Wireless Audio ‘Easier for Consumers to Get Their Arms Around,’ DTS Says

LAS VEGAS -- DTS is at CES this week hoping to build its partner base for two platforms already in the works: the “Headphone:X” platform that it first showed at CES last year and its Play-Fi multiroom audio product that launched with niche audio provider Wren Sound and with Phorus, developer of the technology, which DTS bought in 2012.

DTS hopes to build out the Play-Fi ecosystem through original design manufacturer partners and major speaker brands. Polk and Definitive Technology said Monday they're working with DTS on Play-Fi products for their 2014 rosters. Multiroom audio capability was a noticeable omission from Polk’s wireless audio product launch in New York last fall (CED Oct 7 p1) as brands, including Samsung, Bose and Bluesound, were launching would-be Sonos competitors. Polk and Definitive are also members of WiSA (Wireless Speaker & Audio) Association.

At CES, DTS announced the Play-Fi certified ODM program, which will enable brands to come to market with their own wireless audio ecosystems. Content support the consumer cares about will follow “in a matter of months” through designs from ODM partners such as Eastech Electronics, Fenda Technology, Lite-On Technology, Meiloon Industrial, Solidex Audio, Tymphany, Wistron and Zylux Acoustic, said Geir Skaaden, DTS senior vice president, corporate business development. By year-end, DTS expects 15-20 SKUs with Play-Fi to be on the market, he said, at prices starting in the range of an AirPlay speaker. “You won’t see them as cheap as Bluetooth-only speakers,” he told us, but the company’s ultimate plan is to extend Play-Fi across a broad range of price points.

On the all-important content side, where market leader Sonos offers a menu of some 20 content sources, DTS said at CES it will offer up-and-coming free streaming service Songza, known for curated lists of songs organized by categories including genre, mood and activity. Lack of content agreements has been a challenge for the newcomers to the wireless audio market. DTS lists its content source Deezer, available in Europe, and news sources including NPR, The Wall Street Journal and BBC. The DLNA-compatible system can also stream music from a user’s connected storage device.

DTS CEO Jon Kirchner told us during a pre-CES briefing that the addition of Polk and Definitive “will put Play-Fi on the map in a much bigger way,” which will help grow the ecosystem, including content sources. He promised additional streaming services supporting the Play-Fi app soon, driven in part by an expanding ecosystem.

Mobile devices make up another portion of the fledgling Play-Fi ecosystem, and DTS announced at CES that premium Chinese smartphone brand vivo, will support the Play-Fi platform on its mobile product line. With the CES announcement, vivo users will be able to download the Play-Fi app from the vivo store, and unlock Play-Fi functionality that allows them to stored or streamed music on any Play-Fi connected audio system within their home.

The broad vision for Play-Fi, as Kirchner described it to us, is that consumers will buy a phone with DTS’s Play-Fi and Headphone:X decoding, come home, unplug their headphones and “serve up Play-Fi-based content” for the room they're in or for the whole home. There, they'll be able to direct multiple audio streams to different speakers throughout the house. Play-Fi “covers both use cases,” he said.

On why wireless audio streaming has finally begun to take off beyond the popular Sonos offering, Kirchner said wireless audio for the home “has been bubbling for years,” and as far back as 2005 at DTS. “Now you've got wireless technology and processing power in these chips that is powerful and fairly ubiquitous,” he said, making the idea of wireless delivery of audio “easier for consumers to get their arms around.” The infrastructure of connected devices and wireless networks now exists to support the distribution of content in the home, he said. “It enables a different way to construct the audio entertainment experience -- without wires and with more flexible products on the other end,” he said.

Last year’s focus with Headphone:X was on recreating the living room surround-sound solution through headphones. This year, DTS is switching gears and announcing a headphone tuning partner program for Headphone:X to allow consumers to tune their headphones to their own criteria. Companies that participate in the partner program can offer consumers a “consistent headphone experience across models,” Kirchner told us. DTS is working with partners such as Skullcandy, Panasonic and the Frends brand. The program offers headphone manufacturers access to tools and support for the DTS Headphone:X experience across product lines, the company said. The program also helps headphone brands maintain their signature sound across all DTS Headphone:X-equipped mobile devices, it said.

"A year ago we were talking about spatialization” with Headphone:X, Kirchner said. “Now we're revealing the two other pieces of the program that ensure that that experience is meaningfully better than a year ago,” he said. “We're bringing headphones and tuning and matching them into the system and also personalizing the audio experience based on listeners individually,” he said. Through a 60- to 90-second setup process, users will be able to enter data that will be used by the Headphone:X algorithm to tailor a sound profile to user’s hearing, taste and environment, among other criteria, he said. Once users set up a profile for their phone, it will live in the cloud and “follow you to your next phone and your phone after that,” Kirchner said.

DTS also announced an “object-based audio format” it said was designed to deliver more realism through “more accurate spatial rendering, height audio elements and customizations” regardless of speaker layout. Called DTS-UHD, it’s designed to support DTS channel-based content, the company said.