Comments on: 49 speakers, $30,000

Couple floods 7,500-square-foot home with sound

[techmonkey]

Better way to spend money

Its so nice to know that people have so much money lying around that they can just freely blow it on utter nonsense like 49 speakers. I mean, why 49? Why not 50? And to think, if they went with 40 speakers maybe they wouldnt have had to use some lower end Sonance speakers...

With all those wires running around I hope there is a fire department close by and their homeowner's insurance is up-to-date.

By the way, water (steam shower) and electricity dont mix...but I guess the midwest hasnt learned that yet...

[adithya60564]

Does it matter?

does it really matter? let them spend their money. i don't think it should be
anyone's concern. the fact that they installed 49 speakers is interesting, but i
don't think its really necessary to get worked up over it.

[usadingo]

Learn before posting

Speakers use low-voltage wiring, so it's really not a fire risk. They make water/steam proof speakers, so having them in the bathroom isn't a big deal. And why 49 and not 50? Most rooms have two speakers in each room while surround sound systems usually have either five or seven. There are 6.1 setups, I know - but most do five if they're using their zone B on their receivers to power the rest of the house. As a result, when you add all the speakers, you'll get an odd number.
As for this article, it's not a "49 speaker surround sound." It's a house with 49 speakers in it, and it's not that rare. I sell and install this stuff for a living, and we've done a house that had a $130,000 bill from us when we were done, and that was an excellent deal. (To be fair, his house was built for $7 million.)

[beomatthew]

No Imagination

Why an installation like this is worthy of headlines in beyond me. What floors me is not the cost, but the way the money was used. Sure it's novel that every room has sound, but this is the standard US consumer choosing quantity over quality.

I'm sure that some would argue that 30k is an absurd amount to spend, and some would argue that it's a pittance for today's custom installation market, but it's a challenge that I face every day in selling Bang & Olufsen that people don't understand the investment they're making even when they are spending a lot of money.

You can look at the room and see the lack of imagination with which these people live. There's no personality to the architecture, like every other McMansion across the US, and there's no personality in the decor, as if it all came out of the same catalog!

What kills me as an A/V salesman, and I think that many who sell higher end gear of any brand would agree, that people don't yearn for the real performance stuff anymore. To use a car analogy, I drive a Honda, but I dream of driving an Aston Martin. It seems that most people drive Hondas and dream of driving other nearly identical Hondas! Not that there's anything wrong with a Honda, I'm just saying that when you've got a 30k budget, is Sonance in every room really the most gusto you're capable of?

[bigwormonmine]

$30,000 isn't that much...

in the grand scheme of things, this is not that much to spend on what you like if it is your dream house and you are going to be there for 10+ years. I seriously considered a similar project with each b&w in ceiling costing $600. But I decided against it because I knew that was not going to be our final home. I decided on a sonos system instead.