Rock Speakers just don’t cut it anymore
Whenever the topic of outdoor sound comes up it’s usually met with a bit of resistance. ‘Yeah we’ve had rock speakers in the garden before. We didn’t use them much’ is something I’ve heard a lot.
The reason the rock speakers didn’t get used much is because they sounded fairly awful. 2 under powered speakers located out in the garden which had to be cranked up to hear them in all sections of the yard. Add in the noisy kids in the pool and a bloke at the BBQ telling stories and you have a lot going on. The rock speakers start to get a little annoying at this point. Ask your neighbours!
It’s the same situation with the speakers mounted above the deck pointing out to the backyard. If the kids want to hear some quality top 40 pop while bombing each other in the pool, there’s no way you’re going to enjoy your beer, wine and conversation on the deck. Something’s gotta give and it’s usually the tunes. It’s a shame these speakers rarely get used but that’s the reality of it.
What I’ll do in these situations is offer to set up a demo of a Sonarray or SLS system depending on the size of the yard. These demos can be set up in minutes and it’s a perfect way of showing what is really possible in an outdoor situation.
The concept behind theses speakers is to create an even blanket of sound that is everywhere in the yard.
The Sonarray system consists of 8 small satellite speakers (they look like a garden light) and a sub woofer (looks like a mushroom!) and is perfect around a pool or in a typical quarter acre block situation. The speakers are dug in around the fence at equal points and actually all face back to the house. This creates a sound field that is perfectly dispersed inside the yard, but go outside the yard and sound drops away substantially. Very neighbour friendly. No need to crank it if the pool is being used and no need to turn it off if you want to chat on the back deck. The combination of speakers, the sub and a nice amplifier inside the home that drives the whole thing, will give you a result that will be the best sounding ‘room’ in the home.
The SLS system is the next step up in the food chain and is totally customiseable to your yard. The SLS is usually used for bigger properties, more unusual garden designs or situations where you need separate outdoor zones. The same end result though, you can play your music at a very low level that sounds amazing. It’s an outdoor music system that will actually get used which is the whole point!
I absolutely love these systems. I was blown away when I first heard them and still get a kick when I turn the demo on and see the reaction. Mostly ‘Wow that sounds amazing, I want one!
These systems are perfect for the family that loves music, loves a party and spends a lot of time outside. If this is you then give Chase AV a call and have a demo set up at your place
You should check out HEOS by Denon
It almost happened overnight. Remember when we retired our CD collection and crammed all our music onto our shiny new little iPod in MP3 format.
‘Doesn’t skip when you go for a run!!’ We were so caught up in the new technology we barely noticed the sound was average. Maybe we gave it a pass cause it was so convenient. But if you go back to your CD collection and listen to your favourite tunes again through your old floor speakers (that you’re not allowed to have in the lounge room anymore), I swear you will be blown away. It’s just amazing how good CD’s sound! MP3 not so much. It’s an absolute treat to the ears when you listen to your music again in high quality, not the compressed squished versions we’ve accepted as normal since the digital revolution began.
That’s where I think HEOS by Denon steps up. Yes convenience is great and now we have it, it’s natural to ask why we can’t also have great sound with that? HEOS is a multi room music system that streams in CD quality. If you subscribe to Tidal (a subscription service similar to Spotify) HEOS can stream hi res CD quality tunes to your home and it sounds awesome.
When I first started using it at home I had heaps of fun doing the double blind AB tests on myself and my wife. So happy I was getting to listen to a heap of albums I hadn’t heard properly in years. I think that’s what most people do when they discover music streaming…they’ll be like a kid again and go through their back catalogue for weeks, pulling up albums they haven’t heard in years.
Just the concept of being able to play any song you like immediately still has me in a daze! I remember (old man story) travelling from Port Macquarie to Sydney for a trip to Utopia Records on Clarence St to buy a single CD which I would then flog to death for the next 3 months until my whole family knew every note. You had to work for that music!!
To now and I’ve been running HEOS at home for over a year and can confidently install it in my clients home’s and know they’re getting a great product. I use Tidal for my streaming and also I Heart Radio which is a great service that popped up when Pandora disappeared. I think with those 2 and TuneIN Radio I’ve got everything covered. What I also recommend is connecting your CD player up to HEOS. This allows you to pipe your CD’s around the home with no reduction in quality. Effectively giving you the best of both worlds…old school and new. Most multi room music systems cannot do this without compromising the CD quality.
Which brings me to another point I love about HEOS. The app is super easy to use. The ritual we all followed for years when we wanted to listen to tunes was the same…whether it was vinyl or compact disc the process of turning on the stereo and playing the music never changed. The music is the experience not the app!! To wake up one day and find that the act of playing your music has fundamentally changed is absolutely annoying, so while HEOS are making app improvements in the background the actual operation of the app remains consistent and won’t throw you into a spin with each update.
Anyway I’m a fan and have been installing a lot of it lately so give it a go!
