Sound Devices News from NAB ’26: Astral Mini Plus, Astral PowerStation Cell, and Viviana Cloud for 8-Series

Sound Devices had a busy NAB this year. The Astral Mini Plus, Astral PowerStation Cell, and Viviana Cloud 2 integration with SD 8-Series recorders are all super noteworthy announcements. Here’s what stood out to us the most. (Spoiler alert: ETA TBA.)

Astral Mini Plus

The Astral Mini Plus is Sound Devices’ updated compact bodypack transmitter, built on the same ergonomic form factor as the original Astral Mini. It keeps what we liked about the Mini and adds some welcome upgrades.

The biggest addition is its IP67 waterproofing. The original Mini was water-resistant, but the Mini Plus is now certified as genuinely waterproof and sweatproof. Beyond its IP67 certification, you can simply feel that Sound Devices made this transmitter to last. They’ve been calling the Mini Plus “the Tank” for a reason: this thing is built to withstand pretty much whatever you can reasonably throw at it, whether in film & tv production, live sound for stage & theater, or anywhere else transmitters routinely get soaked in sweat or exposed to extreme elements.

As for RF, the Mini Plus has an expanded frequency range of 169-1525 MHz (compared to the 470-1525 MHz range of the original Mini). And yes, the original Mini can do SpectraBand after a firmware update, so this isn’t entirely new ground. But having this feature standard right out of the box is one less thing to worry about. One transmitter for anywhere in the world, regardless of local spectrum regulations.

Running for 8+ hours on a single XL-B14500 rechargeable cell, the Mini Plus can also take a second battery for extended runtime. And it includes a built-in USB-C port for topping off in the field, which is a nice quality-of-life upgrade over having to swap batteries mid-show or mid-day.

With the inclusion of GainForward, this means no gain control on the transmitter. You set levels from the mixer or receiver. This may take some adjustment if you’re used to working the other way, but it’s become a standard part of the Astral workflow and works quite well in practice.

The Mini Plus’s ePaper display is a great practical touch. The display is readable in direct sunlight and will even stay visible with the batteries removed.

The Astral Mini Plus is shipping very soon, and pre-orders are available now.

Astral PowerStation Cell

The Astral PowerStation Cell is a dedicated fast charger for the XL-B14500 and XL-B18650 battery cells used in Astral TX, Astral Mini Plus, and Astral HH transmitters. Each PowerStation Cell charges up to six XL-B14500 cells or four XL-B18650 cells at once.

This is really made for the mixer who’s fully taking advantage of Sound Device’s Astral ecosystem and needs to keep a track of a lot of batteries for a lot of devices. The Powerstation Cell’s compact form factor was designed for stacking and expansion, so you’re able to efficiently scale to however big your needs may be.

Do note, however, that the PowerStation Cell is not a transmitter dock. The existing PowerStation-8M handles charging by docking the Astral Mini bodypacks directly, but there was no clean solution for the Astral TX and Astral HH batteries short of charging them through the transmitters via USB-C one at a time.

For anyone running a fleet of Astral TX or HH units, the PowerStation Cell is a straightforward way to streamline your battery management and decrease your go-time worries. You pull the batteries, drop them in, and they’re ready for the next day without tying up your transmitters overnight.

The PowerStation Cell should be available soon. Pre-ordering is live now.

Viviana Cloud Integration for the 8-Series

Also at NAB ‘26, Sound Devices provided demonstrations of their 8-Series integration with the Viviana Cloud Box 2. This enables automatic upload to Frame.io and other cloud destinations directly from the Scorpio or 888, without any manual file management steps.

The Scorpio and 888 already had Frame.io Camera to Cloud support via Ethernet. But the Viviana Cloud Box 2 adds a hardware bridge that connects to the 8-Series via USB. This allows files to be uploaded to whichever cloud service you’re using as soon as they’re closed. Put the 8-Series in File Transfer mode, use the Viviana Cloud app to select what you want to send, and it goes.

For productions with remote post teams or supervisors monitoring from a different location, this kind of immediate delivery pipeline has become increasingly expected. Getting audio off the cart and into editorial (or into a production dashboard) the same day it’s recorded is something a lot of shows now want as standard practice. Viviana Cloud makes this simpler to set up on the sound side without requiring a laptop in the bag or a separate file transfer workflow.

The Viviana Cloud Box 2 doesn’t have a firm release date yet. We’ll update when it does.