Outdoor AV isn’t just for summer… Amy Stoneham looks at how this investment in audio makes the garden the place to be all year round.
Most of Europe is now enjoying the last of the summer days before the winter months hit, unless you live somewhere like the UK where temperatures plummeted from high 30s to 10-degrees within what felt like a week! But even so, more and more homeowners are realising the benefits of having outdoor AV in their properties to enjoy, no matter where they live. And although the autumn is now here, outdoor audio and video is still useful all year round.
Since the global pandemic, garden parties and entertaining outdoors has become a frequent, and often preferred, occurrence. With the winter months looming, covid and flu numbers are on the rise, meaning that people are preferring to socialise outdoors to lower their risk of spreading or catching illnesses.
Many popular sporting activities also draw people to entertain outside. This year, the FIFA World Cup is being held from November until December and many people are still set on utilising their outdoor AV set ups to watch the games with family and friends.
For this property in Essex, outdoor audio covering the three-acre garden was very important, although it was part of a whole-home integration solution. Integrator, Element M@E Contracting, took over this project, which initially began around five to seven years ago with another installer. Since then, it has grown into one of the biggest projects Elements has ever undertaken.
The substantial period property has been refurbished into a modern family home, complete with a new Control4 system which includes audio, TV, lighting and security control throughout the house. However, when Elements took the job on, the biggest challenge was to integrate the audio throughout the three-acre garden and its different zones.
James Hollis, integrated systems business manager at Elements says: “The client and his family spend a lot of time in the grounds and wanted music to enhance their experience and enjoyment of outdoor living for a variety of situations, be that an intimate chat on the patio, a family dinner, a pool party or a thoughtful meander around the grounds, or all these things at once. They wanted it to be ready to go whenever they were. To deliver that, we partnered with Snap One to design a customised solution that would be easy to operate, provide a high-quality sound for different applications and be scalable for additional zones in the future.”
The vast outdoor space was divided into five zones – two terrace gardens, a swimming pool area, a temple walkway and a Japanese Koi Garden island set on a lake. “From memory, I think we installed 36 speakers and five subwoofers across the five audio zones in the garden,” adds Hollis.
The outdoor audio set up was planned in partnership with Snap One. Elements had full CAD files of each zone and came up with the acoustic recommendations. Because the garden is unwalled, the number of speakers and subwoofers used had to be high to cover a wide audio distribution across the vast outdoor space. The integrator also wired for more subwoofers in case they are ever needed.
“We got to the first speaker at 80 metres of speaker cables because of how it was ducted and how we had to get to it.”
During the planning process, Elements also worked closely with the in-house gardening team who helped to design flower beds and topiary for speaker and subwoofer placement to minimise their visibility.
Episode speakers from Snap One were chosen for the outdoor audio. These included individual satellite speakers, an all-in-one landscape terrain kit, surface mount speakers, omni-directional speakers, rock speakers, subwoofers and soundbars. Constructed with all-weather components, Episode products can handle the elements (from -28 to 85-degrees Celsius) and still deliver crisp and natural sound. They are also shaped and coloured to blend seamlessly into outdoor environments.
Outdoor installation complete, it features 26 Episode Landscape Satellites and two Episode Landscape 360-degree speakers, as well as five Episode Landscape Subwoofers to enrich the bass. In the pool area, which doubles as a night-time entertaining / party space, Elements installed a 10.2 system to deliver plenty of field volume.
In the two patio areas and temple walkway, four Episode Landscape Satellite speakers are carefully positioned and cleverly concealed by foliage with Episode Landscape 10” subwoofers partially submerged in a 4.1 configuration. Four additional Episode Landscape Satellite speakers were installed in beds along the far edge of the garden to ensure a consistent blanket of sound. Episode Landscape Series 360-degree speakers are also installed on the island to deliver a wide dispersion and a uniform coverage without ‘hot spots’.
“The only challenge we really came across was trying to get around the terraces because we were worried about cable length, run and voltage drop,” explains Hollis. “We got to the first speaker at 80 metres of speaker cables because of how it was ducted and how we had to get to it.”
Because the space is so vast, there was a worry that the audio might have a slight delay from area to area, as Hollis points out: “We had a slight worry about the timings within the system between different zones because a couple of them are on different cabinet locations. We’ve got three cabinet locations out in the gardens with racks and matrices. Thankfully, within the Control4 ecosystem, it’s all time aligned and you don’t notice going from one zone on one cabinet to another zone on a different cabinet.
“We had warned the client that there could potentially be a little delay issue, but we were hopeful that within the software, we might be able to correct it. We weren’t sure how well we could correct it as we’ve never dealt with a project of that size. But luckily it just worked and it all links together seamlessly.”
Linked together through the Control4 system, which is also running the house, the outdoor systems work seamlessly with the interior. The project also involved a full renovation of the house and whole-home integration. The property now features the latest Ruckus R650s with 22 Wi-Fi points throughout. There are also around 25 zones of audio inside the house across two Triad Audio Matrix Switches, as well as about 15 touchscreens for control throughout the home.
Indoor entertainment is important to the client, so as well as the outdoor audio, the homeowner also has a full home cinema set up in a 7.1.4 combination with a Marantz AVR and Origin Acoustics speakers, a Sony projector, and a Screen Innovations projector screen.
The home also has a full Lutron lighting system installed with around 280 circuits of lighting throughout the project.
“We’ve got full remote access with OvrC so that we can monitor and maintain everything,” adds Hollis. “We use APC UPS’s so we get email alerts before the generator starts up so we have that knowledge for power cuts, which is more frequent than we would have hoped in this rural area of Essex. The main house manager also has access to everything and has a laptop with all the backed up files just in case we are ever unreachable for any reason.”
Tech Spec
Araknis 210 16 Port Network Switches
Control4 EA-3 Controllers
Control4 Touchscreens
Dahua NVR Cameras
Eclipse Speakers
Episode 70/8ohm 500x2 Amplifiers
Episode 500W Digital Subwoofer Amplifier
Episode Landscape 360° Speakers
Episode Landscape 6” Satellite Subwoofers
Episode Landscape 10” Subwoofers
Episode Landscape 12” Subwoofers
Future Automation TV Lifts
Lutron Lighting
Marantz AVR
Origin Acoustics Speakers
Pakedge MS-4424 MS Series L3 Managed Gigabit Switches
Ruckus R650 Indoor Access Points
Screen Innovations Projector Screen
Sony Projector
Strong Wall Mount 12u Rack
Strong Wall Mount 16u Racks
Triad AMS8v2 Audio Matrix Switches
Triad One Zone Amplifier