Today, Stem Audio announced the launch of their “conference room ecosystem” aimed at conference rooms and huddle rooms. It includes five networkable products that can be mixed and matched into any meeting room aiming to solve audio connectivity and quality problems in UCC rooms. The Stem ecosystem includes three audio devices: Table, Wall and Ceiling, which can be mixed and matched and work in tandem with Stem Audio’s Control and Hub.

The Table looks sort of like a modern conference room speakerphone — without a dial pad. With nine built-in beamforming microphones and a downward-facing speaker matrix, Table aims too make the quality of a call better. Like the Wall and Ceiling, Table connects via Power over Ethernet (PoE). Ceiling is innovative in that it can be flush mount to a 2×2 ceiling tile or it can hang like a pendant light or speaker; it has 100 mics and three array options. Wall is in a speaker-bar configuration and includes a built-in mount for a Huddly IQ camera and a 15 microphone array with beamforming plus speakers and subwoofers.

Stem, from Phoenix Audio, says they added in deep-learning in neural networks to improve echo-cancelling, de-reverb and noise cancelling algorithms. Stem’s research and development team claim to have discovered new methods for optimized microphone placement and beam design to enhance beamforming performance. Since voice quality is always an issue in a UCC-based meeting, especially when connecting multiple callers via voice or video at the same time, Stem redesigned the traditional approach for measuring voice clarity, implementing a combination of multiple industry standards. Plus, beamforming techniques for smaller apertures enable Stem to achieve full beamforming functionality, even in smaller footprint products.

Here’s a video on what Stem is:

A Stem system is configured via an App and controlled, once installed, via a touch panel. The touch panel becomes a Zoom Room, a Microsoft Teams controller or a BlueJeans Room once you’ve configured your system. The touch panel can be used in two configurations, physically and it priced competitively to an iPad but is a more elegant approach than a typical tablet.

When more than one device is used in a room, Stem Hub becomes the brains of the operation. You can mount the Hub directly on the wall (behind the monitor, for example, and you only ever need one Hub per room. With Dante, USB Type B, Ethernet, VoIP and pluggable terminal blocks, Hub hooks you up with a wide variety of connectivity options. They will officially launch this at InfoComm in booth 4161 and the entire system will ship Q1 2020.

Here’s a dedicated Stem microsite.