The Wireless Speaker and Audio (WiSA®) Association, an industry group dedicated to bringing reliable, high resolution, interoperable, wir...
The Wireless Speaker and Audio (WiSA®) Association, an industry group dedicated to bringing reliable, high resolution, interoperable, wireless, multi-channel audio products to the home theater market, announces support for multi-zone, whole house capabilities. The multi-zone requirements and feature set have been defined by WiSA Association member companies over the last six months, to add simultaneous support of both wireless home theater playback and multi-zone stereo audio streams. The new WiSA extended distance compliance and testing specification offers multi-zone capability, simplifies audio setup for home theater and whole house to a single system, providing more than enough capability to meet the most discriminating audio enthusiast needs.
In addition to offering the best in class wireless audio home theater solution, scalable to 7.1, the new multi-zone capabilities include support for up to 8 separate zones and 32 speakers with a single transmitter. WiSA compliant systems will deliver high resolution, uncompressed audio, up to 100 meters line of sight or 20 to 40 meters through walls. Advanced signal processing technology keeps speakers synchronized to an industry leading 1 micro second, eliminating annoying room-to-room audio phase differences. WiSA compliant multi-zone products will be available from member companies in 2015.
WiSA members recognize the growth of whole house stereo audio solutions in the market place and the practical need to keep system cost down for mass market acceptance. Until now, consumers were limited to purchasing a separate and often expensive proprietary wireless whole house stereo system. However, with the new extended distance radio capabilities, a single system will provide consumers with a WiSA-compliant home theater system and a whole house system.
“The average speaker attach rate for whole house systems has been reported to be less than 4 speakers while streaming no more than 2 separate audio streams at a time to different parts of the home. The WiSA multi-zone solution easily meets these requirements without needing special routers, bridges or additional transmitters,†said Tom Lee, president of the WiSA Association. “By leveraging the new extended distance transmit and receive module, we can address the majority of consumer home audio applications in a single cost effective WiSA compliant audio system.â€
With the new multi-zone capability, audio brands will be able to design wireless audio products that function in multiple use models including high fidelity stereo audio, multichannel home theater and now multi-zone (whole home) all in a single system. The WiSA logo provides consumers with the confidence that they can purchase speakers and transmitter devices such as HDTVs, AVRs, Blu-ray players, gaming consoles, and set top boxes from a variety of audio and video companies for use as both home theater and multi-zone use models and trust that they will work seamlessly together in a system. No longer will consumers be confined to purchasing from a single function product offering.
“As a leading manufacturer of high quality speaker systems, we see the effort by the WiSA Association to extend its current specification to include capabilities for home theater and multi-zone technology as a very positive move that will benefit brands, retailers and end-users in this emerging market,†said Tony Ostrom, vice president of product develop at Klipsch Group.
www.wisaassociation.org