Combining audio with furniture

[ZakR]

Hi everyone!  My name is Zak, and I am currently working on getting a degree in industrial and innovative design.  I am currently working on ideas for a capstone project, and I was wondering if I could get some input on one of my potential ideas.  I really like the concept of is designing a way to integrate home theater audio with furniture.  There is some precedent for this type of thing with companies like lovesac integrating speakers into couch cushions, and victrola and some other companies making side table bluetooth speakers.  But none of those are really high quality hifi solutions in my opinion.  I was thinking of integrating audio into a tv console, in such a way that it would basically be like a giant high quality soundbar, and maybe combining that with a subwoofer concealed as a side table, but that's just one way you could do it.  One company that has tried this approach and no longer exists is MeiliAudio, who designed a great looking, and apparently great sounding tv console (pictured below), but that company is gone, though hopefully not because their product wasn't a good idea.  The benefit of this approach is that if you or your significant other don't like the way your living room/theatre room looks with a bunch of sound equipment in it, this would be a great discreet compromise for high quality audio that also is a high quality piece of beautiful furniture.  If this is something you'd be interested in leave a reply on my post, and let me know what you think!  Some things I'd love to get your opinion on are, should I be considering other types of furniture for this idea, would this fit into the market seeing as relatively cheap decent sounding soundbars exist, and if it should exist, would you prefer it as like an ikea level product (which might actually work since they have that sonos partnership), or something more handcrafted and oriented towards audiophiles?

[jaslion]

Issue is that this is a ultra niche case and only works in setups that need/can use direct frontal audio.

 

It also has the issue of if the speakers die the furniture goes with it and if the users wishes to upgrade the sound these will turn useless.

 

Another issue to battle would be ressonance and furniture vibrations since these are basically large speaker boxes.

[Thomas4]

Great idea, however every other time it's been done, it's proven to be an economic disaster to the company.

 

Changing tastes in the late 50's was one of the causes of the loss of console TV's.

 

The main reasons are appearance - not enough different furniture styles were available, cost - it's cheaper to buy table and speakers separately.

 

Sound placement - for simple sound - like a television its fine, but for good sounding stereo, no.

 

And lastly, the user is stuck with the speakers that come with the unit and are unable to upgrade or replace them when desired/needed.

 

Now, if you do want to go down this line, just add mesh fronts to the unit to allow the user to use their own speakers, however adding mesh front to a metal/glass top only table should prove, er... interesting.

 

But, good luck, anyway.

 

 

[worstalentscout]

27 minutes ago, jaslion said:

 

 

Another issue to battle would be ressonance and furniture vibrations since these are basically large speaker boxes.

 

resonance can be greatly reduced by opening the cabinet's drawers when listening to music........

[ZakR]

1 hour ago, Thomas4 said:

e Great idea, however every other time it's been done, it's proven to be an economic disaster to the company.

 

Changing tastes in the late 50's was one of the causes of the loss of console TV's.

 

The main reasons are appearance - not enough different furniture styles were available, cost - it's cheaper to buy table and speakers separately.

 

Sound placement - for simple sound - like a television its fine, but for good sounding stereo, no.

 

And lastly, the user is stuck with the speakers that come with the unit and are unable to upgrade or replace them when desired/needed.

 

Now, if you do want to go down this line, just add mesh fronts to the unit to allow the user to use their own speakers, however adding mesh front to a metal glass top ony table should prove, er... interesting.

 

But, good luck, anyway.

 

 

Thanks for the input, those are definitely some things to think about.  Maybe it could be more so built for concealment rather than integration of speakers.  Maybe designed so that you could house just your center channel behind some mesh, but then your right and left front channels would just be sitting out if they weren't integrated... hmm.   The annoying part about this project is I want to design something that is a somewhat complex idea so that I can show off research skills and problem solving and whatnot.  Thanks again for your input

[Thomas4]

A few ideas that may help.

Face the bass speaker in a downward position To use the cabinet itself.

Mount the speakers on rubber mounts to help prevent them from resonating from a hard mount.

Place sound deadening to the interior of the cabinets holding the speakers themselves.

and finally, with the speakers themselves, place them as close to the middle enclosed in a chamber that will allow the sound to be directed outward instead of allowing the sound to simply bounce around, thus aiding in reducing the possibility of an echo.

 

Also, I forgot, talk to people that put speakers into cars, as they face the same basic situation. They will probably have better tips.

Again, Good Luck in your endevour.

[ZakR]

1 hour ago, Thomas4 said:

A few ideas that may help.

Face the bass speaker in a downward position To use the cabinet itself.

Mount the speakers on rubber mounts to help prevent them from resonating from a hard mount.

Place sound deadening to the interior of the cabinets holding the speakers themselves.

and finally, with the speakers themselves, place them as close to the middle enclosed in a chamber that will allow the sound to be directed outward instead of allowing the sound to simply bounce around, thus aiding in reducing the possibility of an echo.

 

Also, I forgot, talk to people that put speakers into cars, as they face the same basic situation. They will probably have better tips.

Again, Good Luck in your endevour.

Thank you for the insight!

[cmndr]

Here are the primary flaws with the design

1. Tweeters are not at ear level. Ideally tweeters are angled at the ear and directly facing them. 

2. Ideally tweeters and woofers are vertically aligned
3. no idea how well the ports if any are designed. 

4. IDEALLY speakers are a few feet away from the wall. 
5. If there are drawers you might have some issues with rattling and resonances. 
6. Hard to move. How is someone supposed to assemble this? This looks like an accident waiting to happen (something breaks. 

7. A piece of high quality furniture can last 200 years. A speaker driver is more likely to last around 20 years. It's unreasonable to expect a person to service the speaker. 
8. Designing good speakers in general is hard. It's even harder when you have extra constraints. 

You might have more luck making a dual subwoofer/table/stand. Bass is non-directional, it benefits from a large cabinet and there's a stronger argument for it not mattering if it's against a wall. 


As a fair pass I'd look into guides on building subwoofers and look into subwoofer positioning guides. After that build basically two subwoofers that can be combined into a table/console. 

An alternative might be a console that's designed around placing speakers in/on it. 

As far as getting speakers to work... maybe think bookshelf speaker, add a light on top of it and a lamp shade. Ideally an acoustically transparent lamp shade. 
 

[ZakR]

On 1/6/2023 at 11:05 PM, cmndr said:

Here are the primary flaws with the design

1. Tweeters are not at ear level. Ideally tweeters are angled at the ear and directly facing them. 

2. Ideally tweeters and woofers are vertically aligned
3. no idea how well the ports if any are designed. 

4. IDEALLY speakers are a few feet away from the wall. 
5. If there are drawers you might have some issues with rattling and resonances. 
6. Hard to move. How is someone supposed to assemble this? This looks like an accident waiting to happen (something breaks. 

7. A piece of high quality furniture can last 200 years. A speaker driver is more likely to last around 20 years. It's unreasonable to expect a person to service the speaker. 
8. Designing good speakers in general is hard. It's even harder when you have extra constraints. 

You might have more luck making a dual subwoofer/table/stand. Bass is non-directional, it benefits from a large cabinet and there's a stronger argument for it not mattering if it's against a wall. 


As a fair pass I'd look into guides on building subwoofers and look into subwoofer positioning guides. After that build basically two subwoofers that can be combined into a table/console. 

An alternative might be a console that's designed around placing speakers in/on it. 

As far as getting speakers to work... maybe think bookshelf speaker, add a light on top of it and a lamp shade. Ideally an acoustically transparent lamp shade. 
 

Thank you for the input! I’m still trying to decide if I want to do this project or not, and if it is even feasible.  It seems like this formula might do better if it were positioned as an addition to the ikea/sonos collab lineup.  That way you already know the quality of the furniture isn’t going to be that high, so it will be cheaper, and is more likely to match the expected lifetime of the speakers themselves.  In addition to that, Sonos speakers aren’t generally considered to be the highest quality, so you would be marketing less to people who know about some of the things that you mentioned like wall distance and tweeter angles.  Unfortunately this would lock you into their ecosystem, and you start to lose the benefits of choosing this over a sound bar, such as using the extra space as a way to use better sounding larger high quality drivers, and dedicating a lot of space to porting, so that you get a really optimal hifi sound.  I can definitely see the subwoofer side table working better than the tv console, especially with the non-directional nature of bass like you mentioned.  People can put it wherever they like and it doesn’t matter quite as much.  Again thanks for the input I have a lot to think about.

[cmndr]

If you're going for proof of concept... Chromecast or something from Amazon and set up an audio group. Cheapest Chromecast available + audio extractor can probably do the trick. 


Think Nest Audio in a stereo pair for the L+R and then pair a TV Console with 1-2 subwoofers built in. 

You could also pitch the idea of AVR integration - think computer built into desk concept... though you'd want to make it relatively easy to swap out. Maye do something like pre-run wires to the edges of the desk that have banana plug receptacles or binding posts.

https://www.google.com/search?q=wire+receptacles+on+speakers