Dancing by the pool

One of the paradoxes about custom installations is that the more cleverly they are done, the less there is to see. After all, the magic of a really good installation is the way all the equipment melts away leaving the interior design to speak for itself.

Amina Invisible Loudspeakers are not only, as the name suggests, totally unobtrusive in stylish interiors, they are also practical in wet areas such as kitchens, bathrooms and pools. Once plastered over and sealed with paint, the humidity will not affect the product or its performance.

Take for example this fantastic swimming pool. This might look like Corsica or California but this stunning property is just outside of Cambridge in the East of England.

The pool area is equipped with the very latest top notch AV equipment, all very discrete, including five Amina AIWX 80W loudspeakers. These, together with a subwoofer provide a full 5.1 channel surround sound cinema experience for the main pool area. Plastered over with a 1.5- 2mm skim of industry standard multi-finish plaster, these speakers can deliver an incredible efficiency of 87dB at 1W/1m which means at full power they will create over 105dB! Creating sound via tiny vibrations that are invisible to the human eye, the operation of these speakers is analogous to how a musical instrument, such as a violin or a piano, propagates sound. The use of this vibrational technology, rather than the pistonic action of conventional loudspeakers, means that the units can be plastered over and so disappear from view completely. Additionally the loudspeakers effectively have a hemispherical dispersion pattern meaning that the loudness is pretty much consistent in the entire space and you hear all five speakers, i.e. great cinema surround sound, wherever you are in this luxurious development.

The other challenge for wet areas is that they contain a lot of acoustically reflective surfaces such as hard ceramic floors, walls, ceilings, windows and even the water itself. The energy wave produced by this technology is not directional and far more random in nature than with conventional speakers. Sound reflected from surfaces interacts in a more positive manner. The result, especially with modest volume levels, will be intelligible crystal clear audio reproduction at an even level across the whole space. Finally, and most incredibly, two Amina AIW5X’s are set below the water level, behind the tiles, fully out of the wet area, enabling the listening experience to continue whilst swimming! Whilst the creation of a secure dry home for these speakers was not trivial, the customer was delighted with the result and glad he had taken the risk.