Behind SoundTube: A Word with Andy Lopez
Monday, 21 August 2017
At InfoComm17, AV Magazine caught up with Andy Lopez, Director of International Sales for MSE Audio. Andy shared his thoughts on the history and direction of one of MSEâs primary brands, SoundTube.
At InfoComm17, AV Magazine caught up with Andy Lopez, Director of International Sales for MSE Audio. Andy shared his thoughts on the history and direction of one of MSEâs primary brands, SoundTube.
Text: Andy LopezSoundTube is the bread and butter brand of MSE Audio. The key feature of SoundTube is that we provide speakers for just about every application.
SoundTube started out with the pendant loudspeaker. We had the original pendant speaker equipped with BroadBeam technology, and we were able to promote the fact that the performance of the product from a pendant standpoint is far better than what anyone else offers, and the BroadBeam technology allows our distributors to offer their clients a better coverage for their facilities with far less speakers.
We have a whole array of pendants from three inches up to 12 inches, so theyâll fit every application. Then we have a number of in-ceiling speakers from short-can to large-can, eight inch, six inch, five inch, three inch. So again, we keep the whole breadth of sizes and the in-ceiling, and the same thing with the surface mount.
So people come to SoundTube because we provide a quality product with great support and a reasonable pricepoint. And our product doesnât fail, it does what itâs supposed to do, clients like it, weâve got a good name in the market as SoundTube, and weâre trying to build the brand even more.
DANTE DIRECTION
Our focus for the past couple of years has been on Dante. Itâs a language that people donât totally comprehend and there are so many manufacturers that are Dante-enabled or Dante-ready, but weâve not done a really good job of educating the channel on the whole puzzle. Every manufacturer is really speaking to their piece and I will take a huge hit on that individually saying weâre promoting the endpoint as the speaker being Dante, but if you donât know what the front end of it does, the endpoint really means nothing. So we are trying to spend more time educating the channel on what Dante is and how itâs valuable to the dealer and client. Then thereâs the education between the channel of the IT person and the AV guy. The IT person sees Dante as a huge value-added product â if itâs IP and on a network and they can control and manage it, the price tag is irrelevant. The AV guy is constantly looking at the cost of wires and the cost of amps and wondering how to sell this to a client whoâs still trying to wrap their head around it.In the past nine months I would say thereâs been a huge uptick. The industry is going past just knowing about and quoting it, to actually ordering and installing it successfully. Itâs making sense for specifiers and their consultants. Europe came onboard first, and Asia has come onboard too. But I think weâre just on the very tip of what the opportunity is. So I see the advertising as an opportunity to get the message out that weâre part of that ecosystem.
The main advantage: part one is itâs the final piece of the puzzle to a true Dante system. Weâre taking what would be considered the âdumbestâ part of the system and giving it some brainpower. More importantly, itâs the management of the speakers that you donât typically have. Weâre able to move zones and sources around between speakers through a computer without having to rewire or cut holes in the wall. Itâs much more flexible than a hardwired copper system from the past. And the feedback you get from the status of the speakers is also a benefit for the distributor, the dealer, or the client, because they can monitor the temperature of the speakers, the status of the speakers, whether itâs on or off, if thereâs a condition problem that needs to be dealt with, and so on. Thatâs a much more proactive way of supporting your client than having the client call up and say, âthe speakerâs outâ â at that point itâs a little too late.
SHIFTING SANDS
Weâve been taken into the technological world of IP. Thereâs so much flexibility in not having to physically rewire stuff or pay for extra hardware to do some of the things you can now do literally with âdrag and dropâ mode. Moving rooms, moving sounds, moving sources is a far cry from what it was two years ago.The real estate advantages is the saving in rack space, and this might be why Europe caught on a little bit quicker. Theyâre dealing with tougher installations and retros to the infrastructure of the walls and issues of having limited rack space. When youâve got a few hundred speakers, with each pair running off a two-channel amplifier, that takes up some rack space. Whereas now, thatâs all gone. So youâre paying a little bit more for the speaker with the amp built in but youâre not dealing with the issues you may have by having extra hardware in the game with rack and other vendors and wiring and all that.
Further information on the full SoundTube range can be found here.