Residential vs. Commercial: Basic Audio Differences

It's no secret that more and more installers are looking at commercial audio projects as a way to keep busy and/or grow their business. It's a category that offers lots of opportunity.

It's also an area that requires you to understand some of the fundamentals.

Differences in Pro/Consumer Gear

Let's start with the typical connection between a source and the amplifier.

Consumer equipment uses RCA connections, which are referred to as unbalanced. Essentially, this type of connection has a signal and a ground.

Pro gear uses a balanced style of connection, which has three connections:

• A plus
• A minus
• A ground

The connectors can be an XLR style, a 0.25-inch TRS style or even a removable style of terminal strip.

The balanced connection and its signal have much better noise-rejecting characteristics than the unbalanced style. The signal cancels any noise that might be induced on the line.

A balanced signal also has the ability to go greater distances without noise and is transmitted at a higher level. If you compare the two signals, you'll find that consumer unbalanced signals are rated at -10 dB, and pro balanced signals are rated at +4 dB. That 14 dB difference is quite large. A 10 dB difference appears to be about twice as loud from loudest to quietest.

These factors need to be considered when deploying consumer products like preamps with professional-rated products like amplifiers. The pro amp is looking for a hotter signal than the consumer device is delivering. So, even though the pro amplifier has oodles of power, the system will sound very underpowered.

There are two possible solutions:

1. Use the correct pro preamplifier with the pro amplifier
2. Put a level-matching device in place to essentially step the volume up from the consumer level to the pro level

Companies like Whirlwind, RDL and others make devices that can do the level matching. These devices are active, of course, so you can "set them and forget them."

Differences in Pro/Consumer Applications

Installers who work on the consumer side frequently assume the commercial job will require some of the same features as the consumer job requires. A common list of features that you may not want on a pro job, but certainly want on the consumer side, include: two-channel (or more) sound, IR remote control and a busy front control panel.

Pro jobs trend toward monaural over stereo sound. This is because it's difficult to predict where the listener will be in most commercial applications. In consumer systems, setting up a sweet spot relative to where the listener will be is substantially easier. Surround sound exacerbates the situation in pro applications.

IR remotes certainly make life easier for home applications. Professional jobs often don't require the control options that a remote offers. Further, remotes are prone to get lost or damaged quickly in bar or restaurant applications. It's a much better idea to have a permanent control with volume and source selection only.