Feature Story
WIRED VS. WIRELESS AUDIO SYSTEMS
Home audio systems have frequently represented one of those lines in the sand for couples as men generally want to hold onto the massive systems that got them through their youth while women treat it as something that should be heard and not seen.
As technology has improved, however, there has been a gradual marriage of the two schools of thought so that current audio systems can produce big, loud, incredible sound without gobbling up a quarter of the living room.
“Little speakers and architectural speakers are real popular because there has been a morphing,” said Cecil Ward of Two Guys & Some Wire. “I walk into somebody’s house and the husband will say, ‘I want big sound,’ and the wife will say, ‘But, I don’t want to see it.’”
Several years ago, however, Bose changed the way small, home speakers were built.
“In trying to get a compromise, Bose came up with the Acoustimass system and it revolutionized audio,” he said. “They took a typical setup and chopped the speaker up.”
The idea is that the higher-range tweeter and mid-range audio are more directional and can be placed in smaller, discrete speakers, while the low-range bass housed in the larger subwoofer can be placed essentially out of sight and still resonate well.
It is this technology that makes creating a surround sound home theater such an easy thing to do, Ward said.
Surround sounds now start with a directional and versatile sound bar and amplifier that sits below or above the speaker.
“You have sound bars that you can hook up to your TV and it plays the TV sound through it and also plays music from the Internet through it, as well,” he said. “It’s kind of like a little bridge piece. Once you have a sound bar, you can add a subwoofer and two speakers wirelessly to give you true 5.1 surround sound that is a basic surround sound system.”
This creates the theater-like effect of having the audio coming at the listener from all directions.
For some listeners, however, that isn’t enough.
By utilizing technology created through Heos, a wireless music system that allows the user to control all their music effortlessly from anywhere in your home, it has become possible to create big sound fairly easily.
“Now sometimes people want better speakers and more elaborate systems,” he said. “With another bridge system, both the Mozart and Denon receivers have Heos built right in them. Now you can pick from a $500 receiver that has Heos built into it right on up to $8,000 stuff, then you can pick the appropriate speakers for that system.”
The beauty of this is additional speakers can be placed into other rooms and still be connected remotely via wireless technology, allowing the user to play the same audio in each room or even program it so each room can have its own audio.
Of course, the wireless route requires strong internet to push the apps through the other speakers, which is why William Pearcy of Albuquerque Sound and Vac prefers the old-school methods.
“The whole industry is in a transition right now,” he said. “Forever and ever, wired was what you wanted. Now with all the new wireless technology, it’s bringing with it a lot of headaches.”
With the former tech-savvy youngsters who have grown up, finished college and stepping into their careers, they’re making an impact on the industry.
“Younger people are coming into money now,” Pearcy said. “They’ve got careers now. They’re getting paychecks. Younger people are techier. Everybody’s face is in their phone 20 hours a day. I get clients now, they’re smarter than me. They say, ‘I was looking on the Internet…’ And my eyes roll back in my head as soon as I hear it. So everybody is getting seduced by all this wireless technology. There is a lot of that happening.”
While wireless can be convenient and is certainly on the cutting edge of technology, it still has its drawbacks, he said.
“Quite frankly, I don’t have a license to do wireless. I have a license to wire stuff,” Pearcy said. “We can do all this wireless stuff, but you don’t need me. What’s happening now is we just wifi everything. But do you like that little circle circling around and buffering and loading stuff? Well no. That’s what you get when you work through all this wireless stuff. We try to explain to them, running a wire; anything with a wire is going to be at least twice as fast as wireless. But again, with a lot of people it doesn’t even matter the amount money. Wireless is the new sexy thing. That’s the latest and greatest stuff.”
Of course wireless is far more efficient when strung inside a home as its being constructed, Pearcy admits. Trying to retrofit a house for wires is a costly and difficult proposition.
That’s what makes the wireless revolution perfectly suited to New Mexico, Ward said.
“The wireless has been a huge bonus for us here in New Mexico,” he said. “You don’t know how many homes we walk into that have a flat roof and a concrete slab. You can’t pull wires without tearing up the whole house. Now I can interconnect someone’s house with audio for them without tearing anything up.”