• Transform your space with pre-set scenes • Reduce wall clutter with centralized control • Expand the versatility of your home’s lighting

Why is Smart Lighting Important for Your Home’s Interior Design?

Smart home lighting control systems offer intuitive control which makes it easier to manage your technology. This in turn helps you create a beautiful, dynamic style for your home. From taking ugly light switches off the walls to adding a touch of creativity to your lighting, the right kind of control can enhance your interior and landscaping design.



Using Scenes to Transform Your Space
Scenes are an essential part of a home lighting control system, letting you adjust multiple fixtures simultaneously at the press of a button or at a scheduled time.

• Using Manual Pre-set Scenes
  
  • Create unique scenes that you can pull up at a moment’s notice to prepare the room for a specific event or activity. This way you can prepare the room quickly for any occasion:
    
    • Party Scene: Press a button and colored LED lights go up in your pool, fountains and living room. Decorative fixtures light up your driveway while inside fixtures highlight new pieces of furniture or art.
  • Some scenes can be scheduled at a given time each day. These are a great feature when it comes to your landscape lighting:
    
    • Light Up the Night: Show off your home when it gets dark. Schedule a “Night Time” scene at 7 p.m. that turns on your outdoor lighting. LED lights highlight specific architectural features and important walkways.

Getting Rid of All Your Wall Clutter
Through a smart home lighting control system, you can access all your lights from a touchpad, tablet or smartphone. It’s a dream come true for interior designers. You can get rid of the switchers and dimmers on the wall and streamline your décor to fit your specific stylistic theme. Centralized control can affect your interior design in two distinct ways:

• Get control from the device of your choice
  
  • Transfer all controls to one single device. Instead of five different switches in your living room, you only need one sleek touchpad on the coffee table.
• Use scenes to reduce the number of switches
  
  • Instead of designating a switch for each fixture, install a keypad with each button corresponding to a commonly used scene - like a “Welcome” scene that turns on all lights or a “TV” scene that dims the lights.

Expand the Versatility of Your Lights
Home lighting control makes it easier to embrace new stylistic choices. With centralized control, you can bring in new features and ideas into your home from the comfort of your couch using your smartphone or tablet.

• Get Creative With Colors: Change the color of your LED light fixtures to fit your mood or a given occasion. Go green for St. Patrick’s Day or red, white and blue on July 4^th.
• Highlight Different Features: It’s also easy to change up the things you want to feature. If you get a new piece of art work, turn up the fixtures around it to make it pop. Want to show off a new lawn ornament? Dim other areas in your landscaping and raise the fixtures around your new purchase.

We work hand-in-hand with architects, builders and designers to create lighting control systems that meet clients’ unique styles. Contact the experts at Pacific Audio & Communications to learn about the many ways smart lighting can benefit your home.

 

• Design a Room Optimized to Get the Most Out of Your Technology• Receive Expert Advice on What Works Best for You• Find Equipment that Matches Your Stylistic Preferences

 How Does a Custom Home Theater Differ From Retail Options?

A custom home theater system is an immersive entertainment experience. Every inch of your room is planned out to get the most out of your technology and space. We find the best equipment for the room, optimize it for sound and visual quality, and even work with you to design a unique theme. Below we take a look at some of the benefits of a professionally installed home theater.

Figuring Out the Layout for Your Room

The success of your Maui home theater system comes down to having the right layout in place as well as the right technology. Below we take a look at some of the things you need to consider when designing your brand-new entertainment system:

• What kind of screen do you want in your home theater?
  • The size of your screen will affect the seating arrangement for the room, which will then determine where to place your speakers:
    
    • Screen Size: As a rule of thumb, for a 120" screen you want to be at least 12 feet from the images to reduce strain and to see the picture clearly without having to move your eyes.
    • Screen Viewing Cone: Image quality will diminish as you move away from the center of the screen. Once your screen is installed, we ensure all seating is neatly placed within your screen viewing cone: this signifies how wide you can go before you start seeing a drop in image quality.
  • What kind of surround sound do you want in your home theater system?
    • This will determine how many speakers you’ll have in your room and where they need to be located. We ensure all speakers are equidistant to the viewers, so no one is stuck with audio that is too loud or too low.
      
      • Traditional Surround Sound: These systems include five or seven speakers and one subwoofer. Speakers are installed in front, to the side, above, and behind the viewer.
      • Dolby Atmos: For the best, most –realistic sound you should upgrade to a Dolby Atmos system.
        
        • Separate sounds into distinct objects so they can move within a 3-dimensional space:
          
          • For example: Hear a plane literally flying overhead as the sound travels from speaker-to-speaker above the viewer.

Expert Advice on What Equipment Works Best For Your Space

Once we have a general idea what you’re looking for in your home theater system, we help you find the right equipment:

• Choosing the right screen:
  • Depending on your room's limitations, we help you find the right size, color, and texture for your screen. For example, in places with a lot of ambient light, you want to go with a darker gray or black screen. If you want a discreet option, we can offer motorized screens that retract into the ceiling.
• Choosing the right speakers:
  • We offer the latest state-of-the-art technology when it comes to your speakers. Invest in Dolby-Atmos enabled speakers for truly realistic sound and, if you have space restraints, we also offer in-wall and in-ceiling speakers.

Don’t settle for a second-rate discount theater from your local electronics store. Contract Pacific Audio and Communications to create a truly immersive entertainment space in your Maui area home.

• Identify Problem Areas With Home Monitoring Solutions• Help Out Your Air Conditioning With Smart Shading Control• Eliminate Excess Usage With Motion Sensors


Why Do You Need a Smart Home Monitoring Solution?
There are a lot of things that could make the energy bills in your Kauai, Hawaii home skyrocket. There’s the rising temperatures as spring approaches, the tendency to embrace the beautiful landscapes with large windows and doorways, and excess usage while you’re away. Alleviate these issues with a Crestron home monitoring system that brings all your technology together to find your biggest problem areas and design simple solutions.



How to Find Your Biggest Problem Areas
 The first step in crafting a successful energy-cutting solution is to figure out the rooms and technology taking up the most resources. Below we explain how to best find these problem areas. 

• Using Your Energy Dashboard
  
  • Crestron’s Fusion EM Software lets you see how lighting, entertainment, climate control and security affect your usage.
    
    • Create historical reports: Look at your usage over time to see if certain months or even hours result in higher energy use.
    • Project future consumption: Once you start thinking of solutions, input them into your software to see how they would affect your consumption. These projections will help you pick and choose which solutions are best for you.

 How Can You Resolve Problem Areas?
 Once you’ve pinpointed issues in your home, it’s time to come up with a solution. Below are some common problem areas and potential solutions for each:

• Reducing the Load on Your Air Conditioning
  
  • Make sure to lower your temperature when you’re not in your home or a specific room.
    
    • Install motion sensors so your thermostat rises in unoccupied rooms and automatically drops when you return.
    • Your home monitoring solution also lets you make changes remotely. Turn up your thermostat from your smartphone as you leave and turn it back down when you’re heading home.
    • We know most homes in Kauai are vacation homes. Pick out the months you’ll be away and let your system know the thermostat can be turned off or set to a higher temperature during that time.
  • With smart shading, you can use photo sensors to close shades as soon as they’re hit by direct sunlight to help cool down your home.
• Reducing the Impact of Your Lighting
  
  • Adjust your default settings with a smart lighting control
    • Reduce the default settings on all your lights from 100 percent to 90 percent. Play with your Lutron dimmers to see which could go even lower.
  • Eliminate Excess Use
    
    • Use your tablet or touchpad to see if lights were left on in other rooms and turn them off at the press of a button.
    • Use motion sensors to ensure lights and appliances turn off as soon as a room has been unoccupied for a length of time.
    • You can also incorporate scenes that help you manage your lighting.
      
      • Away Scene: Turns all your lights off when you leave the house.
      • Goodnight Scene: Turns all your lights off at a given time every night.

Pacific Audio Communications Inc. crafts a home monitoring system that helps you keep tabs on your energy usage and lets you create effective solutions. Contact us today to set up a consultation!

• Have Access to Your Favorite Music in Every Corner of Your Home• Optimize the Audio Signals Within Your Kauai, Hawaii Space• Work With a Professional for a Discreet Wiring Installation

What is a Home Audio Distribution System?

A home audio distribution system lets you transfer audio signals from source components –a turntable, media library or CD player – to speakers throughout your house. When installing your system in Kauai, Hawaii, it’s not enough to find the best speakers and A/V receivers. You need to make sure your audio signals travel efficiently through the right cable solution.



What Kind of Cables Should You Use?
In most cases, your audio signals will go through one of the following cables: analog, HDMI or Ethernet. Below we take a look at features from all three to see what the best fit is for you.

• Why Use Analog Cables?
  • Analog cables provide the purest sound from a turntable or CD player since the signal is never translated into digital form when it goes from the source to your receiver.
  • How to judge the quality of an analog cable
    • While all cables may look the same, slight variations in material and craftsmanship can make a huge difference.
      
      • Usually you want a copper conductor, double shielding and high-pressure connectors for the least signal interference.
    • Why Use HDMI Cables?
      • An HDMI cable can carry audio, video, and even internet signals.
      • When it comes to a home theater system, HDMI is the best way to get full surround sound, offering up to eight different soundtrack channels to create three-dimensional audio within the room.
      • A challenge for HDMI is that it is always evolving. This means the latest HDMI technology may not be compatible with older gear.
    • Why Use Ethernet Cables?
      • Ethernet cables can transmit signals in a multi-room system with limited interference. The CAT-6 line also lets you send signals back, meaning it can take a signal from your television receiver and transfer it back to your A/V receiver or speaker. This way any audio generated within your TV can be played on another system.
      • Ethernet connections are also common for wireless speaker systems like SONOS. We also connect your sources –music library or laptop—to a network router to boost the signal.
    • What is the best cable for a multi-room system?
      • Picking the right gauge: The longer your cable needs to travel within your home audio distribution system, the thicker you want it to be. The thicker a wire, the lower its gauge. Most installations will require a gauge between 12 and 14.
      • Wiring behind walls: To reduce the risk of overheating, fire or interference, you want to use CL2 or CL3 wires for in-wall installations.
    • Why should I work with a professional for my home audio distribution?
      • Figuring out what cables are right for you is not a one-size-fits-all solution. Your solution may require a variety of cables depending on your source components, type of speakers and the size of your home.
        
        • Will you also need to transmit video signals?
        • Will you want all wiring hidden behind walls?
        • Are you incorporating wireless speakers?
      • We ensure cables are compatible with your technology. Choosing incompatible cables will not only result in lower-quality audio, but it can also damage your system.
      • As licensed low-voltage contractors, we can find the perfect path from your A/V receivers or matrix switchers all the way to the speaker of your choice. All wiring remains hidden behind walls to reduce clutter.

Want to get the most out of your home audio distribution? Contact Pacific Audio and Communications Inc. for a professional installation.