‘It’s everything over IP’: Harman on taking BSS beyond audio with Omni launch

• Features

• 16/06/2026

Inavate EMEA editor Paul Milligan sat down with Phillip Scobee, director, product management for Harman Professional Solutions, on the eve of the launch of three new BSS Soundweb Omni AV-over-IP platforms at InfoComm 2026. The pair discussed the future of the AMX brand, how BSS can compete with Crestron, Q-SYS and others in the AV-over-IP platform space, and why consultant and integrator feedback has been key to the development of these new products.   

PM: Is Omni the result of direct feedback from the market?

PS: When I first thought of this platform, it came from talking to consultants around the world. They told me their pain points, and we looked at all of them. Step one was figuring out the DSP part, step two was the video part, and step three was the control part. And we really wanted to make sure that those worked as an AV system in an ecosystem that was friendly, not only with Harman's products or one unified platform, but also with the rest of the world. We can't be bold in assuming that we're going to have every little piece on a job. We may only get a part of the job, an amplifier or a DSP or the video, so we needed to make sure we developed a system that was both flexible and user-friendly. And I think we're on the road to achieving that.

PM: BSS's heritage is in audio, but Omni is an audio and a video platform, right?

PS: I call it the Omniverse, because I want to think of the systems today as audio, video, and control. It’s everything over IP. From a mindset, both in engineering and product development, that gives us a better idea of what it's doing. In the past we may have been isolated silos: a video team, a control team and a DSP team. While they were all great at building things, we weren't sitting in the same room and asking, ‘How does this work as one system in our customer's hands?’

Today we're stepping back and saying let's look at it not as individual bits and pieces, but a performance-first AV ecosystem. How do we want that to work and how do we want that to interact with our customers? In the end it always comes down to the software. That's the touchpoint that the customer sees and uses.

Twenty years ago, lots of AV companies were engineering-focused: ‘Look at this cool widget we've made; now you go and figure out how to turn it into a product and sell it.’  I've tried to tell our team that this is the wrong way to do it, and I use Apple as an example. Apple talks to its customers and asks: ‘What are you trying to solve? What problem are you trying to address? How do you want to best do it?’ And they work backwards from there.

We've taken input from consultants and integrators, handed it to our internal teams and experts and asked: ‘How does that translate into what we want to build?’ I’m not saying we're perfect, but I think it's a much better way to create a holistic product that fits with what the customer needs.

PM: Is the BSS brand taking over from AMX, or is it just an evolution from AMX?

PS: It's the next evolution of BSS. We had the Green series originally, and then we had what we affectionately called the Blue series, or the London series, paying homage to the original heritage of where BSS comes from. This is generation three, which we have named the Omni platform.

This encompasses everything we want to do in an AV control environment. When BSS started, nobody had any idea where we would take DSP and audio integration. We all had aspirations, but I don't think we quite knew where it would end up. Now it's the epicentre that controls the entire project, whether it's audio, video or control. 

Systems have evolved over the years, and it was time for us to revamp and introduce a standards-based system that runs on industry-standard technologies, that can be locked down and secured.

PM: So AMX is not disappearing?

PS: We still have plans to keep AMX in certain portfolios and certain product ranges, and you'll see that over the years. It will still be an integral part of Harman’s technology evolution, but we needed to avoid fragmenting our own ecosystem and make it something that is easy to understand and move forward with.

PM: The other product announcement is touchpanels, which, from a Harman point of view, would traditionally have come from AMX. Why do the touch panels now carry BSS branding rather than AMX branding?

PS: Why are we putting an AVX or an AMX touchpanel or video endpoint into the BSS brand? It's to simplify the vision of Omni. We know we need video devices and touchpanels and control devices, and we want to be able to control that user experience. It makes it really easy to have everything under one brand and one identity from a customer point of view. They know these will work and integrate with this system because they're branded and set up the same way.

It's still an AMX technology. AMX is not going away. It's still a major platform for us, particularly in areas such as coding and AV streaming, which AMX has patented and pioneered over the years. That technology is still there. It was more about creating a cohesive, performance-first ecosystem under one brand. It makes ordering and purchasing easier, while helping customers, distributors and integrators understand that everything works together as a modular system.

PM: Do you see the Omni platform entering the market as a competitor to platforms such as Q-SYS or Crestron NVX? Is that the kind of product category you're moving into?

PS: I would say most definitely. There are only a few major players in the world that deliver this level of technology. We're trying to create a complete AV solution. There are smaller companies that do parts of it, but the brands you mentioned are the major ones we compete with on a daily basis, and want that to continue. I think they do an outstanding job. There are many good car manufacturers, and I think there are many good AV solution providers as well. Everybody has their own preference. Some prefer a particular programming style, some like Windows and some like Apple. I think the same analogy applies in the AV industry. I think there is enough business for all of us. The end user benefits from competition, and we as an industry benefit as well.

PM: What will system integrators and consultants like about Omni?

PS: They're going to love the software. We've always done really good software. We had System Architect, London Architect, Audio Architect. Now we have AVX, which adds a whole new style. A lot of the features we were known for in that software have been carried over, but many new features have also been added to the new platform. After years of experience, working with consultants and understanding their pain points, we have made the software much more user-friendly. Software is never finished; it never ends. It will come with a roadmap. I have a 20-year plan, so it's never going to stop from a hardware perspective.

People are going to love that it is a dedicated set of hardware built by us, just like our old BSS products were. It is Harman-engineered and built in Harman plants. It is audio-first as well, designed to deliver a high-quality audio stream and signal path. I think the elegance, the look and the simplicity of it are really nice.

We have also put a lot of focus on IT integration. There are dual network ports for both control and the audio path. So now we can go into redundant switch networks, which is how IT systems are set up in every corporate infrastructure. I made that a standard. I wanted all the major pieces to have two ports for control and two ports for audio, allowing users to set up completely redundant networks. There are a lot of things we didn't know 20 or 30 years ago in pro AV that we have now built into it. That'll make a lot of people happy.

PM: Will Omni require days of specialist programming to get up and running?

PS: There is a whole group of highly skilled people who provide the highest-level programming. I don't want to diminish what they do or their skillset, it’s amazing and what they do is needed in some projects. But there are certain applications where that level of programming is not required. The integrator simply needs to do what is necessary to get the job done, so the system is configured around what I call three levels of automation control.

The simplest level is system design, where you can drop in a logic object and use a toggle to turn something on or off, or make it percentage-based, from zero and 100%.

Then there is the mid-tier, where it is a little more complicated. For example, I might need automated buttons that carry out 10 steps. We have a partnership with Node-RED, an object-based programming tool, and we have integrated our own version of that into our software.

Lastly, we have a fully open coding section. Users can work across different programming languages, such as Python, and run those scripts within the Muse platform, using AMX technology. We give them the best of both worlds - and all worlds.