You might love your media and entertainment, but also hate the clutter it creates.  With the excess equipment and audio video components, it can all be quite distracting from the film or show in front of you.  Plus, when you’re not watching a movie, these products might still be out and going unused during the day or when you have guests.  But with hidden audio video, your media room or home theater can serve an abundance of purposes in your Dallas, TX home.  Read on to learn more about veiling these smart technology features within your interior design.

Hide your Screens

There’s no doubt about it – 4K Ultra HD TVs are ideal in every way for your movie nights and viewing experiences.  But often times, they are extremely wide and take up a large amount of space.  We’ve listed out below several ways to hide your TV screen in your entertainment center.

• Moving Panels: You can feel like you’re in the future with wall panels.  Place your favorite piece of artwork or a picture frame on the panel, so when the TV is not in use, you have a nice addition to the room’s décor.  Then, when it’s time to binge-watch a series or film franchise – press a button, have the panel slide up, and enjoy.
• Furniture Lifts: Incorporate your TV into an actual piece of furniture in the room. The screen can slide up and down out of a TV cabinet or a table countertop, and will effortlessly appear when you are ready to view it.
• Ceiling Lifts: A ceiling lift allows a TV to hang up horizontally above its normal display area. Simply press a button on your smart device, and watch as the screen zooms down from the ceiling and vertically into place.

SEE ALSO: ENJOY FOOTBALL SEASON WITH THE LATEST AUDIO VIDEO TECH

Now for the Audio

You want your speakers to give you the best sound quality available.  This means no obstructions or hindrances to muffle them.  But speakers can be bulky and mess with your room’s style.  Now you don’t have to compromise your taste for quality!  Hidden wall speakers mean the product can be carefully placed within your wall, taking up hardly any space.  You can conceal the speakers’ looks and still hear their top-notch sounds.

If you don’t mind how standard speakers look, but still want them not to take up too much space, then bookshelf speakers are a viable option as well.  You get amazing, high-end sound quality, similar to larger and more predominant floor-standing speakers, but are instead able to place these on top of bookshelves or cabinets – eliminating the amount of room they would normally take up.

For audiophiles in the Colleyville, Texas area, there’s one room that you definitely need in your home: a listening room. As the name suggests, a listening room is a space dedicated to the enjoyment of high-end audio. In this blog, we cover the main things to keep in mind when building a listening room so that you end up with a truly immersive music experience.

SEE MORE: 3 Ways to Fill Your Home With Music

Create the Right Environment

While it’s true that you can really use any space for a listening room, such as your living room or office, the best listening rooms are spaces that are dedicated for that purpose. That way, you can design the environment to be perfect for high-end audio, as opposed to accommodating multiple functions in the space. Your listening room should be a completely separate space that is able to be closed off from the rest of the house, removing any distractions that could get in the way of your music enjoyment.

Choose the Best Equipment

For a dedicated listening room, not just any speakers or audio equipment will do. In this blog on buying high-end audio speakers, we cover the characteristics you should look for when inspecting different speakers, but another topic worth discussing is brand. You simply cannot get the same level of pure, clear sound from cheap speakers, so do yourself a favor and choose a quality brand from the start. Here are our favorite audio brands—any of these companies will provide reliable, robust A/V equipment perfect for your listening room.

• Triad: Handcrafted in the USA, Triad’s loudspeakers are custom-built to fit your needs, including custom paint and veneer. Triad uses top-notch components and proprietary engineering to ensure each speaker offers premium sound.
• Denon: From amplifiers to analog turntables, Denon’s selection of high fidelity audio equipment leaves nothing to be desired. Their speakers are engineered to make it easy to enjoy pure sound.
• Integra: Integra has been around since 1969, and in that time, their A/V equipment has only gotten better. Whether you’re looking for Dolby Atmos surround sound or the perfect amplifier for your system, Integra has you covered.

Optimize the Acoustics

The most expensive speakers in the world won’t yield the type of sound you want for a listening room if the room’s acoustics are bad. Your audio/video integrator should design and implement your listening room with acoustics in mind from the very beginning. For new construction, your integrator should get involved during the initial planning of the building so that your room ends up with the appropriate ceiling height, room shape, and size for optimal acoustics. Other factors that can significantly impact acoustics include speaker positioning and placement as well as the objects and materials in the room, such as glass cabinets or bulky furniture.

Thinking about upgrading your Westlake, Texas home with a multi-room music system? It’s much simpler than you might think. DB Media Solutions can handle multi-room music installations from the initial design to final optimization of the sound in each room. Not all multi-room music solutions are created equal, so we’ve put together this list of the three main characteristics of a high-quality music system for your whole house.

SEE MORE: What You Need to Know When Buying High-End Audio Speakers

Optimized for Each Space

The acoustics in each room of your home will be different, and you need speakers that are versatile enough to accommodate the differences in room layout and furniture. To ensure a smooth, even sound as you walk through the house, speakers are carefully placed in specific locations. Speaker type is another concern with a multi-room music system. You’ll want a different style of speakers for your outdoor audio, for example, than you would for your kitchen. DB Media Solutions can help you design a system that has the right speakers and equipment in the right location throughout your home.

Hidden from View

Your home’s décor probably doesn’t accommodate bulky speakers or cluttered wires. It may be easy to hide speakers in a media room or bedroom, but what about the bathroom? The solution is to use in-wall and in-ceiling speakers, such as the Sonance Invisible Series, to completely hide the speakers. You get high-quality sound without having to deal with wires or looking at speakers.

Easy to Use

The best sound quality in the world isn’t going to do you much good if your music system is difficult to operate. When all of your music equipment is integrated into one seamless system controlled by a touchpad or your smartphone, it’s much easier to adjust volume, change the station, or pause music. You don’t have to walk to the other end of the house to turn on your music—instead, just pull up your phone and start enjoying the high fidelity audio wherever you are.

Getting the family to agree on anything can be difficult. Your sixteen-year-old daughter's ideal media room is going to be much different than yours. It may be enticing to say, "I've got the money, so I choose what we get." But you don't want one of the most important rooms in your Colleyville, Texas house to be a source of resentment. We specialize in creating multi-purpose media rooms that are sure to please the entire family. 

SEE MORE: 3 Ways to Fill Your Home With Music

Mellow Out With Your Favorite Music

With bookshelf speakers, ceiling speakers and in-wall speakers expertly laid out throughout the room you can have a versatile listening space. You don't need a dedicated 2-channel stereo system to break out the scotch and listen to your favorite albums. Many actually sound great on 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound setups as well. Whether you're breaking out Pink Floyd or B.B King, you can get an immersive experience and truly natural sound. While you enjoy your favorite albums, your daughter can use the same system to stream her favorite Pandora channel or Spotify playlist when she’s hosting friends.

Challenge Friends to a Gaming Marathon

A great way to use your 4K Ultra HD television and surround sound is playing games with friends. Create the perfect environment when playing your favorite first-person shooter game. Like a TV show or movie, video game soundtracks are edited to give you a greater sense of the action. Get ahead of the competition with a system that lets you know exactly where your enemies are coming from.

There are a few other ways we can deck out your media room to make it the best place for an Overwatch marathon. In PC gaming, many players opt for multi-monitor systems to increase their peripheral vision. We can recreate this set-up with a multi-screen media room. We also increase the strength of your home network, so your play is never interrupted due to a bad connection.

Investing in high-end audio is a commitment to getting the highest quality music possible in your Southlake, Texas home. If you're only interested in a bit of ambiance while you cook, perhaps this kind of system is not right for you. But if you're the kind of person that categorizes their CD and album collections by eras, genres or themes—it’s time to upgrade your system. The right pair of speakers should be invisible, a transparent window that lets sound come through naturally. If that’s the kind of experience you want, check out how to find the right speakers: 

SEE MORE: 3 Ways to Fill Your House With Music

Things to Look For in High-End Speakers:

• Sound Characteristics: Certain speakers are better at producing different styles of sound, from subtle tones to ‘bright' tones with a lot of trebles. Depending on your musical preferences, we find speakers tuned to the styles you like.
• Frequency response: This is a good way to gauge how pure a sound your speaker can create. It is the amount of frequencies your speaker produces, the fuller the range, the more realistic your audio will be. You also want this range to be flat, meaning that certain frequencies aren’t overwhelmingly louder than others.
• Cone Material: Your speaker has three main components: a cone, a coil, and a magnet. The coil sits in front of the magnet; the coil and magnet interact to create a vibration which is then amplified by the cone. As air comes through the come, it may flex at certain frequencies and distort the sound. What you want is the sturdiest material possible to avoid any flexing.
• Cone Variations: Audiophiles want to hear a range of high, medium and low frequencies. High-end speakers often include multiple cones, each corresponding to a particular frequency to create the most accurate sound reproduction possible.
• Design: You need to have the right design so there’s not too much echo within your speaker cabinet. Everything also needs to be tightly packed to avoid any movement that can create disruption.
• Tweeters: Your tweeters are important in getting higher frequencies to stand out. To reproduce high-frequency, they need to be light enough to move quickly, yet strong enough that they hold their shape at loud volumes. High-end manufacturers work to adjust the design and material of your tweeters to get the best results.
  
  

Give Your Speakers a Test Drive

Ultimately, listening to music is a subjective experience. For you to figure out which speakers sound best, you have to hear them yourself. Just because a speaker is the most expensive or highest rated, doesn't mean it's necessarily the right one for you.

Many AV technicians like DB Media Solutions have showrooms where you can test drive speakers before you buy them. Let us know what you’re looking for in your system and we’ll pick out a few options for you to check out.

Consider Where You'll Use Your Speakers

For one, large speakers in a smaller room can result in too much bass and muddled sound. Meanwhile, small ones will be unable to fill up larger rooms and result in weak, overworked systems