How To Lend New Visual Appeal To Your Audio System
You know what a speaker system looks like. In fact, they all look pretty much the same with their boxy, rectangular speakers attached to a stack of high-tech silver or black electronic gadgets, regardless of how badly they clash with a home's elegant decor. But there's no reason that an amazing-sounding audio system has to look like every other system on Earth. If you're ready to break the aesthetic mold, here are some ways you can make your sound system complement your environment instead of looking like a last-minute addition to it.
Let Your Speakers Double as Art
Sound art involves the creative combination of musical and visual media. If you've always believed that visuals and sound go together like chocolate and peanut butter, why not turn your audio system into an art exhibit? This juxtaposition can assume many different forms, and you can come it from different directions. For instance, you can buy slim, low-profile speakers that actually double as gorgeous paintings in their own right. You can even request that a specific painting -- any painting you like -- be rendered onto these speakers, which run for several hours on a single battery charge and can be controlled by mobile devices via wireless technology.
Another possible approach is turn the music into visuals. These days you can get speakers equipped with multicolored LED lights that react to sound waves by creating a spontaneous light show. Some of these speakers have illuminated water tanks built onto them; the sound waves send the light through the water while also causing the water to "bounce" or ripple.
Create an Invisible Audio System
On the opposite end of the visibility scale, maybe you've decided that your audio system should be heard but not seen. This effect can be achieved in a number of ways as long as you're willing to have your receiver, tuner or digital server tucked away inside an equipment closet. This can be a good choice if you want to create a home theater in which everything just seems to happen like magic, or if you're in a historic home and you don't want to modernize the aesthetic with a lot of electronics. Speakers can be hidden behind acoustically-transparent drapes in a vintage home or built directly into the walls behind fabric panels that match the walls so discreetly as to be "invisible." Just make sure that any heat-generating equipment receives adequate ventilation.
The ceiling can also be a good place to position hidden loudspeakers, especially since most house guests wouldn't think to turn their gaze upward in the first place. You can simply recess your speakers behind ceiling grilles colored to match the decor, or you can have them built into beams and other architectural features. Even your light fixtures can become a source of music. Some systems combine LED lighting fixtures with wireless transceivers and tiny hi-fi speaker units, essentially allowing sound to issue forth from your recessed wall and ceiling lamps.
Enhance Your Outdoor Environment
Outdoor barbecues, birthday parties and even simple evenings on the patio can all be more fun when you have the ability to pipe music through an outdoor audio system -- but not everyone wants to spoil idyllic natural scenery with boxy, standard-issue metallic outdoor speakers. Fortunately, today's music-loving homeowners can choose from a surprisingly wide range of "chameleons," speakers specially designed to blend in with the other fixtures of your yard, garden, patio or deck. You'll have to decide whether you want wired models (in which you'll have to hide the speaker cables under dirt or grass) and wireless models (which can be placed practically anywhere in the yard but require fresh batteries from time to time).
What kinds of speakers can actually look at home in the midst of a suburban outdoor plot? Well, for starters you might consider units shaped and colored to resemble rocks, especially if you have a xeriscaped yard. If you love to collect decorative ceramic vases and flower pots, you can get speakers cunningly constructed to resemble them. You can even get in-ground speakers which, as the name implies, are "planted" directly into the soil. These speakers can be designed to pass for common outdoor items such as lights or sprinklers.
It's worth noting that positioning outdoor speakers can be a tricky task, no matter how cleverly these units are designed. If they point too far outward into the yard, your irritated neighbors may get more of an earful than you and your guests. Music can also sound acoustically "dead" if it has nothing to resonate against except empty air, so it's a good idea to keep the speakers relatively close to the solid structures of your deck, porch, patio or house.
Who says audio systems have to conform to a certain set of aesthetic rules? Take these ideas as a starting point for letting your imagination run wild. You may be astonished and delighted by what you see and hear! For more tips, contact a company like Onsia.
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