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Advanced Voice Activation Now Possible for Music, Lighting, and More

At Show & Tell AV Solutions, we have long been fans of Control4 home automation systems. Their integration capabilities and ease of use allow us to create custom home automation solutions in clients’ homes, making smart home experiences unique to each family and living situation. 

Control4 has led the home automation pack in innovative firsts, from customized keypads with pre-set scenes to enhanced touchscreens. Josh.ai has also been one of our favorite voice control options, allowing users to speak as if they were talking to a friend instead of imitating a robot. 

In November 2021, Control4 and Josh.ai announced an expanded partnership and an exclusive distribution agreement. To say we were excited maybe a slight understatement. The joining of these two mighty forces in smart home automation significantly ups the ante in the level of service and integration we can offer our clients. 

At the core of this partnership is new driver enhancements that create a superior experience. Let’s look at what this means for Control4 smart homes in Bountiful, UT, and the surrounding areas. 

Illuminate, Showcase, and Highlight with Intelligently Designed Lighting

Ambient, task, and accent lighting are the three main types that come together to illuminate your beautiful Park City-area home. If you’re missing one, you may find yourself squinting unnecessarily at your TV screen due to glare, or maybe you have to bring your book closer to your face because the lights are too dim. Lighting serves an inherently functional purpose, but it can also add to the style of your Utah property! Keep reading to learn a few different fixtures you can incorporate into your home lighting control system. 

A Lighting Control System Changes the Way Your Home Looks and Feels

Lighting moves and inspires us. It illuminates the task at hand, and it can leave us feeling energized. With a lighting control system, you can have the power of light at your fingertips! Adjust the brightness of a room with a beautifully customized wall keypad that matches your décor, or say, “Hey Google, turn on the living room” to turn all of the lamps on in your main living area. 

Light also has a way of transforming things in our daily life. Take your artwork and photography collection, for example. In a dim room, the colors simply don’t pop, and in a too-bright room, the colors look harsh, or worse, there’s a glare! It's essential to work with a lighting design specialist like Show & Tell AV Solutions to avoid this unfortunate scenario. Keep reading to learn how you can elevate your daily lifestyle and show off your personal style with color-tunable lighting.

Learn 3 of our ideas for using color-changing lights to infuse your days with fun

Enough articles about how lighting control is “convenient” and “energy-efficient” and “practical” — let’s talk about how much FUN lighting control can be. One of our favorite smart trends is using RGB lighting to bring a splash of color and unique customization to homes of all shapes and sizes. RGB LEDs combine red, blue, and green in one module to create and generate over 16 million hues of light. 

When you integrate RGB lights into a home lighting control system, you suddenly have an entire color palette at your fingertips. With the press of a button on your smartphone, you can send vibrant colors to bathe every room in your home. Sound fun? Read on below to learn three ways to use color-changing lights to brighten up your day-to-day at home!

Headphone Amplifiers

Just like the amplifier that powers your full-sized speakers, a headphone amp works in the same way on a much smaller scale. This low-powered amp increases the signal from your devices, such as your smartphone or PC, amplifying low-voltage signals to higher levels.

Built-in amps tend to distort and compress sound, losing the dynamic range of the music, while high-quality headphone amps are designed to preserve the original signal.

The result is studio-quality sounds that greatly improve the listening experience, providing louder, crisper sounds. Power and quality are the two main reasons people use dedicated headphone amps from high-end companies like MyteK and McIntosh. Below are two of the models we most recommend for our clients.

The Liberty THX AAA Headphone AMP from MyTek provides powerful, precision sound with minimal distortion. The amp also comes with a reference tool to adjust volume and sound settings for optimal listening and production.

We also have the McIntosh MHA200 headphone amp coming to our showroom soon. This beautiful, compact amplifier boasts four different impedance ranges, balanced, and unbalanced inputs. Enjoy sound in stereo or left and right outputs. The MHA200 features McIntosh’s trademark vacuum tube amplification and a toroidal power transformer for powerful, pristine sound with a wide range of headphones and music sources.