The Wireless Speaker and Audio (WiSA) Association has been set-up "to advance the adoption of wirelessly transmitted high-definition surround-sound audio in the home theatre environment", it said.
Pioneer, Sharp, Aperion Audio, Polk Audio, Definitive Technology, Hansong Klipsch, Meiloon, Silicon Image and Summit Semiconductor have agreed to be advisory board members.
"By establishing the industry's first interoperability specification and certification testing programs for manufacturers of high-performance wireless speakers, DTVs, Blu-ray disc players, and other consumer electronics, we will promote interoperability of interference-free, wireless surround-sound audio across a wide range of consumer electronics devices," said the Association.
Initially, interoperability testing and certification will be aimed at products offering uncompressed 'HD audio' over the 5GHz Unlicensed National Information Infrastructure (U-NII) frequency band.
This avoids the 2.4GHz Industrial, Scientific and Medical (ISM) band where most Wi-Fi and all Bluetooth resides, along with cordless phones and other transmitters.
"By operating in the U-NII spectrum, WiSA-certified products will be designed to avoid the interference, signal loss, and generally unpredictable behaviour reported by many users of legacy wireless speaker connections.
It has no guarantee than the 5GHz band will not become just as crowded at 2.4GHz.
By HD audio, the Association means: "16 or 24-bit audio and up to 96kHz sampling rate in configurations ranging from stereo to 7.1 surround sound and beyond", it said. 16bit audio is standard CD audio.
According to the Association's website, compliance attributes include: 24bit uncompressed audio, 5ms fixed latency, under 160ns speaker-to-speaker delay, "amplifiers and speakers matched and balanced as a unit".
It is intended that certified products, said the association, will enable consumers to set up a 7.1 home theatre system in less than 30 minutes on average.