Feb 11, 2013 8:34 AM, By Bob McCarthy The costs and benefits In
an ideal world, sound systems would be invisible and inaudible.
It is easy for us to comprehend the invisible part since we are
constantly told by architects and set designers that they can’t
stand the sight of a stationary rectangular box. Amazingly,
lights moving around changing color and brightness, spilling
light out of their sides and backs do not bother these folks.
But a black box, God forbid one with a tiny LED on it, is an
abomination. Why the prejudice against seeing speakers? This
ties in to the secondary desire for the speakers to be
inaudible, and by that I mean that we strive to create the
illusion that the sound is magically coming directly from the
stage performers rather than the rectangular boxes. Visible
boxes break the magician’s illusion, resulting in a strong
desire to hide them. The troubling part of all of this is that
hiding the speakers visually can actually make hiding them
audibly much more challenging. This is one of