In our series of #CEDIAShares blogs, we’re talking with exhibitors about the hottest technologies and trends they’re looking to see at CEDIA Expo.
Q&A with Geoffrey Heinzel, co-managing partner, ASCENDO Immersive Audio.
Why exhibit at CEDIA Expo?
CEDIA Expo remains one of the few dedicated platforms in North America where the residential integration community comes together around the complete experience, including audio, video, projection, LED, lighting, control, and cinema design.
For ASCENDO, it is particularly valuable because we believe our systems need to be experienced, not simply displayed. We therefore typically collaborate with leading industry partners to create a complete environment in which visitors can hear, see, and understand what all of these technologies can achieve when they are designed to work together.
What is the most exciting trend you expect to see at the show?
We see a continued shift away from simply assembling individual products toward engineering the entire room as one coherent performance system. That philosophy is also behind one of our most exciting technology introductions this year: ASCENDO Panoramic, our completely new loudspeaker concept developed from first principles for immersive audio.
We do not repurpose existing speakers. We engineer acoustic platforms. Panoramic is designed to change the perceived acoustic scale of the room, creating a larger, more seamless and more enveloping soundfield from a remarkably compact concept. We look forward to giving the industry a first experience of what it can do.
What will you focus on at the show?
This year we want to challenge one perception about ASCENDO. We are well known for uncompromising, cost-no-object, state-of-the-art cinema systems, and that can sometimes create the impression that ASCENDO performance is only available at the very highest budgets. At CEDIA Expo 2026, we will demonstrate the opposite.
A key strength of ASCENDO is the complete scalability and interoperability of our system components. The same engineering principles extend across the portfolio, allowing components to be combined and scaled for projects of very different sizes and budgets without compromising the fundamental performance concept. It is a level of system scalability that we believe is unique in our industry.
At the show, we will demonstrate how much of the ASCENDO experience can be achieved with a carefully engineered system at a significantly more accessible price point. The objective remains exactly the same: dynamics, scale, precision, and immersion, but with an architecture that makes true high-performance cinema possible across a much broader range of projects.
To learn more, check out ASCENDO in booth #SR10 at CEDIA Expo 2026 and visit www.aia-cinema.com.
