We know the great feeling we get when listening to good music. In this case, good music is whatever you like to listen to. One person's idea of captivating music is another's cacophony. It doesn't matter what you like; you know the rapturous feeling you experience when you hear it.

Yet music isn’t only about the emotional response. Critical listening on a high-fidelity home audio system can give you an entirely new appreciation of your favorite music or even music you're exploring as something new.

So, what is critical listening, and how can it increase your music enjoyment in your Buckhead, GA home? Let’s explore three key elements below.

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.

Home audio systems tend to last a long time. Good quality hi-fi audio gear sometimes may not be replaced for 15 years or more. Analog components like preamplifiers, amplifiers, and speakers don’t need to be replaced unless they falter or you simply want something newer and different.

So why ever upgrade a home audio setup? While the analog side of audio hasn't necessarily changed that much, digital technology is another story altogether. As we know, almost any digital technology moves forward at a breakneck pace. Today's TVs offer astounding performance advantages over those of a decade ago. And your smartphone is nearly obsolete after about five years.

So why might you take another look at your audio system and decide to step it up? Let GHT Group, metro Atlanta’s home audio installation expert, give you three reasons to nudge you into something new.

Are you always listening to something? Is it music while you check on your investments in the home office or a podcast while you cook? Does relaxing on the patio with the sound of nearby ocean waves in the Florida sun demand just the right playlist? 

If there’s a soundtrack for everything you do, you should consider investing in the luxury of a whole-home audio system. A Control4 whole-house audio setup lets you funnel anything you want to listen to in perfect synchronicity all over your Alys Beach property. Keep reading to learn more about this smart audio solution.

If you were of age in the 1980s, you might remember some of the advertising of the era. It was the last decade before the Internet age; a time where the primary media was print and TV, and a time that Facebook, YouTube, and online banner ads that tracked your every online move didn’t exist. Who could forget the famous Orwellian TV spot in the 1984 Super Bowl that introduced the Apple Macintosh?

There was another memorable ad that captured the imagination then. It was an ad for Maxell cassette tapes. Maxell made some of the highest quality tape at the time, and it was prized by audio enthusiasts as a quality way to make the vinyl music of the day portable. The ad captured the excitement of music listening, with a period-hip fellow getting “blown away” by the high-fidelity sound of Maxell tape.

If you’ve read this far, you may be wondering why we are talking about cassette tape; something replaced long ago by everything digital. You see, the speaker pictured in that ad was the JBL L100. A hugely popular speaker in the 1970s and 1980s, to this day it remains the best-selling speaker in JBL’s long history. Its unique foam square design grill made it instantly recognizable, and it was known as a great speaker for rocking out. Maybe one of your friends had a pair, and if that was the case, it likely evokes fond musical memories of your youth.

But you don’t have to live on memories, and if you are too young to remember the original L100, you’re still in luck.

JBL has decided to bring the L100 back, aptly naming it the L100 Classic. The new model hews true to the original iconic design both in form and function, but it has been resurrected as a product of JBL Synthesis, which is the high end of JBL and part of parent company’s Harman Luxury Audio group. That means it’s not just the great party and rock and roll speaker which may have blown you away in the 1980s – it is a serious speaker worthy of the HiFi stereo system in your favorite Alpharetta or Metro Atlanta listening room.

Best of all, Georgia Home Theater’s Marietta experience center is currently the only showroom in the Atlanta area where you can see and hear the new JBL L100 Classic. Do you need any more reasons to visit us? Learn more about the JBL L100 Classic below.

We can’t take credit for Focal and Naim, two well-known and highly respected names in high-end audio, for getting together. That merger happened back in 2011, and it has been a fruitful partnership. But we can humbly and proudly take credit for being named a Focal/Naim Dealer of the Year in 2022, a sign of our great partnership with these stellar audio brands. 

GHT Group loves working with Focal because of their commitment to hi-fi audio excellence that doesn't sacrifice design and aesthetics, a vital part of the total audio experience. We're proud to display several of these beautiful speaker lines in our Marietta showroom and are equally pleased to be a top dealer in Metro Atlanta and the Southeast for Focal/Naim.

What makes Focal and Naim such a great combination? Both brands share the same core values and commitment to excellence in audio. Learn more about them below!

It's likely that if someone mentions multi-room audio, the Sonos name invariably comes up. The company has made a reputation for itself with simplified audio solutions that sound great, look stylish, and are easy to live with. And not only do they work in one room, but it's also effortless to build a houseful of Sonos audio in perfect synchrony. 

Is a Sonos multiroom system right for your Atlanta, GA home? That's what we're here to discuss! Please read on for four reasons people love Sonos whole-house audio. 

At Georgia Home Theater, we like to associate ourselves with quality brands. When it comes to audio, we have a preference for companies, products, and brands that have been synonymous with quality for a long time. Those brands include Bowers & Wilkins, McIntosh, Klipsch, Rotel and Paradigm, to name a few. Each of those companies has a commitment to offering the best audio performance possible for each of the products they offer, whether that product is aimed at the high or low end of the market.

Recently, we have been proud to add another well-known name with a reputation for quality to our offerings: Martin Logan. Martin Logan is yet another American Hi-Fi company (like McIntosh and Klipsch), founded in the unlikely location of Lawrence, Kansas, by Gayle Martin Sanders and Ron Logan Sutherland. Sutherland was an electrical engineer, and they both had a fascination with electrostatic speakers. What are electrostatic speakers? They are quite different from conventional speaker drivers that use electromagnets and current to move air. Electrostatic speakers vibrate air using thin conducive panels suspended between stationary panels. They are also known as dipole speakers, as they radiate sound all around from these panels as opposed to more directional sound from conventional speaker drivers.

When Martin Logan began, most electrostatic designs were relative failures. They were hard to drive with most amplifiers, and they were weak in bass reproduction. They did, however, offer an airy, enveloping sound that could reproduce genres like classical music in a more natural way than conventional speakers.

To make a long story short, suffice it to say that Martin Logan has applied years of engineering work in electronics and material science to perfect the electrostatic speaker. Today they are the foremost purveyor of electrostatic speakers, to the delight of audio enthusiasts who know that their sound is like no other, offering the kind of soundstage you hear at a live performance.

Georgia Home Theater is pleased to bring the transparent high fidelity sound of Martin Logan to your HiFi stereo system at your home in the Roswell area. Read on to learn more about three Martin Logan speaker models that can transform yourlistening room.

This blog has now been updated; you can view this updated post here.

Do you enjoy live music? Do you like to frequent venues like the Terminal West, Variety Playhouse, Tabernacle or the Coca-Cola Roxy? Do you like the way you can feel the music in those places, experiencing it in a way that is difficult to reproduce at home?

The volume, the dynamics, and the raw, unvarnished nature of the performance – after all it is live – make for memorable experiences. If you prize that feeling, there indeed are home audio systems that can approximate that experience for you at your home in the Atlanta area. But some can do it better than others. 

Georgia Home Theater recently partnered with Klipsch, one of the world’s largest speaker manufacturers, to bring their classic Heritage Series to the Metro Atlanta area. The Heritage line harkens back to the days when founder Paul Klipsch designed all the speakers himself, and they were built by hand.

What makes Klipsch Heritage Series speakers unique?  Read on to learn more. 

Vacuum tube vs. solid state amplification is one of the biggest debates for music enthusiasts, and people usually fall into one of the two camps. But pitting these amplification technologies against each other is unnecessarily restrictive, and McIntosh has realized the potential of a system that merges the two with the McIntosh MA252, the company’s first hybrid integrated amplifier.

This high-demand piece of technology has been back ordered for a long time, but we at Georgia Home Theater have the item in stock at both of our Atlanta-area showrooms. In our opinion, it's shaping up to be an iconic piece of gear within the McIntosh suite of luxury high-end audio products.

Read on to learn more about why a McIntosh MA252 is the perfect addition to the home audio system in your Alpharetta-area house.

Right now, it may not be typical beach weather in Miramar Beach, but it’s a wonderfully cool respite from the summer heat in the Florida Panhandle. It won't last long, so enjoy it! If you need a little help envisioning the beach vibe in this season, there's no better way than music to bring it back. 

If you already have a whole-home audio system, you know the pleasures of music all over the house. If you don't, we can set you up with a system that will invoke any memories you want. From Sonos to Control4 and Crestron and Coastal Source, we can design and install a system that will keep your ears enthralled anywhere in your home, indoors or out. 

Let’s get the beach vibe started. Here are some of our favorite tunes to bring the memories of surf and sand back!

Few home upgrades are as enjoyable and usable as a whole home audio system. If they say music soothes the soul, why not be soothed in every room of the house? We're not making this up; scientific evidence shows that music can increase oxytocin and serotonin levels in your brain. So if there's music that makes you feel good, having easier access to it is good for you. 

But there are audio systems, and then there are whole home audio systems. One important thing to note about audio everywhere in your house: it's not one size fits all. Not only should your system fit you and the music you listen to, but it should also fit your space. One way to do that is with the choice of speakers. You can have speakers for critical listening in one room and speakers appropriate for background music in other spaces. GHT Group works with the best industry brands like Sonance to design custom audio solutions that fit your specific needs. It's one reason we were named Sonance Authentic Partner of the Year in 2022!

Read on to learn more about how we take a bespoke approach to whole-home sound in your Buckhead, GA home. 

In 2016, Rega went back to its roots and brought back the Planar name that made it a household name in the 1970s. The move coincided with vinyl's resurgence around that time. As the music industry moved to digital in the form of MP3s and streaming services, a lot of music fans turned back to vinyl records.

The tactile feel of holding a record offered such a better experience than pressing a button to play music from a playlist. That's not even considering the immense jump in quality when going from digital to analog recordings. But for some newcomers to HiFi audio, it can be daunting jumping to a vinyl world filled with dedicated music enthusiasts.

That’s the great thing about Rega’s Planar turntables. They’re easy to install in your Roswell-area home without needing prior expertise and come in a variety of price points to appeal to newcomers and music enthusiasts alike. If you’re looking to add some vinyl to your Georgia home audio installation, test out their main models in our Marietta showroom: The Planar 1, Planar 3, Planar 6, and Planar 8.

With the advent of the CDs and digital music in the 1980s, everyone predicted that vinyl records would go the way of the dinosaur. In fact, with the convenience and longevity of CDs, vinyl records almost did disappear. The next phase of digital technology, the download, begat the iPod and “30,000 songs in your pocket.” The incredible convenience of digital music stored on a portable computer or player made it easy to take all your music anywhere. With streaming music from the cloud, the cycle was virtually complete. You didn’t even have to take your music with you; 40 million tracks are instantly available from the cloud. How many vinyl records can you carry?

The only problem with digital music is that it took away from the physical and focused experience of listening to music. There’s no way to make a playlist out of several records (short of tape or digital recording), so part of the magic of vinyl is listening to an album all the way through, with no skipping, in the order that the artist wanted it. Add to that the tactile experience of reading the liner notes, and the unique photography or custom artwork on the album cover, and the listening experience harkens back to a different time when the world moved much slower.

It seems that the vinyl experience is experiencing a resurgence, and what’s more, a younger generation that grew up in the age of the iPod is buying into it too. At a time when big box stores like Best Buy are ending CD sales, vinyl record sales are up 19% over 2017.

Vinyl isn’t going anywhere. It’s a great way to rekindle your love of music, rediscover old favorites or listen to new ones with the warm, pleasing sound that vinyl uniquely delivers. Along that line, it’s not too late to upgrade the high-fidelity audio setup in your Atlanta home this holiday season with some stylish equipment that will be the envy of your friends.

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.