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[Tim McCulloch]

Rumours about Sennheiser's "awaiting FCC action" WMAS system.

For we (me) mere mortals, what should we know about this?

[Henry Cohen]

Rumours about Sennheiser's "awaiting FCC action" WMAS system.

For we (me) mere mortals, what should we know about this?

FWIW, Shure is also working on WMAS, though theirs will be a slightly different implementation.

Wireless Multi-channel Audio System is somewhat to wireless microphone technology what digital multi-channel protocol (Dante, MADI, etc.) is to wired audio. Essentially, take the entire 6MHz TV channel (well, a bit less than 5.6MHz actually), and bi-directionally transport a significant number of audio channels of selected quality and direction. User will have the option of choosing high or lesser quality mic or talk back audio, and/or high or lesser quality IEM or queing audio in the multi-channel stream. More high quality channels will mean lower overall channel counts. Latency selection, which affects channel counts, is also potentially configurable. Channels counts being contemplated are in the mid teens to high twenties based on the aforementioned variables, though this is all still in the R&D stage, so take it FWIW.

The one nifty result of this I hope is that wholly grail of a single pack which is both the mic and IEM pack (but I keep getting rolling eyes whenever I mention that).

[Tim McCulloch]

The one nifty result of this I hope is that wholly grail of a single pack which is both the mic and IEM pack (but I keep getting rolling eyes whenever I mention that).

Joe Ciaudelli says the pack will be a transceiver.  He didn't deny simultaneous TX/RX...

[Henry Cohen]

Joe Ciaudelli says the pack will be a transceiver.  He didn't deny simultaneous TX/RX...

So they did settle on that. Good. Haven’t spoken to anyone since NAB.

[Tim McCulloch]

So they did settle on that. Good. Haven’t spoken to anyone since NAB.

So is WMAS something that will be limited to the top end of the wireless market?  Is this technology that can initially be applied to a broader spectrum (no pun intended) of price points?  Too early to tell?

For those wondering:

https://www.radioworld.com/news-and-business/headlines/debate-over-wmas-specifics-heats-up

[Henry Cohen]

So is WMAS something that will be limited to the top end of the wireless market?  Is this technology that can initially be applied to a broader spectrum (no pun intended) of price points?  Too early to tell?

My guess, based on precedent, is that the first WMAS offerings will be top tier due to underlying BOM and investment as well as to showcase the newest technology with the full feature sets and capabilities. After time, that technology could filter down to lesser expensive variations of product, but since the primary idea behind WMAS is high channel counts (with better spectral and power density efficiencies), there may be few customers at the lower end of the market. But I could see a use case for let's say a 2MHz occupied bandwidth version limited to a dozen or so channels and fewer features.

Given that most of the tech support calls to OEMs is from the low to mid tier users deploying their third or more channel, WMAS could cut that tech support significantly (and possibly put a couple of CSR's out of work )

[ProSoundWeb Community]