Cranking up your home audio system or home theater experience can be thrilling. However, our customers often prefer to listen to these systems at moderate or low volumes. Having your home audio system at a low volume is excellent for gatherings and get-togethers. It helps your guests talk to each other at a normal volume, even with music playing. Even watching TV can be enjoyable at a lower volume, especially when watching the news or winding down at the end of the day.
The Cause of Poor, Low-Volume Listening
Think of speakers in your home like downlights. If you have a single downlight the center in a large room, it’ll be bright right under the light, a reasonable brightness surrounding the light, and pretty dark by the edges of the room. If we wanted the room to be evenly lit, we’d suggest multiple downlights throughout the room.
In this case, it helps to think of sound similarly to light. A single speaker in the center of the room would be loud right underneath, quiet in the corners and may be the perfect volume somewhere in the middle. If you adjust the volume to the “perfect level” while in the corner of the room, it will be loud everywhere else!
Fixing A Room To Have Uniform Sound
Thankfully, you can have the best of both worlds. Let’s go back to our lighting analogy. We can all agree that adding more downlights makes lighting more uniform. The same is true with speakers. When you increase the number of speakers, the sound in the room becomes more uniform. The more speakers you add, the more equal the distance everyone is from a speaker, and the more uniform the volume will feel. When the volume is more uniform, you can guarantee that when you think the music is quiet, so will everyone else in your home.
Why Does This Matter?
The truth is, maybe it doesn’t matter to you. Fewer speakers sacrifice volume uniformity. That means the volume change will be uncomfortably noticeable as you walk around your space. Walking around your house with music on would probably feel like watching TV while constantly adjusting the volume.
If you love having people over and putting music on for ambiance, it would be awkward if guests could only hear each other talk in some parts of the room. With fewer speakers, some people may need help speaking over your music while others may not even hear it.
How Many Speakers Are Enough?
It depends! It depends on the height of your ceiling, the size of your room and your goals for the space. We take all this information to help you determine the best speaker arrangement for your space. Our goal is to install the minimum number of speakers while ensuring the volume of the music feels uniform throughout the room. We have multiple ways to make speakers disappear into your décor, including completely invisible speakers. If you want SoundVision the help you with your home AV project, call us at 415-456-7000.