Bring High-Performance Audio to Every Room in Your Home

For some music lovers, the mention of high-end speakers brings a dedicated listening room to mind. They hear the sound field—the guitar riffs off to the right, the vocalist in the center of the stage, and every note of the piano. They imagine sitting in upholstered seating, acoustic treatments dampening the sound reflection, and high-fidelity speakers taking them to the front seat of a live concert. 

Many of our clients, however, want something a bit different. They want to incorporate high-end audio into their daily lives, when walking into their homes, sitting on the patio, or watching their favorite movie. Unfortunately, high-performance tower loudspeakers don’t always work well in these settings, detracting from a home’s design and marring its aesthetics.

The good news is that today’s manufacturers heard the call for high-end architectural speakers and answered. Today, you can experience the immersive sound field throughout your home, in your home theater, the living room, and even out into your yard in Huntington Beach, CA, and Orange County. Let's find out how. 

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The Ultimate Home Theater

Many of you have probably heard of James Loudspeaker. Founded in 1999 in San Francisco, where the company started in the tower loudspeaker arena, they quickly established themselves as innovators and made several "firsts" in architectural speaker design and use. In 2019, they were acquired by Sonance, the inventor of the architectural and invisible speaker category. 

The Age-Old Question: Do You Need High-Quality Speakers to Listen to Records? We Answer Below.

Maybe you’ve been collecting vinyl for decades. Or perhaps you’re just getting started filling a crate or shelf of albums. No matter your experience with vinyl, your music deserves to be heard with crystal-clear sound quality. There are many cheap turntables on the market, but if you’re looking for the best solution, it’s wise to avoid the all-in-one suitcase players. Your best bet is to use a receiver connected to high-end speakers by reputable brands like James Loudspeaker, Triad, or Sonos. From there, you can even expand to whole-home audio that brings your tunes to every room of your home. Let’s go through the basics of high-end audio and vinyl. As an AV design and installation company servicing Irvine, CA, and Orange County, we’ll help you find the best solution below.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           SEE ALSO: 3 Aspects of Home Audio You Don’t Want to Overlook  

Why Quality Speakers Are Essential for Vinyl

There’s something ritualistic about taking a record out the sleeve, placing it on the turntable, and setting the needle for the first song to start. But vinyl brings even more than novelty to music. Vinyl records offer a wide range of sound, enhanced recording fidelity, and an audible warmth that MP3s and CDs don’t quite deliver. Audiophiles appreciate the crackles and hisses in the medium and might find that their records provide a greater range of sound frequencies. You need quality speakers to hear this difference, and if you’re investing in a record collection, it’s worth it to scale up your speaker selection.  

High-End Speakers vs. Low-End

When you first hear records on high-end speakers, it will be like you’ve never experienced recorded music before. ‘High-end’ is a subjective term, but we usually classify it was speakers with quality materials and balanced sound frequencies. The best speakers should deliver low, deep bass notes just as well as mid-range frequencies for clear voices. Can you hear all the instruments? Are the treble notes smooth or irritating? We ask these questions when testing our speakers in our Irvine showroom. Low-quality speakers deliver off-balanced sound. Maybe you can only hear voices while hardly hearing the bass or piano melodies.  

Speaker Brands You Can Trust 

Sonos manufactures arguably some of the best wireless speakers available. You’ll still need to plug the speakers into an outlet, but by ‘wireless,’ we mean you won’t need to connect the speakers to a receiver. Instead, Sonos speakers connect over their own mesh network. Wireless setups are convenient, but we still believe that wired speakers are more reliable and can spread across greater distances. Brands like James Loudspeaker and Triad use durable materials in their speakers with more powerful drivers than lower-end devices. Their bookshelf or floor-standing speakers will connect to your record player via an amplifier or receiver.  

Don’t Forget These Small Yet Important Details When Designing Your High-End Audio System

A music playlist can change the feel of any situation. Relaxing, cool jazz sets the mood for a romantic dinner for two, while fast-paced metal beats keep your blood pumping during a cardio session in your home gym. To experience life with a stellar soundtrack in your Huntington Beach, CA, home, high-end speakers and an expertly designed home audio system are required. High-performance amplifiers, speakers, and cabling are all necessary to enjoy the best possible audio experience in your Orange County home, but there are three often-overlooked components of home audio that you shouldn’t ignore. Read on below to learn three small details you can incorporate into your whole-home audio system for a more enjoyable listening experience.

SEE ALSO: Are High-End Speakers Worth It?  

Room Correction

Sound waves can reflect off of surfaces or absorb into fabrics. Taking the room's physical makeup into consideration when designing your home audio system ensures music, TV, movies, podcasts, and your other favorite audio entertainment sounds clear with no distortion. To further combat possible echoes and audio issues, digital room correction technology can improve the listening experience. Many high-end speaker systems incorporate digital room correction functions that includes internal software and microphones. When a sound is emitted, the software then measures the response time for the sound to return. A digital filter is then placed over the audio waves to combat distortion and improve sound quality. If you were to change your room's layout, you would need to rerun digital room correction to combat sound absorption and reflection in the room adequately.  

Surge Protection

In California, homeowners are no stranger to electrical outages and planned power grid failures, especially during wildfire season. Even though some outages are planned, those that aren't can have catastrophic consequences on the electronics in your home. To protect your high-end equipment, you need surge protection. During an outage or power surge, a surge protector reroutes extra energy so that it does not harm your devices. Over time, multiple surges can wear down your equipment. Robust protection is required to protect your technology investments for years to come.  

Home Network

With the rise in audio and video streaming’s popularity, your home’s internet connection is increasingly important. Slow music downloads and buffering icons during movies are just two mild annoyances that can stem from a poorly designed or underpowered home network. The experts at Launch Systems can create a system that triages your internet traffic, dedicating bandwidth where and when it matters most. Your music and movies won’t lag when you’ve addressed your home network!   Home audio is more than high-end speakers, and it requires an attention to detail that only the professionals at Launch Systems can provide. Connect with us using this online form so we can help get you started!    

The Difference in High-Quality Audio

Humans have enjoyed music for thousands of years—it’s an inherent part of life. So, it makes sense to crave the best-sounding audio for your home. If you’re looking for a new or expanded music setup in your Newport Beach, CA house, you may be wondering: is high-end audio worth it? There’s quite a range of speakers out there, from cheap Bluetooth devices to high-end speakers like Triad and James Loudspeaker. Is it worth it? We’ll share the advantages of premium audio below.

SEE ALSO: Incorporate High-End Speakers in These 3 Areas of Your Home

High-Fidelity Sound

Want to feel like your favorite band is in your living room? That’s what high-end audio can do far better than budget audio. The materials in your speakers’ cones and tweeter make all the difference. Lightweight but rigid materials like glass, Kevlar, diamond or beryllium will sound much better than paper or fabric. If you’re just getting started in audio, ‘frequency response’ is a term you need to know. It means how well a speaker can reproduce musical tones. The best speakers have a ‘flat’ frequency response to deliver all sound frequencies at the same sound level. When frequency responses are uneven, that’s when you experience distortion. The sound of the bass might disappear while drums overpower the track, for instance.

Rich Bass Notes

Since bass notes have a much lower sound frequency than high and mid-range frequencies, it can be challenging to reproduce in the same device. That’s why a subwoofer is essential to your system. Whether it’s built into your loudspeakers or in a separate enclosure, a subwoofer delivers powerful sounds that you can feel. It’s the heartbeat of your audio setup or home theater and should not be skipped.

Quality to Last Decades

Cheap speakers’ sound quality will degrade over time. But trusted speakers like Triad or James Loudspeaker can be expected to last from twenty to fifty years. If you take good care of your speakers and don’t blast them too loud, you could keep them for the rest of your life! The same cannot be said for a cheap speaker off of Amazon.

Your Laguna Beach Home Has Never Sounded This Good

Sound makes the world go ‘round. It can change the mood of any situation, whether it’s provoking memories of days gone by, pulling on your heartstrings, or encouraging party festivities along into the wee hours of the morning. You can bring the powerful influence of music into your Laguna Beach, CA home with the help of high-end speakers. From the patio to the listening room, high-performance speakers and components provide a truly lifelike music experience. You can immerse yourself into your favorite lawn concert performance or the roaring car chase of your favorite film with a high-end audio system. Read on to learn which three areas of your home you probably hadn’t considered for a new speaker system.

SEE ALSO: The Beauty of Multi-Room Music in Your Clients’ Homes

Listening Room

Everyone loves to listen to music, but are they listening to music as the original artist intended? That’s the beauty of a dedicated listening room outfitted with high-end speakers – you can enjoy the optimum listening experience while focusing solely on the music itself. Large tower speakers are perfect for visual appeal and high-fidelity audio from your favorite source – be it a streaming music app on your smartphone, an old favorite CD, or a turntable. Custom finishes and exemplary engineering can match or blend into your interior décor, too. For example, one of our favorite brands, James Loudspeaker, comes in a variety of options from freestanding loudspeakers that make a statement to in-wall and in-ceiling speakers that practically disappear.

Game Room

A media or gaming room brings the high-performance sound many are accustomed to in a home theater into a multipurpose space of your California home. If you or the kids love to play Xbox with friends, then speakers can take you deep into the action of your favorite video game. If you have limited space or simply want a one-speaker solution for media, then a soundbar would be a nice addition to your game room. Sonos recently released the premium Arc designed for TV, gaming, music, and movies; It can deliver crisp dialogue and booming bass without the need for a complex setup or heavy space allocations.

Outdoor Patio

Many people don’t consider their outdoor entertainment as an extension of their inside entertainment system, but it is! You can make it simple by taking your Sonos Move outside to enjoy Bluetooth and Wi-Fi capability to stream your favorite songs, or you can enjoy a comprehensive outdoor speaker system incorporated into your landscaping with bullet speakers, in-ground subwoofers, and more.   Listening flexibility is the best part of incorporating high-end speakers into every room of your home, and not just those rooms listed above. Contact Launch Systems today to get started on your new or upgraded speaker system. We can’t wait to hear from you!