Hidden Sound Solutions vs. The Full Sound Experience: Which is Best for You?

Did you know that there are multiple ways to customize your home audio? You can have completely hidden sound solutions so the sound happens like magic or have designated listening areas that show off what your speakers can do. But how can you choose?

Maybe you don’t even have to choose! Let’s go over the benefits of each and how you can improve your sound!

The Hidden Sound Experience

If you dream of having music appear in your home like magic, you’ll undoubtedly be a fan of the hidden sound experience. With hidden sound, speakers are integrated into the wall or ceiling (even behind the drywall!) and blended with your home’s aesthetic.

You can use other techniques like custom art speaker grilles, small aperture speakers you can hide behind artwork, or create an entire visual feature that camouflages your speakers. There’s no limit to how you want to disguise your speakers!

Benefits of Hidden Sound Solutions

So, what are the benefits of hidden sound solutions? The most significant one is how they blend with your home aesthetic — there won’t be any obvious signs of tech anywhere, but everything works like magic! To that effect, our team of custom integrators can help create bespoke covers, bevels, and custom power lifts to hide your equipment.

The second benefit is having smooth background audio for any activity, whether at home relaxing or entertaining your friends for get-togethers. However, the one drawback is that the sound won’t be as dynamic as in a fully treated room tailored to your listening experience.

The Full Sound Experience

The second way to customize your sound is with the full sound experience, meaning you have a fully treated room with speakers facing toward you. And there are two ways to achieve this: 2-channel audio or an 11.2 home theater surround sound!

2-Channel Audio

With 2-channel audio, you will see all the audio equipment, including speakers, receivers, amplifiers, and music sources. But the room will focus on human binocular hearing, which tailors the sound to your ears for a full room audio sound or a designated listening sweet spot.

11.2 Home Theater Sound

 2-channel audio is typically for a listening room, but an 11.2 home theater sound is precisely that — for your home theater! These systems involve multiple speakers (up to 11) and a subwoofer angled toward your seating. So, whether the speakers are in front, above, to the sides, or behind you, there isn’t a single spot your audio misses!

Benefits of the Full Sound Experience

The idea behind the whole sound experience is receiving the clearest, crispest audio tailored to your hearing, which audiophiles love. But even if you’re not a designated musicophile, you too can benefit from a fully treated audio room — you get to hear content as close to how it was recorded in the studio!

This brings out the emotion of everything you listen to, so you can feel every bit of it in your chest! You get a mini concert just for you! The only drawbacks are that you’ll see more of your audio equipment, and your listening experience will be limited to the treated room.

Can You Do Both?

Absolutely! You can have both hidden sound solutions and a full sound experience together! And it’s up to you how you want that to look— our custom integrators will do the rest!

So, if you want the benefits of hidden audio in your living areas, bathrooms, studies, home office, and a dedicated listening room, there’s no stopping you. And the best part is that tons of new speakers are works of art themselves with colorful glazes, so they’ll even enhance your home’s aesthetic.

Pro Tip: If you want multi-room audio you can control and schedule, let us know! We can customize your listening experience even further!

What’s Your Sound?

Now that you know more about the difference between hidden sound solutions vs. the full sound experience, are you ready to get started? If so, our team at [store name] is ready and waiting for your call! We’ll set you up with a consultation appointment where we’ll review the scope of your audio needs and work up ideas on how to meet your audio needs!

All you have to do is point at what you want, and we’ll do the rest!

Did you know there’s more than one way to customize your home audio? 🤯

Yup! There’s custom hidden audio solutions and the fully treated sound experience — which one will you choose?

How Smart Home Technology Has Evolved from the Beginning to Today!

You might not think it, but a “smart home” isn’t as new of an idea as you’d think. Sure, there’s always the example The Jetsons set, but the idea goes back even further than this beloved cartoon! In fact, the concept of consumer-oriented automation wasn’t thought of until Nikola Tesla created a remote control for a toy in 1898!

But it would still take several years for the true concept of smart home automation to get off the ground and evolve as we know it today!

Did You Know? At the Chicago World’s Fair in 1933, there was an exhibit called the “Home of the Future,” where the creators included their idea of future home technology but didn’t have the tech to show the ideas properly.

1975 & the X10 Revolution

As we said, the idea of a “smart home” has been around for a long time, but it wasn’t until the invention of X10 that smart homes started getting off the ground. X10 is a communication protocol that uses the home’s AC wiring to enable communication between devices and control modules. It sends digital information through radio frequency bursts through the wiring, allowing people to control devices in their homes remotely.

While this invention was a breakthrough, it had several drawbacks. It was super expensive, slow, unencrypted, and unreliable because of the signal loss and interference. You could even accidentally turn off the lights in your neighbor’s house with it — oops, sorry, Ted!

Progress & Hello, Internet (80s to 90s)

With the invention of X10, the world of “smart homes” started growing. By the 80s, motion-sensing lights, automatic garage door openers, programmable thermostats, and security systems were more affordable and prevalent. And in 1984, the term “smart house,” as we know it, was coined by the American Association of Home Builders!

During the 90s, the progression and evolution of the internet enabled more smart devices to become available, especially with the Internet of Things (IoT). In fact, IoT was born from a challenge during this time, which revolved around controlling a toaster from the internet! This got the ball rolling for remote access, but the then-current smart systems were still using X10 systems for wired devices and simple automations.

Did You Know? During this time, Microsoft also predicted its version of what a smart home would have today, like security systems, environmental controls, smart locks, and lighting controls!

Riding the Z-Wave (Early 2000s)

In the early aughts, innovative technology came on the scene — Z-Wave & Zigbee! Also known as the “Z-Wave alliance), these two platforms opened up smart home capabilities because they didn’t require routing cables through the walls to work. With these wireless systems, smart homes could use encrypted communication to keep everything more secure.

And the bonus benefit is that both these technologies can communicate and operate with each other, which means having more interoperability between your devices! It’s no wonder this technology is still used today (although our team handles all compatibility issues!).

Did You Know? The Z-Wave platform operates on a sub-1GHz band, which isn’t affected by interference from Wi-Fi or other wireless technologies like Bluetooth!

Going Wireless (2010)

By 2010, using at-home wireless Internet to run your systems became more prevalent — it just made everything more manageable, especially with smart home thermostats! And since technology was advancing, a new method of power data collection became available. This means smart homes could track how users operate the system and provide analytics.

These analytics made it much easier to make changes to your smart home automation so it can run smoother!

Today & Tomorrow

It’s amazing to see how much smart home automation has grown! Today, smart homes are more effective, with budget-friendly and extensive systems you can use to make all parts of your life convenient. Whether that means helping your kids stay on their routine, saving on your energy bill, maximizing your home entertainment, or improving your home’s security, there’s extraordinarily little your smart home can’t do.

And the smart home systems of “tomorrow” will go even further yet! Experts suggest that virtual assistant technology will shift from passive to active so they can anticipate users’ needs, and AI fundamentals like video recognition and multi-language understanding will continue to improve!

Do You Have the Smarts?

Smart home technology has come a long way and will only continue to improve! So, why not get on the automation train at [store name] today? Our team of experts has years of experience transforming regular homes into the homes of the future!

Call us today to schedule your consultation appointment, and we’ll review your ideas and what you want your smart home to do!

Wait — smart homes have been around for how long?!! 😱 No way!