Residential, Commercial and Resimercial Audio Installations
What’s the difference between the three?
Professional audio installers know that no two configurations are the same. Up until the past few years, however, most installations have fallen into one of two categories: residential and commercial.
More recently, an in-between hybrid of the two types has been developed, termed “resimercial.” In those kinds of installations, a mix of consumer and professional products are utilized to deliver audio in spaces like coffee shops, small restaurants and brew pubs, as well as school gymnasiums, band rooms and auditoriums. In this posting, we’ll explore the differences between the three types of installations and talk about some of the appropriate product options offered by Yamaha in each category.
Residential
Residential audio installations, as the name implies, are done in people’s homes. The heart of these kinds of installations is the AV receiver, which acts as a kind of central “brain,” offering multiple audio sources (including streaming services) that can be directed to a variety of speakers.
The Yamaha AVENTAGE RX-A8A AV receiver is a great choice for residential installations because it provides state-of-the-art surround sound in a living room or home theater, plus it has two additional independent “zones” for a total of three different audio sources that can be distributed throughout the house, enabling the placement of speakers in the kitchen, out on the patio or wherever the client wants them. It’s also MusicCast-compatible (MusicCast is Yamaha proprietary wireless multi-room audio technology), making it remotely controllable from any smart device with the use of the free MusicCast Controller app. (Check out the app’s main features here.)
If more speakers are required, the installer can simply add a Yamaha XDA-QS5400RK Quad Streamer which provides four more zones (“eight channels”) of audio. This allows the installation of speakers in other bedrooms, as well as areas like home offices, bathrooms, the garage and the garden.
There are many different ways to wire and configure this, but the most common is to take a pre out from the main receiver and connect it to the streamer. For bigger residential jobs, an installer can simply add more XDA-QS5400RK streamers, all the way up to 32 zones — with the entire system capable of being controlled with MusicCast from any smartphone.
Commercial
Large public facilities like restaurants, hotels, event centers, concert halls and stadiums require commercial audio installations since there can be as many as a hundred speakers (each delivering different musical content or PA announcements from a microphone), and the equipment will need to be run 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The Yamaha XMV8280 power amplifier is a great option here since it can easily be configured to power each one of those speakers throughout the entire property.
Commercial installations are essentially all about distribution: take whatever audio you put in, whether it’s coming from a microphone or a music source, then distribute it around different zones of the space. A typical hotel, for example, might want specific background music playing in the entryway and lobby, but different music playing in the dining area, the workout area, and out by the pool and jacuzzi. Much of the indoor audio will come from in-ceiling or in-wall speakers, but there will be landscape speakers all around the pool area … and, of course, there will need to be subwoofers in the workout room!
In addition to their superior sound quality, Yamaha products are known for their reliability. “They don’t break and so the installer doesn’t get a call from their customers saying, ‘Hey, this doesn’t work,’ and they have to take a truck and drive out to the site to troubleshoot the system and replace things,” says Phil Shea, Marketing Communications Manager of Consumer Audio at Yamaha Corporation of America.
“This is true of all the consumer audio products that typically get used in residential installations,” he adds, “but is especially true of our commercial audio gear like XMV Series power amps, which are built to an even higher standard. You take them out of the box, you plug them into a rack and you apply power to them, and you can let them run 24 hours a day, seven days a week for 15 years. Unlike consumer products, they’re made to run like that.”
Resimercial
Over the years, a third type of audio installation has evolved —a hybrid of residential and commercial that has become termed resimercial. These kinds of installations are typically done in spaces like coffee shops, small restaurants or brew pubs, as well as school gymnasiums, band rooms and auditoriums — anyplace where a residential AV receiver like the Yamaha RX-A8A or the company’s XDA-QS5400RK MusicCast Quad Streaming Amplifier can provide all the streaming music necessary, but where there are enough speakers so that the extra horsepower and level of build quality of a commercial amplifier and distribution system is required.
In a coffee shop, for example, an installer might use something like a Yamaha MA2030a amplifier (which provides both microphone and line-level audio inputs) to power a pair of standalone loudspeakers so that employees can make announcements over a connected microphone to let customers know that their order is ready.
The setup in small restaurants and brew pubs, as well as school gymnasiums, band rooms and auditoriums, might be a little more sophisticated, requiring streaming music in addition to a microphone, along with a blend of different kinds of speakers placed in multiple areas. Here, a Yamaha XMV8280 (part of our line of commercial audio products) might be employed to drive the speakers in different zones, with the music coming from a residential product like an Yamaha AVENTAGE RX-A8A or an XDA-QS5400RK Quad Streamer.
As shown in the video below, the audio system in the Yamaha corporate office building also consists of a blend of residential and commercial products. Our media room utilizes an XDA-QS5400RK MusicCast multi-room streamer connected to an XMV8280 power amplifier that drives all of our in-ceiling speakers on all three floors of the building. An MTX5-D Matrix Processor tells the whole system where to route any sources, including music from the QS5400RK, and play them in any room. PA announcements can go selectively to any room or rooms anywhere in the building, while at the same time selected music can be broadcast to the lobby and/or any of our meeting rooms on any floor. It’s a true hybrid “resimercial” system that more than meets all of our (sometimes very demanding) audio requirements.
When it comes to audio, Yamaha products provide an elegant solution, from something as small as a Bluetooth speaker in a bathroom all the way up to a full commercial install in a large concert hall or stadium — and everything in-between. Whatever your audio installation needs, Yamaha has a solution for you!
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