The flat-panel TV revolution has a very long reach. Homeowners’ desire for stylized electronics has never been more pronounced, and it’s carrying over into every related area of the home, from furniture and structural design to the ever-present loudspeaker.
The mad success of plasma and LCD TVs has electronics designers scrambling to complement the look of downsized electronics, and the traditional loudspeaker may turn out to be as much a casualty of the flat-panel age as the tube TV. Consumers have turned their backs on boxy electronics, and that’s creating a challenge for high-quality sound. While flat TVs compete admirably with their tube counterparts, it’s a lot more challenging to pull off full-range sound from a tiny speaker.
A combination of home fashion and physics is putting pressure on the loudspeaker to update its image. On the audio side, TV makers continue to squeeze the size of the bezel around the flat-panel TV screen. The latest designs measure 1 inch thick, which doesn’t leave a lot of room for sound output. So when homeowners settle in for a movie or their favorite TV series, the resulting sound is typically thin to go along with the thin TV.
The quandary is that speakers traditionally need a lot of space to move the air required for full-range sound. But since homeowners are shunning boxy speakers, today’s speaker designers are using new tricks to try to achieve the same effect. Digital amplifiers and processing are the tools sound engineers are using today to produce big sound from smaller, nontraditional enclosures.
Other speaker companies—KEF, Artison, MartinLogan to name a few—are opting for flat speakers that mount on either side of the TV. Leon Speakers makes flat-panel speakers in any size, color, material, or shape to fit the look of a particular TV. Speaker mounts are available in two types: on-wall versions that attach to wall studs or a TV version, which mounts directly to any articulating TV mount.
Driven by Looks. Sonance, one of the founding companies of the in-wall speaker industry, sees the flat-panel trend as another example of an overall shift of the custom electronics market to a design-centric business. “The current state of the housing market is causing a lot of our dealer customers to look for ways to diversify their business and their routes to market,” says Ari Supran, chief sales officer for Sonance. “Instead of simply working with custom builders, they’re looking for other ways to grow their businesses, and the design community is a very attractive option.”
In its appeal to be a resource for architects and interior designers, Sonance has taken a proactive role by offering AIA-accredited courses for continuing education requirements. The company plans to develop a similar program through the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID) as well.
For Sonance, the strategy establishes credibility for its integrators as being design focused, rather than electronics driven, a maverick strategy for an electronics company. “We’re looking at different ways to approach the design and custom builder community to show them that our dealers understand the needs of the design team, and more importantly, that they cater to it rather than come in after the fact and detract from what the design team tried to achieve,” Supran says.
