Sound’s digital dividend

Sales of audio equipment within the a-v world – either by audio specialists or general a-v resellers – have always been a topic of lively debate. Audiophiles have tended to argue that the ‘visual’ resellers do not pay enough attention to audio, while videophiles have tended to argue that audio folk try to make their world unnecessarily complex and hard for others to understand.

Both sides have a point. But at the moment they need each other more than ever, so differences should be forgotten.

The pro-audio market divides up into a multiplicity of sectors, not all of which are relevant to the a-v world. For example, the ‘M&I’ or musicians and instruments market is not really a-v centric. But most other areas – live event sound, sound recording, installed sound systems and conference/auditorium sound systems – are intrinsically linked to a-v.

At the other end of the spectrum, more teaching rooms (in both education and industry) are being equipped with basic sound replay systems to complement their projectors and interactive screens.

All of that makes the provision of audio systems in a-v installations more of a necessity than a luxury, and there has been real customer pressure to improve audio quality in installations such as videoconferencing suites, where sophisticated microphones, echo cancellation and digital sound processing have become the norm.

With the sound carrying so much of the communications content, it is important to get it right.

Those priorities are being reflected in the relative health of the different ‘audio for a-v’ markets. Broadly, the messages are that videoconferencing is a growth area for audio, although there aren’t that many new installations being carried out; corporate training and meeting room installation business has been steady, but may fall back over the next few months; and installation business in the leisure/pub and club sector is well down. The live event sector is another no-go area, for slightly different reasons.

Leisure takes a hit

‘We have seen a downturn in installation business in the past few months, although a-v in corporate has held up very well,’ says Shure Distribution professional sales manager Peter James. ‘It is in the leisure trade that we have seen the biggest downturn. Our clients dealing with the major leisure operators say they have all been cutting back on investment ever since the smoking ban. A lot of leisure operators are refurbishing sites, but redeploying existing equipment rather than buying new.

‘Because corporate is planned so far ahead it hasn’t yet shown a downturn. It has held up well.’

Polar Audio head John Midgley agrees, says: ‘Most of 2008 was carried through by projects which had been decided on and funded a year earlier, in 2007 and all our integrators were busy. But the corporate spend in the a-v market has now been greatly reduced.’

Both Polar and Shure expect a few tough months ahead before the installation work now being planned kicks in – a quiet summer that reflects the fact that nobody was prepared to authorise installation investment during the dark days of late 2008.

Tough times for events

On the event side of the market, things are looking less healthy.

‘The a-v presentation and event market is quite obviously holding back spend,’ says Shure’s James. Partly, that’s because big live events are being cut or downsized, so the rental companies who are the main purchasers of live event audio gear have cut back future investment. But the ongoing debate about the availability of bandwidth for radio microphones is also stalling investment.

The government’s plan to reduce the amount of spectrum available to radio mics (and sell it off) are still being finalised, creating massive uncertainties. Until manufacturers and buyers of wireless audio systems know how many channels and how much bandwidth is going to be available, they do not know what kind of products to make or buy. Are they going to need lots of low bandwidth, relatively low quality mics that rely heavily on compression, or can they go on using bandwidth-hungry high quality mics?

As mentioned already, nobody currently knows, so even if users did have the budget available, they couldn’t work out what return they might get on their wireless system investment. ‘It’s a tough situation there right now,’ says James.

There is also a dilemma being faced by live event recording and broadcast companies that have to decide how to cope with 5:1 surround sound; they are going to have to choose their microphones according to whether they want to simply capture the ambient sound taking place during an event or consciously create a ‘soundscape’.

‘We are trying to educate our customers to the fact that surround sound has to be created,’ says Audio-Technica Europe product manager Alexander Lepges. ‘There are a lot of people in the broadcast industry who do not know how to do it and we are doing a lot of presentations across Europe on how to create surround sound and the technical questions they have to address.’

Education is key

That need to educate users about the latest wave of digital products has become characteristic of the pro-audio sector, with Shure Distribution also saying that ‘there is a lot of market education still to be done’.

As James points out: ‘Audio has always been a bit of a dark science, but recent years have spawned some very good small operators. The larger installers are paying more attention to the audio elements of projects and there is more digital product finding its way into smaller installations.’

Polar Audio is taking that principle still further. One of the objectives of its name change last year (from beyerdynamic UK) was ‘to offer more design, project management and installation assistance’, says Midgley.

‘The take up of products such as Biamp Flex, which is not designed to be part of a huge system, has been dramatic,’ says Midgley. ‘It is helping installers solve problems they couldn’t handle using analogue products.’

‘There is an increased understanding of DSP and the market is maturing,’ James adds. ‘There are still some horror stories out there, with people putting in unnecessary outboard equipment, but people are now embracing what it can do.’

More digital, more benefits

Other digital dividends are in the pipeline. QSC, for example, is poised to launch a large-scale integration system for multi-room installations and building control that will widen installers’ choice at the top end of the market, while Audio-Technica has developed conferencing systems that address the need for security as well as seamless room management.

For example, A-T’s SpectraPulse system – launched at InfoComm 2008 but not yet available in Europe – uses a dedicated 6GHz ultra wideband (UWB) wireless transmission system that is enormously secure and is already being used by government and the military in the US.

The company has also launched an ‘out-of-the-box’ digital conferencing system, its ATCS-60 that uses infra-red rather than wireless technology.

‘In the recent past, more people have wanted to integrate conference systems with AMX and Crestron, but some people do not want a massive integrated system, they want an affordable, easy-to-use, stand-alone installation,’ says Lepges.

To meet this demand, Audio-Technica has launched an open platform system that can be controlled by AMX or Crestron but is a complete package for video, audio, audio and video recording, minute taking, chairman priority which can operate up to 150 channels of delegates, and four languages.

On its own, that might not be earth-shattering, but the clear message is that the pro audio sector realises it needs to make its digital systems easy to use and tailored to users’ needs as well as offering all the necessary technical features.

And it has recognised that it needs to help its clients – the installers – understand product benefits and promote those reasons to buy. Spec sheets alone are no longer enough.

Very little work has been done to ascertain the size and shape of the UK pro-audio market, let alone the ‘audio for a-v’ market. Even the major sector trade association, PLASA (the Professional Light and Sound Association) admits to having no reliable figures although it plans to start gathering them.

The best available size estimate comes from research done by InfoComm International into the European market, carried out four years ago and about to be updated. The 2005 InfoComm/Acclaro European a-v market report estimated the European a-v market as being worth EUR8.5bn and the report estimated that the ‘sound reproduction and acoustic products’ sector was worth 10 per cent of the total, or some EUR850m.

Research sources: InfoComm International and AV magazine.