CEDIA Expo 20024 is set to happen this week starting on Thursday, September 5, and same as with last year’s Expo, TechRadar is marking the event with a week-long series of articles covering the world of home theater: welcome to Home Theater Week 2024!
The Expo is an annual multi-day event that takes place in Denver, Colorado where technology professionals in the audio/video and smart home fields gather to check out the latest and greatest products and to attend educational seminars. We'll be on the ground at the show to report on the coolest products we encounter, and we'll also be handing out our first-ever batch of Best of CEDIA awards.
What do we expect to see at this year’s show? Everything from the best 4K projectors – and also some 8K ones – to ultra-large versions of the best TVs. The Expo is also a veritable playground for audio, with 33-channel immersive audio systems being demonstrated along with the latest cutting-edge surround sound processors, speakers, and subwoofers.
What to expect from Home Theater Week
Home Theater Week 2024 kicks off with a feature that takes on the in-wall and in-ceiling speaker (and subwoofer!) category, which is a popular one at CEDIA. Perhaps you’re planning on installing a home theater or media room and are wondering about the benefits and drawbacks of architectural speakers over traditional freestanding ones. Our overview covers those points in detail, and will help guide you through your home theater speaker-buying decisions.
Other articles in our series will explore the performance differences between projectors and ultra-large TVs, recent advances in room correction technology to improve sound, wired vs wireless speakers for home theater, smart lighting to improve your home theater aesthetics, and more. We’ll even tell you about the best Dolby Atmos movies to show off your home theater system and provide a sneak peek into some of the world’s most awesome home theater setups.
This article will be updated over the week with highlights from those posts, so make a point of bookmarking it. TechRadar will also simultaneously be covering IFA 2024 this week, so make a point of checking out our coverage of that show as well to learn about the latest audio/video products and tech news coming out of the world's largest tech show.
The pros and cons of in-wall (and in-ceiling) sound
Custom installation professionals use architectural speakers to create sleek, nearly invisible sound systems in home theaters and multi-room audio setups. The benefit to these in-wall and in-ceiling installations is that the speakers and connecting wires are eliminated from the space, creating a more aesthetically pleasing environment. But architectural speakers can also come with performance trade-offs that you wouldn’t get with a traditional free-standing speaker system, and those compromises need to be considered.
Our list of the 10 pros and cons of architectural speakers will shed light on the category and help you to decide if in-wall and in-ceiling speakers are really for you. The information provided will not just be useful to those planning on hiring professionals to install a home theater or music-listening space, but also to DIY-ers considering breaking out the tool kit to install speakers themselves.
