Unless you’ve got an extra room at home dedicated to being your theatre, converting a living room to provide a similar experience usually requires unsightly speakers awkwardly placed around the space. Love Sac’s come up with a better solution with its StealthTech Sound + Charge line that features speakers hidden away inside a sofa.
The idea sounds a bit gimmicky at first given that movie theatres, arguably the optimal surround sound experience, traditionally feature speakers hung on walls surrounding the audience. But that setup means that certain seats in the theatre, like those in the dead centre, technically provide a better surround experience — or at least an experience that’s as close to what the technician who created the movie’s mix wanted the audience to hear.
It’s why a company called Flexound created the Flexound Pulse: a movie theatre seat embedded with speakers that ensures everyone in the theatre hears the exact same surround sound mix, no matter where they sit. So what Love Sac has created isn’t actually that absurd.
Love Sac (yep, that’s the company’s name) is already an established furniture maker, with modular sofa designs assembled from sectional pieces (which the company calls “sactionals”) and that’s what makes the speaker setup possible. Each piece in the Sound + Charge line includes two sides featuring front and rear-firing Harmon Kardon speakers hidden inside the furniture, plus centre channel and sub-woofers hidden inside additional sectional pieces in-between.
The sofas can be customised to fit any room, and even re-arranged after installation, with either an included remote or the Lovesac StealthTech mobile app used to reconfigure the speakers as often as needed. Customers even have a choice of different fabric finishes that are designed to allow sound to easily pass through, and should they decide to change the fabrics at some point, the system can be updated in the app to accommodate the new sound properties of a different fabric that potentially may have a different density. The app also provides access to different sound profiles pre-configured by Harman Kardon, tuning the sound for movies, sports, or just music playback.
The StealthTech Sound + Charge offers other conveniences too, as the name implies, with optional USB ports or wireless charging pads for powering mobile devices. Pricing is expected to be just shy of $US3,000 (AU$4,010) for a basic configuration but will get pricier as additional sectionals and speaker options are added.