Home cinema, multi-room, connected speakers… there’s no shortage of choices to equip your home with a sound system worthy of the name! The most important thing is to identify what your desires are in this area, and we are here to help you.
Having a good home sound system is life-changing! But for quality equipment, you have to pay the price! Moreover, wanting to install a high-performance audio system at home is certainly a good starting point, but you still have to define precisely what kind of system you want to invest in. This practical guide presents four types of audio systems to help you decide which one, or which ones, are best suited to your home and your habits.
1. Home Cinema
Do you like going to the cinema, do you have a large TV and are you a regular consumer of films and series in your living room? Investing in a Home Cinema is undoubtedly one of your most cherished dreams. Thanks to a complete kit, adapted to your living space, you can enjoy optimal sound immersion, worthy of a cinema. It’s dreamy, right?
Home Cinema 2.1
This version of Home Cinema may involve an amplifier combined with two stereo speakers and a subwoofer, but this is not always the case. If you have a small living room or your neighbors are sensitive to noise pollution, you can invest in a 2.1 sound bar to which a subwoofer can be connected. This allows you to enjoy enhanced stereo sound with reasonable volume. This choice is also suitable for small budgets.
Home Cinema 5.1
Here, the serious things begin. With a 5.1 Home Cinema, you benefit from five satellite speakers to be positioned on the sides of your television, in front of and under it, as well as on each side of your sofa.
Added to this is a subwoofer to be installed on the floor. Everything is connected to an amplifier , which is itself connected to your television and your various audiovisual equipment.
It is responsible for decoding the audio stream to transmit it to the various speakers. You should know that if DVDs and Blu-rays include 5.1 audio tracks, this is also the case with streaming services like Netflix or Disney+ , for example. Immersion just like in the cinema is yours!
If you have a very large living room and no immediate neighbours, you can even opt for a 7.1 Home Cinema , with an extra pair of Dolby Atmos speakers for the third dimension, or even 7.2 , 9.1 , 9.2 … all the craziness is allowed, or almost, and the price swells considerably with each addition of speakers. That said, we understand very well that it makes you dream!
2. Multi-room audio
Sound throughout the house
If you love listening to music in the best conditions and having a coherent sound environment in all rooms of your home , then investing in a multiroom system is probably a wise choice for you. As its name suggests, such an audio system is designed to broadcast audio files in all rooms that are equipped with a compatible speaker.
Sonos speakers , like the various Sonos Play , are the most popular in the world of multiroom, but they are not the only ones that can offer you this kind of experience. Brands like Samsung , Bang & Olufsen and Sony are also present in this market. The multiroom speakers connect to each other via Wi-Fi, and you can control them from a smartphone or tablet. You can listen to music from a streaming platform like Spotify or Deezer and in some cases there are possibilities to connect a turntable to your system, when one of the compatible speakers has an audio input. This is the case of the Sonos Five , for example.
Music everywhere, or not
The idea of a multiroom system is to equip different rooms in your home with a speaker whose power is adapted to its location. We can imagine two powerful models in stereo in the living room, a moderately powerful model in a bedroom or an office and a small model in a kitchen.
From the application that controls the installation, you broadcast the music in each room, to create an immersive atmosphere, or you can limit the sound to a particular space. It is also possible to listen to different music in the different rooms. It should be noted that the use of a Wi-Fi signal provides a much better quality of transmission than Bluetooth, and that any device connected to the same local network can control the sound within the system.
Primarily dedicated to demanding music lovers, the multiroom system can quickly become very expensive if you opt for high-end speakers, but the result is, most of the time, up to expectations as far as sound quality is concerned.
3. Connected speakers
The sound at the best compromise
A less expensive alternative to a multi-room system, but still versatile and adaptive, the connected speaker has been very fashionable in recent years. Here, by connected speaker, we mean models that connect to the Internet via Wi-Fi and have a voice assistant on board . Note that this may also be the case for certain references of multiroom loudspeakers.
Brands like Bose , Devialet , Denon , Sonos , Yamaha or even Harman Kardon offer connected speakers of very variable power. If this type of device can be intended to listen to music, this is not its only advantage. Thanks to the integrated voice assistant , you can control its many features with just your voice, without using a smartphone or computer.
Each room has its connected speaker
The massive development of the connected speaker market has prompted manufacturers to multiply the models, in order to adapt to the needs of users. There are therefore small speakers with moderate power to equip a kitchen or bedroom, larger speakers for an office or living room or even high-performance models, which sometimes include a subwoofer, for very high audio quality. By choosing to equip your home with speakers from the same brand , you can take advantage of certain multi-room functions. However, you should be well informed on the subject so as not to have any unpleasant surprises regarding your expectations.
If the connected speakers mainly use Wi-Fi to connect to the Internet, a smartphone is still necessary to perform the basic settings. Speaker models that integrate Google Assistant are compatible with all Android smartphones: just download the Google Home app from Google Play to make the settings. Google Home is also available from Apple (iOS). On the other hand, Apple’s HomePod speakers are not compatible with Android. You must have an iPhone or iPad to use them to their full potential.
4. And the Bluetooth speakers in all this?
Bluetooth speakers are a separate category. Strictly speaking, they cannot be considered a real “ audio system ”. They do not connect directly to the Internet, and always need to be close to a smartphone to stream the music that is transmitted by the device.
However, if you just want to listen to music from a smartphone or tablet at home, this is a choice that may be right for you. By choosing a wireless speaker, which runs on battery power, you can take it with you to any room, and even to the garden. There are a large number of models on the market today, at a wide variety of prices.
5. Home audio system: you are the master on board!
These broad categories of audio systems do not eclipse one another. You can completely associate a Home Cinema set with a multiroom system or with one or more connected speakers. It all depends on your desires, your needs, and of course your budget. Furthermore, don’t forget that all these systems can change over time, which is an undeniable asset for controlling your investment.