Biamp is planning to demonstrate how Crowd Mics puts the power of a personal, wireless microphone into audience members’ hands at ISE 2019.

Designed for presentations, lectures, panel discussions and other presenter/audience events, Crowd Mics is hosted on a small hardware appliance — the ATOM — that supports up to 1,000 event participants. The ATOM connects directly to the room’s audio system via USB or balanced audio outputs, includes the option to present video via HDMI and provides moderators full access to the event’s participation log, including questions asked and poll results. 

Audience members connect to the ATOM using a free iOS or Android app installed on their phone or tablet. The app lets event participants use their smart phones as a personal wireless microphone and give access to standard audience engagement tools like polls and messaging. The separate Crowd Mics moderator application allows a presenter or moderator to select who will speak next, create and publish polls, and select audience text comments to be pushed to the room’s AV presentation system.

Biamp executive vice president of corporate development Joe Andrulis says not taking advantage of the microphone that is already inbuilt in a smart phone is absurd.

“Smart phones are the most widely adopted mobile device in the world and contain features that make them the perfect tool to empower audience participation with a device people have and are comfortable using. In the Crowd Mics concept, we saw something totally unique that completely aligned with our commitment to deliver extraordinary experiences in presentation spaces.”

The original Crowd Mics application was purchased by Biamp in 2018 from Crowd Mics founder Tim Holladay in Biamp’s first acquisition under co-chairman and chief executive Rashid Skaf.

“I was really excited when Biamp expressed interest in acquiring Crowd Mics. The original team worked incredibly hard developing the idea and it was met with a lot of critical success. Biamp has the expertise, resources and passion, to let Crowd Mics fulfill its full potential,” said Tim.

Rashid added, “We see tremendous value and opportunity in Crowd Mics. The current audience engagement capabilities of the application are just the beginning of a planned roadmap of enhancements for enabling reliable, enjoyable collaboration in all our target venues.”

Like other Biamp devices, Crowd Mics can be easily managed through Biamp’s SageVue 2.0 browser-based monitoring and management platform.

Biamp Crowd Mics will be available Q2 of 2019. More information on Biamp’s full product portfolio is available at www.biamp.com.