Amina Technologies offers interesting options for commercial spaces and in particular when aesthetics are paramount.
To underline this fact, the March issue of Essential Install magazine witnessed Amina launch its new ‘Spot the Difference’ campaign, intended to further raise the awareness of applications for invisible loudspeakers in design-sensitive interiors.
Amina says its products allow design conscious clients access to high quality audio reproduction without having to suffer any cosmetic degradation. Since creating loudspeakers designed to be rendered invisible by a 2mm final skim of plaster back in 2001, the challenge has been to make the industry and prospective customers aware such an option even exists.
“The new campaign is all part of our continuous efforts to find new ways to tell the world of the existence of audio solutions that are completely invisible in application,” says Amina’s founder and MD Richard Newlove. “We are not told that such things are possible whilst at school or university. Even today therefore, after nearly 15 years of informing people about this technology, only a small percentage of the population are aware of what we can do.”
The company spends a lot of its time educating architects, interior designers and now M&E contractors, mainly via exhibitions and Continuing Professional Development (CPD) seminars. These seminars are approved by RIBA and BIID and are presented either at design practice premises or at dealer premises as part of joint marketing initiatives with installation partners.
Amina sales and marketing director, Babs Moore, is looking to partner with more dealers country wide to educate local design companies and architects practices about invisible sound solutions.
Babs says: “For example, our work with Robert Taussig (AV designer and installer, with 30 years in the business) in central London has been mutually beneficial creating a demonstration centre ideally placed for key London based influencers and their clients. Additionally this has allowed Robert Taussig to showcase the broad full-service solutions available from our installation partners, such as themselves, particularly to those who are at the early stages of a project and frequently have not considered the system levels solution. We are looking to replicate this with more integrators in other cities country wide and want to hear from anyone interested.”
The string of new Amina ‘Spot the Difference’ adverts typically feature an attractively finished residential or commercial space, replicated twice. The first image features a ceiling or wall blemished by conventional grilled speakers or ‘dinner plates’ as Babs likes to call them. The repeated image is actually a real completed Amina project, now with clean lines and no visual disturbances in the design, showing exactly what is possible with Amina’s technology.
The first advert featured shows the Platforma des Artes Gallery in Guimaraes, Portugal, completed in 2012, using Amina’s LFieT (Life Fidelity) series of 100 volt line transformer equipped invisible speakers especially created for large commercial spaces. The install allows visitors to focus only on the art hang in the gallery without the intrusion of speakers on the walls or in the ceilings.
Amina explains that the LFieT series has recently been upgraded to feature full Neodymium magnet drivers, making the product even lighter and easier to install single handed. As has always been the case, the LFieT series feature high quality toroidally wound transformers keeping the weight and volume down whilst lifting audio quality to near low impedance standards.
Amina is also at pains to state the green credentials of all its invisible speaker products. In commercial spaces, especially where ceiling mounted devices are in use, the maker says the wide dispersion angle, diffuse low phase coherency waveform generated by a vibrational panel loudspeaker means it is possible to reduce the quantity of Amina speakers used by a factor of two to four when compared to conventional piston based devices required for the same coverage.
Not only that, but spaces can simply be redecorated without the need to renew discoloured speaker trims and or entire speakers, meaning that the invisible speakers could see a useful life into decades.
Richard concludes: “That is a massive carbon saving and one that today may even allow companies to get grant support for renovations, as regional development authorities seek to help companies financially with the adoption of low carbon products.”
