A venerable New Bern, N.C.-based designer and manufacturer of professional broadcast audio equipment under a trio of brand names is gearing up for the 2025 NAB Show with several new product enhancements and additions to its line of offerings.
Wheatstone Corp., which owns the Audioarts and VoxPro brands, is introducing a pro audio streaming appliance for budget-minded broadcasters. Wheatstream Duo is scaled “for affordability,” says Kelly Parker, Wheatstone’s Director of Product Development, who spearheaded the design.
As a Linux appliance, Wheatstream Duo can be added to any analog, digital or AoIP studio, including WheatNet IP and AES67-compatible systems. Wheatstream Duo has a HTML 5 web browser interface, is compatible with standard CDN and streaming platforms and can adapt metadata input from most playback automation systems.
Unique to all Wheatstone appliances, including Wheatstream Duo, are audio processing tools designed specifically to optimize the performance of streamed audio through the streaming encoder and across a wide variety of Internet links.
Wheatstream Duo accepts two input streams of analog, AES3, AES67 or native AoIP such as WheatNet IP, each capable of four output streams for a total of 8 output streams.
Wheatstone will demonstrate Wheatstream Duo, is priced under $2,000, in the West Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center at booth W1654.
That’s where Wheatstone will also unveil its “near instantaneous failover technology” for its IP audio television consoles. The technology features dual mix engines synchronized in real-time. “Both engines remain continuously connected to the network, receiving identical commands from the control surface to maintain perfect alignment,” Wheatstone explains.
A high-frequency heartbeat between engines enables automatic failover, configurable between 0.5 and 5 seconds, ensuring rapid recovery in the event of a failure. Active and standby engine statuses are clearly displayed in WheatNet IP NAVIGATOR management software, with manual failover options available for controlled transitions during upgrades or maintenance.
Wheatstone’s WheatNet IP audio Arcus console is the first to add the advanced failover technology. Arcus is a large-frame IP audio networked console designed for fast-paced live television productions with intuitive navigation on the surface and powerful features on the network.
Wheatstone is also bringing to market a Linux audio driver for its WheatNet IP audio network. The audio driver enables bi-directional audio streaming over the WheatNet IP network and is the latest addition based on Linux OS by Wheatstone.
The WheatNet IP Linux Audio Driver supports up to 24 simultaneous audio streams in and out, depending on host capabilities, and 128 SLIO ports for extensive network-based logic control functions without physical cabling. Wheatstone will continue to offer its Windows audio driver.
Lastly, Wheatstone has brought to market version 5.0 of NAVIGATOR software for its WheatNet IP audio network. It is a distributed AoIP network made up of consoles, talent stations, virtual interfaces and I/O Blade units. WheatNet IP audio networking is in use at studio facilities around the globe, with installations ranging in size and scope from a few dozen to thousands of I/O connection points.
NAVIGATOR is the management software for WheatNet IP audio networks and includes tools for setting up crosspoints, logic signals, AES67 paths, salvos, and SNMP alerting across multiple locations.
With this latest release of NAVIGATOR, WheatNet IP audio networks add new network I/O diagnostics, failover management, and automatic system backup advancements and extends logic status to third-party devices, among other advancements.
