WiSA Technologies had a pretty big announcement today. The company says it is moving forward with plans to bring a lower cost version of its wireless audio platform - WiSA E - to TVs, speakers and home entertainment systems. Why does it matter? One of the things holding many consumers back from deploying immersive surround sound like Dolby Atmos at home is its cost and complexity. With WiSA E, both of those problems could be solved. A TV with WiSA E on board could communicate with a fully wireless Dolby Atmos speaker system without requiring any additional wires, amplifiers, receivers, dongles or adapters.
Avoid the complexity an idiosyncracies of HDMI ARC (Audio Return Channel), and forget about the so-called "virtual surround" of one-piece soundbars. A TV with WiSA E on board could connect wirelessly to a WiSA E enabled discrete 5.1.2 channel surround sound system. And all you would need to do is plug the speakers into a power source. No speaker wires or additional adapters are required. A complete set-up could be done in minutes, instead of hours.
At least one company, Platin Audio, has already demonstrated a wireless Dolby Atmos 5.1.2 speaker system using WiSA technology: the Monaco 5.1.2 wireless speaker system. It's already available for sale at $1499.99. But it currently requires a wireless processor and transmitter which connects to a TV using HDMI ARC (Audio Return Channel) or eARC (enhanced Audio Return Channel). The wireless transmitter is included with purchase. If WiSA is able to license its WiSA E tech to TV makers then this extra device will no longer be required. Also, once it's available in TVs, we'd expect many more speaker makers to come on board offering a breadth of different price points, aesthetics and sound quality.
WiSA's wireless transmission technology supports multi-channel High Resolution Audio with up to eight channels of 24-bit audio at 48Hz or 96Hz sampling rates. It offers a maximum of 5.2 ms of latency and less than 1 microsecond of synchronization between speakers. This prevents the lip synch delay that can be found in other wireless speakers. The cost of the current multi-channel WiSA platform has kept many mainstream manufacturers from coming on board.
"Today's multichannel audio components are expensive ASICs (application-specific integrated circuits) that are relegated to the higher end of the market," said Eric Almgren, WiSA's Chief Strategy Officer. "WiSA has taken its multichannel audio technology that is currently used by many of the world's leading audio brands and created an embeddable software product designed to run on HDTV SoC platforms and low-cost IoT/Wi-Fi chips. Our new licensing program enables any smart TV or speaker to offer multichannel, high-quality wireless audio at a much lower cost than what is currently available on the market."
The company says that WiSA E is sampling this quarter (Q4, 2022) with select Beta customers and business licensing discussions have already begun. WiSA Technologies will be demonstrating WiSA E with select partners at CES 2023 in Las Vegas. The company expects WiSA E software to be in production in consumer products next year (2023).
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