Many families these days boast about having home theater systems. Usually, these entail a high-definition TV and a soundbar or surround sound speakers. But what if you could truly recreate the experience you get in a commercial theater? DB Media Solutions works with you to create a custom theater in your Dallas, Texas home that will let you escape into your favorite movies. For that to happen, we urge you to upgrade the following components:

SEE MORE: 4 Reasons to Invest in a Professional Home Theater System

Say Goodbye to Your HD TV

If you want high-quality larger-than-life images, a traditional HD TV is not going to cut it. First of all, it's time to embrace 4K Ultra HD, which has four times the resolution of 1080p (HD). For an authentic theater experience, we also encourage you to go with a screen-and-projector combination. Not only does it help to set the scene, but it is also easier to get larger displays if you opt for a screen rather than television. If you're tight for space, you can invest in retractable screens that disappear into a niche in the ceiling. 

Embrace the Dolby Atmos Experience

A 5.1 surround sound setup or even a quality soundbar is a huge upgrade from relying on TV speakers. But if you want a home theater system designed to impress, you should upgrade to Dolby Atmos. This new technology separates sound into unique objects, rather than relegating them to a designated channel. This way your audio moves freely throughout the room to create a more realistic experience. We help you find manufacturers that offer this technology and design the right speaker layout to optimize your new equipment.

Upgrade Your Media Library

What good is a great home theater setup if you have nothing to play on it? People often focus their investment on expensive televisions and speakers and forget about the rest. Not only do we help you figure out what source components are best for you (streaming services like Netflix, media libraries, Blu-Ray players, etc.), but we also make it easy to manage them. From a universal remote, touchpad, or tablet it's easy to alternate from one to the other, so you don't waste time trying to find what you want.

Of all the things interior designers take into account when working on your Westlake, Texas home, lighting is often one of the most critical components. It may be easy to focus on wall colors, artwork and furnishings, but professionals know lighting is the glue that brings it all together. Make their job easier with a lighting control system that helps you find the perfect setting for all your lights while reducing unsightly clutter on the walls. 

SEE MORE: 5 Ways to Manage Your Lights With Smart Control

Reduce Wall Acne With Centralized Control

Very few people can argue with the practical benefits of having centralized control of all your lights. From a touchpad, tablet or smartphone you can access any fixture in your home. But there are a lot of stylistic benefits to centralized control as well.

Ever get inspiration for your interior design by browsing fashion magazines? You’ll notice there are never switches or outlets on the walls. While you can’t eliminate outlets without some help from Photoshop, you can certainly do so with your switches. Centralize control to a stylish touchpad flush-mounted on the wall. Whether you’re going for a modern look or a more rustic feeling, you can always do away with some of the wall clutter.

Highlight Your Home’s Best Features

With intuitive control, you can also play around with your lighting arrangements. Have overhead lights for routine activities and focused LED fixtures to highlight works of art, furniture, or architectural features. You can adjust what you want to showcase at the touch of a button.

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

When it comes to a smart technology, overwhelmingly the first thing that most consumers are interested in is home security. In a recent study by Icontrol, ninety percent of users said personal and family security was one of the main reasons they used their system. If you want to embrace the smart security movement in your Westlake, Texas home, you need to make sure your system offers these four features:

SEE MORE: How Does Automation Enhance Your Lifestyle?

Smart Locks

What’s the simplest thing you can do to protect your home? It all begins with locking your doors. So it should come as no surprise that smart locks are one of the first features adopted by smart home users. There are a variety of ways you can ‘smarten up’ your locks. Opening your doors through an app, creating key cards or using unique access codes.

Instead of having to leave a key under the mat, simply give guests or workers an access code. Each code is unique to the person using it, so from a touchpad or smartphone you can monitor who is coming in and out at all times. Want to revoke a person's access? Just erase their code from the system.

Surveillance System

There are two key components to a good surveillance system: having the right cameras and the right monitoring solution. We partner with IC Realtime for the best cameras in the industry. From its trademark Allie that covers 360 degrees (perfect for placing at the center of a room) to more traditional bullet cameras for outdoor use, IC Realtime has options for any environment. We let you know which cameras would work best and where to install them.