HomeTech.fm - Episode 246 - Exploring WiSA with Tony Ostrom

Episode Date: February 22, 2019

On this episode of HomeTech: We are joined by Tony Ostrom, President of the WiSA Association. Tony shares everything you need to know about this exciting standard for high-definition, ultra-low latency, multichannel, wireless audio. Designed specifically for high-performance theater and media room applications, WiSA may be the answer you’ve been looking for to simplify your next surround sound setup. That plus the latest home tech headlines including: A new Savant integration from JoshAI. Samsung’s Galaxy Home speaker may arrive by April (Bixby sighting!) Samsung existing the Blu-ray business? Leviton brings app control to your circuit breakers. Google and Amazon getting greedy with the data. Nest’s undisclosed microphone gaffe. And more…

The Home Tech Podcast is supported by you. To find out more, go to hometech.fm support. This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, February 22nd from Denver, Colorado. I'm Jason Griffin. Hey, I'm from Sarasota, Florida. I'm Seth Johnson. How are you doing, Seth? Pretty good. Pretty good. It's been a... I can't believe it's already been a week since our last recording. It feels like we just sat down last week and did the show. Yeah. It was a long show last week, though, right?

It was, yes. Last week was a monster episode. It was a good one, though, right? Hopefully. I hope so. I hope so. I mean, you may still be listening to this show. And we just picked it back up.

Yeah, if you're working through that one, you'll have to get to this one later i guess i don't know where we where we clocked in on that one but uh definitely a longer episode but really enjoyed uh catching up with giles at cdia and i think we've got another great one this week we had tony osterman from the weissa association they're a new wireless a new ish i should say not brand new but a new new-ish wireless audio standard, really designed for like the media room and home theater sort of environment. So ultra low latency, a really flexible, cool new technology. I really enjoyed having Tony on and learning more about that. Yeah, definitely. It's way cooler. I mean, we're striving for that input zero, right? And

this is one of the ways that I think just, this is one of those things that comes out of left field and says, you know, this is how we're going to get, this is the, now you can see the path. Like you can see the stepping stones to get to that input zero. And I, you know, I knew this kind of stuff would come out of nowhere. And this is one of them. This is one of those things that's just like, oh yeah,

this is how we get there. This is how we have a TV on the wall and nothing else and uh yeah it's pretty pretty cool technology yeah absolutely like i said i definitely enjoyed learning about it so be sure to stay tuned for more on that but as usual uh what do you say seth we jump into some home tech headlines let's do it josh ai has launched integration with Savant, the smart home platform. The integration facilitates seamless interactivity between Savant's user-focused scene creation into the Josh AI platform. By adding Savant capability, Josh AI continues to invest in the custom integration channel and its own ecosystem partners. Yeah, so this is, I know they do Crestron, Control 4, and now Savant.

Yep, good for those guys. Pretty cool. And good to see Savant playing nice with others. And I know I had the chance to preview this technology a little while back, visited Alex and the team over at their office. Pretty neat. So congrats to the team for getting that out to market. While the Samsung Galaxy Home was nowhere to be seen at the company's Galaxy Unpacked event held this week.

The smart speaker apparently has not been forgotten. DJ Koh, vice chairman and CEO of Samsung Electronics, told CNET that the company plans to launch the long-awaited smart speaker by April. First announced back in August of 2018, the device has sort of been relegated to the background for the most part. So it's nice to finally have a release date and coming up right around the corner. And we'll see if anyone actually buys it. That'll be the big question. Bixby.

Bixby sighting. I have a point of contention here. Actually has been forgotten. I had to Google search for whatever. Didn't even know it was a thing. I can't even remember. Well, here's your weekly reminder. Bixby. Bixby sighting.

Levitan has announced a new version of its LoadSitter breaker box with an integrated Wi-Fi or Ethernet hub that will allow you to manage your home electrical setup directly from your phone. That's right. Smart circuit breakers are now here. There have been aftermarket products

that can monitor energy usage in your home, like Sense, which I've got in my house. But Leviton system goes a little bit further by integrating smart home technology directly into the breaker box and individual circuit breakers, giving the homeowners far more information on their power management in their homes. Pretty cool. Pretty interesting. I think Ethernet's the key there, right? I see a box full of Wi-Fi Ethernet breakers in a metal box full of electrical current, and I wonder how well that would work. I'm sure they've tested for that. Kind of a neat technology.

I'd be interested to learn more. They don't need to have the technology. What's going to be in the breakers are just what they call CTs, which basically are just amp meters to tell how much amps are being pulled off that particular breaker. Got it. But the brains could be just separate inside that box. It's a big box. It's probably going to have to be, I would think.

Yeah. Kind of a cool new technology. So we'll definitely keep an eye on that one. HomePod shipments totaled 1.6 million units in the fourth quarter of 2018, a 45% increase on a year-over-year basis, this according to Strategy Analytics. Despite the growth, the research firm estimates that Apple's share of the worldwide smart speaker market was just 4.1% during the quarter. By comparison, Amazon and Google commanded the market with an estimated 13.7 million and 11.5 million smart speaker shipments, respectively. These two companies combined for an estimated 65.5% market share in the same quarter.

So Apple's still got a lot of ground to cover here. Mr. Cook, I have some good news and I've got some bad news. The good news is we're to cover here. Mr. Cook, I have some good news and I've got some bad news. The good news is we're 45% up. Yeah. The bad news is up from zero. We're still getting pummeled. Up from zero. Yeah, exactly.

Wow. The bar wasn't set very high. No, no. Wow, this is confusing. spokesperson confirmed to digital trends uh the statement implies that the company might continue to offer the devices in overseas markets like europe or even in neighboring markets like canada and mexico i don't know i think blu-rays are dead man i think they're dead yeah so it harkens back to our mailbag uh from last week which about extensively, and technology is just coming and going. I think we're starting to see the beginning of the end for these sort of devices. I think the days are numbered, but we'll see. Time will tell. Google and Amazon are expanding the amount of data they

gather about customers who use their voice software to control other gadgets. These companies have always collected data every time someone used a smart speaker to, for example, turn a light on or off or lock a door. However, now they're asking smart home gadget makers such as Logitech and Hunter Fan Company to send a continuous stream of information. In other words, after you connect a light fixture to Alexa, Amazon wants to know every time the light is turned on or off, regardless of whether you asked Alexa to toggle the switch. Another example, televisions must report the channel that

they're set to, and smart locks must keep the company apprised of whether or not the front door bolt is engaged. So I think some really interesting implications here. You know, you would expect that if you ask your Google Home to turn on or off the lights, that data would be tracked. But you'd think if you had the option to go manually turn that on or off, it might be a little bit different. So I don't know, I can certainly make an argument for them needing to track that state in order to, well, I guess even then you'd have discrete on and off commands. So I don't know. This just seems a little bit heavy handed to me. And creepy? Creepy, I think is the word. Definitely a data play. And they're obviously just leveraging their, you know,

their power, right? The power of their platform to sort of put pressure i i can't imagine that device manufacturers are enthusiastic about this yeah i mean users shouldn't be either for that yeah yeah i this is this is so weird i mean we kind of know this we know this happens from uh we talked about this with the tvs uh i think one of the ctos of one of the tv manufacturers admitted that i think it was Vizio, admitted like, hey, the reason these TVs cost the much as they do is because we basically sell every data we can off to advertisers for them to target ads to you.

And I think we're probably going to start seeing the same thing here in the smart home. I mean, this is for some reason, like the only thing, only intelligent thing, I guess, or only business that exists nowadays is just advertising to get you to buy more junk. I don't really understand why we can't, as a society, turn the light on and off in my bathroom every morning at 2 a.m. and all of a sudden I start getting ads for, you know, prostate medicine. I'm not even using the Google Home to do it.

So what business is it of Google's that I'm like the amount of data that they're able to gather is virtually boundless under this model. So I don't know, it's really interesting. I think the significance of this story could go underappreciated if you don't sort of really read between the lines a little bit. Yeah. And again, it's not this like individual point that you turned on and off a light. It's the, like the data in aggregate, the total, the total data that they have on you,

uh, that they can just kind of like pull and suck in from other sources. Like they, they know that you went to the Walgreens and purchased, you know, something for X and then you get, went home and turn on and off. Like they know so much about you at this point.

It's getting kind of, it's kind of ridiculous. I think we're seeing, finally seeing some, some some pushback on that maybe here in the states uh we've seen we've seen definitely seen that in europe with gdpr a little pushback on that but i mean this this comes like on the heels of uh google google kind of having a little issue this week and we're going to talk about it uh real quick too is like they they had the uh they got a little bit of hard water with their security system than s secure um because it's shipped with an undisclosed microphone it wasn't on the spec sheet like

people um google activated the microphone earlier this month for google assistant functionality and it's like hey guess what you can do now with this thing you bought that we didn't tell you good and people are like oh that's great but, there's been a microphone in this device and you guys didn't tell us about it from the very beginning. Like, it's good to have a surprise, but maybe not that kind of surprise. Yeah. Surprise. Easter egg. Google said the on-device microphone was never intended to be a secret and should have been on the text tech specs and tech sheet um but there was an error this was an error on our part they said the microphone has never been on and is only activated when users specifically enable the

option and i mean couple that with like the previous uh previous story it's like you can tell why there's so much angst with this like people just don't trust these companies I mean to ship a product with a microphone that's disabled like people now probably believe that this thing that they had the microphone in it they didn't know that microphone's been on and listening them I don't know who knows what it was listening to them like getting up out of the bathroom in the middle of the night and using the bathroom, I guess. I don't know what it was doing, but, um,

I, I, it's, it's like a trust factor, right? Like you, you want to trust these companies to, to build this technology and make these really cool solutions.

But at the same time, it's like they're selling all this data off, uh, to sell you prostate medicine. I'm just going to stick with that analogy this entire show. Yeah, no, it, I talked about it numerous times on the show. I wouldn't put myself—I guess if you had a spectrum of people, and on one side you have people who just are maybe completely oblivious to all of this, and then on the other side you have the guys like tinfoil hats living in a wood hut in the it's like, you know, how much is too much? And yeah, the amount of data and information that's out there about us is cause for concern

for any of us. I think anyone who's paying attention. It's absolutely staggering. You know, I think I can be sort of pragmatic to a fault sometimes and maybe be a little guilty of being too forgiving of this sort of thing. I think it is just one of those things that we all have to be aware of and we all have to make our own decisions in life about what sort of technology we invite into our homes or into our lives. And it's so ubiquitous and so almost borderline. You know, I hate to use this word because none of it is actually necessary for life. But to live in today's modern world, you have to have a certain amount of technology. Cell phones are being a good example. And it'd be very hard to be a functioning member of society without a cell phone.

Not impossible, but it would be difficult um so we all have to make those trade-offs and it's unfortunate it does feel like it's getting uh getting getting worse but i don't know maybe it's just we're getting more aware of it too yeah that may be part of it yeah this feels like an unfortunate i'm going back and like looking at wikipedia to see when ness released the nest you know like nest guard i think is the name of this thing uh it was september 2017 so it's almost been two years of of this product being on the market and i guess a year and a half and they announced like we're gonna update it and it'll double as a smart speaker for you for your google home stuff and man i i just i can see them like shipping this thing out in 2017

and being like, yeah, you know, the speaker, the tech, the writer doing all, like the marketing guy doing all the tech talks like, hey, engineer, what's the microphone in there for? We're not using it. It's completely turned off because we hope in the future we're going to turn on a smart speaker thing. Oh, I'm just going to put that in. You know, I can see like how that could be not malicious, right?

But fast forward two years and we know what we know about like what these companies are doing. We know what happened with, you know, crazy Russian interference and Cambridge Analytica, that kind of thing. Like the massive amount of data these companies get to do like targeted ads. And you're like, wait, wait, there's a microphone. Yeah.

It's a pause button. And you have to do a double take on that. And I, I can totally, I can totally see how this wasn't malicious, but at the same time, it's like, man,

this is, this is a huge miss and, and, and on, on forced error, as they, as they say, on forced error.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. All right. Well, you know, like they say. Unforced error, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. All right. Well, you know, like I said, everyone's got to, it's good that we're seeing more awareness around it. I think that's, to me, the biggest takeaway is like we're starting to see more talk about it. And I think more pressure is being brought to bear on these companies to be transparent. That's going to be a long battle.

But it's, you know, keep fighting the good fight, as they say. All of the links and topics that we've discussed on our episode this week can be found on our show notes at hometech.fm slash 246. While you're there, don't forget to sign up for our newsletter. We'll send you weekly show reminders and other occasional updates about all of the great things going on here in the world of home tech. And don't forget, you can join us in the chat room live Wednesday, starting sometime between 7 and 7.30, which is usually when we kick it off. To find out more, go to hometech.fm slash live and follow us on Twitter at Home Tech Podcast. Yeah, we've got a few folks hanging out. Omar just joined us. We got Glenn,

who Seth, according to the chat room, is planning a visit to your neck of the woods tomorrow. Yeah, I'm going to have to see what that's about, yeah. And Glenn is here all the way, I believe, from New Zealand, if I remember correctly. Yes, Glenn is a Kiwi, so he is visiting from a very long ways away, and hopefully you guys will get a chance to connect. Yeah, I hope so too. Yeah, absolutely. So without further ado, Seth, what do you say we jump into our interview here? Again, we had Tony Ostrom. He is the president at the WISA Association. He joined us to talk all about the new technology, and let's go ahead and jump in. Hey, Tony, welcome to the show. How

are you? I'm great. How are you guys? Doing very well. We appreciate you taking some time out of your day to join us. And we look forward to jumping in and talking all about WISA and all of the cool things that you guys have going on there. But before we do that, why don't you give our listeners just a little bit of a personal introduction and maybe talk about some of your background here in the space? Sure. My name is Tony Ostrom. I'm the president of the WISA Association, the Wireless Speaker and Audio Association. I've been in consumer electronics for about 25 years,

mainly in product development of new technologies in the audio space and the wireless space, including audio and wireless charging and personal audio and professional kind of ran the gamut in marketing, training, sales, and like I said, predominantly product development. I was formerly with Klipsch as the vice president of product development and brought to market one of the first wireless home theater systems using WISA. Very cool. So we are going to jump in and talk all about that technology and what it does and how people can learn more and get into it. But as we look to tee that up, why don't you give us sort of the elevator pitch here?

What is the short version? What is WISA exactly? So WISA is a wireless audio standard that is specifically designed for multi-channel home audio use. So that it's perfectly, perfectly, a perfect fit for home theater. Because it is multi-channel up to eight channels, because it is a high definition 2496, because it's very low latency and tightly synchronized, it's a perfect wireless solution for multi-channel audio around a video screen. And so we are an association that standardizes that technology, making it interoperable for multiple brands to use. So when you go wireless, you have to be all speaking the same language. We make sure that that happens all the way from the transmitter to any of our certified speaker partners.

Very cool. How long has this been around? So WISA as a standard has been around for a few years with good momentum in the two to four year range. Okay. It was originally developed by a company called Audio Mojo. And they were purchased by another company called Focus Enhancements that became Summit Semiconductor. And Summit Semiconductor, now Summit Wireless, fully owns Wysa LLC, the brand, and all of its components.

We're a wholly owned subsidiary, but a separate entity. So we manage the standards body and all of its membership, which includes some pretty big names these days. Nice. Very nice. So let's take a step. I remember you said there's eight. This is a wireless standard. It can do eight separate channels. So you think like a 7.1 surround sound system.

7.1, 5.1.2, or something simple, 2.0, 2.1. Okay, excellent. Yeah, I mean, just kind of give us an idea of what that looks like. I like to say this out of the box. If I wanted a WISA setup, like, what would that look like physically in my house? And how would I kind of go about setting that up with, I guess, speakers that have the receivers built into them? Yeah, so it's a pretty simple process. It's really designed to make it easy for people to

once again, enjoy that immersive sound experience. Um, but without all the traditional hassles. So what that looks like out of the box, it kind of depends on the system you buy. Um, there are solutions out there that are, there are more, um, home theater in the box kind of, uh, opportunities and every speaker is kind of pre-labeled and this is my center. This is my right front, left front sub. And you position those all around the room and they immediately connect to the transmitter and you're done. We commonly say that it takes longer to unpackage a WISIS system than it does to actually set it up. And I coined a phrase in a previous life and it kind of has some legs. We call it the cold beer setup, because if you open up a cold beer and set up your entire home theater, your beer will still be cold when you're done enjoying your favorite football game or movie or whatever.

The more elaborate way to set something up could all be all from different brands. Just like setting up a traditional wired system, all the brands work together because you physically connected them. Well, all of Wysa certified products work together because they have all gone through the certification process and we know they all work. So if you wanted to use Harman front speakers and a Klipsch sub and Axum surrounds, you could do that. Got it. Got it. So you mentioned the word transmitters there, and I want to take a second and sort of dive into that a little bit as we talk about the architecture of the system and how these things come together. I think people are getting a general sense. Okay, it's a wireless standard, interoperable. I can put together a surround sound system in my family room and not have to worry about running wires, which is great.

But what does the transmitter side of this equation actually look like? You know, does it live in TVs? Does it live in set-top boxes, AV receivers, perhaps all of the above? Like, what is the sort of overall lay of the land when it comes to what sort of devices can act as that transmitter? Well, it's nice when the easy answer is the best answer because all of the above is actually the answer. So there are solutions that are more like traditional AVRs, although dramatically simplified. A good example of that is the Axum Q. So one of our early members, a company called Axum, has a product called the Q that is six HDMI inputs and transmits wireless audio. So if you had more of a traditional setup

with a lot of different sources, you could use a product like that. We've also recently come up with a solution that we call WISA Ready. And that allows sources that don't necessarily want to burden their product with an extra component internally to become wireless. It allows them to easily connect an external component, a very small USB transmitter that will then make that product WISA certified. And that solution is being adopted pretty quickly by some pretty big names. So all of Xbox One, One S and One Xs can transmit WISA with an Axiom Link USB transmitter. It's the only product that's both Xbox certified and WISA certified. And then all of the premium 2019 LG TVs. So all of their Super UHD, which I believe they're now calling NanoCell, and all their OLEDs are WISA ready. So plugging in a product like the Axiom Link

would enable that TV to then become a transmitter. And it's really beautifully done. The user interface on the TV shows you all the speakers in the network, allows you to change their position, add them, remove them. It's really elegant. And they also added the WISA logo to the volume when you're in WISA mode. But so those are a couple of the options to make something a WISA transmitter. Super simple, very easy minutes to install. Got it. So just to kind of drive that point home, if somebody's maybe starting to paint a picture in their head, but to make sure they're totally getting it, Like you could theoretically, if you have one of these LG TVs and then a surround sound set of speakers, right,

that are all WISA certified, that would literally be all you would need. You could theoretically use the built-in streaming apps on that LG TV, plug in that USB dongle into the TV, and voila, you've got a functioning surround sound system, no wires, no AV receiver. Am I understanding that correctly? You are perfectly spot on. That's the aha moment, I think, for where we are with technology and the content that's coming into our homes today. There's so much content from leading providers that's in an immersive sound format. And what we're doing is we're saying, okay,

you're watching this content, you're already absorbing it in your home. You have the beautiful new TV that you're watching it all on. We want to make it as simple as possible for you to realize how great that sounds also. There's really no extra work. Plug in the USB transmitter, set the speakers around you, plug them in, and the setup process is incredibly simple. All you need is a big, beautiful plate of glass on your wall and great speakers around you. You no longer need all the complicated extra parts and laborious install. Yeah. I know you're speaking my wife's language when you say that. No doubt about that. That's very cool. Seth and I often talk about a term that I can't say we coined, but it's something we've picked up somewhere and sort of latched onto this idea of input zero, which is kind of like

the TV, that pane of glass, as you alluded to it, really becomes like your input zero. That's your default. It's got the built-in apps, and that's really all you need. The idea of external set-top boxes and other sources sort of go away. And this sort of extends that out, right, the the ability to now do surround sound without any sort of external av receiver so really cool concept one one last follow-up question on the on the weiser ready concept again just to make sure people are really understanding this correctly you know you alluded to this external usb dongle which could i think lead people to maybe believe well if my tv's got a usb port like i plug this thing in and I'm sort of off to the races.

But if I'm understanding correctly, even though it is an external USB, I guess dongle or whatever you want to call it, the TV or the Xbox, as you alluded to, still has to have some technology built into it to support that, correct? Yeah, for a source like Xbox or LG TVs to be WISA ready, number one, that's a designation that would be on the product packaging, so it's easier to buy at retail. They do have to provide the right audio output to the USB, and there also has to be a way, either through an on-screen user interface or through a mobile app to control the environment, to control the speakers, see them, add them, remove them, do a few things that are mandatory to be certified. But the good news for us all, including the source manufacturers, is that's not a very complicated process.

It's not nearly as complicated as embedding the technology. is really driving a lot of momentum for Wysa Ready, which is great because it's the simplest way for a lot of sources to start, you know, participating in, you know, this very simplified, immersive solution. Right. You just mentioned this, the magic word for me, which is control. And, you know, Jason and I have these, these pesky custom integrator backgrounds.

So we wouldn't be custom integrators if we didn't ask. So control-wise, how does this look from a control standpoint? Are you just sending volume commands to the TV and then those are getting translated over to each speaker? Is that how this works? So we don't restrict a lot of the potential features. And I say that because from an association perspective, we want to make sure that everything works together. But if you want to add advanced system's volume through some known mechanism. Be that, like with LG as an example, the TV remote,

just like they would their TV sound or connected soundbar, works as the volume control. With something like the Axum Q, obviously it's more of an AVR solution. So there's a separate remote. And that control is, is the way it's internalized where you can, you can do what you would like. Now we do mandate that there's a certain amount of volume normalization so that everybody kind of plays nicely together.

But we try to not restrict things too much. Okay. I mean, it makes sense, but like, so if I, too much. Okay. I mean, that makes sense. But so, so if I, if I get a Wysa system, like Jason was talking about, I get my TV, plug in the dongle, get, uh, eight speakers, put them around the room. Uh, I'm basically sitting there with my TV remote and if I hit mute, all the speakers mute at the same time.

Correct. That's slick. That's really cool um and and what type of um what type of like surround sound format capabilities are you supporting is just basically whatever eight channels come out of the tv or can you do like crazy things like atmos and that kind of thing we are basically uh eight eight pipes and You can put anything through those eight pipes you want. If you wanted to anywhere from 2.0 to 7.1

to 5.1.2, we don't really care what goes through the pipes. We guarantee that what you put in will come out the other end with low latency and very tightly synchronized on all eight channels. We would support any of those formats. And the eight channels, is that like a hard limit?

Or are there plans to expand that? I mean, right now, I mean, eight channels seems like enough to me. But I know there are people out there who need more channels. Is that like a hard limit with you guys? Or is it something that may be expanded in the future so with without going into um roadmap details that um people on the technical side of the aisle would would uh bludgeon me over the head for going too deep into um there there are we know there's a need for more than eight channels at some point for the for the mainstream applications.

Getting getting us back to at least five dot one right now would be tremendous for, you know, for a simple, normal application. But, yes, we do realize that there's a need for that and we want to facilitate that. And that's part of a roadmap. So I can't just it's not as easy as just two dongles gets me 16 channels. No, there's, there's some pretty advanced things going on, uh, technologically, uh, to make sure that all those latency and synchronization specs are met. Um, you know, for an, as an example, and I'll just,

I'll just give you one little kind of toe in the water, one of the issues with latency is that with a lot of wireless audio technologies, packets are rebroadcast. So, you know, oh, I didn't get that last thing, send it again. And because that's in the technology, it adds delay. With our technology, that doesn't happen. There are some very, very advanced error correction algorithms that are going on. So we don't ever need to rebroadcast. So that's what keeps our latency so low. And just as a quick example. So there's some pretty high-tech things going on behind the scenes. And so when we start to talk about things like going beyond 2496 and going beyond eight channels, it's not that they're impossible.

We just want to make sure that we're maintaining all the other specs while we would do that. I have a good question for you, and it may be too technical for us to answer on this show. But why are you doing error correction on this if latency is a factor? Well, the error correction happens after the transmission. So it's instead of asking for a rebroadcast and adding delay so that we have time to do that, we're basically saying, okay, it's wireless. I mean, anything wireless, occasionally, you know, something doesn't get from A to B.

I mean, even wired, that's the case. But I'm thinking, I was thinking, if you think about how like TCP works on the internet and UDP works on the internet, one's just a broadcast and you're broadcasting those packets. UDP is a broadcast. And TCP is like the handshake thing

where it has to go back and forth and do all this error correction, set up encryption and that kind of thing. But UDP is just like, boom, you get it or you don't. And here's the ones and zeros. Like what advantage do you guys see doing that type of connection? To me, it seems like you add latency for that. But what advantage are you getting out of that?

Well, no, because we never broadcast, we never add latency. And we do the error correction so quickly that – I'll give you an example. We are in – the high end of the speakers that are utilizing our technology are $40,000 apiece. was extremely critical about the audio quality, even with the error correction engaged. And it took a long time and a lot of research and development and money to pass the golden years at that particular brand. And the current technology does that.

To do it any other way would actually add latency. And we can't do that and feel good about saying it's a home theater technology. So we did it the hard way, but the right way. And we ended up with a product that passes every level of golden ear and doesn't have any latency all, all the way down to 5.2 milliseconds. Wow. So we're well within all the required standards of the various audio governing bodies. Um, and we're really proud of what we've been able to accomplish. Yeah, from an engineering standpoint, that is a feat to get that little. I mean, I'm just I'm thinking of what I really want to dive into this. Like, how are you doing this? This checksum, basically, to figure out if something so if something's not broadcast

correctly, you've got to go back and say, hey, send this packet again and get that information back into the speaker and then put out the speaker before the next piece of information comes in. We never ask for it to be rebroadcast. Oh, okay. So you just drop that. Okay. That makes sense. Yep. Okay.

Yep. We fix it rather than get it again. Interesting. Interesting. Yep. And the output is great. It's really an elegant solution. Very cool. Well, hopefully we didn't lose anyone there. I think it's fascinating stuff. And it

certainly sounds like from an engineering perspective, you've done some great things there. Talk about zooming back out. And I want to make sure that listeners have a really good understanding, like super low latency. I mean, that sounds sexy. It sounds super important, right? But in this environment, why is that? Like, why is low latency such an important thing to think about when it comes to designing a viewing room or media room or theater? Right. Well, you want to make sure that you don't get into lip sync issues and that the, the video isn't getting to your eyes before the audio gets to your ears. And that's, I mean, that's really in a nutshell, what we're trying to avoid and with a lot to,

to bring the technical conversation we just had, you know, up a few notches, you know, or more into, you know, the mainstream. If you don't handle the wireless audio properly, it will be delayed and you will see that lip sync issue. And it's very difficult to get it so low that that's not an issue while at the same time keeping all the speakers on exactly the same timing. Because if you're trying to set up a really nice sound field especially with you know in a few different dimensions you need all those speakers to be very very tightly timed and so to time the speakers together and to keep the latency down with the tv is very difficult and not something that's easily done or done at all with other wireless technologies.

And I kind of look at it like there are certain technologies that fit the role. And if you're talking about multiple speakers around a video, we're the solution. We've really been designed for that use case. Got it. And that's exactly what I wanted you to hit on for sure, because I think everybody listening to the show right now, when you started talking about lip sync issues, if they didn't understand it before, they understand it now, right? Because we've all dealt with that. And it is one of the most infuriating problems in any media room or theater. When you see that slight

delay between the lips moving and the audio that's hitting your ears, it is incredibly disruptive to the viewing experience. And it's something you definitely need to think about with any media room, but especially, like you said, when you start going to wireless technology, it becomes really, really important. We have designed this to be a wire replacement. It should have the same capability. And quite honestly, the fact that it's wireless means that the speakers have to be powered. And from an engineering perspective, being able to design the electronics specifically for each speaker and having them be powered and processed perfectly for the acoustic solution is a really, really great way to approach making a speaker. And so there are benefits even beyond the fact that it's wireless and simple. And we've kind of overcome all these typical wireless obstacles.

Well, then the result is you get this great powered speaker that, you know, this electroacoustic system that was designed perfectly to work, you know, the electronics and the acoustics were designed perfectly to work together. So it's really a win-win situation. You're basically getting like studio grade monitors set up around the room at that point. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, in the traditional, you know, home theater build where it was wired, you know,

you'd pick your receiver that had the right amount of power for your speakers and, you know, it would work. But chances are the guy that developed that amplifier and the guy that developed that front right speaker never went to lunch together right you know and we're talking about those things coming from the same company because they were they were designed to go together the amplifier and the speaker and it's just we've seen you know smaller speakers sound like bigger speakers and bigger speakers sound amazing, you know, like even bigger speakers because they're able to extract every ounce of performance, you know, out of that cabinet, out of that driver, out of that tweeter, out of the whole system. It's amazing.

I mean, we've had some speakers that came in and we're like, okay, those are pretty, you know, they look like they're pretty, you know, imposing. And you turn them on and they just, you know, kick your butt. And it's just because they're completely, perfectly dialed in. Yeah. Stay on speakers. And, and I'm going back on my memory here. Did, did you just say, I mean, we, I was lost in the technical talk, but did you just say that the high end of what you guys support is a $40,000 speaker?

Correct. Bang Wilson deal at 90. Ah, banging. Okay. That makes sense. We are in speakers up to that price point and all the way down to a complete 5.1 home theater in a box, including the multi-HDMI input transmitter for less than $1,000. And that's really the scalability of the solution is, like I said, it's a wire replacement. So we want to be able to be in all of those different opportunities for whatever level of system you want to build, wherever the use case is, wherever the budget is. It still needs to have those features and those abilities. Very cool. So this technology is out there in the wild today. It sounds like people can go out there

and get their hands on it and put it in place. And you've got, like you alluded to, you're working with speakers at all different price points. So that's great. Can you give us an idea for how you go about, I think you said there's a logo that people can look for on the box. I mean, how do people go about if they're interested in this technology and want to learn, okay, what kind of speakers or what sort of components do I need to be looking for? Like what's the easiest way for them to do that?

Yeah, so at Retailer Online, you would want to look for anything that says WISA certified. It's a very identifiable logo. It's a circle with a W in the middle. It looks like a sound wave. And you can also always go to Weiss association.org and look through the lists of certified speakers. We have a number of products up there. We're in the process of certifying more and more and,

and also adding transmitters. Like I said, with all the new LG TVs and a growing list of speakers. So you can kind of figure out what works for you from a price point, from a design perspective, what kind of sound you like. I mean, Bang & Olufsen, Klipsch, Axum, Enclave, Harman, Platin, System Audio, Electric Compagnia, GoldenEar. The list goes on and on of guys that are certified or getting certified with more people joining the association all the time. We're going to have in the next few weeks, we're going to have another announcement of several more companies joining the association. So it's a really exciting time, a lot of growth. And we're just excited about making things easier

for people to build great immersive audio systems in their homes. Very nice. One quick follow-up question that I just thought up on the TVs. We've been seeing this lately, kind of a trend where TVs have basically become software platforms for all intents and

purposes where, uh, new features will be able to be brought into old TVs with, with a simple software update. Uh, is that something you see? Maybe I know LG, it's saying on there on the press release,

you guys have that it's the newer TVs, the OLEDs and the UHD LCD TVs. Um, is this, is this something that can be brought into like an older TV? So like say, you know, something like Vizio comes on board and does a software update. Is it something that they would be able to utilize?

Or is this something that has to have a hardware component built into the TV? It doesn't have to have a specific hardware component to be WISO ready. It does have to have the right components to allow audio to get to the USB in the proper format. And some of that depends on the internal piping of the TV. And it can also in some way even relate to the operating system on the smart TV without going into a lot of detail. So the possible, yes, possible with every TV, probably not. And that's just a case by case basis. And that's why you have the organization that you do, right, is to go out there and evangelize and get more people, get more companies, I should say, onto that bandwagon. So really, really cool sounding technology. Tony, definitely appreciate

you coming on and sharing with our listeners. I know I enjoyed learning more about it. I hope others did as well. As we wrap up our interview here, what's next for WISA? Like, what are you guys getting excited about here in the next 90 days, six months, 12 months? What's getting you guys keeping you up at night for good? We have some exciting products coming through the certification process. We're in the process of signing up several new members. And that includes everybody from sources to manufacturers to speaker brands. And then, you know, really leveraging what's going

on with Weiss already and making this whole thing a lot easier for everybody. We've got good solutions no matter what kind of system you want to build. And we've got some good momentum coming out of the Consumer Electronics Show. And right now we're just keeping that pace going and trying to help people bring more solutions. So there are more options for all the customers out there that want to build cool stuff in their house. All right. Very cool. And if our listeners wanted to connect with you and or learn more about WISA, what would be the best way for them to do that? You can always stop by the website at wisassociation.org, or you could reach out to me directly at tostrom at wisassociation.org. And my contact can be found on the website,

and we'd be happy to talk audio and help you in any way we can. All right. Very good. Well, Tony, we do appreciate you taking the time and we'll look forward to seeing what you guys are able to do. Jason, Seth, thank you so much for your time. I appreciate the opportunity. You got it. Thank you.

All right. All right. Well, that does it for our interview with Tony. And I had a really good time. I knew a little bit about the technology coming into it, obviously from doing some research and approaching Tony about coming on the show, but I learned a lot and it seems like a really, really cool option for the, you know, a lot of different applications, a lot of different price points that you could use this and, you know, certainly save yourself some headaches when it comes to wiring. And it seems like it could be a really neat option,

again, given the flexibility of different applications that you could use it in. Yeah, absolutely. I think this is, like I said earlier in the show, this is like one of those little stepping stones to getting to that input zero that, you know, I don't think, you know, you know the smart guys that listen to this show, right? There's smart integrators that listen to this show and hear, hear these things and kind of like keep them in the back of their mind. You know, it may not be today's technology, but it's definitely tomorrow's technology. And, uh, they're going to be looking at this and, and thinking how systems in the future are going to be designed and how they can integrate with them and all that. So I, um, I, I, and this is huge for consumers, right? Cause you

could just go and buy, you know, one of these home theater in a box type setups, or even those, I mean, you look on their website, they have some clip speakers that are, that are like, uh, WISA certified. Like you could just, it's plug and play. You just set them up, set them up with the app and you go and you got to, you get nice little surround system so i i'm excited about this technology i can't wait to see um you know who picks it up and where it goes in the future yeah yeah i think that'll be the big thing is watching what they're able to do here over the next uh you know six months a year two years like how much uh sort of adoption they're able to get it sounds like they've got a good uh a good running start and a lot of momentum, so definitely wish them all the best and enjoyed learning more. What do you say, Seth?

We've got, I think, a good pick of the week this week. Yeah. So, Jason, what would you say the most stressful part of your morning is? Is it going to the gym and working out? Oh, that is quite the setup for this picture i i certainly wouldn't say that it is uh visiting the commode as it were but uh you know it turns out straining it can go on in there if you're not eating eating and having a proper diet there is you know you gotta you gotta keep a lot of fiber uh in that diet certainly but uh

if you do happen to find yourself spending a lot of time on the toilet seat i've got some good news for you there is now a smart toilet seat uh that can reading from the headlines here monitor your health through your butt cheeks and i think in like five years of doing the show that's the first time we've uttered the phrase butt cheeks here yeah yeah it could be so this thing has this god this is a cardiovascular monitoring system and it's designed to detect deterioration early so um you know as you're sitting there uh doing your morning you know your your daily constitution, as they say. It incorporates a single lead ECG.

So you could basically buy an Apple Watch or buy one of these. And I think this is probably more helpful because, I mean, sometimes you forget to put it on your watch, right? Right. And you're never going to forget to use the toilet. You can check your blood oxygenation level. Make sure you're there breathing. Make sure you have controlled breathing.

And a bastocardiogram, whatever that is, mechanical forces associated with the cardiac cycle. And, of course, it'll detect your body weight as you sit there and ponder why you did eat all of that Chinese food last night. Shouldn't have gone for that third helping. that's the problem with chinese food though it's like it's just so good it's so good it's so good it's so spicy so spicy jokes aside though this is uh definitely uh looks like a fairly advanced probably the most advanced uh toilet seat I've ever seen, I would have to say. And it certainly could be very useful for, I'm imagining this is developed for the elderly. So it could do some, you know, very useful health monitoring while you're using the toilet there.

And kind of an interesting technology. And it gave us the opportunity to say butt cheeks on the air. So there you go. There you go. There's your pick of the week. Hey, at least it won't guarantee your health, but at least you can see if something's going on as you sit there. You don't have to put a watch on. You don't have to do anything.

It's data. It's all about the data, Seth. Exactly. Hopefully they're not selling this particular algorithm off to Amazon. You never know. You never know. Oh, that's what you're doing at 2 o'clock in the morning. It all makes sense.

This is the missing link. It brings it all together. All right. Well, if you have any feedback, questions, comments, picks of the week, or great ideas for a show topic, give us a shout. We would love to hear from you. Our email address is feedback at hometech.fm. Once again, that's feedback at hometech.fm or visit hometech but especially those who are able to financially support the show through our patron page. If you don't know about our patron page, head on over to HomeTech.fm to learn how you can support HomeTech for as little as $1 a month. Any pledge over $5 a month gets you a shout out on the show. But every single pledge gets you an automatic invite to our Slack chat, The Hub, where you and other supporters of the show can gather every day for inside baseball conversations about all the aspects of home technology absolutely and if you want to help us out but can't do it financially we totally get it we would also appreciate a uh a review on itunes or your

podcast app of choice certainly gun for those five stars but any review helps uh let us know what you're liking what you know and and what we could do better perhaps although seth you know we definitely want those five star ratings uh ultimately helps other people find the show which we absolutely appreciate so again if you're a fan of what we're doing here and want to help support the show take a few minutes to go leave a review on itunes or your podcast directory of choice smart Smart toilets. That's the future, Jason. Mark my words.

Data and butt cheeks. It's some big data. That doesn't affect our explicit. We don't have to check the explicit box on this week's episode. No, I don't think so. I mean, we got close, but... PG. All right. Well, thanks everyone for tuning in.

Had a lot of fun and we'll definitely look forward to reconnecting Seth Week. Seth Week. We'll definitely look forward to reconnecting next week. Seth, I hope you have a great weekend. We'll talk to you again soon.

Yep, have a good weekend. All right, take care.