Specialty AV Retailer Launches Free Home Theater Design Tool for Consumers, Pros

The COVID-19 pandemic helped make free a new interactive 3D design tool from retailer Audio Advice that models an acoustically correct home theater system with locations for speakers, a TV or projector and seating. The specialty AV retailer and e-commerce site launched the tool for anyone on its website Thursday, CEO Scott Newnam told Consumer Electronics Daily in a Wednesday pre-brief.

The software is an extension of Audio Advice’s home theater installation business. The company is one of the largest home theater integrators in the country, with installations extending beyond its North Carolina home base to Chicago, Florida, Hawaii and the Caribbean. Newnam’s vision was to eliminate some travel to and from installations and have software do the mathematical calculations required for Dolby, DTS and THX systems via a simple user interface.

The Harvard Business School graduate has a patent pending on the trademarked Home Theater Designer, which guides users through specifying an entertainment space for acoustics and viewing. Users set room dimensions and then answer questions on number of seats, whether they’re using a TV or projector, desired screen size and aspect ratio, and number of speakers. An algorithm “runs the complex math in the background to render the room in real time,” Newnam said.

The pending patent covers real-time calculations in the software based on user inputs. Algorithms run the math to be sure specifications comply with THX, Dolby, SMPTE and other industry standards, Newnam said. The unique data structures that are the outputs of the calculations fall under the patent, said Newnam. During a Zoom presentation, he demonstrated how variables such as moving the position of a row of seats would result in a speaker blocking the view of the screen: “It knows where every object is in a room and how they relate to each other.”

Professional theater design can run upward of $3,000, said Newnam, who's now offering some of that capability in the publicly available software tool. Audio Advice last year consulted with the engineering department at North Carolina State University on the tool, including a price for the service. As of four months ago, it was going to charge a fee for consumers to use it, “but because of COVID, we’re launching it 100% free.” On whether the next version would also be free, he said: “Once you do something for free … there’s no way to put that genie back in the bottle.”

“Plenty of people" will come to the site to try the tool, "and when they do, they will get exposed to who we are,” said Newnam. Audio Advice matches Amazon’s product prices, has two-day delivery and has knowledgeable staffers who “know all about site lines and how to move chairs,” said Newnam. “We assume we’ll get more business from it purely from a marketing standpoint.”

The company is hoping customers will seek advanced help in design while using the tool, or to buy products through its e-commerce site. The tool doesn’t give product recommendations, which gives Audio Advice flexibility to recommend different levels of systems. Customers using the tool on the website can ask for product recommendations through the chat feature or over the phone.

Audio Advice will use its support staff of more than 20 to run the chat section; all are experts in audio and home theater, Newnam said. The business can pull from its staff in stores in Charlotte and Raleigh, North Carolina, which have had less traffic since the pandemic, he said. Store staffers can chat and answer phones from stores.

A “trifecta” of events coincided to facilitate launching the tool now. With fewer people going into stores due to COVID-19, the tool allows Audio Advice to interact with customers in a new way. Closed movie theaters raised the value of entertaining at home. And movie studios are releasing some titles directly to home through transactional video-on-demand streaming, increasing the value of owning or upgrading a home theater, said Newnam. The tool doesn’t lay out a budget or product list. Customers with an $8,000 budget will be directed to a particular set of speakers and an AV receiver if they decide to go to the next step, Newnam said. A $100,000 theater would lend itself to a higher end equipment list.

Competitors can use the theater design algorithms, too, a risk worth taking, said Newnam, talking up marketing value. At several points during experimentation with the algorithm, we were shown messages encouraging us to contact Audio Advice for guidance: “The main front speakers are covering the screen. Consider placing them behind a projection screen. Reach out to our system designers for help or to learn how we can optimize your configuration.” If users want the specs from the tool when they’re finished, they provide contact information and will receive them in an email, putting them on the retailer's contact list, he said. Newnam wouldn't disclose the cost to develop the tool, saying only it was three years in the making. He expects to recoup costs through more business, he said.

A separate part of the patent involves visualization of the data structure, said the executive. Another piece is making a simple user interface from the data, he said. A virtual reality component is also part of the patent, which says the tool can be done on a tablet, PC or VR headset. The tool is built in a full virtual environment in 3D but hasn’t been implemented in VR, said Newnam.

In future iterations, Newnam hopes to add different room shapes to accommodate spaces beyond rectangular rooms. That wouldn’t change principles of theater design, he said. For homes that can’t accommodate wires in a ceiling, he wants to introduce an option that would specify top-loaded, up-firing speaker modules for floor-standing speakers in a Dolby Atmos system.