CE Pro January 2023 - 18

INTERVIEW
Audio+Video
Rob Jones, Chief Technology Officer,
Enclave Audio
Enclave Systems feature full wireless 5.1/5.2 speaker
and hub setups. What are some benefits to enlisting
Wireless Speaker & Audio Association (WiSA) technology
and being a member brand?
WiSA enabled us to do exactly what we were looking to do,
which is to bring that wireless multichannel solution into
the home in a convenient way that also was robust, and
that would meet Dolby and DTS certifications. All those
challenges were something that WiSA had overcome and
that made it very interesting for us to dive into the technology
and look at their ecosystem, which ultimately WiSA
wanted to be able to interchange speakers, hubs and essentially
recreate the wired landscape in a wireless way. That
for us made a lot of sense, this was an opportunity to bring
a level of quality and robustness and audio detail in a way
that a consumer could just plug it into a wall and it works.
The benefits of the technology provide a single-room
solution; for us, we do it a little differently. Our speakers are
WiSA certified, they will connect with a WiSA-certified hub,
however we're certified as an integrated system; our CineHub
works in conjunction with our speakers ... as a whole.
We believe in controlling that ecosystem from a customer
experience standpoint.
Why should integrators and their customers look to
wireless technologies?
One of the benefits to WiSA's technology is they've
overcome those issues of latency and lag and provide an
experience where you can put it next to wired and not tell
the difference. Especially for those customers with shared
walls - apartments, condo dwellers, can't punch holes in
the walls, wire under the carpets, those kind of things -
this is a great solution. Anything wireless in that way is a
great solution.
You have wireless headsets, wireless earphones, Bluetooth
speakers, Sonos whole-home wireless audio ... so now there
are these verticals within the wireless audio spectrum, and
we focus specifically on single-room home theater. We
wanted to do one thing really well. Wireless offers conveniences
for those customers who don't have the space, the
time, the patience - or they look at the back of an AVR
and say, 'I just don't get it.'
18 | CE Pro January 2023
Competing against wireless soundbar/subwoofer
setups, how can a dealer position Enclave's systems?
I think there's a responsibility to get the customer to understand
that there's a difference between what we offer as a
product and an experience versus what a soundbar offers.
It's doing these wonderful things to make your brain think
things are here that aren't here - but it's never going to
hold up to if you want sound from a location... you have to
put a speaker there.
" Wireless [audio]
offers conveniences for
customers who don't have
the space, the time, the patience -
or they look at the back of an AVR
and say, 'I just don't get it.' "
We believe a dealer having the empowerment to say, 'Listen,
you just bought a beautiful TV. Let me show you a wireless,
convenient audio solution. You're going to take the same
setup you would use for a soundbar, and with one wire to the
TV we're going to give you a big movie theater experience.'
If we can get the dealers to think that way, everyone on the
multichannel wireless audio bandwagon is going to thrive.
What does a typical installation process look like? Any
potential challenges?
The biggest challenge is having enough outlets at the
powered speaker locations. We find very little push back
on that, surprisingly. Other than that, it's going to take
longer to unbox it than to install it. You're going to have
an app that will let the customer go in and fine tune each
individual speaker trim, allow them to set the distances
they are for delays in the room, to do a calibration test ... if
the dealer wants to offer an install package they can come
in and actually calibrate the system.
So you can have a dealer tell customers they can get a big
TV, a wireless THX certified multichannel audio system and
the technician is going to be in and out of there within an
hour or two, and it's done.
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CE Pro January 2023

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