiSA chipset, demoed the technology, it used a system sold by Aperion Audio that Venable said is no longer available. The Aperion speaker system was never certified to WiSA standards, enabling B&O to lay claim to having the first certified product.

But WiSA will cover a broad spectrum of products and price ranges, Summit Semiconductor CEO Brett Moyer told us. Due on the market next year are a $299 soundbar, TV dongles and cable boxes, Moyer said. A mock house will be outfitted with WiSA gear at CES, he said, demonstrating a media hub and clients in remote rooms. It wasn’t clear whether the company would show the WiSA ensemble on the show floor or behind the scenes, Moyer said. The products are out for testing this fall and are scheduled for a Q1 sales date, he said.

Issues that have come up during testing of the fledgling technology have to do with “interchangeability,” Moyer said, saying there were no issues with B&O products. When speakers respond to volume commands they have to all respond uniformly “regardless of the brand,” he said. That’s critical to the latency aspect of wireless audio. “It’s important that the delay between speakers is in sync so you don’t get any wobbling of sound,” he said.

WiSA is testing products at its Sunnyvale, Calif., lab, Venable said. In the testing process, products go through a “pretty long list” of testing criteria, including signal integrity at minimum distances. The testing process covers product materials and features, Venable said. WiSA needs to have a “complete unit” in the lab to be sure signal integrity is maintained, he said. If a product made of wood is certified and then the speaker design is changed with the addition of a painted finish, the product has to be re-certified because “there could be aluminum or metal in the paint” that could interfere with the signal transmission, he said.

B&O wireless audio products will display both the WiSA and DFS logos, with the latter representing the company’s Dynamic Frequency Selection technology that works with Summit Semiconductor’s chipset. DFS “hops from one channel to another in case of transmission problems” that might occur due to unique B&O product designs. If interference is detected on the existing channel in the wireless speaker setup, the audio stream is “automatically switched to a channel that has been available for the past minute,” according to a news release.

B&O’s appearance at CEDIA Expo is its first in more than five years, said Zean Nielsen, president of B&O USA. Although the WiSA speakers are billed as do-it-yourself-capable with “wiring mistakes impossible,” the company is nonetheless launching its first national partnership program targeted to integrators at the Expo. Called Bang & Olufsen Professional, the program will allow select integrators to become authorized B&O dealers through company-owned stores in New York, Miami, Chicago, San Diego, Seattle, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and San Francisco along with independently operated stores in other parts of the country. Integrators joining the program will be asked to sign a partnership agreement, display product and attend regular training seminars, both in-person and online, B&O said. Nielsen called the program a natural for B&O products that require installation. Additionally, B&O is recruiting new installers to assist in delivering a “first-class customer experience” through the 53 branded showrooms spread throughout North America, the company said.

Also at CEDIA Expo, B&O announced that Spotify Connect will become part of the BeoPlay A9 sound system through a software update. Following the update, users will be able to play music directly from the cloud and incoming phone calls won’t stop music from playing, said David Zapfel, B&O product manager. When a user’s phone is used as a music source, the music will keep playing even if the phone is taken out of range of the speaker, he said.