Uniting UC And AV
WELLSKY’S NEW CORPORATE CAMPUS PERFECTLY INTEGRATES UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS WITH COMMERCIAL AV
A V
THE MANAGEDSERVICES ERA THEY’RE NOT FOR EVERYONE, BUT THEY MIGHT BE FOR YOU
C O M M E R C I A L
T E C H N O L O G Y
A N D
A P P L I C A T I O N
December 16, 2019 Vol. 65 No. 12
FROM THE CROW’S NEST OUR INDUSTRY WILL LOOK QUITE DIFFERENT IN 2020 AS COMPARED TO A DECADE AGO
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T I L Y A A U Q
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A P P L I C A T I O N
CONTENTS Volume 65 Number 12
T E C H N O L O G Y
A N D
60
32 DEPARTMENTS
COLUMNS
32 UNITING UC AND AV
11 NEWSLETTER 28 INDUSTRY POV
8 WAVELENGTH
WellSky’s new corporate campus perfectly integrates unified communications with commercial AV. By Dan Daley
42 THE MANAGED-SERVICES ERA
A V
By Alesia Hendley
50 A TARIFF PRIMER FOR THE AV INDUSTRY Trade-related developments have sown uncertainty in the commercial AV industry.
C O M M E R C I A L
84
F E AT U R E S
They’re not for everyone, but they might be for you.
6
64
By Lynnette Reese
56 FROM THE CROW’S NEST
Our industry will look quite different in 2020 as compared to a decade ago. By Pete Putman, CTS
62 BENCHMARKING YOUR COMPANY’S COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS A new tool is here to help you. By Chuck Wilson
64 COLLABORATION CONSULTING 2020
Riding the third wave of enterprise design and deployment. By Mark Peterson
Sound & Communications December 2019
The Future Of Conferencing: New study shows the importance of audio. By Chris Merrick
30
INDUSTRY POV
14 SOUND ADVICE
By Peter Mapp, PhD, FASA, FAES
18 IOT
Test Strategies For The HDBaseT Environment: New testing advancements can help maximize system performance.
68 MARKET BRIEF 70 NEWS 70 CALENDAR 73 PEOPLE 74 PRODUCTS 78 MEDIA & SOFTWARE 80 CENTERSTAGE 82 MARKETPLACE
By Ariel Marcus
By Dan Ferrisi
By Mike Brandofino
20 HOUSE OF WORSHIP: BUSINESS
By David Lee Jr., PhD
22 THE COMMISH
By James Maltese, CTS-D, CTS-I, CQD, CQT
24 WHAT WOULD YOU DO?
By Douglas Kleeger, CTS-D, DMC-E/S, XTP-E, KCD
26 AVIXA POV
By Ann Brigida, CTS, CStd
84 AVENT HORIZON
By Pete Putman, CTS
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WAVELENGTH There was a time when our industr y—indeed, our world—seemed simpler. When I started as an Assistant Editor with Sound & Communications in November 2004, AV integrators were largely enjoying the economic expansion sandwiched by the dot-com crash of the early aughts and the Great Recession that began in December 2007. Construction activity was buzzing, businesses and universities were investing in physical infrastructure, and hardware reigned undisputed as champion of the commercial AV categor y. At trade shows, industr y manufacturers led with their projectors’ lumen counts and contrast ratios, or with their power amps’ wattages. Videoconferencing companies showcased their million-dollar, proprietar y room systems. Back then, “Slack” was something you asked to be cut if you were running late. “Zoom” was what you did when there was no further slack to be cut. Sure, an AV integrator’s whole world wasn’t just “hang and bang” back then; however, we didn’t hear too much about working to develop continuing relation-
ships with clients after the gear had been spec’d, installed, commissioned and put into operation. Remote monitoring and maintenance? Ser vice-level agreements? Twenty-four-hour helpdesk? I mean, sure, I suppose some for ward-thinking integrators were doing that when “The Osbournes” was still producing new episodes, but I mostly remember hearing how many jobs integrators had in the pipeline and how busy they were specifying and designing the next system. Stock up on inventor y and then sell it, right? The broader economy has been transitioning away from manufacturing and toward ser vices for more than a decade. Well, so, too, is commercial AV evolving. Specialized, non-commoditized AV gear is the beating heart of our industr y, and perhaps it always will be. AV integrators can earn good money selling and installing it. But, if you’ve been looking at the equipment lists accompanying our installation features, you’ve begun to see more instances of Apple iPads, for instance, working alongside off-theshelf switches and PCs powered by Intel.
That equipment has been commoditized. Against this backdrop, savvy integrators have pivoted. Many have come to recognize the value of capturing recurring monthly Dan Ferrisi revenue (RMR) by selling ser vices. Today’s AV integrators must collaborate with highly empowered, deeply knowledgeable technology managers who work for enterprises and education institutions. It behooves integrators to lead with the ser vices they can provide, with the expert knowledge they possess and, yes, with highly specialized AV gear—not with their ability to sell commodities. One of this month’s features, “The Managed-Services Era,” starting on page 40, dives deeply into a compelling proposition for integrators looking to broaden their portfolio. As the inimitable Alesia Hendley writes, managed services aren’t for everyone, but they might be for you.
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CONTRIBUTORS A V F O R S Y S T E M S I N T E G R AT O R S , C O N T R A C T O R S A N D C O N S U LTA N T S
Editor Dan Ferrisi dferrisi@testa.com Associate Editor Anthony Vargas avargas@testa.com Assistant Editor Amanda Mullen amullen@testa.com Contributing Editors Pete Putman, CTS Jim Stokes
Contributors Mike Brandofino Ann Brigida, CTS, CStd Dan Daley Alesia Hendley Douglas Kleeger, CTS-D, DMC-E/S, XTP-E, KCD David Lee Jr., PhD James Maltese, CTS-D, CTS-I, CQD, CQT Peter Mapp, PhD, FASA, FAES Ariel Marcus Chris Merrick Mark Peterson Pete Putman, CTS Lynnette Reese Chuck Wilson Technical Council Joseph Bocchiaro III, PhD, CStd, CTS-D, CTS-I, ISF-C, The Sextant Group, Inc. David Danto, Interactive Multimedia & Collaborative Communications Alliance Douglas Kleeger, CTS-D, DMC-E/S, XTP-E, KCD David Lee Jr., PhD, Lee Communication Inc. Peter Mapp, PhD, FASA, FAES, Peter Mapp Associates Pete Putman, CTS, ROAM Consulting LLC Art Director Janice Pupelis jpupelis@testa.com Digital Art Director Fred Gumm Production Manager Steve Thorakos Sales Assistant/Ad Traffic Jeannemarie Graziano jgraziano@testa.com Advertising Manager Robert L. Iraggi riraggi@testa.com Classifieds classifiedsales@testa.com Circulation circulation@testa.com
Operations Manager Robin Hazan Associate Publisher John Carr jcarr@testa.com President/Publisher Vincent P. Testa Editorial and Sales Office Sound & Communications 25 Willowdale Avenue Port Washington, New York 11050-3779 (516) 767-2500 | FAX: (516) 767-9335 Sound & Communications Sound & Communications Blue Book IT/AV Report The Music & Sound Retailer DJ Times • DJ Expo ConventionTV@NAMM ConventionTV@InfoComm
Ann Brigida, CTS, CStd, is Senior Director of Standards for AVIXA. She has served on the Board of Directors for the Society of Standards Professionals (SES), and she was the publication’s council director. A licensed educator and former business owner, Brigida has won numerous writing awards.
Alesia Hendley is an audiovisual professional who found her passion at a young age as a sound engineer within her father’s church. Now, you can find her operating/installing audiovisual systems or executing creative ventures. As a young professional, she’s finding ways to bring AV, creatives and creative visions together.
Ariel Marcus is CTO at MSolutions and an HDBaseT Expert Trainer, handling commercial AV product development and HDBaseT courses for AV integrators, installers and consultants. He specializes in fullHDBaseT-ecosystem integration and interoperability. He brings more than 19 years’ experience in multi-disciplinary product development, customer support, interoperability and AV integration.
Chris Merrick is responsible for Shure’s strategic global marketing in the conferencing and discussion systems markets, comprising national and local governments, enterprises, professional services, finance industries and education institutions, with the goal to help these organizations collaborate, communicate, and learn more effectively and efficiently throughout their working environments.
Mark Peterson is a Principal at Shen, Milsom & Wilkie, helping clients develop solid AV and collaboration strategies. Prior to that, he served as Morgan Stanley’s VP in End-User Services, Unified Communications and Collaboration, and he was the architect behind its collaboration spaces. He received the 2016 Pioneer of AV Quality Award.
Lynnette Reese has a BS in electrical engineering, and she has been working in various roles for more than two decades in electronics. She discovered a talent for writing six years ago when she won an award for her first technical article, and she hasn’t looked back since.
Chuck Wilson is Executive Director of NSCA, the leading not-for-profit association representing the commercial electronic systems industry. He assists AV integrators with the challenges of today’s business environment, gives lectures and presentations on technology innovations at key industry events, and has been published in numerous trade journals.
Dan Daley has covered the confluence of technology, business and culture for almost 30 years. He has also been a successful composer and recording studio owner, and he authored the book Unwritten Rules: Inside the Business of Country Music.
Exclusively on SoundandCommunications.com Joe Walsh, VP of Sales, Sports & Entertainment, with VITEC, explains why partnering with knowledgeable manufacturers can strengthen bid proposals, integration teams and project success in the stadium-and-arena vertical. Read it at https://sndcom.us/winning-playbook-for-stadiums-arenas. Sound & Communications (ISSN 0038-1845) (USPS 943-140) is published monthly for $25 (US), $35 (Canada & Mexico) and $65 (all other countries), by Sound & Communications Publications, Inc., 25 Willowdale Ave., Port Washington, NY 11050-3779. Periodicals postage paid at Port Washington, NY, and additional mailing offices. Copyright © 2019 SOUND & COMMUNICATIONS PUBLISHING, INC. Reprint of any part of contents without permission is forbidden. Titles Registered in the U.S. Patent Office. POSTMASTER: Send U.S. address changes to Sound & Communications, PO Box 1767, Lowell, MA 01853-1767. Canada Post: Publications Mail Agreement #40612608. Canada Returns to be sent to Bleuchip International, P.O. Box 25542, London, ON N6C 6B2.
December 2019
Sound & Communications
9
Smart Coverage
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NEWSLETTER MOOD MEDIA EXPANDS TECHNOMEDIA, FORMING GLOBAL SPECIALTY DIVISION Mood Media (Austin TX), an in-store media-solutions company, has announced that it is expanding Technomedia (Orlando FL) into a new specialty division, merging three separate Mood teams to operate as one global force under the Technomedia brand name. With this, Technomedia retains its calling card of delivering highly complex AV installations, but it broadens its industry specialties beyond themed entertainment and expands to have a global footprint. The new Technomedia combines Technomedia, the Mood US Premier System Sales team and the Mood International Advanced Solutions Group to build an AV specialty division that creates original, immersive media experiences. This division offers media solutions—from design and engineering, to integration, installation and support—to Mood’s current slate of global clients across verticals. The team will focus on large-scale audiovisual experiential projects that require a particularly deep level of experience with, and expertise in, capabilities that include LED walls, projection mapping, interactive technology, digital media, advanced AV systems integration, and other customprogramming and content-management services and support.
AVIXA ANNOUNCES 2020 BOARD OF DIRECTORS, LSC MEMBERS AVIXA (Fairfax VA) has announced the election results for the 2020 AVIXA Board of Directors and Leadership Search Committee (LSC). Samantha (Sam) Phenix, AV Tech Executive, has been elected Secretary-Treasurer of the Board by AVIXA membership. AVIXA members also elected to the Board both Alexis Bryant La Broi, CTS, Director of Sales, Mid-Atlantic and New England, for VER, and Ian Harris, CTS-D, President and Principal Consultant, ihD. In addition, the LSC appointed Kay Sargent, Senior Principal and Director of WorkPlace for HOK, to AVIXA’s Board of Directors. The committee also reappointed Martin Saul, CEO of ICAP Global, to the Board. AVIXA membership elected Cassie Berger, Regional Sales Manager for Shure, to serve on the LSC. Current AVIXA Board Chairman Joe Pham, PhD, President and CEO of QSC, made two additional appointments to the LSC: Theresa Hahn, VP of Marketing and Business Development for Verrex, and Mehryn Corrigan, Associate Director of Strategic Alliances Marketing for Sharp Imaging and Information Co. of America. AVIXA offered thanks to outgoing LSC Chair and former Chairman of the AVIXA Board Julian Phillips, Whitlock, and outgoing Board members Wallace Johnson, CTS, WLJ Consulting, and Shaolei Liu, Prime Connections, for their years of service to the AVIXA Board. AVIXA also acknowledged outgoing LSC members Jeremy Caldera, CTS-D, CTS-I, IAS Technology; Virginia Daugherity, Sonic Foundry, Inc.; and Michelle Grabel-Komar, Full Compass Systems.
NSI INDUSTRIES ACQUIRES SULLSTAR TECHNOLOGIES NSi Industries, LLC (Huntersville NC), a provider of electrical and control products, has announced the acquisition of SullStar Technologies (Simi Valley CA), expanding its product portfolio in the low-voltage-product market. SullStar Technologies designs tools and connectors for the datacom and telecom markets. For more than 20 years, SullStar Technologies has been partnering with NSi Industries’ Platinum Tools division, which NSi acquired earlier this year, for the distribution and sales of its products. SullStar’s specialty electrical products include crimp tools, punchdown tools and connectors; the company has more than 60 patents worldwide. According to G.R. Schrotenboer, CEO, NSi Industries, “This acquisition ties together the sales and development of two businesses into one, further strengthening our leadership position in the lowvoltage market.” As part of the overall acquisition, NSi will gain ownership of, and work on maintaining and enforcing, SullStar’s current patents. SullStar products will be branded under NSi’s Platinum Tools division. In addition to NSi’s acquisition of Platinum Tools earlier this year, which expanded its market reach into the datacom market, the company acquired electrical products manufacturer Bridgeport Fittings, Inc., this past August, growing its North American footprint.
You could have received this NEWSLETTER information about three weeks ago, with more detail and live links, via email. Go to www.soundandcommunications.com to sign up! December 2019
Sound & Communications 11
NEWSLETTER AVLEX CORP. AWARDED MIPRO’S PORTABLE PA PRODUCT LINE Avlex Corp. (Kansas City MO) has announced that MIPRO (Chiayi, Taiwan), a manufacturer of wireless audio solutions, has awarded Avlex exclusive distribution rights to the company’s portable-PA products. With this new addition to its already extensive MIPRO lineup, Avlex is now the exclusive distributor of MIPRO products in the US. MIPRO has two categories of portable-PA systems. Its wireless PA systems, such as the MA-303SB or MA-808DB, suit performing musicians and DJs, and they’re a solution for a range of other sound-reinforcement tasks. Additionally, the company’s personal-portable-PA products, such as the MA-100SB compact ultra-light portable PA and the companion ACT-32H handheld transmitter, suit tour guides, lecturers and a host of similar applications. Fred Canning, National Sales Manager for Avlex, remarked, “MIPRO has been [a] leader in wireless, battery-operated portable-PA systems for over 20 years, and these systems...deliver on performance, simplicity, flexibility and portability. These go-anywhere, durable systems are easy to use and fully customizable, making them [a] solution for public-address applications of nearly any size and scope.”
VISLINK TECHNOLOGIES PRICES $4M PUBLIC OFFERING Vislink Technologies, Inc. (Hackettstown NJ), has announced the pricing of an underwritten public offering with expected total gross proceeds of approximately $4 million, before deducting underwriting discounts, commissions and other offering expenses. The securities offered by Vislink Technologies consist of the following: (a) 3,201,200 shares of common stock, together with 3,201,200 warrants to purchase 2,400,900 shares of common stock, and (b) 11,893,100 pre-funded warrants, with each pre-funded warrant exercisable for one share of common stock, together with 11,893,100 common warrants to purchase 8,919,825 shares of common stock. The shares of common stock and accompanying warrants are being sold together at a combined publicoffering price of $0.265 per share. Alliance Global Partners (AGP) is acting as the sole book-running manager for the offering.
B&H PHOTO VIDEO BATTLES SALES-TAX-EVASION ALLEGATIONS B&H Photo Video (New York NY), a retailer of video and photography products, has been accused of evading millions of dollars in New York state sales taxes, The Verge reported last month. According to the article, written by Colin Lecher, the New York State Attorney General, Letitia James, has filed a suit claiming that B&H has offered instant rebates to its customers since 2006 but neglected to pay the necessary taxes on those discounts. Since then, B&H has reportedly seen $67 million in manufacturer reimbursements, but failed to pay more than $7 million in owed taxes. According to James’ lawsuit, the company was aware that it was required to pay those taxes, and it purposefully avoided doing so through “an accounting methodology that effectively hid the instant-savings reimbursements from state-sales-tax auditors.” James’ office was informed of the alleged situation by a whistleblower complaint from 2016. The Verge received a statement from B&H in which the company denied any misconduct. It reads as follows: “B&H has done nothing wrong and it is outrageous that the AG has decided to attack a New York company that employs thousands of New Yorkers while leaving the national online and retail behemoths unchallenged. The Attorney General wants to charge New Yorkers a tax on money they never spent. It’s wrong, and we won’t be bullied.” The lawsuit is seeking the company to pay damages, penalties and interest under New York state law. Jeff Gerstel, spokesperson for B&H, commented, “The Attorney General is flat wrong—and is trying to create a tax on discounts in order to make New Yorkers pay more. B&H is not a big-box store or a faceless chain; we are a New York institution, having operated here for nearly 50 years with a stellar reputation. The tax department has done countless audits and never once—not a single time—mentioned this widespread industry practice.” COMPILED BY DAN FERRISI AND AMANDA MULLEN 12 Sound & Communications December 2019
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SOUND ADVICE
‘Bassic’ Instinct, Part 2 Acoustics à la mode.
By Peter Mapp, PhD, FASA, FAES
L
ast month, I commented on why we seem to love bass so much, as well as its importance in providing, literally, a base for music. We seem to have a primordial connection to lowfrequency sound. (Perhaps because only comparatively recently in our development could it be man-made.) From thunder, to earth tremors, to the roar of the saber-toothed tiger, low-frequency sounds often warn of danger or impending disaster. Furthermore, our bodies resonate at low frequencies; this adds to lowfrequency sounds’ impact, as their sen-
Figure 1: In-room loudspeaker response listening-preference curves for trained and untrained listeners.
Figures 2a and 2b: Oscilloscope images of tone-burst excitations of room modes.
sation might not be purely aural. Our legs typically resonate at 2Hz to 20Hz; meanwhile, our arms, a little higher, resonate at up to 30Hz. Our abdomens and lungs resonate around 4Hz to 8Hz. The chest wall resonates in the region of 50Hz to 100Hz—right where music has its fundamental bass notes and where pop/rock music has its maximum bass content. Our heads tend to 14 Sound & Communications December 2019
resonate at 20Hz to 30Hz, and our eyeballs and intraocular structures resonate in the range of 20Hz to 90Hz. So, it could be said that bass frequencies and sound are fundamental parts of our lives. This is also true of audio and loudspeakers in particular, where bass response is one of our primar y means of assessing sound quality. How many times have I listened to sound systems in cars or stores and found that the bass had been turned up to impress the listener? (I nearly said “unsophisticated listener,” but, actually, I think good or powerful bass response impresses most listeners. It’s just that some listeners are experienced enough to know when it has been overdone, and too much bass can begin to be irksome and become fatiguing.)
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Figure 3: Listening-room SPL variation due to modal excitation (~40Hz).
Figure 4: Amplitude plot of the 1st and 3rd axial modes in a typical domestic listening room.
Over the years, Floyd E. Toole and Sean Olive at Harman have carried out many investigations into loudspeaker performance and, in particular, preferred loudspeaker responses. Olive has shown there to be significant differences between trained and untrained listeners when it comes to bass-response preferences for hi-fi loudspeakers. This has significant implications in pro-audio applications, as well. I have summarized some of this work in Figure 1, which shows plots of the average “in-room frequency response” listening-preference cur ves for trained and untrained listeners. As the chart shows, untrained listeners like the bass response to be emphasized by around 10dB to 12dB, whereas trained listeners prefer much less emphasis—a boost of only around 5dB. The other interesting feature of this cur ve is the difference in high-frequency preference: The trained listeners prefer a gentle roll off, whereas the untrained prefer a slight boost. I found these high-frequency response preferences quite surprising, but we must remember that this is the “in-room” response and not the anechoic response of the loudspeaker.
16 Sound & Communications December 2019
Interestingly, there is a current trend among the top live-sound mixers to go for a flatter, or less pronounced, bass frequency response than was the norm a few years ago, as I indicated in last month’s column. However, as I also noted, it is not just about frequency; the time domain and a system’s temporal response must also be taken into account. This is also true when listening to a sound system (e.g., hi-fi) in a smaller room. It’s quite fun (well, disheartening, really) to play a sine sweep or tone bursts over the loudspeakers in a typical listening room and then listen to the room resonances going off as they become excited. Even more interesting—well, to the room-resonance cognoscenti, at least—is to obser ve these effects on an oscilloscope. Figure 2 shows a couple of interesting oscilloscope pictures of tone bursts that I measured in a listening room a few years ago. Figure 2a shows the tone-burst excitation signal at the top of the screen and the resultant acoustic signal in the room, as a resonance is excited, in the lower trace. In Figure 2b, I used a longer tone burst (lower trace), which resulted in a rather more complex acoustic interaction that involved the buildup, cancellation and decay of the signal in the room. As the figure shows, the acoustic signal that was actually heard bore little resemblance (in the time domain, at least) to the original. Although all rooms have modes at which they want to resonate—these are sometimes called “eigenfrequencies”— there are so many of them in large rooms that they overlap each other. So, effectively, they just contribute to the reverberant field as opposed to being discrete temporal events. However, in smaller rooms, there are far fewer modes (particularly at low frequencies); as a result, individual modes or groups of modes can stand out and color the sound both temporally and spectrally. Modes can not only boost sound at certain frequencies, but also cancel or attenuate it. This will var y spatially
around the room such that one listener might complain of having too much bass, whereas another could complain there isn’t enough! Figure 3 helps put this into perspective. It’s a measurement I made of modal excitation of a typical domestic listening room. The plot shows the variation in sound pressure level (SPL), measured at a single frequency, down the length of the room. As can be seen, in the middle of the room, the bass frequency is effectively nonexistent, being 25dB lower than at the edges (walls) of the room. Figure 4 shows the spatial variation in sound level that occurs at the third modal frequency. At this frequency (~120Hz), the mode is better damped (i.e., it’s not so sharp); as such, it only attenuates this frequency by around 10dB to 12dB. But, again, note the cancellation that occurs along the centerline of the room, which, in this case, was right at the stereo-listening sweet spot. No amount of traditional equalization will fix this problem because it is caused by the phase cancellation of the propagating sound waves. Meeting rooms can suffer from similar modal problems, which can lead to annoying coloration of the voice (often around 200Hz to 300Hz). This can become particularly noticeable with audio- and videoconferencing. Modes can also give rise to premature feedback in sound systems, but this can be addressed by “ringing out the system” to find them and then mitigating their effect with a narrow-band parametric equalizer (0.1 octave bandwidth often works well). It is straightforward to calculate the likely modal frequencies for a room when it has simple geometry (e.g., square or rectangular). When designing such rooms for audio applications, it is a good idea to keep away from simple ratios for the dimensions (e.g., 2:1, 2:4) and to provide a range of potentially non-related modal frequencies. The room-mode frequency-calculation formula is as follows:
f = Frequency of the mode in Hz. c = Speed of sound 343m/sec. at 20°C (68°F). nx = Order of the mode of the room length. ny = Order of the mode of the room width.
nz = Order of the mode of the room height. L, B, H = Length, width and height of the room in meters.
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IoT
The Challenges Of IoT In Healthcare
Successful deployments are certainly possible, but they’re not guaranteed. By Mike Brandofino Caregility
I
n a recent article, I focused on some of the up-and-coming Internet of Things (IoT) devices and applications within the healthcare ecosystem. Those include ingestible sensors, wearable technology that can monitor critical healthcare characteristics and mobile devices designed for patients to take home with them. All of these have the potential to improve patient outcomes significantly, while also helping caregivers gain access to patients and information in a more efficient way. This comes at a cost, however, and many organizations are struggling to deploy and manage IoT solutions. In a sur vey that Cisco published, only about 26 percent of the 1,800 people in the study who were responsible for driving IoT projects thought their project was successful. Overall, about 60 percent said they had significant challenges in the pilot and early stages of their projects. More than 30 percent viewed their efforts as being completely unsuccessful. One of the primar y factors leading to the poor results to date has been outdated infrastructure. This is not merely a reluctance among healthcare organizations to invest in new infrastructure, either. The useful life of healthcare equipment is considerably longer than that of traditional IT solutions. Whereas most organizations see a three-tofive-year useful life for a PC or laptop, healthcare equipment has a sevento-10-year expected useful life. This presents a financial challenge, as the older equipment is still depreciating, as well as a technical one, as healthcare organizations must somehow design a migration path that supports both 18 Sound & Communications December 2019
legacy technologies and the new technologies they’re looking to deploy. Interestingly, another major challenge in successfully deploying IoT solutions in healthcare isn’t a technical one, but, rather, a workflow issue. When I talk with healthcare CIOs and CTOs about which projects failed and which ones were successful, the answer almost always correlates to how much time was spent with the clinical users prior to initiating the project. Too often, the focus is on the technical aspects of the project and the tactical things required to connect devices and manage them. A lack of attention to the workflow and the experience of the clinicians and caregivers usually leads to a solution that’s not aligned with the actual requirements. Spending a significant amount of time gaining feedback from the clinical users and patients—staying focused on their experience and expectations—goes a long way to improving the chances of an IoT deployment’s success. There is no downtime in a healthcare environment. In the corporate world, we have evenings and weekends to perform upgrades and deploy new technology. In healthcare, there is no acceptable outage. After all, ever y second a solution is not working is a potential disruption in healthcare to a patient. This creates a daunting task for those deploying new IoT solutions, as the solutions must be highly available. In addition, they must be capable of remote monitoring and management. These requirements tend to make healthcare organizations more cautious as they deploy new IoT solutions. This has also led many healthcare organizations to shift away from the long tradition of on-premise solutions and toward cloud-based solutions that provide the high availability, scalability and security that would be extremely expensive—not to mention difficult to implement and manage—on their own. IoT devices combined with a cloud infrastructure can minimize or eliminate downtime and provide for better management and monitoring of connected devices. Maybe the most crucial challenge for IoT in healthcare is the capture, storage and analysis of the tremendous amount of data available from IoT devices. This covers both the technical data aspects of the IoT devices and the patient-related data captured via applications running on the devices. It is estimated that only one percent of all data available from IoT devices is actually utilized. The primary reason is that organizations have neither the capacity nor the in-house skills to deal with large amounts of data. Healthcare organizations must ensure that they develop “Big Data” solutions in order to be prepared for IoT deployments and the resulting avalanche of data. Equally important, healthcare providers must ensure they are Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) compliant so that all data that falls under personally identifiable information (PII) is protected according to industry requirements. IoT devices and solutions are here, and they offer a huge opportunity for healthcare providers to improve care and patient outcomes. The solution to overcoming many of the challenges discussed appears to be not tr ying to go it alone. According to the aforementioned sur vey, of those who viewed their project as being a success, a majority leveraged a partner’s platform to help deploy their IoT solution. Leveraging prior experience and focused expertise can give healthcare organizations the greatest chance of a successful IoT deployment.
HOUSE OF WORSHIP: BUSINESS
From The Parking Lot To The Pew, Part 3 It’s time to be vigilant. By David Lee Jr., PhD Lee Communication Inc.
I
n Part 1 and Part 2 of this three-part article, I wrote, “We live in violent times. People are stressed, government is inadequate and people are experiencing bleak economic conditions. Social woes, challenging family conditions and religious conflicts are just a few of the factors that are fueling the stress people are feeling globally.” I believe that this stress is at least an underlying element that is causing some people to become violent and harm family members, colleagues and people they don’t even know in places historically thought to be safe. We don’t have to be paranoid, but I believe it is time for house-of-worship (HoW) leaders to become more vigilant, and it’s time for them to take actions that can enable them to prevent most acts of violence from occurring on their campuses. Therefore, I have put together seven simple steps that I believe can help us help worship leaders be more vigilant in protecting congregants who gather for worship. They are the following: 1) create an action plan; 2) create a security team; 3) train the security team; 4) create a video sur veillance system; 5) keep doors locked except for primar y in/out doors; 6) create a check-in/check-out system for children and teenagers; and 7) explain the need for security to the congregation. In Part 1 and Part 2 of this series, we described the need to create an action plan and create a security team. In this article, we will discuss steps three through seven. Step three is to train the security team. I believe this is the most impor20 Sound & Communications December 2019
tant step of the seven. Training the security team includes explaining and rehearsing how to use technology and people skills to enhance vigilance and security. The first step in the training process is for worship leadership to define and explain the scope of the security team. In other words, leaders must define the purpose of the security team and establish the parameters of its actions. The guiding principle of any good security team is to defuse potential issues before they occur, and, ideally, without using force (especially lethal force). The title of this series is “From The Parking Lot To The Pew.” That means increased vigilance begins in the parking lot, with the goal of recognizing potential problems before they reach the doors of the HoW. Therefore, security-team members should operate in the parking lot, at the main entrances, near child and youth areas, and inside the main worship spaces. Team members should use in-ear wireless radios to communicate with each other, while also utilizing video sur veillance systems. Decision-makers should identify a dedicated leader of the security team who will guide the actions of the team and train its members to function as an effective security force. The primar y members of the security team—the greeters—should be known congregants who have strong people skills and can welcome ever yone to the campus, but who also have the ability to “read people.” These folks are the front line of the security team. One way to meet new people is set up a visitors parking area. Greeters could stay near that special area, greeting the visitors as they exit their cars. Their welcoming smiles enable them to ask friendly questions, “read” the new guests and determine if they potentially present any problems. The next action could involve the greeter using his or her radio to call for a golf cart to come and take the visitors to the entrance of the HoW. Using the radio, the greeter might say, “This is John. Please send a cart to transport the wonderful Jones family to the front door.” The words “transport” and “wonderful” could be code to say, “I believe these people are fine.” Thus, greeters at the door would simply welcome them into the building. By contrast, if the parking-lot greeter were to say, “Please send a cart to escort Mr. John Smith to the front entrance,” the word “escort” could be code to say, “I’m not 100-percent sure if I am reading this person accurately.” When that occurs, the front-door greeters and team leader could meet the person and evaluate him or her. In more extreme cases—say, if the greeter smells alcohol on the person’s breath or senses he or she is impaired or acting erratically—then the greeter should remain calm but radio ahead, saying, “Please send the red golf cart to meet our guest.” The word “red” could be code for “potential problem.” Thus, law-enforcement officers who are members of the security team could go to the location and evaluate the situation from a different perspective. Obviously, many approaches could be developed to greet people in the parking lot and get them to the pew safely. The key, however, is to create a plan, explain the plan to security-team members, and rehearse the plan to make sure all the team members
know their roles and know how to react to a host of potential scenarios. Item four is to create a video surveillance system. This is the primar y role that we, as AV professionals, can play in the heightened security process. Obviously, cameras should be located in the parking lot, at the entrances, in hallways and in front of bathroom areas. Ideally, there should not be any blind spots (other than inside bathrooms). That way, security team members can easily monitor the entire campus from a central location. With regard to item five, the best way to maintain vigilance is to (reasonably) limit the number of entrances into the HoW. This enables the security team to monitor fewer places where people are tr ying to enter and exit. In addition, back entrances and side entrances should be locked so that the general public cannot enter via those locations. If those locations are important access points for staff members, then issue those staffers keys or install a keypad with codebased building access. Additionally, inside the building, exit signs should be clear and conspicuous. Item six, involving a check-in/ check-out system for children and youths, is absolutely required for the world in which we live. Numerous software-based systems enable volunteers to gather family information, take a photo and print an adhesive badge that the child can wear while in the kids’ zone. That badge can contain a photo of the child, the person who checked in him or her, and the persons authorized to check out him or her. Gathering this information is essential to protect children from being taken from the kids’ zone by unauthorized persons who could potentially harm them. It also helps protect the church from legal exposure. Finally, there’s item seven, which
states that the HoW leader should explain the need for security to the congregation. The leader should explain there is no need for paranoia but that, in the era in which we live, all of us must be more vigilant and more aware of the people around us. The ideal explanation should convey that the security measures will not be invasive and that, in fact, if they are implemented effectively, congregants will not even be aware of them. I believe that, with positive and affirming words, the congregation will generally embrace the enhanced security measures. In many ways, I grieved as I wrote this series of articles. I am sad that
our world has become so unstable that even HoWs are no longer sanctuaries in which people can feel safe. On the other hand, the challenges and stress we all deal with each day validate the need for HoWs to exist. Why? Because most of us search for hope in these tr ying times, and HoWs can be a place where hope and healing are experienced. Thus, I believe that we should do ever ything we can do to provide a safe and secure place where people can worship freely, experience hope from their chosen faith and apply that hope to their daily lives. That is what I believe. Please tell me what you believe.
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Sound & Communications 21
THE THECOMMISH COMMISH In the AV industry, the end users are typically represented by two separate, yet equally important, groups: the designers, who specify the systems, and the integrators who install them. My company acts as a third party to commission these systems. These are our stories.
Don’t Make Your Audio Signals ‘Pumpkin Pie’
The best part is the anticipation of a ‘pumpkin pie,’ where the pressure applied to the pumpkin is so great that it simply explodes after it’s been launched.
You’ve hit the limit—but where? By James Maltese, CTS-D, CTS-I, CQD, CQT Level 3 Audio Visual AV9000 Checklist Items Under Test: 6.2.6: The sound system is capable of producing an additional 15dB above the nominal operating level (80dB SPL) for each audio source, with less than 0.5-percent total harmonic distortion (THD) plus noise. Measure THD plus noise when source is at +15dB above nominal operating level at each “destination,” for all sources selected. Reasoning: The goal of any speechreinforcement system is to bring the talker’s speech to the listeners’ ears so that they can easily hear what is being said, even though they might be located ver y far away. This type of audio system must satisfy three main criteria to be successful: It must be loud enough, intelligible and stable. There are tons of other aspects, as well, but failing any one of those three can be a dealbreaker. When technicians are attempting to make the systems loud enough, they might adjust a level setting beyond a limit of a device, essentially “chopping off” the peaks of the waveform at that limit, introducing distortion into the system and, thus, reducing intelligibility. We want the audio signals to pass through ever y stage of the system without the waveform being clipped or “squared.” By doing that, we can distribute audio to the space as cleanly and intelligibly as possible, bringing the listeners “close” to the talkers for an enjoyable, easy-to-listen-to experience. The Stor y: One of the best parts of Thanksgiving weekend—apart from the three Fs (friends, food and family)—is Punkin Chunkin, the pumpkin-throwing 22 Sound & Communications December 2019
contest. Maybe “throwing” is the wrong word, though. Mechanical geniuses (and not so geniuses) are tasked with moving a pumpkin as far down a vast field as possible… using any means necessar y. There are several categories of implement: catapults, trebuchets (my favorite), torsion, human-powered and the monster air cannons. You might be thinking they throw pumpkins hundreds of feet. That’s what the kids do. No, my friends, the current Punkin Chunkin record, held by Team American Chunker, is just under 4,695 feet! You might also be thinking that watching pumpkins fly thousands of feet through the air is the best part. Actually, no, it’s not. My friends, the best part is the anticipation of a “pumpkin pie,” where the pressure applied to the pumpkin is so great that it simply explodes after it’s been launched. You see, ever y pumpkin will deform a little bit when launched, but, if you hit the critical pressure of that particular pumpkin, the shape is changed too much and the pumpkin is no more. It becomes “pumpkin pie.” Not knowing if the pumpkin will take flight is the best part. Naturally, all this got me thinking of commissioning audio systems. We can think about audio equipment in a system as a series of interconnected pipes of various sizes. We can also think about the audio signal as a waveform tr ying to fit through that series of pipes. The different processes might change the size and/or shape of the wave, but it still has to fit through the pipe. If the wave becomes too big, it might squish (or distort) against the walls of the pipe. If the wave never touches the walls, it can leave the system cleanly (undistorted). The system is made up of pipes of various sizes, however. So, the audio wave might be passing through one pipe beautifully but then meet a smaller pipe that it has to squeeze through. At that point, distortion is introduced. Additionally, that squished signal might then pass to a larger pipe; however, once the audio is squished, it stays squished. So, once the audio’s shape is distorted, it stays distorted, even in those bigger pipes where it might no longer be touching the walls. This is where things can become tricky as you tr y to hunt down where the distortion is being introduced to the audio signal. You have to look at each section of pipe to confirm the signal is not hitting the sides. It’s easy to hear distortion. When you send a simple waveform signal (like a 1kHz tone) through a system at headroom level (the maximum level the system has to be able to handle, according to the performance specification), and there is little or no distortion, it sounds like a pure tone. If there is about one-percent distortion or more, you easily notice that a buzz is introduced as the additional harmonics are inserted into the signal. The rails of the system (the maximum voltage a device can handle) have been hit at some point in the signal chain. The audio waveform has been squished (or “squared,” as the peaks of the waveform are flattened at that maximum voltage in the device). It is our job to trace that signal through all the processors or processing blocks in a digital signal processor (DSP), find where the distortion is introduced and adjust the (continued on page 80)
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WHAT WOULD YOU DO?
Consumer TV Or Commercial Display?
Part 2
What’s the difference, anyway? By Douglas Kleeger, CTS-D, DMC-E/S, XTP-E, KCD
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his past October, we discussed the features and benefits of consumer TVs (as compared to commercial displays). Here, we present Part 2, delving into the features and benefits of commercial displays. Let’s get one fact out of the way: Yes, commercial displays cost more—sometimes quite a lot more. Are they worth the additional cost? The answer, in most cases, is yes! The biggest benefit is easily the warranty. Suppose you’re using the display for a lobby and it will be on seven days a week, 14 hours a day. That’s a lot of on time! Some commercial displays are even rated for 24-hour use, a capability that’s great for 24-hour eateries. A consumer TV that’s used for commercial purposes will have no warranty; the basic 90-day labor and one-year parts warranty will have been voided by the commercial use. A commercial display, however, will typically have a three-year parts-andlabor warranty. And, no, you don’t have to have that 70-inch display removed and sent in for service, leaving an unsightly space on your wall; instead, service will come to you! In fact, some manufacturers even offer advance replacement. I think the second most beneficial aspect of a commercial display is control. These displays can be remotely controlled by RS232 (serial) or a local area network (LAN). This is quite an important factor. Given that so many new construction projects are looking to benefit from the tax advantages of Leadership in Energy and Environ24 Sound & Communications December 2019
mental Design (LEED) certification, having the ability to turn the display on and off remotely is critical. In some instances, there are even sensors in a room; in those cases, if ever yone left the space and forgot to turn off the display, a sensor could send a signal to the control system and the control system could shut off the display after a set period has elapsed. It should be noted that RS232 is a two-way stream of information; by contrast, consumer TVs rely on infrared (IR), which is a one-way method. This can be a disaster if you’re tr ying to control the TV with a professional control system because, if there’s no feedback, the possibility exists that the TV will be out of sync with the control system. When you go to turn it on, you could actually be turning it off! Causes of instances like this can include power failures, someone manually turning on the TV, etc. Display orientation is also big. Whereas consumer displays can only be used in landscape mode, commercial displays can be rotated 90 degrees and used in portrait mode. This is a common orientation in, for example, courthouses that have to display records outside the courtroom, restaurants that wish to showcase their menu and retail stores that want to display advertising. All those applications are categorized as digital signage. Many commercial displays that are targeted for digital signage have a built-in digital-signage player (or a space for you to add one). There are other, more conventional applications for displays, including videoconferencing in meeting rooms and team collaboration in huddle spaces. Although those applications are typically not as demanding as digital-signage deployments are, they, too, benefit from commercial displays being chosen. Some of the other benefits of commercial displays include the following: • Commercial displays are brighter, which means enhanced ease of viewing in bright, well-lit spaces. • Commercial displays that are targeted for the hospitality industr y have advanced control capabilities, locking out many functions to which the user oughtn’t to have access. • Commercial displays offer more flexibility with regard to connectivity. DisplayPort (DP) and Digital Visual Interface (DVI) are often still used, in addition to HDMI. And some models that are designed for videowall applications even have a looped output so you can chain together displays. • Some commercial displays have advanced windowing capability. You can input as many as four discrete signals and choose (via control) whether to show any two in a split-screen, all four, a picture-in-picture or any one image—without having to add an expensive windowing processor. • Commercial displays’ glass is actually thicker, helping to prevent damage. In fact, many of these displays even offer touchscreen capability by which, just like on a cell (continued on page 83)
AVIXA POV
Making The Case For Energy Management For AV Systems Conserving energy isn’t only good for the environment; it’s also good for the bottom line. By Ann Brigida, CTS, CStd AVIXA
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bout a decade ago, I was sitting in a session about Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) and rating systems for energyefficient buildings. The presenter was from our industr y, and he was encouraging people to pay attention to power usage. He displayed a statistic about total usage in buildings, as well as what a typical AV system contributed to the overall building. His slide showed that, at the time, the AV system’s contribution to overall building energy consumption was a little over five percent. Building systems like heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) and lighting occupied the largest pieces of the pie chart, and no sector was smaller than AV was. In other words, our industr y’s products were the smallest consumer of energy in the building space. To be honest, that number made me question why we were working on an energy-management-for-AV-systems standard. Don’t get me wrong—I’m an ardent conser vationist. However, when the inevitable “what’s in it for me?” question would arise about why someone should adopt the standard from a business perspective, I was hoping to be able to offer something more compelling than saying, “Because it’s the right thing to do for our resources and the environment.” Business is business, and the fact that AV-related energy usage was so low as compared to other building systems’ energy consumption meant that our work was cut out for us to get practitioners to pay attention and adopt the practices for which we were advocating. That statistic has bothered me ever since, and, as the years have passed, I’ve looked—without success—for an update. 26 Sound & Communications December 2019
Surely, as AV systems rose in ubiquity all over the world, they naturally came to consume much more than five percent of a building’s energy, especially given the number of systems that are left on when no one is around. I just couldn’t find any proof. The AV standard was a great piece of work, and it garnered a decent amount of attention. We were receiving feedback from people who were using the returnon-investment (ROI) calculator for the savings they were seeing, and it was, in general, quite well received. But still… that stat—it’s always stuck with me.
Then, last month, ever ything changed. Alex Sloan, a graduate student from the University of California, Davis (UC Davis), contacted Biamp’s Matthew Kosel, CTS-D, the moderator of the first standard’s task group, for more information on the energy-management standard. [Editor’s Note: The revised standard will be released in early 2020.] Sloan was part of a project, funded by the University of California Office of the President, tasked with figuring out a way to manage energy consumption when buildings on their college campuses were vacant. He shared high-level details of their procedures and findings, and, lo and behold, AV systems actually topped the list when it came to energy consumption when spaces were unoccupied! The findings showed that AV-system energy consumption was 33 percent of the totalbuilding energy consumption. Lighting was next, registering 26 percent, followed by the IT network structure and so on. To be clear, these measurements are not reflective of the total energy consumed when ever y system in a building is on; heating and cooling still take first place there. This data is about which systems are drawing unnecessar y power when they should be idle or off—the ver y reason the standard was written in the first place. So, what are my takeaways from this new information? Well, first, we have updated a muchneeded standard that I hope ever y AV practitioner will adopt. The fact that AV systems are being left on all over the (continued on page 83)
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INDUSTRY POV
The Future Of Conferencing New study shows the importance of audio. By Chris Merrick Shure Inc.
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ver the past 20 years, virtual meetings have transitioned from being a scarce capability found exclusively in executive teleconferencing suites to being a commonplace, critical business activity. Our increasingly globalized economy has expanded our customer reach and hiring options, which now stretch across borders and time zones. For a while, asynchronous communication ser ved to keep distributed teams and clients in the loop. However, with technology’s speed and capabilities advancing rapidly, organizations are increasingly expected to function seamlessly across locations in real time. In light of all these changes and new opportunities, online meetings—with stakeholders, employees, board members, new clients and existing customers—are essential business functions today. In fact, seven out of 10 meetings are already virtual, or they include a mixture of in-person and remote delegates. In addition to being crucial for operations, virtual meetings can be used to help reduce costs, accommodate expanding remote teams, increase meeting engagement and attendance, and make decisions quickly across a diverse workforce. And, yet, professionals over whelmingly report that their online meetings are consistently plagued with frustra28 Sound & Communications December 2019
tions with regard to audio quality. From background noise and echo, to difficulties connecting, to audio cutting out entirely, these problems cause users to spend meeting time troubleshooting, rather than collaborating. Users want meetings that are more productive, with less time spent tr ying to connect (or reconnect) or having to reschedule. Our organization worked with research company Illuminas to sur vey and inter view 201 buyers and 200 end users about virtual conferencing. Drawing from a wide-ranging study of AV users and buyers in enterprise organizations across various industries, we examined technology issues’ significant consequences in organizations that rely on internal, external and combined virtual meetings. We are discovering some key data that will affect the way organizations incorporate AV capacity into their larger strategy, including the fact that more than 80 percent of virtual-meeting attendees say flawless audio is the key criteria for holding successful meetings. Strikingly, they said flawless audio is four times more important than video in online collaboration. Why audio? Because you can hold a productive meeting that does not include video, but, if you aren’t able to speak and to be heard clearly, virtual connectivity is useless. Audio quality is the most crucial issue and technology investment for supporting virtual-meeting success. Two-thirds of those sur veyed rank audio quality as the most critical metric in the success of a virtual meeting. Not hearing ever yone means, quite simply, that work can’t be done effectively. Even with advances in video technology, 81 percent of those sur veyed state that audio quality has the biggest effect on virtual-meeting success, as opposed to 19 percent who say video. And 40 percent more meeting attendees prioritize hearing ever y participant over seeing each participant. Audio quality matters regardless of where meeting participants are located. However, audio is considered more important in rooms where online participants are connecting with more than one on-site individual—in particular, large multipurpose conference rooms, small and medium conference rooms, and executive boardrooms. In fact, the audio quality achieved in large conference rooms was rated three times more important than the audio quality achieved in a home office. To maximize outcomes from meetings conducted in these large rooms, we must ensure that everyone can be heard—not just the person who happens to be closest to a working microphone. (continued on page 79)
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INDUSTRY POV
Test Strategies For The HDBaseT Environment New testing advancements can help maximize system performance. By Ariel Marcus MSolutions
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V integrators working in the field increasingly manage a complex web of signals, cables, sources and destinations, all of which require thorough testing to verify the quality and integrity of video and audio signals moving through the AV infrastructure. In the end, the goals are to reduce installation time, streamline troubleshooting and eliminate return trips to the end user’s facility. Having portable, reliable and costefficient solutions for comprehensive HDBaseT and HDMI cable testing and diagnostics can help achieve those goals. Field installers have to gain immediate access to cable-quality data, with quick readings that deliver a thorough analysis of the signaling, so they can get the job done right. All this means that the HDBaseT infrastructure requires test-andmeasurement gear to ensure that a professionally installed system is in good working order. For example, is the proper length of cable in place? Does the appropriate bandwidth exist to carr y uncompressed signals? The AV industr y has learned that testing the entire cabling and wiring infrastructure is paramount in ensuring high-quality transmission, avoiding signal drops and loss of information. Additionally, doing so at the earliest possible stage will reduce installation time, eliminate the need to rewire, control labor costs and mitigate headaches along the way.
Understanding The Infrastructure The HDBaseT architecture today virtually always has an HDMI interface from the transmitting source device, 30 Sound & Communications December 2019
such as a Blu-ray player or an Apple TV. These HDMI signals are transmitted over HDBaseT to a receiving device that reconstructs the HDMI signal before transmitting it to the sink device (typically, a projector or display). The interface on the HDBaseT chipset is pure HDMI, meaning that seamless interoperability between the two is essential for any transmission. Installers tend to put heavy focus on the HDBaseT element, ensuring that the bandwidth and stability exist to carry a high-resolution 4K signal over the extending medium. This is, indeed, important. However, this focus tends to overshadow assurance that the HDMI cables can support the same. This also involves understanding the differentiation between HDMI wiring. Does the system use HDMI 1.2, 1.4 or 2.0? How does each affect the ability to carry a high-quality 4K signal without information loss? The fact is that the HDBaseT extension is often blamed for failures when, in reality, more thorough testing of the HDMI wiring would identify the true cause: Many times, the HDMI cables cannot carr y the bandwidth that is being transmitted over HDBaseT.
Peeling Away The Physical Layers A number of testing options exist on the market today, although many fall short when it comes to HDMI testing. These devices understand how to read a video stream and run through a loop with the HDMI cable from transmission to receipt. These provide an appropriate comparison of the pixel levels through the loop and confirm that the cables can carr y HDMI 2.0, for example. This provides a degree of value, but there are additional physical layers in the mix that can adversely affect signal integrity. For example, the wiring inside the HDMI cable can have a remarkable influence. In the short term, the video activated and transmitted through the cable will work fine, and the image will appear exact. However, a 24/7 system that has internal wiring shortcomings will gradually leak over the wire. Inevitably, this will cause signal degradation and, ultimately, it’ll affect performance. Testing the cable itself will identify these more advanced issues. For example, one increasingly common problem is the reduction of shielded wire from within the cable. HDMI cables have 19 standard conductors for video, audio, Ethernet and data moving over twisted pairs of wiring inside the cable. Each of those wires should be shielded to maximize performance. Not all of these data-transport opportunities are commonly used, however. Given that copper costs money, some vendors are electing not to support some of the data options. This includes Consumer Electronic Control (CEC), which enables automatic display control as well as volume control. This functionality was not supported at all in HDMI 1.2; it is HDMI 1.4 and 2.0 compliant, but the functionality is not always supported. Additionally, many vendors elect not to support Ethernet to reduce costs. In the case of both CEC and Ethernet, the inability to carr y them is because the corresponding conductor was not included by the cable manufacturer. Removing con-
ductors might save money in the manufacturing process, but it also makes the cable more sensitive to outside interference and causes reduced functionality. Testing for the presence of shielded wires inside the cable will help identify the supported HDMI spec, and it is ver y important in the testing phase. The transition to HDMI 2.0 was over whelmingly driven by the urge for more bandwidth to support higherresolution signals—notably, 4K 4:4:4 and a 600MP flow rate. Furthermore, HDMI 2.0 is built to accommodate the carriage of 8K signals. Surprisingly, many cables on the market today are still limited to 1080p and 4K 4:2:0. On ver y short transmissions, the viewer will still receive and see a 4K image. A quick 20sec. to 30sec. test will help determine the capability to carr y HDMI 2.0/1.4/1.2 signals. It’s important to note that, for higher-bandwidth transmissions, the shielding on the outside of the cable plays an integral role in reducing both internal and external interference for high-bandwidth transport. (Note the proximity of the cables to adjacent AV equipment.) Testing for the presence of that outside shielding will help the installer understand how susceptible the cables are to interference caused by other components.
Winning Positions AV integrators are in the best position when they’re able to test the infrastructure at the point of wiring the project. A large majority of projects still rely on test systems that can only be brought in during the final installation stages. The disadvantage is clear: The wiring is complete. So, if there are missing signals or low-quality connector terminations, then it means pulling out all the cable and starting over, hoping for the best. Today’s diverse, portable test devices will help integrators verify signal presence and integrity upfront via a variety of key parameters, including the following:
• The maximum overhead presence to enable carriage of high-resolution signals over HDBaseT (300Mb/s). • Activation of links to transmit through the cable, even without a source or sink to receive the signal. • The quality of transmission on the uplink (much higher bandwidth) as well as the downlink. • Improper terminations or crimps that cause faults through the twisted-pair wires. These problems, as well as others, can be identified and fixed on the spot, without having to bring in Nicolas (DJ) Virassamy, AV Technical Customer Support Specialist a 4K display or projectors from design-and-integration firm CX2, tests 4K signal integrity and connectivity for all AV rack wiring during an installation at a to confirm and evaluate Houston TX-area college. the link. Upon confirming the integrity of all important performance parameters at the wiring stage, the end components can be installed with confidence, knowing the signals and quality level will hold. The efficiency benefits of using a modern, portable, lightweight, batter y-powered device are clear. Installers can test the wiring, transmit and test the video, verify terminations and verify the quality of the cables, quickly and independently, with a single tool. This is compared to more traditional testing tools and processes, which can take days to move between a complex matrix of wires.
The Results Are Clear Certification is a final important consideration. This is something that installers cannot achieve with a common network analyzer, for example. Devices that can immediately offer a report that displays the minimum and maximum parameters, provides details on signal degradation and improvement, and indicates which artifacts influenced the transmission provide major benefits to ever yone involved. Manufacturers’ warranties are further protected through a certification report that verifies the performance of their equipment. Furthermore, if problems arise several months down the road, comparisons of the initial certification can be made with the current measurements; this can help isolate problems and failures. For example, if someone ran electrical wiring for an air conditioner next to the AV system, that can be isolated as an outside-interference problem. The ability to test each cable’s quality and performance in an accurate and thorough manner is paramount to the installer’s reputation, as well as to the long-term viability of a new AV system. Using a modern test device will better assure end users that their system can move high-quality, high-resolution signals, including 4K/ultra-HD and high dynamic range (HDR), with maximum integrity; meanwhile, installers have better insight into a broader array of testing parameters. In addition, they now can more effectively diagnose a greater range of performance issues, and they can quickly leverage the readings and results to optimize HDMI and HDBaseT performance. December 2019
Sound & Communications 31
UNITING UC AND AV
32 Sound & Communications December 2019
WellSky is applying much of its $260 million in revenue to innovative technology to connect a variety of care. The company views technology as the connective tissue between medical technology and the community it’s meant to serve.
Given the latest economic gyrations in a tariff-torn business landscape, it would be sensible for your advisor to recommend something to stiffen your nerves. It turns out, however, that, these days, your doctor might be the one to ask for stock tips. Although the mergerand-acquisition (M&A) activity swirling around the tech and media sectors has been sucking up much of the oxygen in newsrooms lately, that same bustle has been kicking up dust around healthcare technology, as well. Nowhere is that more evident than with WellSky, a corporate portmanteau made up of a slew of equity-capital-funded acquisitions over the last several years.
Zooming In
WellSky provides software for backend ser vices, such as billing and management, for hospitals, labs, nursing homes, rehabilitation centers and hospice facilities globally. In 2018 alone, the company acquired a half-dozen med-tech companies, with each move aimed at expanding its reach and digital-provider offerings. All this drove revenue to $260 million. (That number is expected to top $300 million this year.) So as better to manage the more than 30 brands under its umbrella, WellSky this past summer moved its headquarters to a new, 66,000-square-foot corporate campus in Overland Park KS. From there, it will serve more than 10,000 customer sites worldwide. They encompass various types of healthcare, focusing on platforms such as home healthcare, scheduling, medication management and cellular therapy. Underlying everything, however, is a technology theme that relies as much on AV as it does on the software that is WellSky’s bread and butter. “At WellSky, we’re using innovative technology to connect once-disparate care settings to ensure patients receive seamless quality care, regardless of how they transition during their care journeys,” Bill Miller, CEO of WellSky, said in a statement. This underscores how the company views its mission: to be the connective tissue between medical technology and the community it’s meant to ser ve.
people on desktop Zoom calls, people in conference-room Zoom calls [and] people in the auditorium on a Zoom call. Our goal was to make that experience the same in all those spaces. It required us [to take] on some new technology.” The whole building is centered on the Q-SYS Ecosystem from QSC. “So,” Nice added, “the simplest rooms run standalone, and then all the Zoom-enabled rooms are built around Q-SYS and have uniform interfaces.” Nice credited QSC with doing “the heavy lifting” on the integration of the Zoom codec by utilizing the Q-SYS Zoom Rooms control plugin. Because the entire Ecosystem was built on standard IT technologies, Q-SYS can easily connect to virtually any solution through its open application programming interface (API). “It was one of those projects where we were both headed on the same path, so we just had to make sure that the two solutions merged at the same time,” Nice stated. “WellSky was already embedded with Zoom…across their enterprise prior to us coming onboard.” The scale of the WellSky project required some adaptation, though. Nice said the original Zoom desktop codec had already been updated for remote and collaborative applications in the form of the Zoom Room codec, which extends connectivity to mobile devices. However, he said, this project required yet more flexibility. “The Zoom iPad interface
The overarching AV challenge for WellSky was how to scale a variety of conferencing-technology platforms across diverse meeting and working spaces. Making that happen was the challenge given to CCS Presentation Systems, the AV integrator hired for the job. “Because they’re multi-site, they have dozens of meetings going on at any one time across their enterprise,” Stan Nice, Senior System Designer and Engineering Manager for CCS’ central states region office, said. “And most of those meetings are not faceto-face in person—they’re face-to-face over Zoom.” He continued, “So, if you walk through their hallways, you’ll see
By Dan Daley Photos courtesy Hoefer Wysocki.
WellSky’s new corporate campus perfectly integrates unified communications with commercial AV.
December 2019
Sound & Communications 33
is the way a Zoom Room is intended to operate, and it’s a great solution,” Nice commented. “We implemented it exactly that way in the CEO’s office and the executive conference room, because those are both small spaces that are appropriate for the mobile iteration.” He continued, “But when you get to the [larger spaces like the] auditorium and the divisibleclassroom environments, we suddenly have the need to do additional room and microphone routing control that [you can’t do] directly in Zoom. So, I’m asking, ‘How do we do this?’ because the Zoom Room experience isn’t intended to support big rooms.” For instance, Nice said, in the divisible training room, it was necessar y to have the capability to have two concurrent Zoom sessions—or, alternatively, to be able to make one room the master and 34 Sound & Communications December 2019
The building’s network operations center, which manages all the facility’s AV and its content, has three 75-inch and four 55-inch NEC displays in it, arranged with the four smaller screens on top of the three larger screens. Video is switched and routed using Visionary Solutions’ encoders and decoders.
use the whole space for a single call. This would entail routing audio (in this case, Dante-enabled Shure MXA Series table and ceiling arrays, as well as handheld microphones and speakers) and video (signal to the 65-inch and 75-inch Samsung LCDs, as well as the PTZ camera control). The challenge was that the QSC Q-SYS PTZ conference cameras are IP based, whereas the Zoom app is looking for a USB connection. “The challenge was to bring that networked camera and audio into Zoom as a recognizable source…which would usually [come in via] USB connections,” he said, preparing to launch into a detailed explanation. He explained that a traditional Zoom Room is a USB camera, USB microphone and loudspeaker that are typically connected to a small PC tied to a display. In essence, it’s USB peripherals attached to a computer. This setup works well in a small environment, but, when dealing with larger spaces, where you need additional microphones (for example, a Shure MXA910 ceiling array mic), you must have a way to convert its Dante output into USB audio. That’s where Q-SYS comes in. Because the
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Q-SYS Ecosystem supports Dante, the Q-SYS audio and conference-camera feeds could be presented to the PC as a camera and a speakerphone, via a Q-SYS I/O-USB Bridge. According to Nice, “It does the same thing with audio…allows us to use that same USB connector, which is fantastic, and presents [itself] as a USB speakerphone to the computer.” By adding a Dante I/O card to the Q-SYS Core 510 Integrated processor, he explained, the integrator was able to stream Dante audio in and out of the system, supporting Shure microphones, Clockaudio microphones and Visionary Solutions network audio amplifiers. The Zoom Room PC, he said, is unaware of the processing and audio streaming between the Q-SYS Core and the amplifier. The PC doesn’t have to know that the room has 14-foot ceilings and that it can seat 200 people. The Zoom Room PC merely knows “I have a speakerphone attached to me.” Nice elaborated further, saying, “We then handle all the audio processing in the Q-SYS Core and present it the appropriate signals. It’s a huge deviation from the tradition of AV because, now, we’re dealing entirely in an IT space. All the normal AV things have to happen, but then, instead of dealing with the back end as AV with analog 36 Sound & Communications December 2019
With its “Mad Men” 1960s airport lounge, the client experience center, designed to let WellSky’s engineers interact with their clients and prospective clients, has a Primeview 138-inch LED TV custom videowall, as well as a custom lectern fitted with an HDMI input and an eight-inch QSC touchpanel to control the room’s ClickShare system.
microphones and HDMI into a big, fixedframe switcher, we’re taking every source, converting it to a stream and manipulating it at the IP level.” Visionar y Solutions’ contributions were important to the system’s success. Its 4K ultra-HD-over-IP encoders and decoders were used extensively. The company produced a plugin for the Q-SYS Ecosystem to enable control on the touchscreen, including source selection and preview images.
Floor By Floor The main floor houses a 200-seat auditorium, as well as the divisible training/ conference space, two small conference rooms, a cafeteria and a fitness center. The auditorium’s video features two laser projectors, two motorized screens, Zoom videoconferencing, two Q-SYS PTZ-IP conference cameras and two Samsung 75-inch confidence monitors on the back wall. Audio consists of four zones of QSC AcousticDesign ceiling-mounted loudspeakers (4.5-inch and 6.5-inch models), six Shure MXA910 ceiling-microphone arrays and eight wireless mics (four handhelds and four lavaliers). Although the audio and control systems were routine, Nice said that integrating the Zoom Room videoconferencing technology illustrated the overall project’s main challenge.
The training space comes with an AV package that includes a 98-inch display and two 65-inch displays as confidence monitors, two Shure MXA910s on the ceiling (one on each side of the space, as well as a wireless handheld microphone and a lapel mic), a Q-SYS conference camera in the back of the room, a Zoom Room computer for each room and Barco ClickShare for content presentation. Its original AV design was somewhat different, however. “This room was originally [specified] with [a motorized] screen that would come down over the windows, but the clients specifically told us they didn’t like projection,” Nice recalled. “So, we
a handful of small conference rooms. (The second floor has not yet been built out.) The NOC, which manages all the facility’s AV and its content, has three 75-inch and four 55-inch NEC displays in it, arranged with the four smaller screens on top of the three larger screens. Video is switched and routed using Visionary Solutions’ encoders and decoders, with Q-SYS as the control and audio platform. Like the rest of the offices, it’s wired with Cat6 cabling, with gigabit Ethernet fed back to NETGEAR switches. Nice said the shorter wiring runs
of a vertical campus meant the team could stick with copper cabling.
Executive Space The fourth floor houses the executive area, with a large videoconference room, a boardroom and the client experience center. The white Shure MX310 microphones lined up on the marble-topped boardroom table are tied into the Zoom system through the Q-SYS Ecosystem, as is the Barco ClickShare and the 98-inch NEC display surrounded by glass marker board at one end
looked at the space and [we saw] the size was appropriate to put an NEC 98inch display on the front wall, which would also address any ambient-light issues.” He continued, “[Using] the large-format LCD instead of projection allowed us to match the ambient light in the room and keep this as a bright, open room instead turning it into a dark, closed-off training room.” Nice added that control of the Samsung displays and Barco ClickShare application that make up the AV package for that floor’s small meeting rooms are both managed through those manufacturers’ ser ver applications. “That’s typical of ever y Samsung TV in the building and ever y ClickShare in the building,” he said. And those Samsung displays come with their own digitalsignage feature built in. CCS’ technicians took advantage of that by loading MagicINFO digital-signage software and a WellSky informational video loop that runs until the room senses users have entered; at that point, ClickShare automatically pops open. “In any modern office today, we have glass walls pretty much outside ever y conference room,” Nice said. “Black TVs are ugly, and they make the CEOs go crazy. So, the easy solution is to make those into digital signage.” The third floor has the building’s network operations center (NOC), along with a large videoconference room and December 2019
Sound & Communications 37
One of two small conference rooms, both of which are equipped with Zoom-enabled conferencing capability that’s built on QSC’s Q-SYS platform.
38 Sound & Communications December 2019
EQUIPMENT
2 Apple 9.7" iPads 36 Barco ClickShare CSE-200+ wireless collaboration solutions 4 Biamp/Cambridge Sound Management E-P-B-16-4 adjustable black Qt active emitter 4 packs w/4x16' plenum-rated cables 124 Biamp/Cambridge Sound Management E-P-W-16-4 adjustable white Qt active emitter 4 packs w/4x16' plenum-rated cables 20 Biamp/Cambridge Sound Management PI-AE active emitter power injectors 7 Biamp/Cambridge Sound Management PS-AE-3 active emitter power supplies 1 Biamp/Cambridge Sound Management Qt 300 sound-masking control module 2 Biamp/Cambridge Sound Management Qt 600 sound-masking control modules 3 Biamp/Cambridge Sound Management RM-QT rackmount brackets for Qt 300 and Qt 600s 4 BrightSign LS424 standard I/O players 2 Chief FCA811 Fusion 14" above/below shelves for XL displays 3 Chief LTM1U large Fusion micro-adjustable tilt wall mounts 25 Chief MTM1U medium Fusion micro-adjustable tilt wall mounts 52 Chief PAC526 large in-wall storage boxes 2 Chief SYSAUW suspended ceiling projector systems (white) 10 Chief TS325TU medium THINSTALL dual swing arm wall display mounts 13 Chief XSM1U X-large Fusion micro-adjustable fixed wall display mounts 10 Chief XTM1U X-large Fusion micro-adjustable tilt wall mounts 2 Clockaudio C303-D-P-UDP PoE Dante and AES67 tri-element array hanging condenser mics 4 Covid D1114P-BK Decora, HDMI pigtails (female, black) 3 Covid D1114P-W Decora, HDMI pigtails (female, white) 2 Da-Lite 21797LS tensioned Advantage Electrol recessed projector screens (133" diagonal) 18 Evoko ERM2001 Liso Room Managers w/8" touch displays, RJ45, PoE 1 FSR T6-LB-AC2CH large bracket for RT6 and T6 boxes w/2 AC outlets and 2 USB chargers 1 FSR T6-LB-CP T6 large section bracket for cable pull 1 FSR T6-SB-3SS T6 small section bracket for 3 snap-in connectors 1 FSR T6-SQBLK 6" table box w/square black cover and no mounting brackets 2 Heckler Design H523 Zoom Rooms consoles for 9.7" 6th-gen iPads 2 Heckler Design T267 gigabit + PoE adapters for iPad 10 Intel NUC7i5DNKE NUC mini PC kits 11 Logitech 960-001101 MeetUp all-in-one ConferenceCams 2 Lowell LWBR-4032 wall racks w/bases
2 Lowell RRD-40 rack rails, 40 rack units, 1 pair 2 Lowell UDE-214 utility drawers, 2 rack units, 14.5" deep (black) 2 Maxell MPWU5603 laser-light-source 3LCD projectors w/6,000 lumens 4 NEC C551 55" thin-depth commercial displays 3 NEC C751Q 75" ultra-HD commercial displays 3 NEC C981Q 98" ultra-HD commercial displays 4 NETGEAR GSM4352PA-100NES 48-port fully managed switches 1 Primeview PRVLEDFSNM138 138" all-in-one slim seamless LED TV 28 QSC AD-C4T-WH 4.5", 2-way, 150° conical DMT ceiling speakers (white) 10 QSC AD-C6T-BLACK 6.5", 2-way, 135° conical DMT ceiling speakers (black) 56 QSC AD-C6T-WH 6.5", 2-way, 135° conical DMT ceiling speakers (white) 3 QSC CDN64 Dante audio bridge cards 3 QSC CIML4 mic/line analog input cards 3 QSC COL4 analog line output cards 3 QSC Core 510i Q-SYS integrated core processors 3 QSC CXD8.4Q 8-channel 500W network amps 9 QSC I/O-USB Bridge AV-to-USB bridging endpoints 8 QSC PTZ 12x72 PTZ-IP conference cameras (20x optical zoom, 60° horizontal field of view) 1 QSC PTZ 20x60 PTZ-IP conference camera (12x optical zoom, 72° horizontal field of view) 3 QSC SL-QSE-510-P Q-SYS Core 510 scripting engine software licenses 3 QSC SL-QUD-510-P Q-SYS Core 510 UCI deployment software licenses 10 QSC TSC-80TW-G2-BK 8" tabletop system controllers 23 Samsung QB55R edge-lit 4K ultra-HD LED displays for business 28 Samsung QB65N edge-lit 4K ultra-HD LED displays for business 2 Samsung QB75N edge-lit 4K ultra-HD LED displays for business 2 Shure Microflex Advance MXA310B table array mics (black) 3 Shure Microflex Advance MXA310W table array mics (white) 6 Shure MX150B/O-TQG omnidirectional 5mm subminiature lavalier mics, TQG for Shure bodypacks (black) 9 Shure MXA910 ceiling array mics w/IntelliMix 6 Shure MXW1/O-Z10 Microflex wireless bodypack transmitters w/integrated omni mics 6 Shure MXW2/SM86 handheld transmitters w/SM86 capsules 2 Shure MXWAPT2 access point transceivers 1 Shure MXWAPT8-Z10 8-channel access point transceiver 2 Shure MXWNCS2 2-channel networked charging stations 1 Shure MXWNCS8 8-port networked charging station 39 Visionary Solutions D4100 4K ultra-HD-over-IP network decoders 46 Visionary Solutions E4100 4K ultra-HD-over-IP network encoders 2 Visionary Solutions PNA-D4 PacketAV Series Dante/AES67 PoE+ 4-channel class-D network audio amps 8 WyreStorm EX-100-4K-PRO HDBaseT 2.0 4K transmitter and receiver kits w/USB, HDCP 2.2 7 WyreStorm EX-70-H2 HDBaseT 4K extender kits w/IR, RS232 and PoH, HDCP 2.2 (230') 9 ZeeVee ZVSYNC-NA HD digital tuners/decoders List is edited from information supplied by CCS Presentation Systems.
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of the room. Despite the abundant hard, reflective surfaces, Nice said the room did not require any acoustical treatment. That is due to Q-SYS processing, which keeps the sound off those surfaces and on the seats, and good gain-structure management, including automatic gain control (AGC) and acoustic echo cancellation (AEC) via the QSC Core processor. “We would all cringe walking into that room, saying, ‘We’re going to put a conference system in here?’” Nice recalled. “But just by applying the science in the way that it needs to be applied, the problems were solved and it looks great.” (Acoustical treatment is minimal throughout the project, although sound masking, using more than 100 Biamp/Cambridge Sound Management active emitters, is used throughout the offices and the corridors between them.) One other slight hiccup for that room that had to be overcome was the fact that the architect, when told an LCD screen would be installed on the glass marker wall, simply drew one on the blueprints. However, Nice emphasized, “You can’t drill through the glass to put up a TV mount. You have to have the glass precut to go around the TV mount. That required careful coordination with the architect and the builder to make sure we still had enough space to install the mount while keeping the overall look of the glass walls.” The client experience center, also known more prosaically as the demo room, is designed to let WellSky’s engineers interact with their clients and prospective clients in order to fine-tune software solutions. Thus,
White Shure MX310 microphones are lined up on the marble-topped boardroom table. The 98-inch NEC display is surrounded by glass marker board at one end of the room, with adroit use of QSC DSP to keep sound off all the reflective surfaces.
40 Sound & Communications December 2019
The fourth-floor lobby, where clients are greeted by an executive assistant as they get off the elevator.
it has the most unique piece of AV in the office: a Primeview 138-inch all-in-one slim seamless LED TV. It also has a custom lectern fitted with an HDMI input and an eight-inch QSC network touchpanel to control the room’s ClickShare system. The room, which can seat up to 10, is designed to be both hip and informal; it has kind of a “Mad Men” 1960s-airport-lounge aesthetic, complemented by cool blue recessed ceiling lighting. “It’s intended for WellSky staff to show off their software products,” Nice said. “So, getting a ver y large display that everyone could see was important. The challenge was, in order to do that, they needed something bigger than a 98-inch LCD—but they really didn’t want projection.” He explained further, saying, “Their concern was that a video projector would feel tired in a few years, which is a fairly common sentiment that we hear. So, we threw out this idea of a direct-view LED with a 1.5mm pixel pitch—ver y, ver y high resolution on a full-HD display. We had just finished another project with the direct-view LED, and we were able to confirm that the AVIXA viewing-distance math still works in the direct-view LED space. So, we went in with confidence that we could say these seats are going to be in a great position to view this image.” Motorized sunscreens cover the window wall on the east side of the room, but, according to Nice, they’re less about dimming ambient light and more about keeping the intense Kansas morning sun at bay. “The views are amazing,” he said, then added, “Well, in Kansas, you can see forever.” The individual executives’ offices have a specific videoconferencing assembly. “Instead of installing full videoconference packages for ever y office, we opted for a Logitech Meetup, which is a camera/ speakerphone combination that hangs underneath the TV, and a WyreStorm USB and HDMI extender to bring the HDMI and USB back to the docking station for the executive in their office,” he explained. “So, they get all the benefits of having a videoconference room at each office’s four-person table, but without the [added] complexity of an additional system in their room. Basically, they can pull up Zoom on their laptop and it’s there and running.” The new headquarters’ opening, which took place in July, was an event attended by the mayor of Overland Park and other civic leaders. But it was also a moment that captured the deepening intersection of healthcare, technology and business. Tailoring workflows to meet the requirements of all those stakeholders is AV’s big challenge in the 21st centur y. CCS seems to have figured out the formula, though. Nice summed things up fittingly, saying, “I believe we accomplished all of our goals and produced a solution that not only fits their corporate culture, but [that also] will be ser viceable into the future.”
THE
MANAGED-SERVICES T H E Y ’ R E B U T
N O T
T H E Y
F O R
M I G H T
BY ALESIA HENDLEY
B E
E V E R Y O N E , F O R
Y O U .
ERA
Throughout my years on Twitter, and through all my time becoming part of the #AVtweeps community, many of the conversations I’ve had have stemmed from questions I randomly threw out to the Twitter verse. Sometimes, they were polls; sometimes, they were questions following a video of some sort. All of them, however, recognized that we grow and learn from each other, as an AV community, when we ask questions and have deeper conversations. A few months back, I asked a simple question spurred by an ongoing industr y buzzword: “managed ser vices.” I asked, “Which companies are doing managed ser vices exceptionally well?” The
responses generated by that question not only sparked this article, but also made me want to connect further with my network and learn how managed ser vices are being provided around the world. I wanted to move beyond the buzzword and learn who was actually taking action to implement managed ser vices. I feel strongly that integrators are leaving money on the table if they’re not considering adding managed ser vices to their portfolio. Here are three reasons: (1) managed ser vices provide a way to scale business; (2) managed ser vices build long-term client relationships beyond a traditional hang-and-bang job; and (3) managed ser vices add to the value proposition we present to clients. Given those points, everyone should be doing this, right? Well, maybe not! Conducting the interviews for this piece, I learned that managed ser vices aren’t for ever yone. In fact, those were the exact words of IV Dickson, Director, Digital Signage, with SageNet.
42 Sound & Communications December 2019
look who’s
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web conferencing integration
network video distribution
The new Q-SYS NV-32-H network video endpoint is a software-defined HDMI encoder/decoder that fits natively into the Q-SYS Ecosystem. The NV Series is optimized for connected meeting spaces, providing HDMI video distribution as well as integration of audio and Q-SYS conference camera feeds for web conferencing applications. All without additional control processors, bridges or complicated programing.
Š2019 QSC, LLC, all rights reserved. QSC, the QSC logo, Q-SYS, are registered trademarks of QSC, LLC, in the US and other countries.
www.qsc.com/video
Tobi Tungl ‘We focus on oneon-one training or group sessions to help clients navigate their new technology with confidence. We demonstrate how it will increase their productivity and achieve full operational capabilities.’
Charmaine Torruella ‘Many customers say to me, “Oh, I didn’t know you did that!” My job is to bring ser vice out of the shadows of AV integration and into its own light, showing customers that this is a viable piece of business.’ 44 Sound & Communications December 2019
“The reason I say that is not to shy people away so that I have less competition,” he explained. “It’s because of the technology infrastructure that is required in order to offer managed ser vices.” Dickson continued, “There are ser vice groups there, 24/7/365, who are taking tickets for a proactive and/or reactive issue. There is a portion of our team at SageNet that will be available on holidays like July 4 and other major holidays to service those clients that are in the field.” Formed by the merger of SageNet, founded in 1998, and Spacenet, founded in 1981, today’s SageNet was founded on pillars fundamental to managed ser vices. “Our leadership team was brought up in an environment where we were providing managed ser vices for folks who were doing ser ver-infrastructure and data-center work,” Dickson remarked. “It was a natural transition for us, 20 years ago, to get out of that work and move into managed ser vices on the network.” He recalled that, back then, retail stores were tr ying to figure out how to accept credit cards, and a lot of folks were still running on dial-up. Dickson continued, “From the beginning, it was really about being centralized on how we provide a network connection that’s going to be stable and a network connection that’s going to be on all the time.” Now an experienced leader in managed services, SageNet has broadened its managed-ser vices offering to include the digital-signage vertical in our industry, as well. Conference Technologies, Inc., is another major player in our industr y, and it has been providing managed ser vices for more than a decade. Thinking it important to learn how each company began to grow its managed ser vices in a time before the buzzword and before momentum had built, I put the question to Tobi Tungl, CTS-D, RCDD, Director with Conference Technologies. He replied, “We saw a gap in what our clients needed, and we helped them raise the bar of ser vice for their businesses. In the end, it’s about our clients ser ving their clients, internal or external.” Indeed, as you read this piece, one thing should become apparent: Ser vice trickles down, starting with integrators, going to end users and then blending into the overall client experience. Tungl continued, “We focus on one-on-one training or group sessions to help clients navigate their new technology with confidence. We demonstrate how it will increase their productivity and achieve full operational capabilities. Our staff takes time to carefully review the
equipment and functions with all clients, answering questions and addressing scenarios to alleviate their hesitations.” He added, “It has grown from there to providing in-depth training to IT staff so they can maintain the system and provide user support.” Charmaine Torruella, Global Ser vices Manager with Verrex, is trying to push our industr y for ward by preaching the gospel of ser vice. For its part, Verrex has been providing managed ser vices to its clients for more than 15 years. When Torruella joined the team in 2017, she was brought on to develop new client services. Her mantra is “Ser vice is not a consequence of integration.” She elaborated, saying, “Most companies provide managed services as an add-on to integration. Service is its own reward…service is its own animal. And that’s exactly how I approached it when I came onboard here at Verrex.” Torruella continued, “Many customers say to me, ‘Oh, I didn’t know you did that!’ My job is to bring ser vice out of the shadows of integration and into its own light, showing customers that this is a viable piece of business.” And service, it should be noted, isn’t just about fixing something when it breaks. Ser vice can be proactive, rather than just being reactive. Jason Ward, Sales and Marketing Director at Involve, one of the AV community members who responded to my initial tweet, brought an interesting perspective. “Here at Involve, hardware is a means to more ser vice,” he said boldly. He continued, “At Involve, we’ve also been providing managed services for close to 20 years. We won a bid with a significant government video-ser vice client, which we still run today, almost 20 years later. We’ve seen three phases of hardware refresh, core networks and ser vice-level adjustments. Because of this experience and relationship, we’re able to bring a wealth of experience to other managed-ser vices opportunities.” Clearly, Involve has found a way to play the long game, adjusting along the way to ser ve its clients even better. HB Communications is another leader in the industry, having been in business since 1946. Managed ser vices represent a piece of the puzzle that’s relatively new, however, having been embraced by the company about six years ago. “It’s interesting,” Peter Charland, Executive VP, Global Sales
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Jason Ward ‘We provide helpdesk, full video-concierge services, dedicated service management, remote management, reporting, onsite engineering, health checks, training, lab-test environments, portal, cloud video, etc., all under the managed-services umbrella.’ & Ser vice, said, “because there are many different definitions of managed ser vices. Traditionally, it has been a telephone-support ser vice or an on-site repair ser vice.” He elaborated, “Here at HB, we provide advanced support capabilities. Our clients have more or less led us from basic tech support to augmenting their staff and being more involved in their day-to-day operations—not only with onsite staffing, but also with remote ser vices.” One angle we’ve not yet broached is that of the consultant. So, following a Twitter exchange, I pinged Daniel Lee, Managing Director at Hewshott International, a firm that specializes in AV, IT and acoustics, to learn the consultant’s view of managed ser vices. In particular, I wanted to know what Hewshott clients are requesting. “As ‘managed ser vices’ is a term currently used to describe any number of things, I need to break this down,” Lee began. “When a client asks about managed services today, they generally mean ser vice and maintenance-type offerings. They will sometimes mean a more proactive version than just responding to faults, and they may also mean videoconferencing call management or bridge-operator-type ser vices. They rarely mean anything more than that. This hasn’t changed significantly over the last two years.” Lee continued, “When we consider the suitability of managed ser vices for a client, we look at the full plethora of ser vices that can be provided by an external party to enhance deliver y or technology ser vices. This ranges from cataloged designs, to onsite staffing, to a full AV-as-a-ser vice (AVaaS) offering with fixed operational-expenditure (OpEx) costs and limited capitalexpenditure (CapEx) requirements.” That more ambitious vision of ser vices is the one I embrace. Yes, there will always be break-and-fix-it ser vice scenarios because hardware has to be repaired and updated. But building out your proactive-services offering will unlock a better long-term client experience and facilitate an ongoing relationship.
Flexible Options Ever yone in our industr y is in the business of selling something, although it’s clearly not always the same thing or the same kind of thing. By the same token, companies that embrace managed services each do it a bit differently, although common to ever yone is providing extended ser vices of some type within a contracted period. So, what does this look like in practice? How are top-tier companies customizing their ser vices offering and meeting clients’ need for flexible solutions? Let’s ask! Conference Technologies’ Tungl kicked things off, saying, “Our portfolio is very unique compared to most in the industry. We have branded our offering as CTI Complete in three different levels: CTI Complete, CTI Custom and CTI Onsite.” He elaborated, saying, “Our CTI Complete ser vice is there for you 24/7 through our dedicated CTI Care customer-experience team. Through onsite technical ser vice, recommended programming upgrades and quar46 Sound & Communications December 2019
Daniel Lee ‘When a client asks about managed ser vices today, they generally mean ser vice and maintenance-type offerings. They will sometimes mean a more proactive version than just responding to faults, and they may also mean videoconferencing call management or bridge-operator-type ser vices.’
terly reliability checks, a client’s system is covered for the unexpected, as well as for planned maintenance.” Tungl further laid out the program, saying, “We train to operate equipment with confidence, and, when critical meetings arise, we help ensure system performance with proactive system testing and an onsite checklist. So, their systems will be ready when it matters most. Our managed-services staff does more than diagnose and repair failures; they help plan for system lifecycles.” With CTI Custom, the ser vice plan is designed to include coverage tailored to an organization’s needs, just as every AV system is customized for clients. Finally, CTI Onsite is an additional level of support that suits enterprise environments. The earlier-referenced offerings are similar to what HB Communications and Involve deliver. According to HB’s Charland, “It’s a portfolio. There are services that can exist onsite as full-time facilities for clients, running meetings and providing event support. We run a large network operations center (NOC), from which we provide a
range of remote ser vices—from technical support, to remote monitoring and management, to video-concierge services.” In fact, HB delivers a range of managed ser vices to customers in more than 30 countries. Ward jumped in, saying, “At Involve, we provide helpdesk, full video-concierge ser vices, dedicated ser vice management, remote management, reporting, onsite engineering, health checks, training, lab-test environments, portal, cloud video, etc., all under the managed-services umbrella.” He added, “These services are almost always à la carte. In our experience, when it comes to managed ser vices, each customer’s needs are unique ever y time.” Having worked in the field myself as an end user and integrator, there were many times that I was on a team and had to outsource, as the team just didn’t have enough resources. But there’s a right way and a wrong way to outsource; in our industr y, temp agencies just won’t cut it. According to Hewshott’s Lee, “We noticed a trend toward outsourcing more areas of ser vice delivery than just maintenance and staffing
over five years ago. We started developing our own portfolio to match.” He continued, “Due to the range of ser vices we would consider advising a client on, our network now includes not just integrators, but also graphical user interface (GUI) design specialists, digital signal processing (DSP) experts, programmers, and service-delivery and transition-management firms, just to name a few.” Meanwhile, Verrex’s Torruella identifies a client’s needs with what one might describe as “a Dr. Phil approach” wherein one says, “Here, come sit on the couch and tell me your problems.” One of the biggest problems she sees, however, is a mindset of addressing issues on a case-by-case basis, rather than in a systemic way. “Let’s think enterprise,” she exhorted, “which is what we do at Verrex.” Torruella continued, “If you do it case by case, you’re not solving the client’s problems. It just becomes a patchwork. Ever ybody knows you can patch a roof, but you’ll eventually have to replace the whole structure. We work with our clients from an enterprise
perspective to solve the entire problem—not just to patch it. Proper client diagnostics is how we get it done.”
Coming To Terms Any discussion of managed services must include contract terms. What are the parameters of the contract? How long does it last? Is the subscription month to month, or is it annual? The business model you follow matters, and it will affect the overall client relationship. Our end users are accustomed to contract terms like those from Amazon Prime, Netflix, Zoom and the like. Accordingly, many expect managed-ser vices contracts to work along the same lines. SageNet’s Dickson explained, “It’s all about how easy it is to do business with us. Through the years, we’ve found some things that really guided us in that process. One of those is a monthly recurring subscription charge. That is key. Even though there are a lot of pieces and parts that fall under that monthly subscription, it’s important to make sure all onsite ser vice is included. That way, we’re not going back and having to bill them for that onsite ser vice.” He continued that it was a good idea “to find ways to make that an all-inclusive monthly charge associated with the term.” Dickson explained that the company has some customers who want to pay yearly, but it’s not especially common. In addition, a few customers want to follow the traditional model and to be charged for each visit, but that’s also uncommon for SageNet clients. According to Dickson, “The other advantage to this type of model is consolidated billing. We’re considered an aggregator, as well as a consolidated-billing environment. Many of our customers might have 500 or 1,000 or 1,500 locations, but corporate is going to get one bill from us, allowing them to pay one source one time.” The advantage, he said, is reduced overhead. And that reduced cost redounds to both SageNet’s and the client’s benefit, he affirmed. As an AV industry member, I was excited to hear about a monthly subscription option like this, given that a fair number of companies in our industry tend to stick to traditional methods. Currently, SageNet’s monthly subscription pricing varies considerably based on what ser vices are being provided. Looking at the digitalsignage categor y specifically, though, it starts at around $75 to $100 per month. Tungl’s clients seem to like things being done a bit differently, perhaps unsurprising given that Conference Technologies serves different areas of the market. “Our services are very much on an annual basis,” he affirmed, adding, “Very few go month to month.” But he was quick to note that he understands not all offerings fit everyone’s needs, and not all clients fit into one category. “We look at our CTI Custom portfolio and work directly with client stakeholders to exceed their experience within their contract,” he declared.
IV Dickson ‘A monthly recurring subscription charge is key. Even though there are a lot of pieces and parts that fall under that monthly subscription, it’s important to make sure all onsite service is included.’
PETER CHARLAND ‘WE PROVIDE ADVANCED SUPPORT CAPABILITIES. OUR CLIENTS HAVE MORE OR LESS LED US FROM BASIC TECH SUPPORT TO AUGMENTING THEIR STAFF AND BEING MORE INVOLVED IN THEIR DAY-TO-DAY OPERATIONS—NOT ONLY WITH ONSITE STAFFING, BUT ALSO WITH REMOTE SERVICES.’
48 Sound & Communications December 2019
Ward at Involve added his own unique perspective. “Each customer’s requirements are unique, and we treat our pricing as such,” he remarked. “But, historically, a contract is held for three-plus years, averaging around four or five. Again, within reason, so it benefits all parties, billing is built around project scope and customers’ needs.” Charland also spoke on the topic of contract terms. He said, “Pricing terms can often be customized based on the scope of what we’re looking to accomplish. These contracts are one-, two-, three- or five-year, although they can be longer. Therefore, these contracts need to adjust for change during the life of the agreement.” Charland also emphasized that managed-services contracts must have “business outcomes,” with ser vice-level and performance targets, including performance penalties. “Having skin in the game is essential,” he said. “Other wise, the contract provides little more than empty promises.” Dynamism and responsiveness to change help illustrate each of these companies’ approach to business. They also help explain why each company is known for outstanding client relationships. We’ve seen clearly that managed services come in all shapes and sizes, stretching across a wide swath of verticals. In light of that complexity, I wanted to know Hewshott’s process when recommending managed services. According to Lee, “The decision to propose outside managed ser vices to a client is typically based on their appetite and ability—or the lack thereof—to provide the services themselves, using in-house resources. Some of the organizations we work with prefer to manage all services themselves with in-house staff. Some want the exact opposite. Most want a hybrid of the two.” Lee continued, saying, “I think the beauty of managed ser vices is that we can use a number of providers to create a totally bespoke offering that exactly matches the end-user requirements. For this reason, we don’t consider there to be any blind spots whatsoever. When discussing these ser vices—or any services, for that matter—we talk in requirements, experience and outcome. The service we craft around those is for us to worr y about. They want an outcome delivered, and, so, that’s what we do.” Accordingly, when consulting about managed ser vices, Hewshott’s approach is hands on, ensuring nothing is overlooked either for the integrator or for the client. Managed ser vices are no longer just a buzzword; the ser vices era is here. Either companies can manage their technology using their own in-house resources or they can work hand-in-hand with our industr y as we evolve beyond the days of simple hardware sales. This is our new approach collectively, whether we specialize in digital-signage deployments or enterprise meeting rooms. As stated from the outset, no, managed services aren’t for ever yone. But all integrators should evaluate their current business model and assess whether—and, if so, how—managed ser vices can grow your profit margins. In doing so, it’s likely you’ll also grow your relationships and establish greater trust with your clients. That’s a recipe for long-term, sustainable success.
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A Tariff Primer For The AV Industry TRADE-RELATED DEVELOPMENTS HAVE SOWN UNCERTAINTY IN THE COMMERCIAL AV INDUSTRY.
By Lynnette Reese Editor’s Note: As trade- and tarif f-related issues become more prevalent on the nightly news, Sound & Communications thought it worthwhile to of fer our industry a primer on how tarif fs work, how they af fect the economy and how they af fect the commercial AV industry. Our writer, Lynnette Reese, cast a wide net to speak to both economic experts and AV industry veterans. This introduction to tariff issues updates our recent web article. The United States’ executive branch’s power over trade with foreign nations rests on Trade and Tariff Acts, as well as on various agreements rooted in international organizations like the World Trade Organization (WTO). With tariffs, countries can wield power over trading partners, although the impact is far less than, for example, that of economic sanctions. Under the authority of section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, American tariffs against China have been in place since July 2018. Additional tariffs, originally set to take effect late this year, have been put on a temporar y hold as of this writing. On October 9, the Congressional Research Ser vice (CRS) stated the following in “US-China Tariff Actions by the Numbers”1: “US tariffs currently affect 66.6 percent of US imports from China, which is set to grow to 96.5 percent once all proposed tariff increases take effect…. On October 15, 2019, the United States is to increase many existing tariffs from 25 percent to 30 percent. On December 15, 2019, the United States is to impose an additional 15-percent tariff on most remaining imports from China….” Initial tariffs covered steel, aluminum and a few white goods. Since then, the US has collected duties of $36.84 billion on Chinese imports (through mid-November). The next tariff, which was originally set for mid-October, has been delayed to tr y to grease the skids for further negotiation between the US and China.
Who Administers And Collects US Tariffs? US tariffs are published and administered by the US Trade Representative (USTR), who reports to the US executive branch. For three decades, the USTR has published a “Special Report on Section 301”2 (Figure 2) ever y year, providing an opportunity to call out foreign countries and expose the laws, policies and practices that fail to provide 50 Sound & Communications December 2019
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Image courtesy Congressional Research Service.
Figure 1: US imports and exports affected by the recent tariff actions. Values are not exact, as they reflect 2018 tariffs as applied to more complete and readily available 2017 trade information.
effective intellectual-property (IP) protection and enforcement for US entities. The office of the USTR states in the report that the US will take appropriate actions, with the highest concern being countries that have consistently violated US IP; those countries land on a Priority Watch List. China is one of 11 countries on the Priority Watch List. The International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) submitted comments on the 2019 Special Review that stated, “China maintains a number of longstanding discriminator y restrictions in the audiovisual sector that harm the US industry, limiting its ability to compete fairly and inhibiting its potential growth in this massive and fast-growing market.”3 With regard to the enforcement of trade regulations and tariffs, US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is integral. CBP operates at 328 US ports of entr y, decides which products fit in the USTR’s tariff categories and collects the duties. As of mid-November, CBP had assessed $36.84 billion on Chinese imports since the tariffs began in July 2018.4
Image courtesy www.ustr.gov.
Identifying Products Subject To Tariffs
Figure 2: Section 301 is a nickname for Sections 301–310 of the Trade Act of 1974.
52 Sound & Communications December 2019
Identifying the next round of products subject to tariffs is understandably imprecise in the USTR’s “Modification to Section 301”5, where annexes A and C list more than 1,000 general descriptions of products from China potentially subject to duties (Figure 4). Uncertainty in tariff policy negatively affects businesses—including, notably, AV businesses. For instance, the time period for which quotes or bids can be honored—in deference to the customer—is uncertain until all tariffs are in place and no additional changes are expected. Many AV integrators ser ve customers that need long lead times of a year or more, owing to the size of construction projects and the hard budgets under which municipalities, school districts and, ironically, federal-government entities operate. Many AV integrators have already eaten small cost increases because of the initial tariffs’ effect on their outstanding proposals. Matt Lavine, Owner of a boutique-like integrator, BugID, Inc. (pronounced “bug-eyed”), caters mostly to the commercial space for media companies, higher education, and arts and entertainment facilities. Lavine’s margins have already been affected by several small, tariff-related price increases, which he’s absorbed. Lavine said, “Tariffs don’t benefit anyone. It’s just going to increase the overall cost to the consumer. Businesses will take the brunt of the first wave of tariffs because we don’t have enough reaction time to pass that onto the consumer.” AV-equipment manufacturers are themselves beginning to pass on the costs of the tariffs, and they’re doing so in a couple of ways. Some equipment manufacturers incorporate tariff-related price increases into their published prices. Others include them as an additional “tariff line item” on the invoice, as if it were a tax. Lavine questioned who would benefit from the funds collected as tariffs. Unlike with tax dollars, states and cities will not directly benefit from the new duties being collected. According to a recent Pro-AV Business Index report from AVIXA, “The widely fol-
Image courtesy Congressional Research Service.
lowed Institute for Supply Management manufacturing purchaser’s index clocked in at its lowest reading since June 2009. The disappointing mark knocked a couple percent off stock market indexes worldwide, and it signals two impacts on [commercial] AV. First, trade-generated manufacturing problems are driving price increases and uncer tainty, which make projects difficult to price, especially since end users don’t want to pay more for hardware. Second, high prices and manufacturing problems create economy-wide problems that affect buyers of AV equipment. In an unsteady economy, end users will hesitate to invest in AV upgrades.”6 Tariff-related issues are more complex than ever before, with nations having become deeply and globally enmeshed. Sean Wargo, Senior Director of Market Intelligence, AVIXA, pointed out, “We seem to be living in a highly polarized time, witnessing a heightened sense of nationalism against a backdrop of globalization and interconnectedness. Trade laws and policies are being adjusted to fit a modern world, which just compounds uncertainty.”
Figure 3: The impact of tariffs on merchandise imports. As of this writing, the most recent round of proposed tariffs has been delayed.
The Overall Financial Impact Of Tariffs According to estimates from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), tariff increases might diminish US gross domestic product (GDP) by 0.3 percent by 2020. The uncertainty that tariffs have caused might have already lowered the total sum of all US business investments.7 Tariffs might hurt foreign countries in the end, if US manufacturing is able to fill the void, but, in the short term, American businesses and consumers have to endure the blitz. Another devil in the details of the tariff stor y is how China is responding. Although China has fewer US imports to tariff in kind, there are perhaps other ways to retaliate. Scott Wright, President of Lifeline Audio Video Technologies, shared an interesting tidbit. He investigated a significant backlog of wireless microphones earlier this year. Wright said, “When I finally got to the bottom of it, one of the chips that go in the wireless microphones is only made in China. The same chips are used in the automobile industr y. How many are going to go to the wireless manufacturer? Not nearly as much. It’s a smaller industry.” Is China retaliating by withholding shipments of components that it exclusively manufactures? Conversely, maybe it’s just a ripple in the pond of a deeply interconnected world. Wright stated, “Now, I’m sitting on 98 percent of the system ready to be installed, but I have to wait 60 days because there isn’t a component available to us.” Cash flow and customer satisfaction are the victims. Wright’s stor y will ring familiar to several AV integrators. As Wright asserted, “Before the tarif fs started, I would get an email from a manufacturer that stated how much and when an increase could be expected. Now, I’m getting emails announcing a nine-percent increase as of today on these items. How do I go back to a customer who got my proposal two weeks ago and say, ‘Oh, by the way, instead of $10,000, it’s actually $11,000’?” December 2019
Sound & Communications 53
Image courtesy www.govinfo.gov. Image courtesy AVIXA.
Figure 4: A section of the Modification of Section 301 (as amended in the Trade Act of 1974) published in August. The publicly available modification includes more than 1,000 types of products affected by as-yet-unimposed tariffs. (Source: www.sndcom.us/modification-ofsection-301).
Wright explained further, “The inability to plan for price increases boils down to poor communication about when tarif fs are going to hit, what percentage will be applied and to which devices. Supporting proposal pricing for the long term becomes difficult. We mainly deal with schools, auditoriums, municipalities and the like. It can take much greater than 60 or 90 days to get it through a committee so they can make a decision.” Implicit in that statement is a question: Who knows what’s going to happen 60 or 90 days from now? The upshot of all this is a high risk of suffering from diminished profit margins. Buyer beware: Choosing a lower published price might be deceiving if the tariff is listed in the invoice as a discrete line item, right above the sales tax. (Yes, tariffs will be taxed.) Hidden charges like these lead to inaccurate project estimates or less profitable projects (or both). (For a point of reference, think about when fuel surcharges were similarly added to shipping bills.) Steve Minozzi, Co-Owner of Monte Bros. Sound Systems, Inc., focuses on house of worship (HoW) projects. As Minozzi asserted, “Much of the time, the projects do not come to fruition for nine months to a year. We have close to a million dollars of projects that are going to happen within the next year. Do you buy all this equipment now and then sit on it? That’s a lot of inventory to invest in.” Monte Bros usually honors its proposals for a year. So far, the integrator has been absorbing the costs. It has no plans to change equipment manufacturers due to its excellent, longstanding
Key Resources
Figure 5: The Asia-Pacific market has become the largest in terms of commercial AV revenues, thanks to a strong Chinese market. The Americas are second, largely due to the US market.
Financial Impacts On The AV Industry In terms of commercial AV revenues, the Asia-Pacific (APAC) market is the largest, due, in part, to China (Figure 7). All businesses face the unpredictable nature of tariffs, which are applied like a surprise tax. New duties applied at customs can take months to settle throughout supply chains. They’re on the horizon—but how and when they’re going to hit is unclear. And uncertainty is the most irritating thorn in the commercial AV integrator’s side; after all, not ever y business is equipped to handle tariffs, and communication between national leaders has been dicey to say the least. As Margaret Atwood declared, “War is what happens when language fails.” 54 Sound & Communications December 2019
Official resources for keeping current on US trade and tariffs: z www.federalregister.gov: Access the online presence of the Office of the US Trade Representative for up-to-date information on tariffs at www.sndcom.us/ us-trade-representative. z www.ustr.gov: The Office of the US Trade Representative has press releases, speeches, reports and fact sheets on its official website, including Section 301 Investigations: www.sndcom.us/section-301investigations. z www.regulations.gov: Comment on issues at www.regulations.gov or view the 2019 Special Review hearings by searching docket number USTR-2018-0037.
Dealing With The Impact Of Tariffs For a recent Pro-AV Business Index, AVIXA polled its Insights Community about how the trade conflict affects them and how they think conditions will change over the next six months. Respondents reported that the biggest impact is that trade uncertainty is causing companies to avoid AV investment, followed by AV products becoming more expensive thanks to tariffs and supply-chain disruptions. And, unfortunately, the community sees worsening conditions, with 48 percent predicting trade-war intensification against just 15 percent foreseeing improvement, according to the report. A mixture of tactics can be used to deal with the impact of tariffs. AV manufacturers can delay pay raises, absorb costs, move manufacturing operations or pass along the costs by raising prices, which then are passed onto the end user. Looking at an example outside of our industr y, the price of washing machines in the US has grown by as much as 12 percent since the 2018 round of tariffs. According to the CRS, “If all scheduled tariff increases take effect, by the end of 2019, nearly all US imports from China will be subject to new or increased tariffs, most in the range of 15 percent to 30 percent.”8 Here are a few strategies for integrators to ponder: • Absorb smaller cost increases while implementing a shorter expiration period for new proposals. • Be transparent with customers. Communicate potential price increases, rather than adding tariffs unexpectedly as an invoice line item. Most customers should already be aware of possible tariffs through media coverage. Check www.ustr.gov for updates. • Diversify your business. – Tr y new markets, rather than sticking to one type of venue. (Perhaps some will have shorter lead times and quicker turnaround.) – Lean in on the service side. Yes, selling replacements will involve dealing with tariffs, but ser vice is centered much more
Image courtesy AVIXA.
relationships, but it plans to evaluate the situation at the end of this year. If further tariffs take effect (and existing ones remain), the integrator plans to set a date for implementing change and optimistically intends to honor all existing proposals.
Figure 6: Three overall revenue areas benefit most from recent trends that have been bolstering the commercial AV industry: streaming media, storage and distribution; services; and video displays. All but services are susceptible to tariffrelated problems.
on labor than on hardware. • Try to avoid equipment likely to experience tariff-related problems, choosing instead to source from other nations. • Build up inventory before tariffs are increased. (The next tariff rounds are poised to hit items on the “Modifications to Section 301,” Figure 4). • Take advantage of recently lowered interest rates to borrow capital, as needed. • Be willing to walk away from opportunities that carr y increased risk. (For example, projects that are much heavier on equipment, as opposed to skilled labor and ser vice, and that have long and unpredictable timelines.)
Hard Truths AVIXA’s Wargo mentioned a hard truth that, sometimes, can be difficult for an integrator—or anyone—to accept. “One of the options, at the end of the day, is that, sometimes, you have to walk away from a bad deal that doesn’t give you room to add value and margin to the stor y.” Peter Hansen, Economic Analyst of AVIXA, stated, “You can be prepared for the worst. You don’t want your business in a terrible situation, tr ying to meet a price that you promised a year ago, potentially having to disappoint clients when you can no longer meet that price. Be conservative about pricing and forge a communication process with clients about the economic situation that we are in. Even if you’re an optimist about trade, no one can know for certain what’s going to happen. Making sure that you have an excellent ser vice side of the business is going to provide a lot of value to make up for potential margin troubles on the hardware side.” Douglas MacArthur once said, “The soldier above all others prays for peace—for it is the soldier who must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war.” Let’s hope hostilities cease before the AV industr y risks any additional collateral damage. For more details, search “tariff” at crsreports.congress.gov or visit www.avixa.org. Endnotes 1 “U.S.-China Tariff Actions by the Numbers,” Congressional Research Ser vice, www.sndcom.us/US-china-tariff-actions. 2 “2019 Special 301 Report,” Office of the United States Trade Representative, www.sndcom.us/2019-special-301-report. 3 “IIPA Written Submission Regarding 2019 Special 301 Review: Identification of Countries Under Section 182 of the Trade Act of 1974: Request for Comments and Notice of a Public Hearing,” International Intellectual Property Alliance, www.sndcom.us/regarding-2019-301-review. 4 “Trade Statistics,” US Customs and Border Protection, www.sndcom.us/CBP-trade-statistics. 5 “Notice of Modification of Section 301 Action,” Office of the United States Trade Representative, www.sndcom.us/modification-of-section-301. 6 Pro-AV Business Index, AVIXA, www.sndcom.us/avixa-pro-av-business-index. 7 “The Effects of Tariffs and Trade Barriers in CBO’s Projections,” Congressional Budget Office, www.sndcom.us/effects-of-tariffs-cbo-projections. 8 “U.S.-China Tariff Actions by the Numbers,” Congressional Research Ser vice, www.sndcom.us/US-china-tariff-actions. December 2019
Sound & Communications 55
From The Crow’s Nest OUR INDUSTRY WILL LOOK QUITE DIFFERENT IN 2020 AS COMPARED TO A DECADE AGO.
56 Sound & Communications December 2019
All photos courtesy of the author.
Large, immersive display environments like this one represent a practical alternative to near-to-eye virtual-reality displays.
By Pete Putman, CTS This month marks the end of my 42nd year working in the audiovisual industr y, my entr y into which happened largely by accident. (I’ve discussed that topic in previous “AVent Horizon” columns.) This is my ninth year writing for Sound & Communications, and it’s my 32nd year contributing to a long list of industry trade publications (AV, broadcast, cinema, post-production and so on), most of them now just memories. Having written forecast columns like this one numerous times, I can say one thing with absolute certainty: My predictions are just as likely to be wrong as they are to be right. Trying to figure out where the AV industry is headed can be a ver y frustrating exercise, particularly when it comes to adoption rates for new tech that pops up in other arenas. “The next big thing” sometimes falls flat on its face when it shows up amid much hoopla at trade shows. More often than not, the products and processes that have the greatest impact on AV typically sneak, largely unnoticed, into the marketplace. You might not have noticed, but many traditional exhibitors at broadcastthemed trade shows are tracking the continued strong growth in AV; accordingly, they have established a presence—or they have expanded their existing one—at ISE and InfoComm. These folks are a bit ahead of the curve when it comes to transporting AV over networks and deploying video/audio codecs, so it has been interesting for me to see how their sales pitches contrast with our born-and-bred AV nameplates and their largely proprietar y solutions.
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The JPEG XS “mezzanine” codec, ideal for ultra-HD signal transport, is used here to compress an 8K/60 signal with 10-bit 4:2:2 color to pass through a 10Gb network switch
Next-generation AV control systems will combine voice recognition with AI-powered facial recognition, as seen in this automotive dashboard application.
LEDs continue to get smaller and smaller. This large, fine-pitch LED display uses thousands of them to show high-dynamicrange images.
58 Sound & Communications December 2019
And the AV industry is strong. Considering the first InfoComm I attended drew barely 10,000 attendees, this year’s final attendance figure of 44,129 is impressive. It shows just how much the industr y has grown over the years from its mom-andpop roots. This past June, I escorted a couple of colleagues from the broadcast and video-production industries around the floor; as first-timers, they were amazed at how large the show was. (One even scored a new job at the show!) As I dust off the ol’ liquid cr ystal ball, let’s review the trends we do know about. Then, we can extrapolate how they’ll affect our paychecks next year…and for quite a few years after that.
Displays For AV Will Be More Affordable My first love has always been display technology. I’ll leave the nuts and bolts of control systems to others, and there are roomfuls of colleagues who are far more knowledgeable about audio and acoustics than I am. But I cut my teeth back in the day by setting up a variety of display products for staging projects and, later on, for fixed exhibits. I attended my first InfoComm (in 1994) as the move from conventional, CRT-based projection to solidstate LCD and then DLP projection was just getting started. It’s been a truly nutty quarter-centur y since then. The display-manufacturing business isn’t for the faint of heart. Indeed, entire companies have gone belly up and lost millions of dollars because of sour bets on promising technologies that eventually went south for one reason or another. Remember Ampro, Apollo, Chromatek, Davis and Dukane? How about Fujitsu, Hughes-JVC, Lasergraphics, nView, Proxima, PLUS, Sayett and Sanyo? Remember plasma displays, LCD projection panels, surface-conduction electron-emitter displays (SEDs), rear-projection TVs and light valve projectors? (I rest my case.) However, I’ve never seen anything resembling today’s business climate. If you had told me 10 years ago that I’d be able to buy a 65-inch “smart” ultra-HD (4K) TV with high-dynamic-range (HDR) support for just $400, I would have laughed in your face. But, indeed, you can. The reasons behind that largely have to do with oversupply of the display panels (mostly LCD) manufactured in Asia for televisions.
Simply put, there is too much manufacturing capacity and there’s not enough demand for these panels. The situation has gotten so bad that one of the largest Chinese display manufacturers recently put a brand new, multi-billion-dollar generation-10.5 LCD panel “fab” up for sale not long after it opened. With finished LCD panel prices so low, that company would seem to prefer taking a short-term financial hit on its investment rather than having to wade through years of red ink. If you combine that trend with declining sales of smartphones and tablets, you can see why some long-established brands are slowly shuttering older LCD fabs and putting their research-and-development (R&D) money into direct-view imaging technology that uses inorganic light-emitting diodes (LEDs.) Indeed, LEDs have become the single most disruptive display technology today, wreaking havoc on the large-venue projector market, taking the lead in digital signage, and knocking on the doors of everything from digital cinemas and meeting rooms to home theaters. Here’s a great example: At this year’s InfoComm, we saw a few demos of “buildit-yourself” fine-pitch LED walls for small meeting rooms. These displays can be assembled by two people in a few hours, hung on a wall or attached to a stationary or mobile stand, and easily connected to a video source through an HDMI port. Granted, they are expensive—some models cost more than $50,000 for a 130-inchdiagonal screen—but they are much brighter than LCD monitors are, they offer very high resolution (depending on pixel pitch) and they support HDR imaging under any ambient-light conditions. If the past decade is any indicator, then prices for these self-service LED displays could drop by 25 percent or more by next June, particularly given that most LEDtile manufacturing takes place in China and there is plenty of price competition between brands. And, by all accounts, there is a lot of interest in this technology from prospective buyers. The concept is great, and the tech is contemporar y enough for any meeting space—even huddle rooms. Look for more AV brands to jump on this conference-room LED-display-wall bandwagon with aggressive pricing—in particular, those marquee names
whose bread-and-butter projection business is being hammered by LED displays. Lurking in the darkness is potentially the biggest market disruptor of all: microLED, which is an imaging technology that creates red, green and blue LED emitters so tiny that they can be used in watches and smartphone screens. As of yet, microLED isn’t ready for prime time—far from it—but a ton of investment capital is going into R&D to make it the next display platform for televisions, mobile devices and even near-to-eye displays.
So, where does that leave the traditional pur veyors of large LCD monitors? If they haven’t made the switch to ultra-HD (4K) panels yet, they will have to—and they should do it right quick. Wholesale 4K panel prices in large screen sizes are at rock bottom, with IHS Markit saying earlier this year that the average LCD panel (across all sizes) costs around $500, and it’ll drop to about $300 in three years. And anyway, 4K is king. No one wants to make full-HD display panels anymore—there’s no money in it. As for 8K, the few commercial display
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It’s now possible to manufacture large, bendable displays for eye-catching digital signage using OLED technology.
products I’ve seen are still too expensive. I don’t expect 8K to have a significant market impact for at least two more years.
Projectors On Endangered-Species List?
The major drawbacks to near-to-eye virtual reality are poor image resolution and the weight of the headgear. Those two limitations won’t be easy to resolve.
60 Sound & Communications December 2019
Well, are they? No, not quite yet. However, to stay competitive in this market, they have to offer a unique selling proposition beyond lots of lumens. The strongest niche market for projection will be ultra-short-throw installations, where they can hold their own creating 80-inch (and larger) images at affordable prices. The education ver tical is still ver y fond of projectors. And, of course, projection is the only practical way to map images on concave, convex or trapezoidal surfaces without installation challenges and severe image distortion. Speaking of near-to-eye displays, 2020 will be another year of sluggish growth for virtual-reality (VR) and augmented-reality (AR) headsets. There’s not a lot of demand for them in our industry, just as there isn’t much demand for them in general. I have more than once described VR as “a solution in search of a problem,” and that appears still to be the case. Current headset designs are too bulky; the near-to-eye resolution is too coarse; and the overall experience for most users is less than favorable. What we will see more of in 2020 are
large, immersive spaces created by curved and warped display screens. It’s easy to wrap organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays around and inside of cur ved surfaces; indeed, the leading OLED manufacturer will now ship you a tool to bend your own. And I’ve experienced surprisingly effective demos of glasses-free VR standing inside large, half-pipe displays with ultra-HD-resolution, HDR video and threedimensional spatial sound. Some manufacturers have started to build cur ved, finepitch, inorganic LED tiles and screens, and, of course, it’s easy to use projection mapping to create large virtual spaces. These environments aren’t just for amusement parks and theme parks, either. In addition, they can be used as teaching tools and for simulations of ever ything from surgical procedures to deep-oil-field drilling. The requirements will be ver y high resolution (no screen-door effect allowed!), HDR with a wide, realistic color gamut, and spatial-sound playback to complete the effect. It will be some time before headgear hits those benchmarks, but the ever-decreasing price of large displays can make it happen now. Let’s move on to control systems. Who will be the first to introduce voice recognition as an AV control inter face? (Recall what I wrote earlier about where “the next big thing” often emerges.) If the consumer world is a harbinger, we’ll be using more and more speech-recognition technology to operate AV gear and facilities. It’s just a matter of time. Voice-recognition systems are already a mainstay in the home; for that reason, it shouldn’t be too much of a challenge to migrate them to AV control systems that
Quantum dots, coupled to inorganic and organic LEDs, make it possible to build LCD displays with high dynamic range and very wide color gamuts.
incorporate some degree of ar tificial intelligence (AI). Speech-recognition chips are quite good at distinguishing between languages, regional accents and voice pitches. Can these systems replace a touchpad control? There’s no reason why not. The groundbreaker surely won’t be one of our industr y’s established control companies, as they have too much invested in making and suppor ting existing inter faces. No, I think it will be a smaller company—perhaps even a star tup at a small trade-show table—that will advocate for and demonstrate a practical voice-control system for AV. And, if the system actually works, you can be sure one of the larger players will buy the company out. I’m pretty sure you’ll see such a demo at ISE or InfoComm next year. Speaking of control and signal distribution, the AV-over-IP format battles continue unabated. In this corner, we have a proprietar y, turnkey AV/IT system incorporating light video and audio compression, signal transport and metadata
that’s been getting a lot of press coverage lately. In the other corner, we have AV/IT systems based on low-latency wavelet codecs that are more in line with what other industries, like broadcast and cinema, use. Which is the right way to go? The key to choosing an AV-over-IP platform will be futureproofing. Right now, our industr y seems to be fixated on how we can get 4K video through a 10Gb network switch, which is kind of a low bar with 8K video and bitrate boosters like HDR and high-frame-rate (HFR) video coming into play soon. The proprietary AV-over-IP (continued on page 79)
BY CHUCK WILSON NSCA The average NSCA member has seven open positions. And, unless we see a softening in the North American economy, it’s unlikely that this pattern will change anytime soon. In other words, our industr y needs more talent! It’s no secret that compensation and benefits can help encourage potential staff members to join your team. Although money isn’t ever ything—especially, we are discovering, to millennials—what you offer to prospective employees in terms of compensation and benefits can have a big influence in attracting and retaining top talent. With unemployment levels at record lows and adjacent industries competing for the same people as you are, many integrators find themselves having to offer higher wages and additional benefits and perks—this, in turn, drives up the cost of doing business. Setting staff salaries is always a tricky task. You want to pay enough to get the best possible talent, but you don’t want to pay too much. Salar y decisions might be more straightfor ward for employees who work on commission, but what about
BENCHMARKING YOUR COMPANY’ for administrative and support staff? General compensation-and-benefits data for these positions exists, but it’s not collected from our industr y. For the most accurate assessment possible, it’s helpful to compare compensation and benefits among companies that conduct similar work, that are in your geographic region and that have a comparable number of employees.
Creating The Compensation & Benefits Report Every four years, NSCA puts a tremendous amount of time, effort and resources into collecting accurate data on industry salaries and benefits. This helps integrators uncover wage trends, identify fluctuations in compensation, pinpoint employment trends and determine appropriate wages for employees. The data we collect comes directly from integrators. We work with a third-party market research firm, FMI, to sur vey members about their location, staff size, compensation information, benefits information and a whole host of other data. This year’s sur vey was distributed to NSCA members in North America beginning on May 28, and data was collected up to August 1. All surveys were collected and processed by FMI. This year, there were nearly 600 responses—more than any other compensationand-benefits sur vey. The majority of NSCA members chose to report their salar y and benefits data. That is great news because the more data we have to share, the more accurate, helpful and valuable our information will be. The resulting NSCA Compensation & Benefits Report is the largest, most comprehensive research project we’ve done to date on the subject. Now in its sixth iteration, the report tracks and benchmarks vital information, including the following: • staff levels (full-time and part-time employees) • benefits offered (and their costs), including health insurance, dental insurance, life insurance, vision plans, disability, retirement and bonuses • compensation for 47 positions, which range from the C-suite to human resources, accounting, installation, system design, purchasing, marketing, project management and more • ancillary compensation (bonuses) for sales, administrative and project-management professionals • raises for different staff categories 62 Sound & Communications December 2019
• business and travel reimbursements (mileage, cell phones, expense accounts, per diems, etc.) All that data is broken down by geographic region and total gross revenue, and it’s compared to data from previous years’ research. Integrators of all types, sizes, gross-revenue categories and geographic locations responded to the sur vey; thus, they’re all included in the report.
Key Findings There are a few key findings that we thought were attention grabbing as the
hind larger companies when it comes to offering benefits. For example, 100 percent of the mid-sized and large companies we surveyed offer health insurance to all or some full-time employees; by contrast, of the small companies that responded to our survey, only 50.6 percent offer health insurance.
Sign-On Bonuses Sign-on bonuses are currently the least-common benefit of fered, but they’ve made more than a 500-percent increase from 2014. That could indicate that we’ll see even more sign-on bonus-
advantage of the resources NSCA offers to help you improve business efficiency and productivity, both of which ultimately affect staff. It’s imperative to get from (and give back to) each person on your team the greatest amount of value possible. NSCA offers many resources to help you offset increasing costs associated with growing your labor force—the NSCA Education Foundation’s Ignite program for recruiting and onboarding, assistance from our Business Accelerator partner alliantgroup in claiming the research-and-development (R&D) tax
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report came together. The overarching trend is that companies are offering more benefits: The percentage of companies that offer a specific benefit to full-time staff has increased in eight of the nine benefits we examined in the survey. The only benefit that has decreased in prevalence, notably, is health insurance in small companies. That being said, health insurance continues to be the most popular general benefit offered to employees. It’s available for full-time staff at 67.7 percent of the companies sur veyed (and available to part-time staff at 12.9 percent of the companies that employ part-time staff). Although health insurance is still the most popular benefit option, fewer of our members are able to offer it (due to costs, one would assume). No surprise there. The 2019 data we gathered indicates that health insurance accounts for the greatest financial cost of all employee benefits. On average, the typical company pays $125,000 per year to offer health insurance. That equates to a median of 1.67 percent of total gross revenue and a cost of $4,485 per fulltime staff member. Company size is obviously a difference-maker. There are substantial variances in benefits based on company size. Small companies typically lag be-
es in the future as the industr y looks for innovative ways to attract talent. In terms of salary increases (raises), they were most commonly seen in the largest companies. The sales-staff category is the only group where the mean increase was the greatest among the largest companies. This was also the only group that received an average increase of less than one percent. All small and mid-sized companies expect a larger percentage of increases in the current year, whereas large companies only show an increase in administrative staff. Regardless of company size, technical staff members are most likely to receive a salar y increase and this has held true for a while, as indicated by previous iterations of this report. This repor t also uncovers many other interesting findings, including the impact of recent merger-and-acquisition (M&A) activity. This activity has increased the size of the member companies, the number of outsourced projects, and the number of remote employees and/or branch offices. Larger firms with multiple locations create even more competition for top talent. As you make decisions based upon the information presented here, we encourage you to place a high value on your human capital and take full
credit, etc. Many of our members have received hundreds of thousands of dollars (or more!) in tax credits that they can put toward recruiting, hiring and training.
Get Your Copy To obtain your copy of the report, visit www.nsca.org/research. It’s free to download for all members, and it’s available to non-members for a small fee. As you peruse it, you’ll discover what other integrators in your area offer to their employees, get a better feel for the industr y’s employment landscape and benchmark where you currently stand. If you determine that your firm’s compensation and benefits aren’t what they should be for particular positions, but you aren’t in a position to fix it just yet, you can provide other valuable perks once you’re aware that an issue exists. For instance, employees are often drawn to non-financial rewards like flexible hours, a casual dress code, more vacation time, telecommuting options, catered lunches and more. If you have questions about how to use the information found in the report, NSCA is here to help. Visit www. nsca.org/contact and send us your questions! December 2019
Sound & Communications 63
The enterprise message to consultants is simple: Design the most engaging spaces possible.
COLLABORATION
CONSULTING 2 0 2 0
R I D I N G T H E T H I R D W AV E O F E N T E R P R I S E D E S I G N A N D D E P L O Y M E N T. By Mark Peterson Shen Milsom & Wilke, LLC Integrated ICT—standing for information and communications technology—is the latest acronym that defines the work of consultants who are responsible for providing the design solutions and specification guidance that make enterprise spaces as functional and productive as possible. Just as our enterprise clients are, we are constantly adjusting to the metamorphosis in products, platforms, ecosystems and the user experience. Gaining a mastery of the client’s collaboration workflow and IT-network roadmap is the secret sauce to integrating technologies into the organization’s global ecosystem. That’s because today’s decisions around unified collaboration (UC) are affecting the three most significant components of any facilities project: schedule, budget and quality. Consultants have to be engaged earlier in the timeline, and we have to stay around longer to verify success. But let’s stop the ICT rollercoaster for just a minute to enjoy the freshly brewed cup of coffee now being ser ved up at the barista station (now an established institution inside every enterprise’s amenity space, having become equally ubiquitous as guest Wi-Fi). The enterprise message to consultants is the same: Design the most engaging spaces possible. Thus, we find ourselves in parallel trajectory with the coffee being served up right now at the espresso bar. This dark brew has an uncanny resemblance to the solutions we can expect to engineer in the meeting room. The impact on enterprise ICT consulting in 2020 is worthy of deeper consideration. But, first, a quick coffee lesson: Brands like Folgers and Maxwell House surfaced during the first coffee wave, long before the millennium. The physical process of harvesting, roasting and delivering a consistent product was challenging—not unlike the experiences of enterprise AV consultants who struggled to solve physical design 64 Sound & Communications December 2019
and application problems like mounting, resolutions, signal impedance and integrated services digital network (ISDN). The second-wave coffee-roasting technologies available today are much more efficient. Starbucks and Dunkin’ can deliver a consistent experience across thousands of franchises. In our industry, second-wave enterprise designs include the transport of voice, video and content signals over unshielded twisted pair, along with remote collaboration. Cisco and Microsoft emerged as leaders because their solutions deliver a consistent user experience across their product portfolio. For their part, technology consultants have to figure out how to apply clients’ preferred platforms across the organizations’ entire campus. Each platform is essentially an ecosystem. Even though they have expanded to the internet, enterprises still have to choose between being a Microsoft or a Cisco house. Consultants have figure out how to connect these walled-off solutions with the rest of the world.
The Third Wave What sets the third wave apart for coffee aficionados and enterprise IT managers alike is the degree to which they have both a greater appreciation for the product and a willingness to challenge the traditional ways of production and consumption. Let’s examine the third wave by breaking down its key features and their impact on schedule, quality and budget.
Schedule Taking people’s phones away and moving to Software as a Service (SaaS) can be just as dramatic to users as removing the coffee bar. Enterprise leadership needs time to evaluate UC options and gain consensus from all stakeholders. These strategic consider-
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interface is easy to operate and there’s an increase in employee productivity. This exercise helps both the enterprise and the consultant.
Budget How much are you willing to pay for a good cup of coffee? The consultant is responsible for matching budget and systems designs. However, the coupling across the supply chain is a third-wave distinction that
Enterprise IT managers have gained a greater appreciation of the products we spec, and they’re showing a willingness to challenge the traditional ways of using them.
ations were previously upstream from the consultant brought in to build out a few floors in a new facility. Change in technology is so rapid during the third wave that strategic decisions are happening concurrently to the building out of new spaces. Just like asking the barista, “What’s in this cup?”, IT managers are demanding a better understanding of their distinctive options. They want solutions that avoid productivity disruptions and that improve the user experience. ICT consultants must step in earlier in the design process and provide multi-dimensional comparison matrices for rapid decisionmaking: What happens when cloud-based voice services intersect with room meeting solutions and content collaboration? Will the newest session initiation protocol (SIP) platform work with a next-generation speakerphone? Will the wireless sharing solutions that provide both guest and employee access require security architecture review? Fortunately, just like the physical mug that contains the coffee, the core conduit and back-box infrastructure are likely to be required in the same locations, just as the Cat6a cabling is likely to handle any variations of UC. Rack space, power and network drops are the first three requirements that must be conveyed by the consultant to the rest of the design team, so they can go off and do their designs. And, yet, these specifications are highly dependent on the enterprise standardizing on a collaboration platform. Frequently, the consultant is brought in so far into the design phase of the project that it’s too late to flush out the 66 Sound & Communications December 2019
client’s UC strategy. This is also when the consultant’s master plans are put to the test: Standardized products are being specified on the project. The consultant has to be engaged to advise on mocking up solutions to make sure they match the design requirements. Master plans have to include a process for modifying standards to support the rapidly changing products and features sets. Take a sip. Can you differentiate the flavor nuances in that cup of coffee? Often underappreciated is the nuance of end-user training and its importance to overall project success. Time for it must be set aside in the project schedule. If the user struggles to operate the interface, it’s considered a poor design, even if the interface is derived from third parties such as Microsoft, Cisco or Zoom. Third-wave consultants make sure there is sufficient time for end-user training on even the most basic collaboration technologies. What’s more, what is written on the quick-reference-guide cards has to match the client’s actual use cases, rather than being generic steps from the manufacturer’s website. In the third wave, consultant engagement extends beyond the project deadline. Six months later, they are back to verify their solutions are achieving the desired results. For instance, they’re confirming the user
make cost estimating challenging. From component manufacturer to platform provider, ever ything is tightly bundled. Take soundbars with built-in microphones and cameras, for instance—the consolidated hardware might have a lower cost, but there are lots of interconnecting pieces. The bundling of the SaaS subscriptions can make it difficult to unpack the actual cost for a single meeting room, particularly with a variety of add-on features available to enterprise clients in the various offerings. A variety of USB+AV-over-IP transport solutions is emerging on the third wave, and they can scale from huddle rooms to auditoriums. The challenge for the consultant is to identify a single product line to work across all variables so that, ideally, a single management platform can be used to support the enterprise’s campus for alerting and firmware updates. Some manufacturers are charging a fee for every device that is monitored. It’s a long-term commitment, so subscriptions and other management platform dependencies have to be evaluated holistically. These are additional considerations that third-wave consultants tackle on enterprise projects.
Quality Second-wave quality is the trade-off between time and budget; hence, the “good
enough” experience at Dunkin’ is a lot like the choice to use a software application like Skype for Business instead of a dedicated videoconferencing appliance. No-cost bundled solutions inside an ecosystem like Microsoft Office have lots of appeal, but, on the third wave, highquality video is simply expected. The latest generation of web-platform solutions delivers not only better audio and video, but also a better overall experience. Thus, the third-wave perception of quality is both tangible (image, sound and content sharing) and abstract (experience and productivity).
management platforms have to be reconfigured into trend lines so that predictive analysis can be done. That, ultimately, will help enterprise managers determine improvements for the next generation of collaboration solutions. We are witnessing technology’s next evolution in the enterprise. Whether it’s at the desktop, in the meeting room or at the barista station, clients in 2020 are building communities using collaboration solutions that bring people together in ways that websites and mobile apps cannot. Second-wave
products provide uniformity, but they’re restricted to a specific ecosystem. The third wave is driving the enterprise to create a consistent client experience regardless of the ecosystem, and consultants are helping to define the collaboration strategy earlier in the project schedule. Third-wave products are more accessible than ever before, and the increased focus on production quality benefits all parts of the supply chain. Enterprise clients are expecting consultants to make sense of the plethora of choices— before the fourth wave rolls in.
The Fourth Wave? Right now, the emphasis is just as much on the café experience as it is on the double espresso shots. Third-wave collaboration vendors are competing to build the best persistent-chat and threaded-conversation platforms to bundle with their voice and video products to deliver the richest experience possible. The four th-wave pushback might be coming soon. Enterprises might not accept a vendor’s solution if requires them to remain beholden to a single platform— par ticularly if it requires a dedicated computer processor in the conference rooms. Enterprises are going to want to consider lighter, more fluid alternatives. Until staff members can be as productive in a conference room as they are at their desks, enterprise managers will have to provide ever yone in the office with laptops that they can bring to meetings. That significant cost could be recouped with technical advances in mobile solutions; those should ride in on the next wave. The fourth wave of coffee is predicted to focus on the scientific aspects, such as the precise knowledge of soil and plants. Likewise, the fourth wave for collaboration technologies will focus on measurement of behaviors to improve the experience, leveraging the Internet of Things (IoT) and the vast number of components being plugged into the network. The role of the consultant will be to make sense of all that data on behalf of the client. We have to identify the core questions that enterprise managers want answered and then determine which devices must provide what type of data, and how often. The real-time reports coming out of the
EVOLUTION The search for commercial AV technologies and suppliers has a new web app resource.
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From the team at Sound & Communications
MARKET BRIEF Large Commercial Buildings & Offices By Amanda Mullen In a world that’s becoming more and more plugged in, it’s crucial that companies offer employees work environments that enhance workflows and boost overall productivity. As might be expected, technology is frequently being utilized to assist in this endeavor. Huddle rooms and videoconferencing solutions are becoming increasingly common in office spaces, and the demand for both continues to rise; this is evident in many recent features and “Industry POVs” published in Sound & Communications. Of course, incorporating technological advancements sometimes requires companies to renovate their office spaces or even to find altogether new ones. Purchasing office space that was built with technology in mind, along with environmental sustainability, is a great way for organizations to ensure they’re attracting top-tier talent. Employee satisfaction plays a big part in overall productivity and, thus, a company’s bottom line. That’s a fact many corporations are rapidly picking up on. The need to entice workers is beginning to get more attention during the design and construction phases of office complexes. Many modern office buildings strive to provide spaces that will cater to workers in some capacity, whether by appealing to their desire for comfort during the workday or whether by providing convenient amenities. Readers of this report will see that many of the projects currently underway are making a point of including fitness spaces and lounge areas in their designs. Those amenities will attract companies to those buildings because those companies, in turn, want to attract the best talent for their team.
Amenities Abound
One Class-A office space that seems determined to offer more than just a traditional workplace to its tenants is the 360 Rosemary Tower in West Palm Beach FL, which had its official groundbreaking back in March. The project’s developer, The Related Cos., is still in the
360 Rosemary Tower.
process of erecting the building, which will be a 20-story tower upon completion. The project is part of a $700 million initiative the company is undertaking in the hopes of revamping downtown West Palm Beach. (In addition to the 360 Rosemary Tower, it is also renovating Rosemary Square and designing an apartment building nearby.) The 68 Sound & Communications December 2019
new tower, which will provide tenants with 300,000 square feet of office space, will clock in at around 250 feet tall. On its own, the building will amount to around $160 million. Tenants for the office space are already lined up: Levatas LLC, an AI software firm, will occupy 16,000 square feet of the building; meanwhile, investment firm Comvest Partners will take up another 26,000 square feet. Some of the features the property will boast are a 10,000-square-foot outdoor terrace, a fitness center, lounges and a conference room. The base of the building will also be home to art exhibits. With these additions, it seems that the building is striking a balance between amenities that will enable employees to engage in effective collaboration and areas that will serve as somewhere to rest and socialize. Expected to finish construction in 2020, the 360 Rosemary Tower will open its doors by the Q1/2021. Seven Tower Bridge in Conshohocken PA is a large project that’s also prioritizing the worker experience; accordingly, the 14-story building will feature a number of amenities for its tenants. American Real Estate Partners (AREP), Oliver Tyrone Pulver Corp. (OTP) and Partners Group are the developers on the tower, which will offer 260,000 square feet of office space when finished. The facility will be completed in 2020, and there are plans to open its doors next November. One of its tenants—Hamilton Lane—is scheduled to move into the complex in 2021. The private market-assetmanagement firm will utilize about 130,000 square feet of the building, turning it into a new headquarters. Shoemaker Construction is the general contractor on the building, and it will lease another 5,000 square feet of space; meanwhile, OTP will lease 4,000 square feet. The office tower is being designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, and it boasts amenities such as four levels of underground parking, floor-to-ceiling windows to provide natural light, an outdoor patio and a collaboration area. The building will also offer workers ample opportunities to stay physically active; plans include a fitness center, a bike trail and walking paths. In addition to the built-in benefits that Seven Tower Bridge will provide its tenants with, it will also offer close proximity to mass transit, restaurants and retail spaces. That proximity is something those at the helm of the project were aware of going in, and they intend to market it as part of the tower’s appeal. At the time of this writing, no price tag for Seven Tower Bridge has been released. However, construction financing is being covered by Mesa West Capital, LLC. San Jose CA is also seeing an addition to its skyline in the form of a downtown office tower intended to house the types of tech companies currently making the area their hub. Jay Paul Co. broke ground on the project at the beginning of November, holding a ceremony at 200 Park Ave., where the 19-story building will sit. Measuring around 300 feet tall and encompassing 875,000 square feet, the complex will be one of the tallest buildings in the area. Jay Paul Co. anticipates that, when 200 Park Ave. is completed, it will accommodate anywhere from 3,500 to 4,400 employees. And, much like Seven Tower Bridge, this location will offer employees a location that boasts plenty of nearby retail stores and restaurants. In addition, the building will have 26,000 square feet of outdoor terraces, as well as skyways. The design ensures sufficient natural light. Lining up with the other projects featured this month, a fitness
MARKET BRIEF center is planned for the space, further indicating that many companies are concerning themselves with their workers’ physical well-being. The project was designed by Gensler, and it’s slated for completion between late 2022 and early 2023. An office tower called the Epic II is currently under construction in Dallas TX, and there are big plans in store for the building once it’s finished. Developer Westdale Real Estate 200 Park Ave. Investment and Management broke ground on November 1, and, although work on the space has just begun, Uber Technologies already has plans to move in when it’s done. The 23-story tower, which will offer 470,000 square feet of office space, will be fully occupied by Uber. The company plans to relocate approximately 400 employees to the area by the end of the year, but the tower itself won’t be ready for move-in until the Q4/2022. When the building is ready for its new tenant, it’s expected to draw in 3,000 additional Uber jobs, as well as $75 million in capital investment. Westdale Real Estate and Uber chose the Deep Ellum neighborhood of Dallas as the facility’s location because of its easy accessibility and its reputation as a hub for innovation. Location seems to be a major factor that building designers are taking into consideration as of late, indicating workers—and, thus, the organizations for which they work—want convenient access to the facility.
at 90 Arboretum Dr., on October 17. The space will be the first office complex in New Hampshire to be built using Mass Timber construction, meaning that the primary building material used for the structure is not steel or concrete, but, rather, wood. SGA Architects designed the building, and the company made sure to consider environmental factors when doing so. Farley White Interests also considered energy efficiency when selecting heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems, deciding on a unit that recovers the heat or coolness of the exhaust air and reapplies it to the air currently going out. The building will encompass 72,000 square feet of office space; project completion is slated for the summer of 2020. Colliers International acquired a $29 million loan from Berkshire Bank to finance the property. In addition to its focus on environmental sustainability, the space is also nearby mass transit, including Pease International Airport, as well as amenities that include running trails and a golf course. Construction on an 11-story office complex is underway in St. Louis Park MN and energy efficiency is being taken into consideration, although, admittedly, on a much smaller scale than the New Hampshire-based project. The tower is intended to be an energyefficient building, although the exact details of its environmentally
Green Office Space
Environmental factors are also playing a significant role when it comes to constructing new buildings. Certainly, that’s the case with Farley White Interests’ new project at Pease International Tradeport in Newington NH. The company broke ground on the building, located
Farley White Interests’ new project at Pease International Tradeport.
Groundbreaking for an 11-story office complex at 10 West End.
friendly approach haven’t been released, as of this writing. When the tower is completed, however, it will reportedly be Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certified. Ryan Companies and The Excelsior Group broke ground on the project October 24, holding a ceremony at 10 West End, where the building will be erected. Although there’s no signed tenant for the office space at the time of this writing, the building’s design plans include numerous amenities for the companies that will make the space their new home. Open-air balconies, fitness facilities, a sky deck and collaborative lobbies are among the features the new building will boast upon completion. Outdoor spaces and parking facilities are also being prioritized. Ryan A+E is designing the space, Ryan Construction is building it and ACORE Capital is providing the financing. If all goes according to plan, the 343,000-square-foot complex will be completed during the first half of 2021. December 2019
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NEWS Compiled by Amanda Mullen, Anthony Vargas and Dan Ferrisi
Creator Corp. Joins SDVoE Alliance Creator Corp., a manufacturer of AV solutions based in Guangzhou City, China, has joined the SDVoE Alliance as an adopting member. “We’re proud to join the SDVoE Alliance and work with the innovative SDVoE technology,” Jing Long, R&D Department Manager, Creator Corp., said. “The powerful capabilities of the platform to deliver zero-latency, artifact-free transmission of true 4K60 (4:4:4) video, [as well as] its wide-ranging applicability to so many applications, will help us to closely meet user requirements, achieve the full potential of IP-based AV distribution, and reduce cost and complexity of system construction.” “We welcome Creator as the latest equipment manufacturer to design their next-generation [commercial] AV products on the SDVoE standard,” Justin Kennington, President of the SDVoE Alliance, said. “This partnership represents an exciting expansion for SDVoE technology in the domestic Chinese market, a market that has been working with AV-over-IP for a long time and that will now more fully benefit from the matrix-switch-level performance available using SDVoE.”
LNCA Opens New Distribution Center Legrand, North and Central America (LNCA), has opened a new distribution center in Moreno Valley CA. The facility replaces an existing center in Rancho Cucamonga CA, and it will accommodate Legrand’s product portfolio resulting from multiple acquisitions over the last two years. The Moreno Valley complex is more than double the size of the previous facility at 340,000 square feet, and it is expected to create approximately 40 new jobs over the next three years. From its opening, it will support Legrand’s Electrical Wiring Systems, Building Control Systems and AV divisions; it will have the capacity to support additional business units in the future. The new distribution center will deploy a range of new automation technologies designed to improve customer service and logistics, and to decrease the time required for an order to be prepared for shipping. “As we continue to expand our market presence in North America, both organically and through additional acquisitions, we are constantly seeking new ways to make it easier for our customers to do business with Legrand,” John Selldorff, President and CEO, Legrand, North and Central America, said. “The investment in this facility is part of a broader plan to continue streamlining and evolving our operations at multiple company locations across the country.” A formal ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new facility, located at 24975 Nandina Ave., Moreno Valley CA, took place on November 14.
Leyard And Planar Announce New Showrooms Leyard and Planar have announced the addition of two showrooms in Irvine CA and Oakland CA, expanding the company’s US presence by providing 10 North American showrooms in which local sales and product teams can showcase the company’s latest developments in display technology to local customers. The introduction of the company’s California showrooms is intended to demonstrate Leyard and Planar’s commitment to maintaining a presence in the videowall market, as well as its commitment to meeting the diverse and growing needs of today’s customers. The company’s showrooms in Irvine and Oakland follow the previous introduction of a Toronto, Ontario, Canada showroom. The new California showrooms come on the heels of Leyard and Planar being named the numberone market-share leader in the $5.7 billion LED-video-display market, according to the “2019 LED Display Market Report” by Futuresource Consulting. In addition to this, the company grew its market share to 10.3 percent in 2018, up from 9.1 percent in 2017. Leyard and Planar also secured the top position in the narrow-pixel-pitch-LED and indoor-LED categories. This report follows Futuresource Consulting’s “2019 Videowall Display Solutions Report,” which named Leyard and Planar the number-one global-market-share leader in the narrow-pixel-pitch LED-videowall market and number-one leader in America’s LCD control-room videowall market. 70
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Whitlock Receives Growth Investment From Marlin Equity Partners Whitlock, a provider of audiovisual and videocollaboration solutions, announced that Marlin Equity Partners, a global investment firm with more than $6.7 billion of capital under management, has joined Whitlock as the majority shareholder in the company. “We are excited to partner with an investment firm that understands the importance of collaboration solutions for the modern workplace,” Whitlock’s CEO, Doug Hall, said. “Marlin has a history of empowering high-growth businesses, and we look forward to working with them to execute our strategic plans, bring new and added functionality to our customers, and expand into new markets.” “Whitlock’s strong customer base and partner network are a testament to the value proposition that Doug and his team consistently deliver,” Ryan Wald, a Managing Director at Marlin, added. “We recognize that Whitlock is at the forefront of workplace-transformation technologies, and we look forward to partnering with them and building upon their deep and longstanding expertise in the collaboration-solutions market.” Fifth Third Securities served as exclusive financial adviser to Whitlock in the transaction.
CALENDAR
January
The NAMM Show Jan. 16–19 Anaheim CA National Association of Music Merchants www.namm.org
February
2020 BISCI Winter Conference Feb. 9–13 Tampa FL BISCI www.bisci.org Integrated Systems Europe Feb. 11–14 Amsterdam, The Netherlands AVIXA, CEDIA www.iseurope.org
March
Enterprise Connect March 30–April 2 Orlando FL Informa PLC www.enterpriseconnect.com/orlando
NEWS IMCCA Wraps Up Collaboration Week Silicon Valley The Interactive Multimedia & Collaborative Communications Alliance (IMCCA) wrapped up Collaboration Week Silicon Valley 2019 (CWSV19) earlier this fall. From October 28 to October 30, industry professionals and end users attended events at Intuit, Poly and Amazon Web Services (AWS). In addition, at a gala dinner, industry icon Bob Hagerty was presented with the IMCCA’s Emerging Technology Fellow Lifetime Achievement Award. IT/AV Report Editor David Danto provided a unified communications and collaboration (UC&C) overview, covering hot topics. These included the battle lines between various providers, the Team-Chat hype storm, interoperability, security and the new look of the office. Intuit’s Peter Kolak explained to those gathered how he goes about setting standards for rooms and systems. Pexip’s Karl Hantho and BlueJeans Network’s Robb Woods gave an overview on the state of interoperability and discussed how users can tackle it in the future. Dr. S. Ann Earon detailed the war for users’ mindshare and compared many of the biggest industry platforms’ talking points and cautionary notes. In addition, Nemertes’ Irwin Lazar explained how unified communications (UC) metrics are evolving from examining call detail records (CDRs) to measuring business value. Talking Pointz’s Dave Michels explained that “video is now the cheese on the pizza,” as our industry has changed to a video-first posture. IT/AV Report columnist Josh Srago, CTS, presented an eye-opening series of observations and warnings on security, malware, and protecting AV and collaboration ecosystems. Shen Milsom & Wilke’s Mark Peterson detailed how remote workers and societal transformations are changing how offices are designed and built. And, finally, AWS’ Sam Chon and Jennie Tietema laid out Amazon’s view of collaboration and the future of UC systems. The list of sponsors and organizations that participated included Intel, AVI Systems, Amazon, BlueJeans Network, Compunetix, Crestron, Intuit, Logitech, Pexip, Poly, Rec. VC, Sennheiser, Vyopta, Yorktel and Zoom.
LG TechTour Concludes With Technology Pop-Up In New York LG Business Solutions USA wrapped up its 2019 LG TechTour with a technology pop-up experience on Fifth Ave., in New York NY, which drew hundreds of attendees to experience the array of LG business and partner solutions. At the daylong event, which featured live entertainment and a range of food from New York’s eateries, guests experienced an assortment of digital-signage displays, along with a series of workshops and product presentations. “The LG TechTour is a self-contained innovation roadshow that demonstrates the full range of LG’s and our partners’ capabilities,” Garry Wicka, VP of Marketing, LG Business Solutions USA, explained. “This year, over 1,400 business-to-business customers from coast to coast came together in unique environments to experience LG’s broad portfolio of digital-signage displays, renewable-energy systems, enterprise mobile solutions and more. And I think they had some fun, too, along the way.” Every stop of the six-city tour featured distinct locations and specially themed events. For example, the Dallas TX event was held in AT&T Stadium, home of the Dallas Cowboys, where LG highlighted its new direct-view LED screens and advanced LG OLED videowalls. The event included a performance by the famous Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders, an exclusive meet-and-greet event with a former Dallas Cowboys all-star and an on-field Punt, Pass & Kick competition for LG guests. For the New York finale, LG hosted the event in a loft space in midtown Manhattan during New York Digital Signage Week (NYDSW). In addition to the keynotes, product showcases and breakout sessions, the day’s agenda included craft-beer tastings, coffee tastings, a live DJ and an open bar, and a unique food experience provided by an array of purveyors.
Digital Signage Expo 2020 Opens Conference Registration Digital Signage Expo (DSE) has announced that registration for its 2020 event is now open. DSE will be held from March 31 to April 3 at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Las Vegas NV. It will offer more than 100 education opportunities, including 12 pre- and post-show events, 21 industryspecific peer-networking luncheon roundtables, 32 general conference sessions, 52 free on-floor workshops and a program of study to ensure certification renewal in cooperation with the Digital Signage Experts Group (DSEG). Other new features of the 2020 conference include the following: the return of education tracks for key verticals; opening keynote; Content + Experience (C+X) Theater; DOOH Marketplace; and one-, two-, three- and four-day conference-package pricing. Registration for any of the DSE 2020 education sessions, which are eligible for DSEG certification renewal credits, can be done online at www.dse2020.com. December 2019
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NEWS USAV Announces New Partnerships USAV, a division of PSA, has announced the addition of seven partners to its network. This group of partners is composed of integrators, manufacturers and service providers in the AV industry. “Twenty-nineteen has been a year of evolution for USAV, and we are thrilled to be adding high-quality partners that share our strategic vision,” Chris Salazar-Mangrum, VP of USAV, said. “We have an extremely engaged network that works collaboratively to make positive contributions to our industry and organizations, and these new partners will be extremely valuable to the group as a whole.” The new Preferred Manufacturer Partners include AtlasIED and NETGEAR. AtlasIED is a global electronics manufacturer that provides audio solutions for commercial markets that include corporate, education, healthcare, retail, transportation and government. NETGEAR is a provider of networking, storage and security solutions. Preferred Service Providers include TrueNorth, Domotz and Paximo. TrueNorth is a risk-management and insurance brokerage firm focused on providing integrated solutions. Domotz is a remote-monitoring and -management platform for the Internet of Things (IoT). Paximo is a recruitment firm that helps identify and place talent in the AV and security industries. Finally, USAV’s new partner in the Integrated Service Groups category is PCD, Inc., a company that specializes in the design and installation of audiovisual systems.
NSCA Announces Keynote Lineup For BLC 2020 NSCA has announced the confirmed speakers for its 22nd annual Business & Leadership Conference (BLC), which will be held from February 26 to February 28 at the Four Seasons Resort and Club in Irving TX. NSCA’s BLC brings together hundreds of executives annually to share stories, learn from other leaders, and hear about new ways to embrace technology and motivate employees. The BLC 2020 keynotes include the following: “The Future of Work: How Will Humans Fit In?” by Geoff Colvin; “What to Do When There’s Too Much to Do” by Laura Stack; “Helping Your People Bring Great Ideas to Life” by Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg; “Build a Culture of Good” by Ryan McCarty; “Outrageous Empowerment: Giving Employees Their Brains Back” by Ron Lovett; “Leadership Isn’t for Cowards” by Mike Staver; and “Economic Outlook 2020 and Beyond” by Chris Kuehl. “The experts we’re bringing in this year have the potential to change our members’ businesses for the better,” NSCA’s Executive Director, Chuck Wilson, said. “They’re giving integrators something new and different to think about from every perspective—whether it’s finding and retaining talent or managing never-ending workloads.” BLC 2020 sponsors include AtlasIED, Audinate, AV Brands of Legrand, Axis Communications, Barco, Biamp, Bosch, Christie, D-Tools, Domotz, FSR, Jeron, Kramer, Listen Technologies, MultiTaction, NEC, QSC, Rauland, Shure, Solutions360, Sonance, SurgeX, Synnex and West Penn Wire. NSCA members pay $899 to attend BLC, whereas non-members can attend for $1,499. To register, visit www.nsca.org/blc.
ACT Lighting Exclusively Distributing Luxibel In North America ACT Lighting is now the exclusive distributor of the Luxibel line of products in North America. Luxibel is the lighting brand by AED group, which is headquartered in Belgium, and which has divisions in the Netherlands, Germany, France and the UK. “Luxibel’s well-designed, high-quality, reliable and high-value products are an ideal addition to the brands ACT distributes exclusively in North America,” ACT Lighting’s CEO, Ben Saltzman, said. “We are excited to bring Luxibel’s product line to the attention of our customers, and [we] will be introducing them to the wide array of tools that are available.” “ACT Lighting is well known for its…service and…market reputation, and [it] represents the world’s top brands,” Damon Crisp, International Sales Manager for Luxibel, added. “Luxibel is honored to join the ACT association and this select product roster. We look forward to our new North American customer partners discovering Luxibel solutions for their AV and exhibition needs.” 72
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Microsoft Teams, Zoom And Cisco Announce Video Interoperability As videoconferencing solutions proliferate, remote working continues to rise and the number of intercompany videoconferences increases, a lack of system interoperability has become a major pain point for many users. Internally focused videoconferences are less problematic, as everyone is familiar with their system of choice. However, once companies begin to interact with each other, there’s a good chance they are using different videoconferencing providers. That means multiple independent accounts, no central system and the need to hop from one provider to another throughout the day. That frustration could soon be a thing of the past. Microsoft and Cisco have announced that video interoperability will be available between Microsoft Teams and Webex Meetings and devices. Moreover, Microsoft has announced that it will support interoperability with Zoom. For the end user, that means all these platforms will work together seamlessly. A recent Futuresource Consulting research study, which interviewed more than 1,100 end users across the US, the UK, Germany and France, showed that almost two-thirds of interviewees are spending up to three hours per week in meeting rooms using conferencing technology. In addition, nearly three in four companies are actively encouraging employees to increase their use of conferencing technology to communicate with colleagues, customers and third parties. Until now, it hasn’t been possible to start or join a session from one provider by using the platform of another. Not only has this been a nuisance, but it could also be affecting company profitability. The Futuresource study showed that one in three conference calls suffers from some sort of mishap, including problems encountered when people try to join the conference session or problems during the call relating to unfamiliarity with the system. One in four conference sessions also begins with a delay, costing companies time, money and, potentially, goodwill. Much of this is likely to be resolved by employees being able to use their preferred videoconferencing system in all situations.
PEOPLE
Compiled by Amanda Mullen
I. Bambagi
M. Fisher
J. Marchionda
K. Joyce
V. Schuster
D. Myers
R. Marchant
A. Pearce
W. Chan
F. Monetti
S. Kaskon
S. Craig
J. Bakker
M. Frazier
G. Schottert
M. McFall
I. McKelvy
J. Hao
D. Ong
J. Fernandes
Kramer Electronics welcomed Itzhak Bambagi as its CEO…Origin Acoustics promoted Marc Fisher to President of Sales, and hired John Marchionda as CMO…TAG Video Systems named Kevin Joyce as CCO…Cabletime appointed Vince Schuster as VP of Sales for the Americas…EliteProAV named Doni Myers as Managing Director…QSC promoted Ron Marchant to Senior Director, Sales and Marketing, EMEA, and Andy Pearce to Senior Director, Southeast Asia and Pacific, and welcomed William Chan as Senior Director, North Asia…VITEC named Fernando Monetti as Sales Director for LATAM…Neutrik USA promoted Stacy Kaskon to Director of Business Development…Key Digital
welcomed Scott Craig as its Northeast Regional Sales Manager… Radio Active Designs hired Jim Bakker as EMEA Sales Manager… DPA Microphones appointed Matt Frazier as Northwest Area Sales Manager…Chauvet named Gerrit Schottert as Senior Business Development Manager…Ross Video welcomed Mary Jean McFall as In-House General Counsel…CP Communications appointed Ian McKelvy as Senior Account Executive, AV and Broadcast Services… Clear-Com hired Jason Hao as an Application Engineer, Dalton Ong as APAC Technical Support Associate and Jason Fernandes as a member of the Clear-Com UK Applications Engineering team…. December 2019
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PRODUCTS Compiled by Dan Ferrisi
Extron’s Presentation Matrix Switcher
Extron has introduced the DTP2 CrossPoint 82, an 8x2 presentation matrix switcher that provides video scaling, switching and integration features. With a maximum data rate of 18Gb/s, it supports video resolutions up to 4K/60 at 4:4:4 chroma sampling and is HDCP 2.2 compliant. The DTP2 CrossPoint matrix switcher incorporates Extron-patented Vector 4K scaling technology. It features DTP2, DisplayPort and HDMI inputs, plus 1 HDMI and 1 scaled DTP2 output for extending video, audio and control signals up to 330' over a shielded Catx cable. The DTP2 CrossPoint 82 boasts a built-in Extron IPCP Pro control processor and integrated 100W Class D power amp. The matrix switcher delivers excellent image quality, along with fast and reliable switching. In addition, it offers Extron ProDSP audio processing, seamless videotransition effects, logo keying and HDMI loop-through. Extron Electronics www.extron.com
Shure’s Ceiling Array Mic
Shure has announced a new version of the MXA910 Ceiling Array Mic with Intellimix DSP. The MXA910W-A Ceiling Array Mic with IntelliMix DSP provides a solution for installation in 24"x24" ceiling grids in the US. This new MXA910 variant includes the same technology and performance as all prior versions. Available in white (but paintable for a variety of design aesthetics), the MXA910W-A features subtle adjustments to the form factor of its chassis design to ensure it is compliant with recent court requirements. Additionally, Shure continues to offer uninterrupted global availability of the MXA910 60cm version. This new mounting option joins a range of other mounting options, including suspension mount, VESA pole-mount and hard ceiling mount. As such, consultants and integrators have a range of solutions compatible with any meeting room. Shure Inc. www.shure.com
All product information supplied by manufacturers and/or distributors.
Hall Research’s Latching HDMI Cables
Hall Research is shipping the CHD-SF latching HDMI cables, which provide 18Gb/s bandwidth for 4K60 video. The cables are designed for critical applications where a tight and reliable HDMI connection is required. Regular HDMI cables do not secure the connector, and they can become unplugged with as little as 2lb. of force. The SnugFit cables use spring-loaded protrusions on the top and sides of the HDMI connector to increase the retention force. The top tabs are positioned in such a way as to snap into slots in compatible mating connectors. This provides tactile and audible feedback of a proper connection. The SnugFit cables are available in lengths from 1' to 25'. Hall Research www.hallresearch.com
TASCAM’s BD-MP1 Shure’s MXA910
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TASCAM has introduced the BDMP1 professional-grade Blu-ray player. It replaces the BD-01U. The compact, single-rackspace BD-MP1 saves space by eliminating the need for discrete audio/ video playback devices in an installed rack. It accepts a range of media and file formats via 3 versatile input slots: disc tray (Blu-ray/DVD/CD), USB flash or SD card. In addition to its input options, the BD-MP1 supports all popular media and file formats, including Blu-ray (BD-ROM, BD-R, BD-RE), DVD (DVD-ROM, DVD-R, DVD-RW), CD (CD-DA, CD-R), video (MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4 AVC, VC-1, AVCHD, WMV), image (JPEG, GIF, PNG) and audio (LPCM, MP3, AAC, WMA). A power-on play feature enables content to begin playing, automatically, immediately on power up, without having to engage the BD-MP1’s play feature. TASCAM www.tascam.com
Hall Research’s CHD-SF
Extron’s DTP2 CrossPoint 82
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TASCAM’s Blu-Ray Player
PRODUCTS Lowell Manufacturing’s Rackmount Panels
Lowell Manufacturing has introduced 19" rackmount panels that present access to network connections from the front of the rack, using pass-through connectivity ports. The ports (RJ45 or USB A/B) allow technicians to connect laptops to the audio, security or main network—whatever interface was made at the back of the unit. A white area above each port can be used to identify the connections. In addition, the panels feature 5 charging ports, including USB-C PD and USB 3.0. Panel model ACR-1507-SSI-FC places the charging ports in front, making it easy to charge personal devices while working at the front of the rack. Model ACR-1505-SSIRC places the charging ports in the rear. The panels also include a bank of NEMA 5-15R power outlets for added practicality. Built-in surge suppression protects them from power surges and spikes up to 40,000A. Lowell Manufacturing Co. www.lowellmfg.com
Poly’s All-In-1 Video Bars
Poly has introduced videoconferencing devices with a built-in Microsoft Teams experience. The Poly Studio X Series—purposebuilt, all-in-1 video bars for Microsoft Teams—will offer a native Teams meeting and calling experience. The Poly Studio X Series consists of 2 video bars designed for small rooms: the Poly Studio X30 and Poly Studio X50. The Poly Studio X Series are appliances that will run the Teams application natively. The Studio X Series supports 4K ultra HD, advanced noise suppression and video-production rules to improve all aspects of the meeting experience. Setup requires a single power-over-Ethernet cable. Users can choose to control the Studio X Series with the Poly TC8 touchscreen. Poly www.poly.com
NewTek’s Video Production System
NewTek has introduced the next generation TriCaster Mini, an addition to the TriCaster product line. The plug-and-play setup of TriCaster Mini allows new video producers to get started quickly and work their way up to creating more sophisticated programs, in resolutions up to 4K, for delivery to all of today’s screens. Its small size and light weight allows storytellers to take it anywhere, set up and get started in minutes. Also included are hundreds of entry-level and advanced production tools, including built-in virtual sets, animated transition effects, replay for sporting events, streaming, recording, projecting, 1-touch social-media publishing and more. TriCaster Mini’s 8 external video inputs will support any combination of compatible sources in resolutions up to 4K ultra HD, giving storytellers more options, more angles and more points of view. NewTek www.newtek.com
QSC’s Networked Audio Interface
QSC has begun shipping the Attero Tech Synapse D32Mi networked audio interface and released a supporting update to uniFY Control Panel software. This model in the Synapse series of 1RU rackmount network audio interfaces provides 32 mic/ line analog inputs with studiograde mic preamps and Dante/ AES67 connectivity, including up to 24-bit, 96kHz analog-toDante conversion. The inputs are available as either terminal blocks or DB25 connections. The D32Mi’s combination of performance, channel density, control capabilities and integration with the Q-SYS Ecosystem makes it suitable for fixed-installation applications. The newest Synapse model offers front-panel and network control of mic-preamp gain, phantom power and muting. Easily assignable front-panel headphone volume control and source selection enable local input and Dante confidence monitoring at the rack position. QSC www.qsc.com
Lowell Manufacturing’s ACR-1507-SSI-FC1
QSC’s Attero Tech Synapse D32Mi
NewTek’s TriCaster Mini
Poly’s Studio X Series December 2019
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PRODUCTS Atlona’s Compact Display Controller
Atlona is shipping a compact display controller that automates smaller meeting spaces in a streamlined configuration. The 4K/ultra-HD-ready AT-DISP-CTRL provides users with plug-and-play operation for meeting spaces that lack AV switching, while also eliminating the need to manage handheld remote controls during lectures and presentations. The DISP-CTRL detects connection of a source device with an active signal and automatically sends a control command to power the display. The controller automatically changes the display power state based on HDMI device connection or disconnection, enabling display control, volume control and input selection without a remote control. Programmable display-control modes can power off displays after a specified period of inactivity or following a manual disconnection. Adjustable lamp cool-down modes are available to avoid prematurely powering up a projector after shutdown. Atlona www.atlona.com
NETGEAR’s Network Switches
Matrox Graphics’ Multi-Monitor Controllers
NETGEAR has added the M4500 Series 100Gb network switches to its managed-switch line. To address the growth of AV deployments over Ethernet, NETGEAR is introducing the M4500-32C and M4500-48XF8C switches. These AV-over-IP-ready Ethernet switches combine the configurability of an AV matrix switcher with the power and scalability of Ethernet to support hundreds of AV-over-IP endpoints. Removing the need for complicated Layer 3 PIM routing, these switches offer NETGEAR-engineered IGMP Plus, which simplifies system architectures with the same L2 techniques across the entire AV-over-IP network. The M4500-32C 32-port 100Gb/s switch can be leveraged to aggregate the edge switches for a complete setup for large projects up to 320x320 SDVoE (10G) devices in a single architecture. Installers opting to use the M450048XF8C switch in their installation will find it’s already preconfigured out of the box. NETGEAR, Inc. www.netgear.com
Matrox Graphics has released the QuadHead2Go multi-monitor controllers. Available in appliance and PCI Express card form factors, QuadHead2Go units can drive 4 displays from 1 signal, offering a path to next-generation videowalls. The new multi-monitor controllers also feature a modular architecture that provides complete videowall scalability and flexibility by powering videowalls of any type and size, while delivering good image quality across high-impact configurations. OEMs, AV integrators and AV installers can use the included Matrox PowerWall software to configure the latest emerging, large-scale and artistic videowalls. QuadHead2Go controllers capture a single video signal—of up to 4Kp60 and 8Kx8K—for display across up to 4 screens, at resolutions up to 1920x1200 per output. The input content can be from any source—including professional graphics cards and integrated GPUs, digital-signage players, laptops and more—while displays can be arranged in classic rectangular 2x2, 2x1, 3x1, 4x1, 1x2, 1x3 or 1x4 setups. Other artistic configurations are also possible. Matrox Graphics Inc. www.matrox.com/graphics
NETGEAR’s M4500-48XF8C Atlona’s AT-DISP-CTRL
Matrox Graphics’ QuadHead2Go Clear-Com’s FreeSpeak Edge 76
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Clear-Com’s Wireless Intercom System
Clear-Com has released its FreeSpeak Edge wireless intercom system. FreeSpeak Edge is an addition to the FreeSpeak family of digital wireless intercom solutions. It delivers good audio quality and performance for complex live-performance environments. The system gives the user more control and customization options because of advanced frequencycoordination capabilities and design features in the system’s transceivers and beltpacks. FreeSpeak Edge harnesses the power of 5GHz technology to perform well in challenging venues and high-multipath environments. The system takes advantage of ClearCom’s RF technology, which uses OFDM to provide a robust transport layer that is immune to most forms of interference. FreeSpeak Edge delivers clear 12kHz audio quality with ultra-low latency, and it’s highly scalable with the technology and bandwidth to support more than 100 beltpacks and 64 transceivers to accommodate large productions. Clear-Com www.clearcom.com
PRODUCTS EliteProAV’s Non-Electric Projector Screens
EliteProAV has released its Manual Tab-Tension Pro Series of non-electric projector screens with choice of either a matte white or CLR materials. The Manual Tab-Tension Pro Series is the company’s premium-grade, nonelectric, large-venue projector screen. It offers a tough, versatile design that can be installed and used where there is no available power source. This ISF-certified, non-electric projection screen is for venues large and small. The design features a hands-free, slow-retract mechanism. This means that, once the release handle or lanyard is pulled, the screen will slowly retract on its own without the need for hands-on assistance. Choose from 2 models featuring either the CineWhite UHD-B material with a white metal screen housing or the CineGrey 5D material with a black metal housing. EliteProAV, Inc. www.eliteproav.com
Lawo’s Grand Production Console
Lawo recently showcased the Xtra Fader Version of its mc296 grand production console, providing an increased fader count in the Central Control Section. 16 instead of 8 faders in the Sweet Spot—a layout option that can also be retrofit into existing consoles—provide direct access to double the number of channels in the ideal listening position. This gives audio engineers enhanced freedom for a more flexible workflow in fine-tuning their audioproduction settings. The mc296 console’s Xtra Fader Version is dedicated to studio and OB truck applications that require the maximum number of faders in a small footprint. The mc296 Xtra Fader Version allows a 112-fader frame to fit into a 92.52" width for installation in standard-sized OB vans (truck crosswise). To see the console in action, click to youtu.be/oWeP8R6L3U4 or youtu.be/NKTwg3-vNkQ. Lawo AG www.lawo.com
Lumens’ Media Processor
Lumens has introduced the CaptureVision System LC200, a media processor and an upgrade from the previous model (the VSLC102). It is for recording, saving videos and creating livestreams for any audience. The LC200 allows users to record videos at full HD 1080p; mix, encode and switch between video sources; add overlays and background at the user’s preference; and broadcast the mixed videos to various social platforms. It supports capturing various video sources from up to 4 HDMI or 3 IP-video input sources, including HDMI inputs, Lumens IP camera, NDI|HX camera and standard RTSP streams. Together with 4 line-in/mic-in inputs, the LC200 can provide a complete audiovisual experience for audiences. It’s well suited to serve as a core system in lecture capture, event recording and streaming. Lumens Digital Optics Inc. www.mylumens.com
Analog Way’s Live-Presentation Systems
Analog Way’s LivePremier Series is a range of 4K/8K multi-screen live-presentation systems. Analog Way also released v1.0 of its LivePremier software. The LivePremier Series includes 4 preconfigured products (Aquilon RS1, RS2, RS3 and RS4) and 2 fully customizable models (Aquilon C and C+). The LivePremier Series offers 4K digital connectivity, real-time 10/12-bit 4:4:4 video-processing power, good image quality, and pure 4K60p on each input and output with ultra-low latency. The LivePremier Series also features capabilities such as audio embedding/de-embedding and native Dante audio routing, as well as up to 120MP throughput at a 10-bit 60Hz. The LivePremier Series combines a heavy-duty modular design, components chosen for their reliability and redundant hot-swappable power supplies to deliver 24/7 performance. Analog Way www.analogway.com
Lumens’ CaptureVision System LC200
Analog Way’s LivePremier Series
EliteProAV’s Manual Tab-Tension Pro Series Lawo’s mc296 Xtra Fader Version December 2019
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MEDIA & SOFTWARE
Have information about software releases, firmware updates or apps? What about the latest whitepapers, website updates, videos and online resources? Send details, with photos, if applicable, to dferrisi@testa.com.
Compiled by Amanda Mullen
Focusrite’s Podcast Series
Focusrite has introduced Tape Notes, a podcast series hosted by John Kennedy, the Radio Music Champion Award winner, that’s intended to reunite artists and producers. Together, they’ll take a journey through their creative processes—from kindling the first spark of a song idea, to decisions on style and instrumentation, to finessing the final product. Listeners can hear broadcast demos and stems, as well as the stories that shaped each seminal work. With more than 25 episodes from which to choose, the podcast gives listeners insight into the working methods of some of the biggest talents in music, including Kate Tempest and record producer Dan Carey; The Big Moon and Catherine Marks; Wolf Alice and Justin Meldal-Johnsen; The 1975; Little Dragon; and others. The Tape Notes podcast series is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and all other major podcast platforms. New episodes are currently being released. Focusrite www.focusrite.com
Datapath’s Software Update
Datapath has launched a new version of its Wall Designer software, delivering content-downscaling capabilities that ensure the original aspect ratio is maintained, irrespective of the size or placement. Working seamlessly with Datapath’s Fx4 controllers, the software gives users the ability to tile, replicate and refit content for creative displays. Available now as a free download, Wall Designer v2.2.0 offers a solution for project integrators challenged with designing multi-segment LED videowalls. When placed upstream of LED sender devices, Datapath’s Fx4 becomes a content-manipulation tool suitable for deployments of all sizes. Providing video synchronization across all outputs, the Fx4 enables multiple independently sized LED fixtures to be built into 1 unified display surface. Content regions can be adjusted to cater to custom LED-fixture resolutions, scaling the content to match the LED display every time. Datapath www.datapath.co.uk
ClearOne’s Configuration Software
ClearOne has released its CONSOLE AI configuration software. With it, AV practitioners can design a CONVERGE Pro Audio system with Audio Intelligence built in. A new AI Workflow Checklist guides you as you build your system to make sure you never miss a step. The AI Project Audit checks your design and reports errors and warnings to alert you to potential problems. Enhanced visualization streamlines routing, design and reviews. New visual-language elements include drag and drop, boundary boxes, mixer blocks and custom-routing lines. Audio channel groups can be created, and then can be expanded for detailed control or collapsed for simplified viewing and control. In-line renaming allows you to change channel and channel-group labels quickly, without going to the Renaming Tool. Also, C-Link capacity is now increased to 150 channels, allowing larger systems to be created. ClearOne www.clearone.com
Meyer Sound’s Control-Software Package
Meyer Sound has released v4.6 of its Compass control-software package. It’s the 1st to incorporate feature sets for full control of Meyer Sound devices, including the Milan-certified GALAXY processors. Compass 4.6 includes new firmware for the Galileo GALAXY network platform processors, CAL beam-steering column-array loudspeakers and RMServer for remote system monitoring. With the software and firmware upgrades in place, all existing Meyer Sound GALAXY processors will be capable of upgrading to be Milan-certified devices. Thousands of GALAXY devices are currently in the field, and all future GALAXY processors will be shipped with the new Milan-certified firmware installed. The Milan protocol guarantees interoperability of networked devices by standardizing the implementation of AVB technology. Every Milan-certified device will discover and operate with any other certified device. No custom network configuration is necessary, and all benefits of AVB networks are retained. Meyer Sound www.meyersound.com 78 Sound & Communications December 2019
INDUSTRY POV: THE FUTURE OF CONFERENCING: NEW STUDY SHOWS THE IMPORTANCE OF AUDIO (continued from page 28) Despite more innovation across aspects of virtual meetings, familiar technology issues still exist. Almost ever y user (96 percent, in fact) experiences some frustration in his or her virtual meeting. The majority of those frustrations are related to audio quality, consistency or connection. Among the top five meeting frustrations are background or interference noise, echoing, and simply being unable to hear or to be heard. In fact, participants report hearing the phrase “Can you hear me?” in most or all virtual meetings. Additionally, meeting time is eaten up by participants having to reconnect or having to repeat information said while on mute or while waiting for a connection. A quarter of the time, these issues interfere with productivity; fifteen percent of the time, the issues are so disruptive that they lead to a negative outcome from the meeting. Buyers and end users are equally likely to experience conferencing-software issues and poor-audio-quality challenges. But these problems are occurring so often that nearly half of buyers and end users are escalating these issues to technical experts on a weekly, if not a daily, basis. Overall, eight out of 10 respondents have experienced a negative impact from poor audio quality, with lost time and lost productivity leading the list. In terms of emotional consequences, audio issues can leave meeting participants feeling frustrated, embarrassed, disappointed, angr y or apathetic. Executives spend significantly more time in online meetings as compared to lower-level staff. As a result, executives
report experiencing technical issues with more frequency than other levels; one-third indicated that their meetings suffer from poor audio quality. On top of that, those meetings are more than twice as likely to be externally facing, revenuedriving meetings like client/customer demos (64 percent) and new-business meetings (59 percent). Those meetings are high-risk/highreward. If ever ything goes well, then the executive has the opportunity to land new clients, drive sales and deliver returns for shareholders. In these situations, they take great pride in technology that works. Conversely, if there are technological issues of any kind in the meeting, executives experience the cost much more acutely. They are much more likely to feel embarrassed about technology issues than lower-level staff are, and they’re much more likely to experience a negative business result if things go poorly. More than half of executives have experienced at least one of the following as a direct result of audio issues: • lost customer trust or confidence • damage to their brand reputation • lost customers • lost sales The frustrations and consequences don’t stop with AV end users, either. Those responsible for buying solutions for and managing the conference rooms that support online meetings are dealing with ever y type of software and equipment issue. Because of all the issues, buyers spend a significant amount of time troubleshooting virtual-meeting issues that
the meeting participants have escalated. More than half of AV buyers are resolving issues with conferencing software on at least a weekly basis—and sometimes on a daily basis. Nearly half indicate they are specifically addressing poor-audioquality issues with the same frequency. The following are some things that organizations can do: • Don’t forget the main goals. Ultimately, collaboration equipment and meeting spaces must ser ve their primar y functions—keeping people continuously connected throughout a meeting and supporting productive collaboration • Consider audio needs first. When it comes to allocating that budget, there is a clear winner between audio and video: Ninety-five percent of users agree that ever y meeting participant should be heard, whereas only 55 percent think ever y meeting participant should be seen. Although that statistic might seem obvious, many companies still spend significantly more on video as compared to what they spend on audio. • Focus on strategic investments. With all the benefits of remote work, the expanding necessity of virtual meetings, and the documented consequences of outdated or other wise-lacking AV facilities, organizations have to focus on what products and solutions are most important for long-term success. • Prepare to deliver solutions built for the future and for future expansion. Three out four AV buyers expect to increase their budget for supporting virtual meetings with both hardware and software solutions. Invest in products that can be futureproofed.
FROM THE CROW’S NEST: OUR INDUSTRY WILL LOOK QUITE DIFFERENT IN 2020 AS COMPARED TO A DECADE AGO (continued from page 61) system has a limitation of low compression ratios, whereas codecs that originate in the broadcast and cinema worlds are capable of much higher ratios. How much? Enough to pack down an 8K video signal with 10-bit 4:2:2 color, refreshed at 120Hz, with minimal latency. (Yes, I did say that 8K wouldn’t be a big market driver for a while; it’ll get here eventually, though.) Imagine pushing a 4K signal with 10bit 4:2:2 video, with a 120Hz frame rate, through that same 10Gb switch: The un-
compressed data rate of 28.5Gb/s might be a bit strenuous for that turnkey system to handle. By contrast, a JPEG XS codec could do it without breaking a sweat. It is possible right now to buy a 40Gb switch, although current product offerings use four 10Gb ports simultaneously with timing protocols. (We interfaced 4K video the same way in the early days, using four HDMI 1.4 ports and stitching together four 1080p images.) One broadcast-equipment manufacturer has pushed for a 25Gb “mez-
zanine” format, whereas a startup claims to be working on 50Gb and 100Gb switch fabrics. In 2020, I expect to see single-port network switches capable of speeds that exceed 10Gb/s at major trade shows. Wireless networking will be just as important as—if not more important than—wired switches. We already have a fast wireless IP protocol, 802.11ax, which is beginning to make its way into wireless access points (WAPs). Forget 5G for now—there’s still way more hype than reality attached to it. The December 2019
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THE CENTERSTAGE AN ADVERTISING SUPPLEMENT TO SOUND & COMMUNICATIONS
MFX-12MC
Electro-Voice MFX Multi-Function Monitors MFX multi-function monitors utilize high-output coaxially aligned HF and LF transducers matched with an innovative new Electro-Voice-engineered Constant Directivity waveguide. The dimensions and location of the waveguide interact with the woofer to effectively create a dipole output, resulting in precise coverage control through the midrange frequencies. Two models are available: the MFX-12MC (12”) and MFX-15MC (15”). In addition to providing a stable sound image as the performer moves off-axis, the compact coaxial design presents a significantly lower-profile footprint on stage in comparison to competitive high-end monitors. Both models feature pole sockets recessed into the side handles for use as short-throw reinforcement in portable applications. The monitors can be used in passive or bi-amp configuration. Multiple DSP settings optimize the speakers for specific uses. MFX multifunction monitors are optimized for use with the new TGX10 or IPX10:4 DSP amplifiers from EV’s sibling brand Dynacord. WEB ADDRESS: www.electrovoice.com
simple fact is this: Unless you use millimeter-wave frequencies for 5G wireless links, your download speeds won’t be substantially faster than what we have now with 4G. In addition, 5G networks will require many more nodes, due to the short range of millimeter-wave radio signals. For the average presenter, in-room 802.11ax will do the job of sharing photos and streaming videos nicely. It’s possible the time has come. Our industr y has a reputation for being a hoarder when it comes to old technologies, and the RS232 format celebrates its 58th birthday next year. Can you think of any tech that old that we still use, aside from LEDs? I am starting to see more AV products dropping the nine-pin D-sub connector in favor of an RJ-45
network jack that, in some cases, does double duty as an HDBaseT connection. (For what it’s worth, the latter format is likely headed to extinction, as more people get with the AVover-IP program.) And, finally, we turn to the elephant in the room. Low-cost manufacturing (increasingly enabled by robotics) and aggressive pricing aren’t limited to the display supply chain. Every piece of AV hardware that we use can be made cheaper by someone else, and more and more of it moves through distribution with each passing year. I’ve even heard multiple stories of customers buying two or more of a given product at discounted prices, then simply replacing units that have malfunctioned and would otherwise need repair.
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Lowell Manufacturing Faster, Simpler Remote Power Controls With “Pass-Through” Connections Lowell introduces pass-through RJ45 connections to its line of Remote Power Controls (RPC-P Series), Relays (RY-P Series) and Sequencers (SEQP Series). This means that instead of connecting each device directly to the sequencer, the RPCs and relays can connect to each other, in any order, with only the first device connected to the sequencer. It’s also easier to scale a system up or down, as equipment is added or removed, using Cat5/6 cable. New sequencer Model #SEQ-P4 is engineered to control up to 20 remote power controls or relays per step (80 total), so the pass-through devices can save quite a bit of time for medium to large installations. The RPCs and relays also have a step selection switch onboard each unit, which allows the startup position for any device to be quickly changed at the flip of a switch—without rewiring. WEB ADDRESS: www.sndcom.us/lowell-power-sequencer
That’s why you see so many smaller booths at trade shows these days. The established players just can’t justify big trade-show budgets the way they used to. Not with so many products selling with two or three zeros on their price tags. And there are plenty of smaller booths featuring startup companies that see opportunities in selling new tech, such as fiberoptic-based signal extenders, network switches with display interfaces built in, cutting-edge control systems and low-cost wireless-presentation-sharing gadgets. And software—lots of software—mostly for control systems, but also for analytics like who’s using the facilities and when. So, there you have it. Cheaper displays (and AV hardware), fine-pitch LED displays
for meeting rooms, large VR space designs, the emergence of voice-recognition technologies for control, more migration to AV-over-IP, faster network switches and wireless, and the continuing commoditization of hardware. See you next December (unless, by then, I’m replaced by a robot)….
THE COMMISH: PUMPKIN PIE (continued from page 22) signal level to assure it passes through the system with less than 0.5-percent distortion. That way, users can’t perceive it. Keep your audio signals like Team American Chunker kept its pumpkin for the infamous 4,695-foot throw. Make sure they pass through the system cleanly and intact, rather than being turned into “pumpkin pie.”
THE CENTERSTAGE AN ADVERTISING SUPPLEMENT TO SOUND & COMMUNICATIONS
AT-OME-EX-TX Transmitter for HDMI with USB
Atlona Omega: Redefining AV For Presentation And Collaboration The Atlona Omega™ Series is a new and evolving family of Atlona switching, extension, and video processing solutions for communicating and collaborating around AV content in modern institutions and meeting spaces. The Omega Series is the result of a refreshed product design initiative at Atlona, reflecting the continually evolving trends of how people gather to share information and facilitate better productivity, as well as the ways in which they engage technology for communicating through AV content. From very simple user operation to 4K, universal BYOD interfacing such as USB-C, easy screen sharing, architecturally friendly installations, software video conferencing, and much more to come — Omega has you fully covered. The Omega Series will continue to evolve and grow with new and innovative product solutions – in a variety of form factors, I/O configurations, and technologies for all your collaboration and presentation needs. WEB ADDRESS: www.sndcom.us/omega-4k-hdbaset
Extron TLC Pro Complete Control Systems Extron TLC Pro Control Systems are complete solutions that combine a TouchLink Pro touchpanel with a built-in IP Link Pro control processor. This all-in-one approach streamlines system designs by consolidating essential control system components, freeing up space, and easing integration. The included port expansion adapter makes it easy to add traditional control ports when needed, directly at the touchpanel. All TLC Pro control systems maintain the same stylish appearance and high performance of our TouchLink Pro touchpanels and are ideal for any environment requiring a customizable, all-in-one touchpanel control system. WEB ADDRESS: www.extron.com/article/tlcseriesad
Platinum Tools MapMaster™ Mini RJ45 Pocket Cable Tester
TASCAM VS Series AV-Over-IP Streaming Encoders And Decoders The VS Series VS-R264 and VS-R265 AV-over-IP streaming encoder and decoder appliances are designed for live video streaming in both 4K/UHD streaming (3840x2160) and Full HD streaming (1920x1080). The VS-R264 (Full HD) and VS-R265 (4K) offer simultaneous encoding, recording, streaming and decoding of multiple video streams at a low bit rate over standard networks suitable for 100Mbps or 1Gbps. The VS-R264 is a full HD AV-over-IP streaming encoder and decoder that simultaneously records, encodes, streams, and decodes video content using H.264 long GOP encoding with bit rates up to 30 megabits. The VS-R265 is a 4K/UHD AV-over-IP streaming encoder and decoder that simultaneously records, encodes, streams, and decodes 4K video content using High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC), a high efficiency coding scheme that delivers H.264 video quality at half the bit rate. WEB ADDRESS: https://tascam.com/us/ E-MAIL: chris@teac.eu
The MapMaster™ Mini RJ45 pocket cable tester maps multiple locations of RJ45 network cables and detects shorts, opens, miswires, reversals, and split-pairs, Every installer should have for installation, troubleshooting, and maintenance calls. Determines wire condition and displays it on its LCD display. A set of five mapping remotes is included for locating cables terminated in wall jacks or patch panels. Also identifies the patch panel port where network cable is terminated and can find and fix the position of exposed or hidden cables. A large LCD displays TIA/EIA568A/B wiremap sequence & easily identifies faults and identifies Network ID-Only Remotes Set #1-5. Trace/locate network cables and locate breaks/opens in network cabling and quickly identify unlabeled network cables. Includes a self-storing remote and auto power off. p/n T109 WEB ADDRESS: www.platinumtools.com E-MAIL: info@platinumtools.com
December 2019
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For advertising rates and deadlines call 800-YES-7678 x510
AD INDEX Company
Page #
Absen America.........................................59
MARKETPLACE
Anchor Audio...........................................39
ACE BACKSTAGE CO., INC. STAGE POCKET SYSTEMS
Arista.........................................................19
THE STRENGTH OF
STEEL
Audio-Technica........................................10 Audix.........................................................23 Biamp/Cambridge Sound Management.29
CONNECTRIX
CP Communications...............................21 d&b audiotechnik....................................15 D.A.S. Audio.............................................13
2.25x1-CSSMusicAd-2017_Layout 1 1/6/17 10:51
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Electro Voice............................................35
CSSMusic.com 800-468-6874
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ENCO Systems........................................45
#122LLBK – Rugged, professional grade fabrication - 11 gauge CRS – Designed for simple installation & ease of use – Standard pocket holds up to 50 connections
Extron Electronics..............................2, 86 IDK America............................................61 LogiSon/K.R. Moeller Associates.........41
Telephone: 661-295-5760 Website: www.acebackstage.com
Luminex......................................................8 Meyer Sound..............................................3 NACE..........................................................4
AVENT HORIZON: TO INFINITY, AND BEYOND!: AV TECHNOLOGIES ARE BEING REINVENTED
Platinum Tools.........................................45
(continued from page 84) goal, a puck sliding around a hockey rink and racecars moving by at 150mph. The camera then down-converts these recorded images to 120Hz for recording in the camera, using a mezzanine codec to achieve light compression. They didn’t stop there. By using such high frame rates, NHK was also able to devise a system whereby flicker from pulsed light sources (like LED lights) that interfere with the camera’s refresh rate is completely eliminated. The camera sensor operates at 240fps and its output alternates between short (1/600sec.) and long (1/150sec.) exposure times. By summing three consecutive recorded images, an image with an exposure time of 1/100sec. results, free of flicker. Clever! The final paper detailed how NHK built an 8K television network from scratch, broadcasting to homes and apartments in Japan via satellite links. To accommodate
Premier Mounts......................................49 QSC...........................................................43 Rose Electronics......................................85 Sescom.....................................................47 Shure..........................................................5 Sound Control Technologies..................49 TASCAM..................................................17 Toner Cable Equipment..........................25 Whirlwind.................................................57 Williams Sound........................................65 Winsted....................................................37 Yamaha Pro Audio...................................27
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the enormous amounts of data, phase differences in circular polarization were employed to provide two downlink signals. (NHK has also used phase differences in horizontal and vertical polarization to broadcast 8K video over standard UHF television channels.) There is sufficient isolation in each case to prevent data crosstalk, and, with some jiggering at the receiving end, viewers can now enjoy 8K content at home. All ver y cool. Equally cool was the Thursday session, which was devoted entirely to video and audio content from space (real and imagined.) For me, one of the highlights was the first known use of a fine-pitch videowall to generate background plate images for the film “First Man.” Back in the old days, this was done with rear projection (and usually not ver y convincingly, which is why shallow focus was used in such scenes).
For advertising rates and deadlines call 800-YES-7678 x510
MARKETPLACE
The Easy Sell.
See those Churches & Schools you drive past everyday?
WHAT WOULD YOU DO? (continued from page 24) phone or tablet, you can interact with the display. (This is often used in classrooms and other collaboration-centered spaces.) • Many commercial displays offer a builtin amplifier for ceiling- or wall-mounted loudspeakers. Many also offer an audio output that can feed a dedicated power amplifier for more robust sound than the built-in loudspeakers can deliver. As you can see, commercial displays offer many features and benefits that, taken together, offer great return on investment (ROI). If you have thoughts that you would like to share regarding commercial displays versus consumer TVs, please email me at dkleeger@testa.com.
AVIXA POV: MAKING THE CASE
Chances are they DON’T have a lockable, easy-to-use, and beautiful HSA Rolltop Desk A/V Workstation. So it’s YOUR chance for an easy sale by helping them organize and secure their Audio, Video & Lighting Control systems. Make your next sale the easy way - call or help@hsarolltops.com www.hsarolltops.com email HSA today for dealer tm info and design ideas! The Rolltop People
574-255-6100
Then, the industr y migrated first to blue screens and, eventually, to green screens to generate background footage. Although green screens work pretty well, no one on the set can see or imagine what the final shot(s) will look like, as all the footage is added in post-production. However, the special-effects crew on “First Man” changed all that with LEDs, which are sufficiently bright to stand up to intense LED lighting and refresh at fast enough speeds that flicker issues can be eliminated with a little work. Even better, unlike projection screens, they don’t wash out when studio lighting falls on them. And, in some of the shots, the video on the screen was linked to movements of mocked-up cockpits and space capsules to simulate flight through clouds and space. As amazing as that all was, what happened next topped it. Thanks to Amazon
Web Ser vices (AWS), the NASA Houston Space Center staff and NASA’s Huntsville Space Center, we established a Westinballroom-to-International-Space-Station (ISS) live-video link through which we could talk to astronauts Christina Koch, Jessica Meir and Andrew Morgan, located 250 miles above Earth. This event was planned to celebrate the 50th anniversar y of the Apollo 11 moonwalk, as well as to commemorate the first all-women spacewalk from the ISS, a video of which was shared with us. Total latency from the ISS-to-NASA downlink and transport through AWS in Atlanta GA to Los Angeles CA was about 5.8sec. Impressive! SMPTE, which celebrated its 100th anniversar y in 2016, continues to be relevant at a time when video, audio and display technologies are being reinvented and redefined. It’s a privilege to be part of it!
(continued from page 26) place might not be news, but, now, we have a number to put on that waste and a standard that will help you rein it in. You can’t use the excuse that AV systems consume so little energy that you can ignore them. If you do that, you’re hurting your bottom line by wasting all kinds of resources, and resources always translate to money. I imagine that we will see more stakeholders taking a harder look at AV systems, and they might be looking for ways that AV equipment can be made more energy efficient. I don’t see that as a bad thing; instead, I see it as people recognizing our industry’s importance. Moreover, I have every confidence that the attention will only make us better. I commend the task group that is updating the energy-management standard. It has accommodated var ying levels of energy-management opportunities so that ever y single system can improve its power consumption. The group has made it possible to start simply and work up to comprehensive management of all AV systems. So, start now! Whether you’re a committed conser vationist or whether you simply acknowledge this as a matter of good business doesn’t really matter. You’re doing the right thing. And, now, we have a statistic to back it up. My thanks to Alex Sloan and Alan Meier from UC Davis for allowing me to share this information. December 2019
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AVENT HORIZON
To Infinity, And Beyond! Video, audio and display technologies are being reinvented and redefined. By Pete Putman, CTS ROAM Consulting LLC I’ve been a member of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) since 1997, and I’ve participated as a session chair since 2012 at its annual Technology Conference. (I attended more a few of the conferences in prior years.) It’s a lot of work to plow through paper submissions, find those few gems in the rough, and then wrangle finished papers and PowerPoint slide decks from presenters in time for the conference. As much of a headache as that can be—incidentally, it’s not much more work than teaching multiple classes at InfoComm, which I did for two decades—the result is always worth it. Here are papers on advanced techniques for the recording, storage and display of video and audio. Here are papers on human visual response. Here are papers on advanced entertainment experiences in theaters, at home and at theme parks. And, of course, here are papers on an ever-growing body of standards for making it all work. As you might expect, there were plenty of hot-button topics to toss back and forth, including the following: cloudbased file storage and deliver y of media, both for production and editing; porting full-HD and ultra-HD video over IT networks and maintaining precision timing at both ends; advances in spatial (3D) sound for cinemas and the home; and the ongoing battles to facilitate easy file exchange during production workflows. This was my eighth consecutive year as a session chair—apparently, I’m just a guy who just can’t say “no!”—and, although I generally prefer to focus on advances in display technology, my bailiwick this year was 8K video (formally known to SMPTE as UHD-2). For my session, I rounded up three speakers from NHK, the Japanese national television network, from which just about all the advances in 8K cameras, recording, distribution and display are originating. 84
Sound & Communications December 2019
(L-R): Katsuya Hayashi, Pete Putman, Ryohei Funatsu and Sato Shingo. The author posed with his SMPTE 8K session presenters, all from NHK.
(L-R): Astronauts Christina Koch, Jessica Meir and Andrew Morgan. They talked to the audience at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel over a live video link with the International Space Station.
The papers were intriguing. The first detailed a brand-new type of camera sensor for capturing 4K and 8K video at 60Hz. It arose out of the technical challenges of designing a camera sensor in a standard size (Super 35, similar to APS-C) that would work with existing prime and zoom lenses and not change focal lengths, but that would have twice as many photosites that can write data at high frame rates and have additional light sensitivity and not add significant noise. Easy, right? What NHK came up with was an organic photoconductive film layer on top of an existing 8K complementar y metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) camera sensor. This layer not only boosts light sensitivity (think of a low-noise preamplifier) with minimal additional noise, but also works as an electronic global shutter (no image distortion when panning or shooting fast-moving objects). To top it off, by var ying the applied voltage to the sensor, it functions as an infinitely variable neutral density filter. (And, boy oh boy, does it catch fish!) But NHK wasn’t done. The second paper revealed the design of a 1.25-inch 8K camera sensor that can capture images at 480Hz. (Yep, you read that right.) Having previously broken the 120Hz and 240Hz speed barriers, this sensor amounts to a “top fuel” product in its ability to provide sharp detail of things like a baseball pitcher, a soccer (continued on page 82)
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