InfoComm 2023: Live Sound Engineers are Inching More Towards Commercial Installation to Leverage Brand Familiarity
As the pandemic continues to reshape the world, the audio technology industry is innovating to stay relevant. With last week’s InfoComm 2023 now wrapped up until next year, the event highlighted some of the changes that have been particularly significant for live sound engineers who are pivoting to another market and introducing a new crossover of expertise. The result has been hybrid products, such as Audio-Technica’s ATND1061 Beamforming Ceiling Array Microphone, which offers flexibility and ease in the transition.
It also means that users can opt for their preferred mode without sacrificing the quality of the output. The convenience and simplicity of this is dynamic and straightforward and assists its users in more ways than one. Along with the product, the company has additional benefits in store for customers for better product experience. Elaborating deeper into this development, Dan Pelletier, the Senior Technical Engineer at Audio-Technica stated why there’s an upside for customers in fostering familiarity. He talked with Pro AV Today at InfoComm 2023 and explained some product functionality, and also shared just how customer friendly his company is.
Pelletier’s Thoughts
“Really, I think the simplicity of configuration and installation makes things just a little bit more familiar for people. You can call it the COVID era to a degree. A lot of live sound engineers were moving over into the commercial installation market. So, some of our products like the ATND1061 DAN, that’s our beautiful new ceiling array microphone has both analog ins and outs, and it has Dante IOs, so you could choose your flavor. So, if you’re a little bit more comfortable working with analog IO, you can certainly do that. If you want to go Dante, you could do that too. The other thing you could do related to that is, so with that analog input, you can send an ADC reference from the far end analog and then go auto mix out into an analog device. So again, that kind of keeps things very simple, very simple to use. Even when you’re connecting it up, the AT&T 1061 has its dynamically tracking beamforming microphone out of the box. You have one … so all you’d have to do is go Dante channel out, or you can go auto mix out, which is on channel six in Dante, or you can go analog out, and it’s going to come out of that channel too.
So, it’s a very, very simplistic setup operation. If you choose all of the mounting hardware, so all of that’s in the box, it makes it just very simple and easy. So, with that brand familiarity, and then moving over from, let’s say, more of a live sound type application to more of a commercial application, there should be a lot more familiarity. And really to give a nod to our support team, you’re going to be able to get somebody on the phone and talk to somebody just like you might be used to from other verticals such as live sound.”
