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.

The holidays are just around the corner, and with them comes lots of online shopping and package deliveries. You'll get plenty of notifications that your package is approaching or at your door, but even in the best neighborhoods, there's always the chance you might be the victim of porch piracy.

What is porch piracy? As you might surmise, it’s the opportunistic thief that might be tailing the UPS or Amazon truck and lifting the AirPods your teenager coveted for Christmas from your front door before you’ve had a chance to retrieve it. No one wants that agony. But there is a way to make those pirates think twice about targeting your Dunwoody, GA porch with a security camera installation. Learn how below.

Unused rooms in your home offer a world of potential. Recent retirees may have an office they no longer need, or empty nesters may want new ways to transform their kids’ rooms. Fitness rooms, library rooms, and libraries are some of the more popular choices. Recently, we’ve also seen a lot of clients reach out to see if these spare rooms in their Vinings-area homes are big enough for a successful media room design.

Entertainment spaces used to require a lot of equipment that could easily overwhelm a small room. Over the past few years, however, technology advances have made it so you can create the ideal viewing and listening environment almost anywhere. From motorized shades that reduce glare to speakers that stay hidden from view, we outline some of our favorite features below.

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.

For over 15 years, Control4 has been a leader in home automation technology. One of its greatest strengths is the breadth of its business. The company does business in 100 countries, its systems interoperate with over 12,000 consumer electronics products, and its channels include 5,700 custom integrators, distributors and integrators. When you choose Control4 home automation for your Roswell or Metro Atlanta house, you know you’re choosing home control technology that will be around for years to come.

Georgia Home Theater is proud to be a Control4 Diamond Dealer and Certified Showroom. We can offer the full line of Control4 home automation solutions from controlling a home theater to automating your lights, motorized shades, lighting, climate control, and much more. We pride ourselves on our service and in delivering a fully integrated solution that works the way you want it.

Recently, Control4 has introduced new capabilities to its system that put even more power in your hands. With the popularity of smart devices, consumers have grown more comfortable with the concepts of controlling smart devices under different scenarios and making them work better together. Traditionally, expert integrators like us would program this automation, as it could get very technical. Control4 decided to open up more of the power of its smart home control systems, making it easy for customers to customize their own automation routines. Control4 calls this new feature “When >> Then.”

You don’t need to use When >> Then to harness the power of Control4 home automation in your Metro Atlanta home. But if you are a bit more technical, and you like to have precise control over many functions in your home, When >> Then is a powerful – yet easy to use – tool to customize your environment. Read on to learn more about the exciting possibilities with When >> Then and Control4’s innovative 4Sight services.

On these pages in the recent past, we’ve enthusiastically extolled the virtues of motorized shades in residential settings. There's no denying the comfort and convenience factors, the compounded benefits from integration with other smart automation, and the real energy savings they can bring. 

You may not know that all the benefits above can be applied to commercial settings, as well. We could even argue that the business case for motorized shades in your Marietta, GA enterprise is easier to make.

How? Keep reading to learn some smart shading solutions for business.

SEE ALSO: What Makes Lutron Motorized Shades Among the Industry’s Best?

Envision a home that inspires you every time you return to it. Everything feels natural and just right. It feels like a home, tailored just for you, like a bespoke suit or designer dress. A home that welcomes you, seemingly anticipating what you want before you even think about it. It feels magical, almost dreamlike, with lighting that sets the perfect mood for the time of day, music that permeates the air, and an environment that feels just as comfortable in pajamas or your business attire. 

What makes such a home? It's the confluence of many skill sets brought to bear on your vision, your dream, and what a home means to you. It's the skill of the architect that captures your style, the builder who brings the architecture to life,  and the interior designer who curates the right finishes, furniture, and colors. But all of these critical elements are static once they are complete. One other skill set is crucial in bringing in the magic that makes your home dynamic and adaptable to every activity and moment: the integrator. Using smart home automation as a platform, the integrator weaves in technology to create the soul of your home. Let's explore this key element below in more detail.

We recently added Monitor Audio to our burgeoning collection of hi-fi audio brands, already one of the most extensive in Atlanta. While their Platinum series is highly regarded and well-reviewed, their broad architectural (built-in) speaker line is one that also deserves your attention. They offer the same accurate, detailed Monitor Audio sound in a package discreetly hidden in the walls.

Many different types of speakers can work for home theater and media room duty. Floor standers, stand-mount bookshelf and mini-towers, on-wall, in-wall, and in-ceiling can all be used. The choice depends mainly on your design and style preferences and sometimes on the layout and construction of your media space.

While in-ceiling speakers are de rigueur for height effects from Dolby Atmos and DTS:X immersive soundtracks, some people think architectural speakers represent a compromise in sound quality for the sake of style. Once upon a time, that may have been true - but no more. This month, we have a case in point - Monitor Audio’s Controlled Performance Series. Simply put, they produce some of the most incredible sound we’ve ever heard from architectural speakers at Georgia Home Theater. So if you are looking for a surround sound system for your media space in Alpharetta or Atlanta, you owe it to yourself to listen to these.

Read on to learn more about the Monitor Audio Controlled Performance line.

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.

When the pandemic hit and gyms everywhere were suddenly closed, there was a renewed focus on exercise at home. Wait times for Peloton bikes stretched for weeks, dumbbell and weight sets were nowhere to be found, and it seemed like the entire world was doing yoga classes on Zoom, YouTube, or from exercise apps.

Now, gyms have reopened, Peloton is even offering discounts (gasp!), but the home gym is here to stay. Why? It’s easy, you don’t have to go anywhere, you can control your environment, and it’s much simpler to step away from a work-from-home day to get some exercise in. Not to mention that no one will care that you’re not wearing the latest Nike or Lululemon. 

But one thing that shouldn’t be overlooked in home gyms is lighting. Just like in the home office and your living areas, lighting affects every activity. Keep reading to learn about the most illuminating ideas interior lighting design companies recommend for Roswell, GA, home gyms. 

We adapt to technology quickly, perhaps more than we realize. In the past 25 years, life has changed markedly with the onslaught of the Internet, which continues to connect not just people but almost every facet of our lives.

Sometimes, people rue the effect of technology on their lives and long for the "good old days" before it came along. They complain about the impact of technology, that all our "interconnectedness" makes too much of a 24/7 world.

However, technology can also enhance our lives in ways far better than the “good old days.” One of the latest features of LED lighting and lighting control is color-tuned lighting, and it promises to make your home’s lighting more natural and attuned to your daily rhythms.

It’s called human-centric lighting, and it’s brought to your Roswell home by Lutron, a pioneer in lighting control since the good old days. Read on to see how Lutron lighting control can enhance your wellness at home.

Coastal Source has long been known for high-quality audio and lighting solutions for the outdoors. Their landscape speakers, Bollard speakers, and powerful marine-grade amplifiers stitched together with the robust, proprietary Coastal Connector have brought a new level of performance to outdoor sound. 

Never content to rest on their laurels, Coastal Source thought: What if we made an architectural speaker elegant enough for indoor use but made to withstand the elements? The result is the new Razor line, a different kind of outdoor sound system for your Buckhead, GA, home. Keep reading!

As a recovering home theater company, we love to talk about home theaters. And when the weather is warm, we love talking about moving the home theater outside. After all, now that drive-ins are practically extinct, how else can we enjoy summer movie nights under the stars?

We are only joking about the recovering part – we are still very much into home theaters! GHT Group is always excited to bring you new options for outdoor technology, and you can even see and experience many of them at our Marietta showroom. Recently, Samsung announced its first foray into outdoor TV, with the new Terrace line. What makes it perfect for an outdoor home theater setup at your Brookhaven, GA home? We’re going to cover that below!

Since 2003, Control4 has been an innovating force in smart home automation. Their systems have always been intuitive, easy to use, and designed so that novice and experts alike can control their home environment effortlessly.

Smart home technology is moving ahead at a breakneck pace. Control4 understands that, and they have not stood still. They’ve listened to Control4 installers like Georgia Home Theater, their customers, and paid attention to the latest advances in the smart home world to build an even better version of the Control4 platform: OS 3.

In OS 3, Control4 made a huge leap forward to make its system even easier to use for homeowners like you. Over 1,000 enhancements have gone into the software to enable the ultimate smart home experience.

What do you need to know about OS 3 for the Control4 home automation setup at your Sandy Springs or Metro Atlanta property? Read on to learn more.

The British seem to have a way with hi-fi audio. Brands like Bowers & Wilkins, KEF, Meridian, NAD, Linn, and others are renowned for engineering and craftsmanship in the field of audio reproduction. Another brand that sometimes doesn’t get as much mention - but should - is Monitor Audio.  

For over 40 years, Monitor Audio has been building a complete range of speakers for home audio, which today encompasses 16 product ranges from custom install to high-end home theater speakers. Like most British audio makers, they have their unique slice of expertise that they apply to their speaker designs.  

Monitor Audio is one of the world's foremost experts in crafting speaker drivers from metal, which is not the easiest material to fashion into an audio transducer. For example, the RDT (Rigid Diaphragm Technology) in the Platinum speaker cones is made from ceramic-coated aluminum/magnesium in the front skin, with carbon fiber in the back. This high-tech combination of materials results in a speaker that responds to transitions quickly with ultra-low distortions, which all translates to better sound. 

Georgia Home Theater is proud to be one of Monitor Audio’s select dealers in the Atlanta area, adding to our extensive collection of high-end speakers for hi-fi and home theater. Read on to learn more about the unique aspects of Monitor Audio speakers.