Sebastien Boulanger, DVOX

The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT There are lots of reasons why digital signage and digital out of home ad networks don't have audio - the biggest reason being that the majority of people (especially staff who are in that environment all day) don't want to hear messages over and over. Many speakers have been stabbed with forks or seen their audio cables snipped by workers who could not take it day after day. But there also cases in which audio would be welcomed, and very useful. There are different technologies out there that can enhance and complement the messaging on screens, and headset devices that can be borrowed or rented, so that audio can be added to things like museums and attractions or live sports events. The challenge is that the technology used might be old and limited, or the set-up requires maintaining, cleaning, charging and keeping track of a lot of hardware. A Montreal company called DVOX is taking a different approach - making audio streams from live events and from screens available over local area networks and WiFi, so that anyone with a smartphone and headphones of some kind can launch a simple web app and start listening. The primary markets, I think, are with big sporting events and conferences, but it's also the sort of thing that has applications for digital signage and digital out of home. I spoke with DVOX president Sebastien Boulanger. Subscribe from wherever you pick up new podcasts. TRANSCRIPT Sebastien, thank you for joining me. I know very little about DVOX. Could you give me a rundown of what the company is?  Sebastien Boulanger: DVOX is a fast-growing startup at the moment that is offering a new generation technology for live audio streaming purposes in several domains.  How does it work? Sebastien Boulanger: Easy enough. DVOX is taking and acquiring any analog audio source, that might be coming from a live microphone, sound desk, broadcasting trailer, audio extractor devices, or whatever you please. We're acquiring analog audio input and then converting it to digital to stream it directly over the local area network, meaning that guests or visitors have to be connected to the right WiFi to be granted access to the audio stream. We're doing so that the stream goes out through a webpage, so the end user doesn't have to install any mobile apps or whatever. It's only a web browser page, basically.  So the idea is you're seeing stuff on a screen at whatever venue you're in, whether it's a sports bar or a sports stadium or some other place, you can basically hear the audio without, the having to crank the speakers to 11 for, that to happen? Sebastien Boulanger: Yeah, that is correct. Let me give you a couple of examples here that might be helpful here. Let's say you are in a sports bar, as you were just mentioning, and you have plenty of screens in front of you. So, which of those screens will be on the speaker boxes? So basically you can have ambiance, music, whatever for all the other guests, but if you feel like you want to hear a football match, you simply have to have the audio of that screen.  So with DVOX what you can do is have all the different audio feeds running inside of the system And then by being connected to the right WiFi, you will be able to choose which audio feed you want to hear, so basically, through a regular webpage,, as simple as browsing, you have access to all of the audio feed that the venue is offering in live, in real-time. You only need a QR code to get onto the event page, and if you're on the right WiFi, there you go; you have all the feeds.  You're using a smartphone and a web app to get this, as opposed to asking people to download our special app and go through a bunch of hoops?  Sebastien Boulanger: Yeah, that is correct. And that's why we're having a lot of pull these days in the sports industries, in the congress center industries as well, educational because any audio source can be streamed through WiFi. We're