Invisible Function

M-05 · Invisible speakers

Sound with no visible source

Drivers that get skim-coated and painted over until the wall is just a wall. The speaker is the easy purchase. The back-box, the isolation and the finish coat are what decide whether it stays invisible in year three.

Price a room Integrator subcontract

The problem

Invisible speakers fail at the wall, not the driver

Sonance, Amina and Stealth Acoustics all make drivers that genuinely disappear into a wall. Buying them is the straightforward part, and any integrator can do it.

What goes wrong is the wall. The driver is a rigid plate set into a flexible substrate, and it is then covered with joint compound by someone who was booked for two days and treats it like a patch. Six months later there is a faint rectangle in raking light, and by the second heating season it has a hairline crack down one edge. Nobody can be held to account for it, because the driver is fine and the drywall was signed off.

Here the driver, the back-box, the isolation detailing, the skim coat and the final sanding are one scope and one person. If the outline shows, it is mine.

Detailing

What is actually in the wall

Drivers
Sonance · Amina · Stealth
Wall depth needed
2–8 in
Back-box
Sealed, damped, decoupled
Skim
3 coats, feathered 18–24 in
Finish level
Level 5
Paint
Any sheen, flat included
Photograph required
Driver mounted in the stud bay before skimming, back-box and wiring visible
4/3  ·  /images/speakers/driver-in-wall.jpg
Photograph required
Finished wall in raking light from a window — no visible outline anywhere
4/3  ·  /images/speakers/finished-raking.jpg

Questions

Honest answers, including the unflattering one

Me. This is the whole reason the service exists as its own line. An invisible speaker that is skimmed by whoever is available will telegraph its outline within a year as the compound and the substrate move at different rates. The finish work is not a separate trade here.

Not quite, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. A good invisible driver in a properly built back-box, with the right amplification, is genuinely excellent for music in a living space and completely convincing for film dialogue and effects. A critical listening room should still have real speakers.

Yes to paint, in any finish including a flat that will not telegraph. Wallpaper is possible with the right drivers and the right paper — heavy vinyl is a problem, and I will tell you before it is hung rather than after.

For anything beyond a pair of speakers and an amplifier, yes, and I will work to their design. Amplification, sources, distribution and control stay in their scope. If you are an integrator, this is normally where you subcontract me: your drivers, your amps, my wall.

Next step

Usually specified alongside something else

Invisible speakers are most often an add-on to a lift or a millwork package, which is the cheapest way to buy them — the wall is already open.

Request a quote TV lifts

spec@invisiblefunction.com  ·  (717) 555-0142  ·  Ephrata, PA