NAB 2025 in Review: Broadcast Audio Faces a Future of Tariff-Induced Higher Costs

NAB 2025 in Review: Broadcast Audio Faces a Future of Tariff-Induced Higher Costs Different approaches by an industry with a global supply chain and market By Dan Daley, Audio Editor

Monday, April 14, 2025 - 7:00 am

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Audio at last week's NAB Show offered some new SFX: the sound of markets plummeting and supply chains rattling.

Just days before the start of the show, the President Donald Trump's announcement of massive new import tariffs sent a wave rippling through broadcast's pro-audio sector, and virtually every other industry on the planet.

New York City-based Dale Pro Audio has experienced multiple pricing changes on an array of products on literally a daily basis since the tariffs were announced, according to Dale Pro Audio Technology Development Manager Joel Guilbert. No one knows where their numbers are going to be, he says. They're continuously changing.

Despite an equally unexpected pullback of some tariffs on the last day of the show, a level of economic uncertainty unequaled since 1930 shook markets.

The size and disruptive impact of U.S. trade policies, if sustained, would be sufficient to tip a still healthy U.S. and global expansion into recession, JPMorgan Head of Economic Research Bruce Kasman told Bloomberg News the day NAB 2025 opened. The tariff shock will likely be magnified by its effect on sentiment and through potential disruptions to global supply chains.

That sentiment extended to the pro-audio segment of the broadcast market at the show, where executives at leading pro-audio companies pondered their next moves. Some were still unsure of how individual components of their products would be impacted, with some manufactured in various countries, and how individual new levies would affect the overall prices of finished products. The tariff kerfuffle climaxed with a record 145% levy on China, which produces a considerable percentage of technology products.

Some of our hardware is made in the impacted countries, but an increasingly high percentage of what we sell is software-based, says Josh Rush, CMO, Audinate, which markets the widely used Dante connectivity format. All of our products are affected differently. They're all manufactured in different countries, so they are exposed to different components of the tariffs.

Recalling how the COVID-era supply-chain disruptions had prompted clients to move to software-based solutions, Rush says that dynamic is helping mitigate some of the supply-chain concerns that the tariffs are causing. Some of the supply-chain fallout from COVID drove a lot of our manufacturers to our software solutions.

The tariffs could boost replacement of hardware with software, a phenomenon that's already happening with smaller audio mixers.

However, he adds, I think the other big wild card that all the companies are sorting through is whether they're going to pass [increased] costs on or if they're going to absorb [them. I think all the companies in the value chain are working through that right now and trying to figure that out. We've seen some of our customers come out and say that they're going to absorb it and raise prices and others that are saying they're going to just pass it right on to customers. I think the other part that has to shake out is what other companies actually do as a result of it.

Manufacturers React Some companies are already implementing reactive strategies. Burlington, ON-based Evertz, whose latest additions to the Studer Infinity Series, including the new SMPTE ST 2110-compatible Infinity Mix Engine, were on display at NAB 2025, plans to expand operations at its Indiana, PA, manufacturing facility.

We'd already been investing in manufacturing there, notes Mo Goyal, senior director, international business development/live media production, Evertz. We're now expediting that investment to address some of the tariff concerns that our U.S. customers have. We are not building from scratch; instead, we're expanding that facility to bring in some local workers, adding to the team there, producing equipment there for local broadcast customers in the U.S.

Canada-based Q5X's products - such as a new iteration of its PlayerMic, this one with interchangeable rechargeable batteries - remain protected under the existing U.S.-Mexico-Canada (USMCA) trade agreement. Signed in 2020, that compact replaced the NAFTA accord and is slated to run through 2036 if it's updated after a scheduled 2026 review by all three countries.

Our products are captured under the existing free-trade agreement, says Q5X CEO Paul Johnson, so, right now, there are no tariffs on our products and no import tariffs for us either. It still has another year and a half to run. After that, we'll have to renegotiate. For now, I am very grateful that, at this point, we're not impacted at all.

Other companies are raising prices ahead of the tariffs' effects. Israel-based Waves, which was demonstrating the newest iterations of its eMotion LV1 Classic mixing console and Cloud MX cloud-based broadcast mixer, increased prices on hardware over 10% in February, in line with what the tariff increases were expected to be. Product Specialist Jeremiah Clever notes that some of its manufacturing takes place in China.

Keep Calm and Carry On Thanks to judicious and timely component sourcing, Calrec parent Audiotonix and its console brands, including SSL and DiGiCo, weathered the COVID supply-chain disruptions better than most. Supply chains for such products as the ImPulseV cloud-based DSP processing core and Argo M compact IP broadcast-audio console, which were exhibited at the Calrec booth, aren't the main concern this time, says Calrec Managing Director Sid Stanley. Our issue is getting our product to our U.S. cust

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