Why use a Speaker Back Box?
Also known as speaker hoods, speaker back boxes are an essential to consider during the earliest stages of your smart home project. Why? For a small fraction of the cost of your overall multimedia installation, a back box offers a wide range of fantastic benefits that contribute to a better overall listening experience.
Why is a Speaker Back Box important?
Sound Quality
Whether it’s Radio 2, the latest pop hits or if heavy metal is your preference, you expect only the best sound quality from your multiroom audio system. One of the key steps in achieving this is to contain the sound from the speaker to your room, as opposed to your ceiling cavity. A back box does just that – the acoustic pad dampens the sound, not only ensuring that the sound waves don’t escape, but also ensuring that they’re distributed correctly, therefore improving the overall sound quality.
Soundproofing
Back boxes do exactly what they say on the tin – where they’re installed in a ceiling, they ensure that the sound waves are directed downwards, and don’t travel from one floor to another. This can be particularly useful where the space between floors is minimal, meaning that you can jam to AC/DC without disrupting your wife’s listening of Cliff Richard.
Safety
As with any form of home improvement or self-build project, there are numerous boring rules and regulations that your house needs to conform to; fire safety being one of these. All Loxone-manufactured speaker back boxes are made of MDF (the same material that ceiling plasterboard is made from) and therefore mean that when you install your shiny new speakers, the existing fire safety isn’t compromised.
First-Fix Decision
Where a speaker is installed in a (hopefully!) plastered ceiling, it is clear that it is somewhat difficult to fit a back box after it has been dry-lined. Therefore, you should always consider installing one during the early stages of planning your multiroom audio project.
Assembly
It’s also important that you plan out your speaker layout, not only for even acoustic distribution but also so you know where to place your back boxes depending on where you want your speakers!
Size Matters
You need to choose a back box that has an appropriate capacity for the speaker that you’re fitting; where it’s too big or too small, sound quality can be affected. Not to worry though – the Loxone Speaker Back Box has a 9.1-litre capacity, making it the perfect companion for the Loxone Speaker.
Cabling
Finally, it’s crucial that you fit the cable for your speaker through the box before it’s mounted! Otherwise, you face the pretty tough challenge of trying to feed your cable through a tiny hole in your ceiling; this can easily be avoided through some careful pre-planning and organisation.
Whilst they may initially be seen as just an extra expense to consider with a multiroom audio installation, speaker back boxes are an invaluable piece of kit that can significantly improve the quality of sound, isolate this sound to its intended destination, all whilst helping you conform to the latest building standards and regulations.
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