Robinson is excited about solutions that innovate while also adding value. The education sector, generally perceived to be a budget-conscious market, is even more financially prudent during COVID. Xilica manufactures networked digital signal processors for live and installed sound. It features dual-core processing and a 40-bit floating point DSP to “guarantee impeccable audio quality across installations,” according to the company.
The quarter-rack-width Xilica Solaro QR1 digital signal processor guards sound quality as its number one priority. To integrate everything together, including analog or networked microphones and speakers, along with echo cancellation and other features that improve audio clarity for the remote student, DSPs are seeing significant growth in the education market vertical. “As universities continue to rapidly deploy technology into small- and medium-sized classrooms to support UC applications such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams, AV technology managers are looking for audio solutions that are cost-effective, simple to install, and do not take up a lot of space,” said Shaun Robinson, vice president of product management with Xilica. Some audio specialists cite new demands for audio digital signal processing (DSP) in classrooms. You just talk normally, and wherever you are in the room, you will get picked up.” Microformat DSPs “You don’t have to worry about turning it on or finding the right levels. Students and teachers can simply “forget about the microphone, because you don’t have to touch it,” Missall said. “Participants in the classroom can hear interactions from students, wherever they are, in the room and off site.”Īrray technology has been a boon for delivering better audio in classrooms by, paradoxically, becoming invisible. A touchless system-such as Sennheiser’s TeamConnect Ceiling 2, which features Sennheiser’s patented beamforming technology-also frees the teacher because they “don’t have to always hold a microphone to be heard clearly,” said Missall.
When installed in ceiling tiles, these audio applications, some equipped with artificial intelligence (AI), provide design flexibility. (Image credit: Sennheiser) Touchless Audio and BeamformingĬeiling array technologies have been growing in popularity for years, but the pandemic inspired many to take a closer look at smarter arrays and automatic beamforming systems. Sennheiser’s TeamConnect Ceiling 2 features the company’s patented automatic dynamic beamforming technology, which allows it to adapt to on-site conditions without reconfiguration and ensures messages are clearly transmitted from anywhere in the classroom. To track a teacher as they move through a space, or where there is a mix of on-site and mobile participants, a stable system is needed with proper microphone pickup and adaptive echo cancellation that can handle multiple speakers and changing dynamics in a room. “You want every student at home to feel like they’re connected, and a lot of that has to do with audio clarity and intelligibility,” said David Missall, technical application engineer manager at Sennheiser. Audio signals from-and to-remote learners must be pristine to foster a sense of class cohesion. To guarantee intelligibility for all students, even those in the virtual back row, tech teams hope to provide consistent audio reinforcement. Physical classrooms and online channels present various acoustic challenges, from reflective surfaces to spotty Wi-Fi. New sensibilities and new solutions are needed as virtual learning modalities become commonplace. The focus has moved to meeting the critical audio needs of teachers and learners on site, in HyFlex (hybrid-flexible) setups, and helping Zoomers hear clearly. Technology is, by nature, a moving target, but the rapid shift to remote learning in 2020 required many AV stakeholders to rethink classroom audio.