Unseen-Audio  custom built by Sound Counsel

Here is the latest article written about Sound Counsel by Trevor Volkman

I recently had the opportunity to demo two different home theaters built by Jeff Cook at Sound Counsel. I was very intrigued by the "speakerless" technology; as I like to call it. So I had to hear it for myself. 

Here are my thoughts on these two rooms:

First room: Dedicated home theater room.

This was by far one of the cleanest (if not the cleanest) home theater setups I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot. The first thing that initially caught my attention was the complete absence of any sound treatment hanging on the walls: no absorption panels, no diffusers, not a single thing. Normally this is a no-no as any speakers would sound horrible and echoey in such a room, especially a room with a 13 channel Atmos setup. I HAD to investigate to see what speaker sounded good in such a room, and this is where the "speakerless" comes into play because there are absolutely ZERO speakers. There isn't a single speaker in view (with the exception of a subwoofer) because they are inside/behind the drywall. That's how this technology works. Sound Counsel uses technology that allows the sheetrock to actually become the speaker. The backside of your drywall (inside your walls) is vibrating your drywall to produce the resonances that cause the sound to come out of them, so in essence, your drywall is the speaker. It's an amazing technology and hard to wrap your head around until you hear it in person. So naturally, I had to hear this technology in action and witness for myself that this system really could sound good without any room treatments.

The first disc we popped in was the Dolby Atmos introduction Blu-ray because it does an excellent job of using all the speaker channels in an Atmos setup, especially the height channels in the ceiling. The thunderstorm scene sounded incredible. It sounded as if rain was pouring down on the ceiling. Checkmark! It passed my first test of how well the system would handle separating the sounds into each speaker, but that's a relatively simple task to just reproduce sound so we had to up the ante a little bit to really see how well this system could do with vocals.

For the second demo we popped in "The Greatest Showman" because it has a lot of varying sounds going on in most of the musical scenes. I wanted to hear how this system would sound with all of the clapping, stomping, dancing and of course the vocals. I was really curious how clear the vocals would sound amidst all that. We first played the opening scene where Hugh Jackman sings "The Greatest Show" intermixed with lots of stomping and clapping.  I really loved this scene!  I felt as if I were sitting there in the arena amongst the stomping and clapping because I could hear it coming from all around me. I could actually feel the vibrations in my chest from the subwoofers in the room, and best of all I could still hear Jackman's voice crystal clear and pick out every word. It has a real 3D feel to the movie - as if you're in it. The next scene we had to play, of course, was when the opera singer Jenny Lind sang the very emotional song "Never enough." This song sounded amazing with the technology in this room! I forgot that I was even sitting in a theater room. It felt as if I was in the front row of the opera house with Jenny singing right to me. Once again the sound was very open and airy, it didn't sound like it was coming from a speaker in the corner or under the screen. In fact, if you closed your eyes during any given scene we played and tried to point from the speaker where the sound was coming from you wouldn't be able to because it was that "3D" of a sound.  It's very hard to describe, you'll just have to experience it for yourself because it's unlike any other speaker system out there. I could go on and on about the sound and all the different movies and music we played but in the end, it passed the"vocals" test with flying colors. It's hard to believe unless you hear it for yourself.

I need to describe the aesthetics of the room. I mentioned I was initially confused at the lack of sound treatment in the room, then how I was blown away by the sound of the system so I knew I had to look over the room more thoroughly once the lights were on. The first thing I noticed was how there was no screen. That's right, the projector was projecting right onto a super smooth wall with a special type of paint on it to make the image pop! It looked simply stunning! Deep blacks, very vibrant and punchy colors, and once again with no screen it added to the cleanliness of the room.

Here is the take-away:  you have a dedicated theater room, remove any sound panels from the walls, remove any and all speakers (except any subwoofers you want), remove the screen and what do you get?... One of the cleanest, sleekest looking theater rooms I have ever seen! Best of all, this type of room should be one of the best bang for the buck systems you can have. While it won't outperform a $100,000 system it will get very, very close to it; for a fraction of the cost!

The second room I demoed was in a living room, and in my opinion, this is the best setup for such a system. For any of my guy friends out there that have tried to set up a media room in your living room you already know your wife essentially gives you two options: first, you get the tv speakers for your "surround" sound (which isn't much of an option in a large open room) or second, if she feels nice she'll let you get one of those soundbars that's "Atmos" enabled and bounces the sound of the ceiling and walls (we all know that is just a gimmick).

That's where these speakers really shine because for not much more than some of the soundbars out there you can have a full 7 channel surround system that's invisible to the eyes and has a "wife approval factor" of 10 out of 10. It's the only system I've ever seen that could receive such a score because there are literally no speakers or wires seen anywhere and still blows any soundbar and tv speaker out of the water. So it's a win, win, win situation.

So do yourself a favor and give Jeff a call or visit them at www.getsoundcounsel.com. By the way, he's a really fun guy to talk to and he's SUPER passionate about superb sound and home theater, so he'll be more than happy to get you set up with a super sleek, clean, and speakerless theater system.