A few years ago, I was meeting with a client to assess their audiovisual needs. They were preparing to redesign and furnish a corporate boardroom and wanted a suitable suite of technology to stock it with.
As we got started, I began working through my list of questions to define what AV functionality the client needed for the project, as well as any expectations they might have. At one point the owner’s representative (not a member of the technology team) stated that they expected a high quality system including “microphones, speakers, and surround sound”.
Surround sound? This was a corporate boardroom, not a home theater, so I followed up by asking what video content they would be viewing in the room. “None,” they replied. “We mostly just use PowerPoint presentations.” Do you used an audio on those presentations? “Nope.”
Eventually we deduced that their leadership didn’t really want or need surround sound after all. The representative was simply equating the descriptor SURROUND SOUND with high quality audio, and therefore a high quality AV system.
Of course, in reality surround sound is a specific processing type applied to certain audio tracks to make movies, TV, or music feel more real. Using that same processing on a speaking voice piped through a standard sound system often reduces the intelligibility of the system, and there is a high cost to the specialized systems and components used for surround sound that in this case would never be needed.
It’s a good example of a case where a client’s assumptions were a few degrees off, and it took an expert opinion and some discussion to properly identify the real needs at work and propose the correct solution. We were able to discover exactly what the client really needed well before the systems were designed and installed, saving money and guaranteeing a great result in terms of their overall boardroom IT design.
At Hamilton AV, we approach projects without making assumptions so we can hone in on the right information from the beginning of the project, offering the right conference room, classroom, or boardroom AV solutions without wasted cost or missing or extraneous features. Contact us today at 616-836-1776 or tim@hamiltonavdesign.com to learn more.