Canadian Home Packs in a Wealth of Stealth
By Steven Castle
How one home meets the needs for high-performance systems that never intrude on the decor.

What do you do if you’re a classically trained musician who’s made a very nice living in software development? You build a very high-tech home with a very cool music system, using high-performance loudspeakers that convey the ethereal essence of classical scores. You might even add a digital player piano that can perform piano pieces over a whole-house audio system, but can also be played to accompaniment—very loud accompaniment—from the home’s audio system.

And if you’re this Vancouver, B.C., homeowner, you also have all the technology cleverly concealed—except for the piano, of course. That means there’s a bevy of in-wall and in-ceiling speakers, TVs hidden by scrolling artwork, subwoofers that fire bass from beneath the floor, and in-wall touchpads and control panels to operate this orchestra of goodies.



“The owner expected superior audio/video performance everywhere and brought us literally thousands of media discs to upload and be accessible anywhere in the home,” says Harold Clark, director of the RSI Group at Vancouver-based Commercial Electronics. “He wanted immediate access to a digital piano, electronic games, and laptops.”

So how does one achieve maestro-level performance with in-wall and in-ceiling speakers? RSI used a complement of “ribbon” speakers from BG Radia, which better convey that airy presence of classical music. A ribbon speaker consists of a membrane that vibrates uniformly and without much bending or wrinkling as with a traditional cone-shaped speaker driver.

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