Why Showrooms Matter In A Digital World

On this episode of “SoundVision Tech Talks,” Mark, Eric, and Andrew sit down to discuss Why Showroom's Matter in a Digital World.

You can scroll specs. You can watch demo videos. You can read every five-star review online. But you can’t feel any of it through a screen.

From lighting that instantly shifts your mood, to shades that sculpt daylight instead of simply blocking it, to audio that doesn’t just sound good but resonates in your chest. There’s a sensory layer that digital browsing can’t replicate. 

We walk room-by-room through our Experience Center, breaking down the real-world decisions homeowners face every day. Two living room setups highlight practical considerations like TV height, brightness, and seating distance. Kitchen and bath vignettes demonstrate layered lighting for both task and nighttime ambiance. The theater reveals how a properly tuned soundstage transforms storytelling. Even the outdoor space shows how music and lighting extend the experience beyond four walls. 

And then we pull back the curtain. We discuss equipment racks to reveal the backbone of every great system: clean wiring, proper thermal planning, smart power management, and infrastructure designed for long-term performance and serviceability. 

Online tools absolutely have their place. Configurators and AR mockups help narrow choices. Reviews build confidence. You can’t judge a projector’s true contrast, a subwoofer’s impact, or the way a shade handles afternoon glare without stepping into a space that has these products deployed.

If you’re considering lighting control, motorized shades, whole-home audio, or a dedicated theater, this conversation explains why seeing, and feeling, it in person changes everything. Curious to feel the difference for yourself? Book a visit to our experience center and let your senses decide what belongs in your home.

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Transcript

From Tangent To Thesis

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Matter of fact.

SPEAKER_02 0:06

All right. So in a digital world that we live in today, let's discuss why showrooms or experience centers still matter.

SPEAKER_01 0:14

Dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun. I didn't know if the music was working, so I thought I would I'm sure you can't tell me. You put it in there, yeah. I did it. Why do showrooms matter? And today we have our design engineer Eric passing the weight.

SPEAKER_00 0:35

So not you. Yeah. I don't know what that was, but thank you for having me on.

SPEAKER_01 0:42

We we needed to have a uh oh my gosh, I just forgot. What's the show you go to every year at Christmas?

SPEAKER_00 0:47

Trans Siberian Orchestra.

SPEAKER_01 0:48

We need Trans Siberian Orchestra approval for Aaron. Yes, copyrights. With some fire shooting out of the background. By the way, we went, we Eric and I went a year ago. Eric invited me and I went with him. And I was very surprised. Uh it's really good. Uh very uh it's like very fast moving. But it is super loud. Got to be prepared for that. And it's warm because they literally like shoot fire and it gets hot in there. Oh wow.

SPEAKER_00 1:19

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:21

Which I was not expecting either.

SPEAKER_00 1:23

So we discussed that this year because the fire was bigger, and we were sitting, I would say we're not down in the main section, we're off to the side, but we're six to eight rows away from the stage, which seems far enough away, but that heat is intense. I can't imagine standing directly in front of that when those people are performing. Like I was like, wow.

The Case For Experience Centers

SPEAKER_01 1:48

Now, now let me just tell you, Andrew, you think this is a tangent. You're like, we got to get to the subject, but wait till you see how I just weaved this little segue in. Okay. We're gonna talk about the showroom in a digital world. You can watch all the Trans-Siberian concerts online, and you'll experience none of the two things that I just said.

SPEAKER_02 2:12

Ah, what a good point. That was a great segue.

SPEAKER_01 2:14

Don't I should get a drop for that? Something. Give me something. Ah, look at that. Yeah. Eric's wishing he could weave that in that smoothly. But uh so we have invested in a showroom here. We call it an experience center. And we do that because we want customers to experience what it is that we're gonna provide in their homes. The number one word that I used when we were designing this, and I had nothing to do with the design, very little. Zach Simpson did most of it. Uh, was possibilities. I wanted to walk in, I wanted to I wanted customers to be able to imagine possibilities in their home, to experience things that you can't see in a digital world. Fair?

unknown 3:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:04

So we said before we got on this we were going to be a little bit more like conversational, and I'm the only one conversing.

SPEAKER_00 3:11

Well, I think automation you're making points, you're not conversating.

SPEAKER_01 3:15

Conversating. Okay, so how do I conversate?

SPEAKER_00 3:19

So we can have a conversation on why a showroom matters. So you're you're talking about um the possibilities, and yes, I can go on YouTube, I can go on Instagram, I can go on whatever, and I can search whatever I want and I can see it. Yes, but I'm not going to experience it, hence why we call it an experience center. Um, myself, I will tell you, I'm a Gen Xer. I'm 50 years old, and I am very liar.

SPEAKER_01 3:46

Did you turn you turn 50 this year?

SPEAKER_00 3:49

You turned 50? Yeah. Did we know that? You guys were out at CDI and you forgot all about it. No one wished me a happy birthday. It's just like, you know, whatever. I'm I'm an important part of this company, but it's cool. It's cool. Or maybe we did it intentionally. Yes, because I hate celebration.

SPEAKER_02 4:03

Yes, because you oh Eric requests that there is no singing of happy birthday on his birthday.

SPEAKER_00 4:09

And it drives Mark insane. It does.

SPEAKER_01 4:11

So we we literally uh for our team, we we um uh we recognize uh birthdays and anniversaries, which are very important, especially in a monumental one like 50, which means that Eric is old. And let me tell you, if you saw him, you'd go, oh yeah, yeah, he's 50.

SPEAKER_00 4:28

So everything's drooping, falling apart, just yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:32

Back to the showrooms.

SPEAKER_00 4:34

So um, me being 50 years old and a Gen Xer, like I am very tactile, I'm very hands-on, I'm very visual. There are so many times where somebody tries to explain something to me, and I'm like, I I don't, I have no idea what you're saying right now. Can you give me a diagram? Somebody will literally start writing it, and I'll be like, boom, got it. Like my brain just puts the pieces together because I can see it. So, yes, I can go. Um I'm sorry, I'm gonna sidetrack for one second here.

SPEAKER_01 5:04

Sidebar.

SPEAKER_00 5:04

Yeah, sidebar. Walk into Best Buy. There's 75 TVs on the wall.

SPEAKER_01 5:09

Yeah, that's a good one.

SPEAKER_00 5:09

They're all at maximum brightness and they all look exactly the same, let's be honest. Yeah. So, how can you actually go in and tell what the TV's gonna be like in your space when there's 75 TV?

SPEAKER_01 5:22

That's a really good idea, a really good example of a difference where you can go and experience something that you couldn't go on to best buy.com. Because you can go on their on their dot com and you can you can see all the specs and you can see the prices and whatever. But you can't actually look at it it's any one TV by itself or next to a bunch of others. Now, you're right, they turn them all up to maximum brightness, and we can get that's a whole nother thing for marketing. But uh we're this is totally different. When you come in here, this is literally designed like a home with various things from lighting to shading to audio video. We we have a fair amount of uh displays in here, projectors and different sized TVs and all that kind of stuff, but they're in an environment and a space that you can say, wow, but yeah, this is how I would like it in my home. And so that's the difference. I'd throw this out. I'm gonna be devil's advocate the other way. And I'm gonna talk about the car industry. Okay. So for the forever, you've gone to car dealership, and over the last, let's call it five years, maybe it's a little more, but that's close enough. You've had things like Carvana, uh, you know, certainly Autotrader and Cars.com and that sort of thing. But then you also have um these configurators that every car manufacturer has on their website. And I would say that Tesla might be the number one because you can literally order the car. I mean, I guess you can do that with anybody. So it probably shouldn't single them, but you can literally order the car and you never go see it at all. What is that? I mean, how does that fall into this from an experience?

SPEAKER_02 7:02

Yeah, I think so. You know, getting behind the wheel is like uh a theater here, for example. You can I can film this, post it on social media, you can watch the movie, hear all the sounds, but when you're sitting right there in the middle of that couch, we've curated the sound so it moves around the room, it moves with the movie with the different scenes. I mean, that's a great example.

SPEAKER_00 7:26

I'm gonna give you a good example to go back to the car.

SPEAKER_01 7:28

So basically, you're saying ours weren't good.

unknown 7:30

All right.

Best Buy Walls And Real Rooms

SPEAKER_00 7:32

I'm actually gonna go jump off your car example um because my last two vehicles I have purchased through Carvana. Not a sponsor. Oh, the new the new Jeep? Yep. Oh, cool. But I can tell you not a sponsor. I can tell you phenomenal. I went in to get my car the first time, so I went in, signed the paperwork. It was less than an hour. First of all, if you go to an actual dealership, and Andrew can attest to this, it's like the ER. It's minimum. It's like the ER. Minimum four hours. Yeah, minimum four hours you're gonna be there. Minimum.

SPEAKER_01 8:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:07

You know, I was minimum or maximum?

SPEAKER_01 8:10

Minimum.

SPEAKER_00 8:12

But to to the point that we're trying to make, the first car I bought was a Toyota Tacoma. I've always wanted one. I love the way they look. Uh, and also specifically, I needed it to fit in my garage. So it's more of a mid-sized truck, and I measured it and it fit in my garage within three inches. But hey, it meets the requirements.

SPEAKER_01 8:30

Sure, it meets the requirements.

SPEAKER_00 8:31

However, I never went and saw it, never got into it. So, and I purchased it basically sight unseen. Once I got it, got into it, I immediately was like, I'm too tall for this vehicle. And so that's problematic for me because I didn't go and test drive it. I was just like, oh, it's a cool looking vehicle, and I've always wanted one, so I'm gonna buy it because that's the truck I want. Ended up being a little bit of a problem for me because you know, if you're tall, which I am, you have to scrunch in the seat and it just gonna cause back problems.

SPEAKER_01 8:59

So we're we're a bit off off topic, but to bring it back, when you come into the showroom, when you come in and you experience what's in here, um, and we just did a uh piece on lighting design and lighting control in the C that podcast. Plug. Uh uh, but there's a feeling that you can't get that feeling when you're online in in the digital world. And I, you know, there's there are things in our world now where uh they're augmented reality, uh, where people are doing designs to that, which is really cool. And yeah, maybe in that instance you can get some of this feeling. But when when you see customers come in here and we get to see it pretty regularly, and they walk in and almost immediately like they think they're coming in to you know sit down and go for like a wine, a proposal or something. And they walk in and and immediately they're disarmed, like you could see them just whoa, yeah, the shoulders lower, their eyes widened.

SPEAKER_00 10:01

Wow. Well, I can tell you uh what that is for me. Um, our showroom, not to throw shade on other people, but lots of times showrooms are the as flashy as they can be, and they have product that most people don't buy, but it's like, look at this cool product. It's you know, a$55,000 pair of speakers. Yeah, that's super cool and they sound amazing. But that's careful.

SPEAKER_01 10:24

We have two pairs of those in here.

SPEAKER_00 10:25

I was gonna get to that. You know, when you walk into our showroom, you're immediately split into two rooms. The right is a living room, it is a standard average, everyday living room. It's got a fireplace, it's got a uh TV above the fire.

SPEAKER_01 10:40

If you live in Europe, it's standard and average.

Car Buying And Configurators

SPEAKER_00 10:43

I think it's standard and average for here. Like, what's really yeah, okay. We're not talking about like the big people who have you know seven million dollar homes that have these giant great rooms. This is a normal living room. Normal living room for the normies out there like me. But so you walk in there and it's immediately it's not you're not smacked in the face with flashing lights, you're not smacked in the face with 14 rows of speakers on the wall, like you can listen to them all. It's it's literally a space in your home. So you can instantly envision what it's gonna look like in your home.

SPEAKER_01 11:17

Yes, that's true. No, yes, that's purposeful, yes.

SPEAKER_00 11:20

Yes, to Mark's point, yes, further into our showroom, we do have a room that has two different pairs of really incredible and really expensive speakers, and they are amazing, but that's for like one percent of the clientele. And yes, we will allow you to listen to those, but that's not our bread and butter, and that's not what we want you to feel. We want you to walk through the door and go, Oh, I can imagine this in my home because I'm kind of looking at my home right now.

SPEAKER_01 11:50

We've we've curated each space so that you can experience, I keep using that word, the possibilities in that space. That's the bathroom, that's a little mini kitchen that we have, but it shows different types of lighting, whether you're cooking, whether it's relaxed, whether there's a pathway to your bedroom. Uh that's we have uh actually two living rooms, really, when you come in and you can see how shades control natural light and and do that. We've got a conference room that could be a huddle space or an office space or literally a conference room in somebody's office at wet work, uh, because we definitely do commercial stuff. We've got a theater, we've got this podcast studio, we've got uh a mini conference room. Like we have a lot of spaces here that account for pretty much every every area. Oh, I didn't mention outdoors, but we've got that too. Because when you go outside, we've got to curate both light and audio so that you can experience what that would be like on a patio, a lanai, a pool, like anything. Uh so yeah, we again it's just that it's that feeling. You can find well, actually, you can't find all of this product on the internet. You can find some of it. You could certainly find something that's representative of it, but in a lot of cases you can't find it. And to see it actually deployed, to see it actually put in in not only working, but how did they install it? How does this look? Uh, one last thing, and then I'm I'm probably talked out. But uh, we also have the equipment racks in here, so you can see how we're gonna put together the systems front and back, so you can see how the wiring's gonna be too, because we take extreme pride in in that uh and making sure that the systems are designed uh for all kinds of things like thermal and power and service and all kinds of stuff.

When Online Falls Short

SPEAKER_00 13:48

Yeah. Uh essentially we are not going for shock and awe. We are going for relatable. Yes, you know, we want you to understand what you're getting into. And again, it's that whole visual element and it's the feeling of it. Again, you can look at a subwoofer online, but you can't feel what that subwoofer sounds like. Right. And you do truly feel what a subwoofer sounds like.

SPEAKER_01 14:12

Yeah, yes, you do. Whether you want to or not.

SPEAKER_02 14:18

Did we miss anything, Andrew? No, I think we covered it high level. I think uh just to end it, with all that said, to any of our listeners, come experience it and see what we're talking about. Come visit our experience center and really understand how to how it feels. I'll do that later.