In a briefing held before ISE, Karam Kaul, vice president of audio at HARMAN International unveiled several products and principally, the BSS Audio’s Soundweb OMNI Open Architecture Digital Signal Processors. “You've seen in the last years we've made significant investments modernizing our portfolio. You’ve seen this with JBL, you've seen this with Martin. And that commitment to that innovation is going to continue with BSS and it starts with Soundweb OMNI and then the AVX software suite.”
The Soundweb OMNI family combines enterprise-grade processors, flexible I/O expanders, Dante/AES67 networked audio, an onboard scripting engine developed by AMX, and a vast library of processing objects, including media playback, AEC, VoIP, and more.
The platform is seamlessly managed through AVX Architect and AVX Control, an all-new software suite, built from the ground up to support the latest installed products from HARMAN Professional starting with BSS Soundweb OMNI, ushering in a new era of installed AV software at HARMAN.
“We've seen the proliferation of third-party devices and securities become a concern,” said Kaul. “So, we know that technology is advancing at a rapid rate as is adoption and our ability to adapt and offer value with our systems and our ability to work well with third-party customers becomes incredibly important. With that in mind, we've spent the last few years modernizing our architecture to address these market shifts and bring our audio and our video brands closer together.”
HARMAN is taking its next-generation audio solutions and tightly integrating them with its next-generation video and control portfolio. Kaul explained, “We’re unifying them under a new software suite known as AVX. That integration involved considerable effort and that included standardizing our operating systems, modernizing our DSP libraries, updating our communication, and networking protocols, adopting Dante as our audio backbone, and the list goes on.”
Next-gen MUSE
Alongside of all the audio development, HARMAN developed its next generation AMX MUSE Automation platform. “It’s capable of processing multiple scripting languages, supports different coding platforms, and really simplifies those routine tasks for users across multiple skill sets,” Kaul added. “This concept becomes incredibly important as we fold new users into our ecosystem. And this technology will also natively support AVX-enabled hardware devices, legacy HARMAN audio devices and AMX video devices. “The reason we did this was to protect the investments our customers have made with us over the years as we develop new products and expand this entire system.” The MUSE Automation platform technology is not only found in MUSE devices, it is also natively embedded into Soundweb OMNI processor. “This is like an instance of how we're bridging our audio and video portfolio and bringing them together.
“Just Audio Architect took an integrated systems approach within our audio portfolio. The AVX Suite simplifies that configuration control monitoring of Soundweb OMNI and future HARMAN products including AMX and incorporates third-party device integration through two very, very friendly user applications. The first one is an evolution of audio architect known as AVX Architect,” Kaul said.
The AVX software suite streamlines the configuration, control, and monitoring of Soundweb OMNI systems through two user-friendly applications. AVX Architect is a desktop software app for system diagramming, device configuration, network management, and custom UI design. AVX Architect allows users to add an unlimited number of processors and expanders to a single project file, while still enjoying the simplicity of a true, single canvas for device configuration. AVX Control is a lightweight software app, which provides easy access to custom UIs for controlling and monitoring devices across a multitude of platforms, including Windows, iOS, Android, and AMX Varia touch panels. These custom UIs work not only with Soundweb OMNI devices, but also Crown DCi amplifiers and previous generation Soundweb London devices, thanks to protocol-bridging technology developed by AMX.
On Security
The other key announcement is that HARMAN has moved to a single standard-based security paradigm across its entire AV portfolio. “Because a lot of development from the prior platform happened over time, there were design and implementation differences based on the portfolio,” Kaul said. “Making sure that our portfolio is following one design principle so that way is when there is a change in the landscape, because we're using a standards-based secure platform, we can easily react to it and then drive that change across a number of devices instead of having to do them on individual devices.”
