This article originally appeared on TV Tech sister brand Radio World.

With the U.S. economy in a state of flux as the Trump Administration tightens — and subsequently laxes — the flow of imports into the country, tariffs have been top of mind for many manufacturers, including those in the broadcast industry.

At the 2025 NAB Show this past April, as the Radio World team wandered from booth to booth, we asked exhibitors how they might be impacted by these ever-changing tariffs.

Their answer was simple: “We’re not sure, yet.”

For some broadcast manufacturers that import many of their materials from other countries like China, the situation looked rather bleak as the U.S. levied a 145% tax on Chinese goods.

For other U.S. companies that manufacture most of their materials in-house, the outlook is much sunnier. Broadcast equipment manufacturer Wheatstone is one of those companies, building all of its products at its factory in New Bern, N.C.

Wheatstone says 99% of all its metal extrusions were made in the U.S. Additionally, the company does all its own painting and uses powder coat paint that it buys from other U.S. companies. Finally, all the machinery Wheatstone has for fabricating, metal and surface mounting components are supported by U.S.-friendly companies, according to Wheatstone CEO and Founder Gary Snow.

“It took years and years for us to build all that here in the USA,” said Snow, “and I’ll admit there were times when I wondered if it was such a smart thing to do, but I don’t question it now.”

While Snow told Radio World that Wheatstone largely remains unaffected, that doesn’t mean his company isn’t aware of how these “reciprocal tariffs” have been affecting the industry as a whole. Snow specifically references the strain put on container shipping and the freight industry.

“Companies that build offshore could be paying two and a half times more for containers of finished goods. That’s hundreds of thousands, possibly a million dollars more than what they had set aside — just to open the container,” said Snow. “This could very well threaten the stability of those companies if all their cash reserves are going to containers instead of to business as usual.

“At the very least, it will cost broadcasters more without any real benefit added to the products they buy, or worse, make it harder to get parts and support when they need it,” he said.

It’s important to note that, as previously mentioned, the state of global tariffs remains in great flux, with manufacturers scrambling to keep updated about ongoing changes. To that point, these quotes from Wheatstone executives were obtained by Radio World on May 9, just prior to an unexpected announcement made a few days later.

On Monday, May 12, the United States and China announced that they would suspend their respective tariffs for 90 days. Under the agreement, the U.S. would reduce the tariff on Chinese imports to 30% from its current 145%, while China would lower its import duty on American goods to 10% from 125%.

When asked which of Wheatstone’s necessary components could be subjected to these tariffs, Snow only listed one product: semiconductors.

“Semiconductors are excluded from excessive tariffs at this time, but even a 145% tariff on a 10-cent transistor is not much in the scheme of things,” said Snow. “As a manufacturer that makes just about everything except the semiconductors that go into our products, we are far more concerned with price fluctuations and the availability of components than the tariffs on those components, which is why we doubled down on parts inventory.”

Wheatstone Purchasing Manager Pattye Bagshaw said, even before the tariffs kicked in, she began padding inventory so Wheatstone would have more than enough parts to last through next year.

Snow told Radio World that this practice of keeping a spare supply of stock in-house is a holdover from the pandemic, and the desire to not be caught shorthanded.

“We are a well-oiled machine when it comes to ordering and stocking parts,” said Snow. “We buy from parts distributors in the U.S. that we’ve known for years and have direct relationships with all our major semiconductor manufacturers. In fact, Xilinx (which makes a critical FPGA used in Wheatstone products) put us on their priority list during Covid when it was hard to get parts because a lot of people were buying them up and scalping them.”

Even with extensive preparations, Wheatstone hasn’t been totally exempt from hiked prices. Bagshaw said they recently received a shipment from China and were hit with a 170% tariff.

(Read: Optimism Clashes With Tariff Anxieties at 2025 NAB Show)

“This was for printed circuit boards,” said Bagshaw. “Wheatstone outsources the printing of circuit boards but designs and surface-mounts components in-house. We have since been able to move that business to vendors that we know of elsewhere and have worked with in the past.”

As for changes to product pricing, Wheatstone Senior Sales Manager Jay Tyler said, well, there is none.

“We have finished products on the shelf and are ready to ship at the same price now as before tariffs began,” said Tyler. “Although, tariffs here can have a snowball effect on our international customers especially because they’re already paying import tariffs on top of the price of products coming into their country.”

At the most recent NAB Show, Tyler said he heard about several manufacturers handing out new price lists with price increases spurred by the tariffs.

“I also heard that people who are rolling out new automation systems or other PC-centric systems were gobbling up computers while they could to avoid tariffs, and that could affect the supply chain,” he said.

Stressors on the supply chain, and potential increased costs on consumers continue to be a concern for manufacturers and buyers alike.

Per the Yale Budget Lab’s latest report on May 12, consumers face an overall average effective tariff rate of 17.8% — the highest since 1934 — which is estimated to dent households’ annual purchasing power by $2,800.

For Tyler’s customers, however, he isn’t worried.

“My customers want the same things they’ve always wanted. They want to be able to afford to move their studios if the rent goes up in their old building. They want to be able to pay for a new console to replace that older board that’s long overdue for retirement,” he said.

“From our perspective, tariffs should have very little effect on whether they can still do those things.”

LOS ANGELES—The universe of AES67- compliant products has expanded over recent years and with the interoperability standard now published in the SMPTE 2110 standards suite has become the “Rosetta Stone” of audio-over-IP. But while digital mixing console system products were among the first to adopt AES67, to what extent are end-users networking compliant products? What barriers to adoption remain, and what can be done to promote more AES67 network implementations?

ALL IP

“In the TV market, AES67 interoperability is part of almost every client conversation,” said Martin Dyster, vice president of business development-TV, TV Solutions Group, The Telos Alliance. Proof that AES67 is ready for primetime can be seen at University of Notre Dame Martin Media Center, a benchmark for what is possible in an all-IP, multivendor environment, where his company supplied the console and routing pieces, Dyster said.

Across the campus-wide media production environment, says Dyster, “All video and audio are transported as IP from the cameras and mics to PCR, and in the case of the Telos Alliance Axia Fusion consoles, there’s not a physical router in sight. Everything is routed at switch level, so it truly is a system achieving what was intended with AoIP all along.”

The installation includes Evertz core video and control elements. “The interchange of around 450 AES67 streams between it and the audio production system is seamless,” Dyster says. “Other vendors in this installation include Riedel, who supplied an AES67-equipped Artist system. Other examples where we’ve connected at AES67 level include products like the Genelec 8340 IP monitors—but any AES67 compliant product should work fine.”

AOIP IS THE GOAL

Don Bird, vice president of Business Development and Marketing for Lawo North America, agrees that AES67 is a basic requirement in almost every customer project. “In some cases, as a natural subset of their request to deploy a complete ST2110-compliant infrastructure, but even in those projects involving an upgrade of existing facilities where AoIP is the goal and the rest of the production pipeline is going to be migrated to IP over time,” he says.

Lawo has been providing AES67 capabilities across distributed and remote production architectures as well as in local studio environments for some years now, according to Bird. “This is nothing new at this point, as customers clearly recognize the savings in cost, flexibility and efficiency of operation.”

Phil Owens, senior sales engineer, for Wheatstone in New Bern, N.C., has observed less enthusiasm for AES67 thus far. “Customers are primarily concerned with their central infrastructure,” he says. “AES67 tends to address add-ons, in most cases. This will change in the TV market as SMPTE 2110 and its audio component, SMPTE 2110-30, become more prevalent.”

Owens has primarily seen client interest in interfaces with a live sound component in a system, and interfaces with some AES67- or Dante-capable intercom systems. “And we have seen smaller local studio implementations, such as interfacing with Dante-equipped mic preamps via AES67,” he reports.

“We are currently working on two university projects that have an auditorium equipped with a Dante-equipped live sound board tied into their broadcast facility via AES67,” adds Owens. “Another university has expressed interest in interfacing a Wheatstone system with an RTS intercom using their Omneo protocol, which is in fact Dante; that will be an AES67 interface.”

Calrec Audio has supplied AoIP networks to several broadcasters for facility-wide installations, reports Dave Letson, the company’s vice president of sales. “More often, though, we are seeing pockets of deployment in POC or smaller applications, so the broadcaster or facility can cut their teeth and gain an understanding of SMPTE 2110 networks.”

The real benefits and savings will come from greenfield builds that can implement the networking facilities from the get-go, Letson believes. Thus, some manufacturers have developed products, such as Calrec’s H2-IP Gateway devices, to bridge proprietary IP infrastructures and create hybrid networks.

That said, Calrec consoles are being networked with products such as Sonifex’s AES67-based monitor pre-hear products and Grass Valley routers, says Letson. “Calrec’s AoIP I/O solutions allow any piece of third-party equipment that is AES67 compatible to talk to Calrec’s I/O boxes and enter the [company’s proprietary] Hydra2 domain.”

BARRIERS TO ADOPTION

Manufacturers almost universally note that AES67’s lack of discovery, control and connection management, which were never part of the standard’s brief, are a barrier to adoption. Lawo’s Bird observes, “We offer a range of products that enable us to provide all-AES67 network infrastructures for our customers, so we don’t really encounter any barriers in that respect.”

“AES67 is an audio-only interface that has to be set up manually by entering a number of stream parameters at both the send and receive ends,” says Owens, “or ‘semi-manually’ by using an SAP utility to advertise those stream parameters to the various endpoints. Control—logic events—has yet to be addressed, although yet another standard, AES70, is a possible solution.”

Letson points to a recent survey by Grass Valley that indicates that IP adoption is slower than previously forecast. Two-thirds of respondents stated a preference for a hybrid approach, with cost a major concern when considering a move to IP. “Cost is obviously a barrier unless you are already planning to replace equipment,” he says, including the costs to deploy completely new infrastructure and train staff, and costs incurred through disruption.

“A fear of the unknown and a feeling that AoIP is brand new and unproven” also militate against wider or faster adoption, Dyster suggests.

The Networked Media Open Specification [NMOS] is currently being finalized. The IS-04 part of that spec addresses discovery, and the IS-05 part addresses connection management, according to Owens. “NMOS will make AES67 much easier to set up and use,” he said.

Calrec, like many other manufacturers, is developing a stream manager, Calrec Connect, which will allow complex network information to be displayed and streams to be created in a user-friendly manner, according to Letson. “This helps to reduce the burden of training needed,” he said.

Bird noted the importance of ongoing training in fostering adoption. “Through involvement in associations like AIMS and various technical recommendation groups and standards bodies we put great emphasis on education and awareness,” he said. “We encourage any customers interested in deploying an AES67 infrastructure to have open dialog with their consultants, integrators, and equipment providers to verify that all components specified are fully supporting the standard in an interoperable way.”

NEW BERN, N.C.—Wheatstone continues to push its IP developments and will show some of its most recent ones at the upcoming IBC 2016 show in Amsterdam. This includes IP audio networking for television sound and a new IP audio broadcast console.

Gibraltar IP Mix Engine

After showing its Gibraltar IP Mix Engine at IBC 2015, Wheatstone has announced that its IP audio interface for its audio mixing consoles is now available for Dimension Three, Series Four, Series Two, D-8EX, LXE and IP-64 digital mixing consoles. Gibraltar will provide the consoles with direct connectivity to the AES67 compatible IP network, WheatNet-IP, with the broadcast audio tools and controls integrated into a single network.

WheatNet-IP’s I/O BLADEs now come standard with 5.1 surround input and routing, with surround sound also being able to be routed and managed through WheatNet-IP’s NAVIGATOR software and controlled via scripting and the WheatNet-IP BLADE ACI. Additional benefits of the WheatNet-IP networked audio consoles are no limits with fixed connection points on the console; no soundcards needed; it’s a common platform for resource sharing; based on AoIP; direct connectivity to automation; AES67 compatible; and all sources are accessible from the console.

The new LXE IP audio console will also be shown during IBC 2016. One of the products that can be used with WheatNet-IP, LXE is a control interface with programmable switches, rotary controls and fader groupings for remote operation. The AES67-compatible network provides end-to-end audio transport, logic control and an audio toolkit at I/O points in the network. Additional new features offered with the LXE include a customizable architecture with pull-down configuration software where every switch can be programmed for function, mode and color. Up to 32 motorized faders are available with the LXE, as well as the new Graphics User Interface with screens for metering, clocks, timers, dynamics, EQ and assigns, all of which are customizable and can be used as a touchscreen.

IBC 2016 will run from Sept. 8-13 in Amsterdam. Wheatstone will be located at stand 8.A51

LOS ANGELES—The ability to pass audio over IP between different brands of mixing consoles and other equipment potentially became somewhat easier with the publication of the AES67 standard in late 2013. AES67 may not be as comprehensively functional as other currently available audio networking protocols. Nevertheless, it offers a standardized method by which equipment can share signals, alongside those other networking protocols as well as transports such as AES3 and AES10, otherwise known as MADI.

Television broadcast appeared to reach something of a tipping point in 2015 with regard to the acceptance and adoption of IP-based audio and video workflows and infrastructures. But the industry’s wider AoIP adoption has lagged slightly behind other sectors such as live sound and radio broadcast, where audio networking has been in use for quite some time via various protocols, including AVB, CobraNet, Dante, EtherSound, Livewire, RAVENNA, WheatNet-IP and others.

INTEROPERABILITY TRANSPORT STANDARD
AES67 was not developed to supplant existing AoIP networking platforms; indeed, it lacks certain features found in other AoIP protocols, such as a specified method for channel or device discovery, signal routing and labelling, and system control. But AES67 is essentially a subset of RAVENNA and is supported by Dante and other audio networking protocols, enabling broadcast consoles of various brands to interoperate with a very wide variety of IP-enabled products and, potentially, with each other.

SSL’s System T broadcast audio production system environment, incorporates networked audio, control, and processing based around Dante networking technology. Paul MacDonald, spokesman for U.K.-based Solid State Logic, a Dante licensee, said “AES67 is an interoperability transport standard—control and discovery are intentionally not defined—and as such we don’t view it as a competing technology to Dante, but a complementary standard. However, we think there are developing standards, within the AES and beyond, that have the potential to provide future extensions to standards-based interoperability alongside AES67.”

SSL’s latest broadcast audio production environment, System T, incorporates networked audio, control, and processing based around Dante networking technology, according to MacDonald. “Dante is by far the most widely adopted and, we believe, the most complete and practical audio networking solution,” he said.

Wheatstone, whose Series Four, Dimension Three and other IP consoles route and control audio through the company’s proprietary WheatNet-IP Gigabit Ethernet network, values AES67 for its ability to bridge between its network and others. Phil Owens, head of Eastern U.S. Sales for the New Bern, N.C.-based company noted that AES67 “provides the common synchronization, clock identification and session description we can all share in order to transport audio between our various systems without jitter, delay and data dropout.”

Wheatstone was one of the first to add AES67 to its WheatNet-IP system as another way to “get in and out of our system,” alongside analog, AES, MADI and HD-SDI, Owens said, adding that AES67 is complimentary to WheatNet-IP’s full system approach.

A European plugfest held in October 2014—the first for AES67—led to revisions in the standard, published as AES67-2015, that included some minor updates. At the 2015 AES Convention in New York the Media Networking Alliance (MNA), founded by a group of manufacturers to promote awareness and uptake of AES67, held its first public display of audio networking using the interoperability standard. That demonstration included 22 products from 18 different companies.

Wheatstone products interconnect through the company’s proprietary WheatNet-IP Gigabit Ethernet network. Wheatstone Engineers Kelly Parker and Dave Breithaupt participated in the second AES67 plugfest, held recently in Washington, D.C., and reported on the event on the company’s website. AES67 requires support for both unicast and multicast streaming, the latter requiring SIP, the Session Initiation Protocol that is also behind Voice-over- IP (VoIP) communications, for connection management. According to the report, WheatNet-IP supports SIP, but SIP interoperability was not achieved by every product at the plugfest. It notes that a subsequent AES report “suggests that an SIP technical overview and recommendation be published prior to subsequent AES67 plugfests.” The next plugfest is currently planned for the U.K. during 2016.

Calrec, which has been refining its Hydra2 networking scheme for the past 15 years, is the only broadcast console manufacturer to support all current protocols, including RAVENNA, AVB, Dante, and AES67, according to Dave Letson, vice president of sales for the U.K.-based company. Hydra2 provides a layer of management over all those signals, he noted, providing a multitude of additional functionality like port protection, alias files, virtual patchbays, and access rights. “Uniquely, Hydra2 provides the ability to apply the same management functionality to any supported protocol, providing control and functionality irrespective of which protocol our customers choose for their facility,” Letson said.

A NEW ALLIANCE
An AES standards project, designated X210, is currently addressing an interoperable control protocol. Open Control Architecture (OCA), a technical descendent of AES24, first published in 1999, appears to be on track for ratification as a control and monitoring standard providing interoperability across audio—and, eventually, video— transports. A group of manufacturers has formed the OCA Alliance to actively promote the adoption and standardization of the architecture.

“The lack of an accepted standard is frustrating for both broadcasters and manufacturers alike, and so the main value of these alliances is to provide information and support so that we can all make informed choices for the future,” said Letson. “We are all coalescing protocols into a unified standard and there is still some cautiousness amongst broadcasters and manufacturers in committing to a single standard.”

Lawo has always been aligned to open standards, be it SMPTE 2022-6/-7 and TR-03 in video, AES3, MADI, RAVENNA, or AES67 in audio, or Ember+ in control, according to Andreas Hilmer, director marketing and communications with the German-based company. “We strongly believe in these standardized, open approaches in order to come to best possible solutions with a solid and secure long-term perspective for our clients,” said.

Lawo recently announced that it had joined AIMS, the Alliance for IP Media Solutions, “an independent trade association founded to ensure that all IP solutions brought to market offer complete interoperability and are based on open standards for seamless integration into media workflow environments,” according to an AIMS statement.

“AIMS’s support of open standards and technical recommendations such as TR-03, TR-04, and AES67 afford us an opportunity to eliminate the fragmentation of implementations that our industry has endured over the last 20 years. It’s our big chance to avoid repeating expensive and time-consuming mistakes of the past,” said Hilmer. “In order to support the transition to IP-based infrastructures, we encourage all manufacturers to come together and embrace interoperability and open standards as the best solution for our mutual customers.”