Video: 10 Minute IT Jams - An update from Sennheiser

Sennheiser is betting on smart audio for the new world of work. That was the message from product manager Jason Grabevsky as he sat down with IT Jams to talk through the company's approach to business communications, the post-pandemic workplace and trends in the Australian and New Zealand market.

Known globally for its microphones and professional audio technology, Sennheiser has spent more than 75 years developing products for live concerts, recording studios and broadcast television. Now, as Grabevsky explained, those decades of audio engineering are being channelled into business and education environments that demand flexible, top-quality communications solutions.

"We have a pedigree of high quality engineering from an audio perspective, and we've transitioned that into what is now the business communications division," Grabevsky said.

Sennheiser's business communications portfolio centres around four main categories: meeting and collaboration, presentation and lecture, assistive listening and visitor guidance. Each area is served with what Grabevsky calls "hero products", specifically designed for today's corporate and campus communications needs.

In the world of meetings and collaboration, the company's flagship is the TeamConnect Ceiling 2, a beamforming microphone system which, installed in the ceiling, can pick up voices anywhere in a room, untethering participants from the traditional, table-bound mics.

"It's really designed to cover large spaces and give complete freedom and mobility for users and participants in those meetings, so they can collaborate as they see fit without being tethered to a microphone that's directly in front of them," he explained.

The company's partnership with Microsoft has delivered the TeamConnect Intelligent Speaker, which works with the Microsoft Teams platform to provide voice control and real-time transcription. "It leverages things like Cortana voice control as well as voice profiles for discrete transcription," Grabevsky said.

For lecture and educational settings, Sennheiser's SpeechLine Digital Wireless platform is key. It was built specifically to tackle challenges faced by both users and facilities managers, who often need to manage large fleets of devices across sprawling campuses.

Beyond hardware, Grabevsky highlighted Sennheiser's Control Cockpit software, which allows IT teams to deploy, maintain, monitor and control all audio equipment across an enterprise environment from a central dashboard.

"That's what allows us to digitise the workflows that you would normally encounter in dealing with these when they're deployed across an enterprise or a campus," he said.

As businesses and universities adapt to hybrid work and learning, Sennheiser's scenario-focused approach is central. Grabevsky argued that audio-visual technology, once a luxury reserved for exclusive executive suites, is now expected everywhere. The pandemic has simply accelerated this trend.

"The democratization of that technology has allowed the individual to have that same level of connectivity and control at their desk. There's an expectation of that to be easily actioned and engaged with when I walk into the office environment," he said.

Similarly, he noted, education is moving towards hybrid and blended models, and technology needs to cater to students and staff both on and off campus.

From a development perspective, Grabevsky said Sennheiser was focused on user-driven design, making sure their products were simple for both the end user and the facility's IT team to manage, monitor and deploy.

"Our products are generally the edge devices that sit on the AV system – we're tasked with acquiring or delivering that high quality audio signal," he said. "But when it comes to how that is distributed and manipulated once it's in the client's environment, there are generally other platforms the Sennheiser products will connect into."

Unlike some competitors, Grabevsky made it clear Sennheiser avoids locking clients into closed ecosystems. "We are really trying to not build ecosystems that close our clients into a certain platform, but enable the ability to give them choice," he said.

Quality audio, he argued, is now non-negotiable. As video conferencing surged during the pandemic, many focused on getting cameras into rooms, but high fidelity sound is what still enables work to get done.

"If our cameras failed right now and the audio still continued, we could continue this conversation, we could have that dialogue, so work still gets done," Grabevsky said. "Audio is more part of what we do on a day-to-day basis, especially with remote work and hybrid learning."

Poor audio, he warned, can quickly become fatiguing, give rise to frustration and even impact business outcomes.

"It may make or break the deal if the quality of that audio signal is not great," he added.

What does this mean for productivity and collaboration? For Grabevsky, it's all about removing barriers.

"Can we simplify the on-ramp into getting a meeting started and getting a lecture started? What intuitive features can we build into those products so there's no barrier to entry?" he said.

When the technology fades into the background, he continued, users can focus on communicating, not on the tools they're using. "Collaboration just flows – the technology is not getting in the way of that meeting and that conversation."

He also highlighted Sennheiser's investment in making its tech "more intelligent". Their products now sit on corporate networks and integrate with well-known control systems to collect data, trigger automation and provide new value. For example, the TeamConnect Ceiling system can detect the location of a speaker in a room and communicate with cameras to ensure the person who is speaking is always on screen.

From a support perspective, universities and large organisations now routinely monitor and manage devices remotely, including performing preventative maintenance based on telemetry their systems collect.

"The idea is that we're building preventative workflows and also digitising those workflows where they may have been manual scenarios that would have been taken care of physically room to room in the past," he said.

Looking ahead, Grabevsky is confident that demand for high-quality, smart audio solutions will only increase as businesses and education providers strive to deliver better experiences in both physical and digital environments.

"We want to be your first choice when it comes to advanced audio technology in those meeting and education environments," he said.