I promised you I’d be back to talk about Day Three of CEDIA Expo 2022! As expected, Saturday was a little bit slower than Thursday or Friday were, but that’s always to be expected with a show that goes until the weekend. The great thing about this was that I got to spend a little more time on the show floor and talk a little more with manufacturers or otherwise wouldn’t have the time to speak with me.

If you’ve ended up here but haven’t read my wrap-ups of Day 1 or Day 2 of the show, you can get those here:

Steph Says: CEDIA Expo 2022 Day 1 Thoughts

Steph Says: CEDIA Expo 2022 Day 2

Yes, I did say above the show floor was not as busy. But there was one booth (or demo room, rather) on the show floor that had constant lines and business all day. You may have seen Gary Kayye’s piece on the theater room demo, featuring Trinnov, McIntosh, Sonus Faber, Kaleidescape and probably some others that I’m missing. If you’ve ever wanted to see what hundreds of thousands of dollars could get you in a home theater, this is the demo for you.

BEST Demo at CEDIA 2022: A Collab Between Trinnov, McIntosh, Sonus Faber, Kaleidescape and madVR

Similarly, we got a video of the companies explaining the collaboration and so you can see a little bit of what this demo room looked like. How crazy that this was literally just built on the show floor?

And on top of all that, it sounded amazing. The highs and lows hit exactly where they needed to and the bass rumbled your entire body just enough.

The WFH Dilemma

One thing about this CEDIA Expo was that one of its partners was the IMCCA — an organization that aims to strengthen UCC. The IMCCA had also partnered with CEDIA Expo in 2021, but that show was a different story (no one can control COVID). This year, the partnership was front and center in a few different ways. There was a WFH section on the show floor, a few of the presentations were home-office centered, and from what IMCCA/Poly’s David Danto told me, integrators in the residential space have a ton of questions right now.

• Whose job is it to spec a home office (traditionally professional equipment but it’s going in someone’s house)?
• How do I get into this market? Will it lead me in more of a commercial direction?
• Do I spec all the same brands I’m used to already using?

David answers a lot of these questions in the interview I had with him (link coming soon) and he seemed pretty excited about where the market is going.

My Last Favorite Trend

This may not be groundbreaking to any of you, but AV can be beautiful. I’ve spoken about this trend for a while now. People are really enjoying that the equipment in their spaces can be aesthetically pleasing, whether these spaces are their houses or their workplaces.

Something interesting I’ve found is that AV can also be virtually invisible. I can’t even count the number of solutions I saw that were made to be unseen or, at least, as unseen as possible.

Everything — and I mean everything — was advertised as being flush mount so that it won’t even stick out of your wall. For instance, there was the Flush Mount Inc. stuff over on the Origin Acoustics stand. If you’re wondering what that’s about — you can learn more in this story.

Origin Acoustics Reflects on Its History and Future Ahead of CEDIA Expo 2022

But yes, while I realize that invisible AV is by no means a new trend, I still think it was done creatively by a few different manufacturers. JBL showed its trusty Conceal Series.

I like the idea of a lot of these things coming unfinished so you can paint them to match your walls.

Final thing I noticed, or some of my co-workers did anyway — there were no regular up and down light switches anywhere on the show floor. Which, fair enough. As a society, we’re past that.

My REAL final thought that I’ll share is that I’m so grateful to our entire team for pulling this off. From interns to the leadership team, this was one of the best shows I’ve attended, and I think it was because everyone worked so hard. I love my team!

By the way, this is only a taste of what you’ll see and hear at rePLAY CEDIA Expo 2022. It’s Oct. 5-6 and you definitely want to be there if you want to hear Gary and I discuss all our favorite things. See you there!