Bang & Olufsen Beoconnect Core Expands Wireless Audio Options with UWB and LC3plus

Bang & Olufsen announced Beoconnect Core, described as a new streaming box that turns legacy Bang & Olufsen speakers into a wireless speaker system. But under the hood Beoconnect Core is effectively an extremely advanced hub that combines all legacy connectivity options found in the company's products for more than 30 years with the latest wireless technologies, including UWB, and using Fraunhofer IIS' LC3plus high resolution codec.

Sonical, the company pioneering a fully integrated approach for the product development of headphones and hearables, with a real-time operating system that allows consumers to load their own apps, will partner with XMOS for its Headphone 3.0 demonstrations at CES 2024. The two companies will showcase a first joint development that will greatly enhance wireless audio quality with huge benefits to the feature set in Sonical's roadmap.

The Audio Engineering Society created a new Task Group to develop a new standard for Ultra Wideband (UWB) high resolution, low latency audio. During the 155th AES New York 2023 Convention (October 25-27), a dedicated workshop will detail the potential of UWB for audio, and this new AES effort. Titled "UWB – A New Wireless Tech in the Future of Pro Audio" the panel will include Jackie Green (UWB Alliance), Jonny McClintock (AntennaWare/Audio Codecs), Gary Spittle (Sonical), Torbev Sonderskov (Lenbrook), and Alexis Bizalion (Qorvo).

In response to growing industry interest and activities around Ultra Wideband (UWB) technology for audio applications, the Audio Engineering Society announced the creation of a new Task Group to develop a new standard for UWB high resolution low latency audio interface. The new AES Standards group is called SC-02-02-B and is under the Working Group on Digital Audio Interfacing chaired by John Grant, and chaired by Jackie Green, Technical Advisor for the UWB Alliance.

PSB Speakers, together with hearables start-up Sonical and audio codecs specialists MQA, announced a partnership that intends to define a new category of high-resolution audio headphones. The collaboration is aimed at creating true hifi headphones and smart earbuds, combining MQA's SCL6 high resolution wireless audio transmission and Sonical’s CosmOS platform. Planned for release under the PSB Speakers brand by Q1 2024, the resulting products will be the first headphones to feature Sonical’s ear computing platform, enabling a variety of apps and software upgrades.

Japan Audio Society (JAS), the internationally respected audio research organization, has certified MQA's new SCL6 scalable codec for use with its Hi-Res Audio Wireless logo. This new codec carries the technical name of SCL6 and is coming to market as MQair. In the announcement, JAS confirmed that both the new SCL6 (MQA) and LC3plus (Fraunhofer IIS) codecs will receive this new level of certification, created specifically for wireless audio, and expanding the existing Hi-Res Audio certification.