We're all still making adjustments to our lifestyle with the ongoing pandemic. And while some schools and workplaces are back in operation, suffice it to say that everything is not back exactly the way it was before.

During this timeframe, we have leaned heavily on technology for work, education, entertainment, and even fitness. We’re not here to claim technology is a substitute for in-person interaction. Still, as a longtime home technology integrator, we are here to make it as easy and seamless as possible to enable you to do all that you want to accomplish.

While everyone is working on desktops, laptops, tablets, and Chromebooks, we think there's an opportunity to leverage existing AV setups in your home for more flexible and engaging work, learning, and socializing. It’s easy to do, especially if you employ Crestron Home smart automation in your Roswell, GA home. Let's explore some scenarios below that you may not have thought about. 

As a purveyor and custom integrator of home technology systems and solutions, GHT Group sees many clients at different stages of their journey into smart home technology in Georgia. While home automation has a host of benefits in convenience, luxury, and efficiency, we see a couple of areas that tend to draw people in. 

The first area is smart lighting. It's fairly easy to see the benefits, from effortless control to energy efficiency. The other is whole-home audio. Whole-home audio not only brings music seamlessly to every corner of your Alpharetta property, it's also a gateway to adding more layers of smart home features. Keep reading to see how.

Some high-fidelity speakers require massive power to sound their best. Sometimes, even veteran audio enthusiasts have a speaker that they're not satisfied with that may just need more energy. For example, electrostatic speakers from MartinLogan require a lot of juice to bring out the airy and deep soundstage for which the brand and the technology are known. But without the right amplification, you might be unimpressed.  

The other aspect of wringing the best sound from a great speaker is matching the amplifier to the speaker. There are several types of amplifier designs and topologies. Two classic types are vacuum tubes, which date back to the dawn of electronics, and solid state, which is the most common type found in most audio products.

There’s much more to this, but we’re trying to keep it simple here. And if you already know all that, you’ll still want to keep reading about the McIntosh MC901 amplifier, which combines both vacuum tubes and solid-state components into a beastly high-end audio amp with the power to drive just about any speaker in your Brookhaven, GA, listening room.  

SEE ALSO: 3 Ways to Improve the Sound of High-End Audio Speakers

GHT Group is committed to bringing the best in home technology solutions to the finest residences in metro Atlanta. One of the areas that we think adds the most value to your home and lifestyle is lighting. Mastering the balance of natural and artificial lighting in your spaces makes significant contributions to your home’s functionality, beauty, and even your well-being.

Great lighting design is what turns a house into a spectacular residence. Even a home with the best furnishings and design can be let down by subpar lighting. In the paragraphs below, we’ll give you some of our favorite ideas on residential lighting design to make your Johns Creek, GA house into the home you’ve always envisioned.

Today’s smart security cameras and systems are an excellent way to keep an eye on your home. Motion sensing and other advanced features can instantly alert you to unexpected visitors, intrusions, or potential problems. 

As with many things related to safety and security, the right security camera installation is critical for a system to provide the safety benefits you are looking for in your Alpharetta, GA home. Where you place your cameras might be the difference between averting an issue versus finding out about it when it’s too late to act. Keep reading below for some practical tips on security camera placement to keep your home and property safer. 

SEE ALSO: Monitor Your Home from Anywhere with a Security Camera System

Yes, the pandemic is still with us, and as tiring as it may be, maintaining health and safety habits will go a long way to ensure its tenure in Georgia will last no longer than necessary. One of those healthy habits – in any environment and time – is to keep hands clean and oft-used surfaces germ-free.

Light switches and controls are a high-touch area that likely few think of as potential sources of germs. No, you don't necessarily need to remove them or cover them up with tape. Fortunately, Lutron lighting control solutions provide multiple ways of controlling your lights that involve touching nothing at all. Now there’s a high-tech approach to keeping your Sandy Springs home a little safer for you and your family in these challenging times. Keep reading for three simple ways to make managing your lighting touch-free.

What is room correction? No, we’re not talking here about moving walls around to fix your room. We are talking about how your home theater audio system sounds in your room. For those of you that are audio aficionados of either the two-channel or multichannel type (or both), you may already be familiar with this. It’s the use of calibration software and methods for adjusting a sound system for even, natural sound in a media room or theater. 

Why is room correction important for your home theater installation in Buckhead? Because every room is different, and even the best equipment and speakers may not sound quite like you expect without a little corrective help. Keep reading for a quick view of room correction and how it can help your sound quality. Or, skip the rest of the blog and call us; as metro Atlanta’s premier home theater company for over 30 years, we can expertly calibrate your home theater or media room for superb sound!

SEE ALSO: Want to Get the Most Out of Your Home Theater Installation?

If you're selling your home in Alpharetta, you might be faced with some expenses for either bringing deferred maintenance up to date or needing to update some items to make your property look fresh. It might be refinishing wood flooring, replacing carpeting, painting inside or out, or renewing bathroom and kitchen faucets. Depending on the age of the house and the competition, it might even be more extensive than that.

Most recent surveys show that prospective homebuyers are increasingly looking for smart home features in homes. And in new construction, builders have increasingly responded by prewiring homes for smart lighting, whole-home audio and other popular features.

If the prospect of modernizing your home with smart technology seems daunting, GHT Group can make it easy. In business serving the metro Atlanta area for over 30 years, we are your go-to smart home company for home technology. Keep reading below for three ways to freshen your home with smart tech and add the wow factor to bring in offers fast!

SEE ALSO: Does Your Smart Home Company Do These Things?

GHT Group loves LED lighting for many good reasons. Shall we count the ways? Just peruse some of the reasons below:

1. LED lighting is up to 80% more efficient than incandescent lighting.

2. Because it’s so efficient, it uses its energy to make light, not heat. That means lighting up your room doesn’t warm it up too.

3. LED lighting is incredibly long-lived. You can get up to 10 times the life of incandescent bulbs. We're talking 20,000 hours of light for some.

4. Unlike compact fluorescent lights, they don’t require special disposal because of mercury or other harmful materials. Not that you’ll be disposing of many.

LED lighting fixtures, by virtue of the way the technology works, also allow lighting designers to create different types of lighting not possible with other technologies. That means you can be very creative in illuminating your Buckhead, GA home in imaginative ways. Read on for a few ideas for indirect lighting with LED fixtures.

We’ve waxed poetic about the virtues of motorized shades in our blog. If you are looking to remodel, modernize, or are merely rethinking your window treatments, they should be at the top of your list. They're also a great way to begin your smart home transformation.

One of the best things about motorized window treatments is all the ways you can control them. And we're not just talking about the smartphone app, either. Apps are great, but sometimes there are other things to do with your smartphone. Also not discussed: manual control. After all, if that's what you were seeking, you probably wouldn't be reading this. 

One of GHT Group's preferred brands for powered shading is Lutron. Lutron shades offer an incredible array of choices in materials, styles, and control. Since this blog is about all the ways you can control your powered Lutron window treatments in your Atlanta, GA home, we're going to focus on that aspect in the rest of this blog. Please keep reading!

There’s an old adage that says good lighting can make any room look good, and bad lighting can make even the most beautiful space look seriously deficient. OK, we’ll admit we just made that one up. 

However, adage or not, there is truth in our words. Our eyes see everything as reflections of light off objects. And any picture you see is also the capture of light into an image. Light is a critical factor in how you view just about everything. 

When it comes to residential lighting design, perhaps there is nothing more annoying than a poorly lit bathroom. Bathrooms serve multiple purposes. They are functional spaces, but they also increasingly serve as retreats for relaxation with luxurious tubs, showers and other amenities. How do you illuminate bathrooms in Brookhaven, GA, to serve these different needs? We're glad you asked. Keep reading for some of the latest lighting trends for today's bathrooms.

SEE ALSO: 3 Smart Lighting Design Trends for Home Offices

Audio enthusiasts come in many stripes. Some are continually upgrading every part of their sound system, looking for their ultimate dream setup that sounds "perfect." Others enjoy rotating equipment in and out of their system, looking for a tweak or two to improve sound quality or give it a different nuance. Many simply enjoy the audio journey, knowing there is no audio nirvana, but the ride sure is a lot of fun.

Now, you might think that this constant search for aural perfection can get expensive. And it can, but there is an amazing amount of excellent audio gear that fits many budgets. Many of the hi-fi brands we offer at GHT Group – Monitor Audio, Klipsch Heritage, B&W, and more – have affordable options. But if you already have a set of high-end audio speakers in your Alpharetta, GA listening room that you like, there are some simple tweaks you can do to extract that extra ounce of oomph you may be looking for in your setup.

Keep reading for some simple tips you can try to improve your sound. And afterward, if you still think you need an upgrade, we’ll be happy to assist you with that!

The audio world is full of terminology and buzzwords. There are the traditional ones, like preamplifiers, amplifiers, woofers, tweeters, crossovers, and more. If you’re into audio at all, you know what these are. Then there are words that describe how a speaker or system sounds, like soundstage. If you're an audio fan, you know what that means, too.

Then there are the terms that came in with digital audio. How about lossless vs. compressed, MP3 vs. AAC, 16bit/44 kHz vs. 24bit/192 kHz sampling? For some people, they might have little to no meaning, other than they might surmise lossless is always better than compressed. The reality is, like in most things related to audio, there are not always absolute truths.

If you are familiar with all this as you sit in Johns Creek, GA listening to music on your whole-home audio system, you might wonder if high-resolution audio is something essential or a feature you can blissfully ignore. Keep reading to see which side of the fence you may fall.

A few weeks ago, we wrote about how video games can help you exercise the latest features of your home theater setup. It's true, some of the best video games take full advantage of 4K, HDR, and the latest immersive sound formats. And we also noted that many movies don't take full advantage of everything your up-to-date theater or media room can do.

However, we didn’t mean to imply that you’ve wasted your money on your 4K HDR Sony projector, or that McIntosh-based Dolby Atmos multi-channel surround system. Indeed, we think that an incredible soundtrack does as much to draw you into a film as fantastic cinematography and special effects. So, we set out to find the best movies to bring a knowing smile to your face that says yes, that Dolby Atmos system was the best entertainment investment ever. And if you don’t have an immersive surround sound system yet, GHT Group is your local Atlanta home theater company you can trust for the job.

Now, on to the top three movies that will put your surround sound – and maybe your ears – through a torture test.

It's safe to say that technology moves fast these days. We have now come to expect annual (or even quicker) updates to smartphones, tablets, operating systems, and apps. Since the innovation in smart devices like lights, thermostats, and security cameras are primarily software-driven, these devices are also rapidly gaining new intelligent features. 

Artificial intelligence (AI) is also driving advances. AI machine learning technology lets smart devices get smarter, detecting patterns and anticipating your moves and desires based on behaviors. What are some of the areas benefitting most from all this AI and software prowess? It’s hard to pick three areas, but we think these three have shown incredible leaps forward in the past couple of years, with much more to come. Keep reading to see how security cameras, voice assistants, and smart lights will enable more advanced home automation in your home in Alpharetta, GA or the greater Atlanta area.  

SEE ALSO: What Does the Future Hold for Home Automation?