One open floor, several listening areas
Our loft is a single open floor of about 2,000 square feet — how do you decide where one listening area ends and the next begins?
By walking it with you and measuring distances between the things you do, not by dividing the floor plan evenly. We mark the TV seats, the dining table, the kitchen, any work corner and the bedrooms, then look at how far apart they are and what stands between them. Areas closer than about fifteen feet with an open line between them almost always behave as one, so we treat them as one Sonos room. Areas at opposite ends of the floor, or separated by a column line, a kitchen island or a bookcase wall, can be separate rooms with separate music. A typical 2,000-square-foot loft ends up with three or four areas: the TV seats, the kitchen and dining end, a quiet end with the bedrooms, and sometimes a work corner. The written plan shows each area, its products and which way they face.
Can the kitchen end of the loft play the news while the sofa end plays music, without the two blurring together?
Yes, if the two ends are far enough apart and the speakers face away from each other. Sonos will happily play two different sources in two rooms; the challenge in a loft is acoustic, not technical. We place the kitchen speaker low and close to where you stand, aimed along the counter rather than out into the room, and set its volume cap modestly, because speech needs less level than music to be understood. At the sofa end, the pair or soundbar faces the seats with its back to the kitchen. Thirty feet or more between the areas, plus a rug and a sofa back in the way, is normally enough for each to hear its own sound clearly. Less than that and you will hear the other area in quiet moments, so we tell you before anything is bought.
The bedrooms in our loft are glass boxes built inside the open space — how much music gets through their walls?
More than most owners expect. A single pane of glass in a light frame stops some treble but very little bass, and the gaps around sliding doors and at the top of partitions that stop short of the ceiling let sound straight through. Broker guides recommend glass walls and sliding doors as a way to make private zones in a loft, and they work for privacy of sight far better than privacy of sound. We plan bedrooms on the assumption that the open floor will be heard inside them at night: lower caps on the nearest open-floor speakers after a set hour, no subwoofer near the glass, and a speaker inside the bedroom only if you want one. If you are still designing the enclosures, ask your architect about laminated glass and sealed tops; they make a bigger difference than any setting.
When everyone is in one zone for a party, how do you keep the far end from sounding thin compared with the speakers near the sofa?
By spreading the sound instead of turning one area up. Grouping every Sonos room together for a party plays the same music in sync everywhere, but if the only serious speakers are a soundbar and Sub at one end, guests at the dining table sixty feet away hear little. A second pair or a couple of Era 100s along the floor, each at a moderate level, gives an even sound the full length of the loft with far less volume at any one spot. We set the group's relative levels during the visit by walking the floor while it plays, then save that as the starting point. It also keeps the party friendlier to the lofts above and below, because nothing has to be loud for the far end to hear it.
Carrying speakers and cable without hollow walls
Our ceiling is open to the sprinkler pipes and ductwork — can cable or a speaker hang from them?
No. Sprinkler pipes are life-safety equipment, and trade sources quoting NFPA 13 cite its rule that sprinkler piping or hangers shall not be used to support non-system components. Hanging anything from them, even a cable tie's worth of speaker wire, risks the pipe, its hangers and the building's inspection. Ducts are the building's or your HVAC contractor's, and their hangers are sized only for the duct. Where cable has to cross an exposed ceiling, it travels along the side face of a beam or joist on small clips, or in a painted raceway fixed to the structure with the board's agreement, and stays clear of every sprinkler head. Where a speaker is wanted overhead and there is no void to put it in, the honest answer is a wall position, a shelf or a stand instead.
With no hollow walls and no dropped ceiling, how does speaker cable cross a 90-foot loft?
Usually it doesn't have to. The first plan we draw keeps wired speakers close to their Amp, and uses wireless Sonos products for the far end of the floor, so long runs disappear from the drawing. Where a cable really must travel, we choose the least visible straight line the building offers: along the base of a brick wall in a slim raceway painted to match, up the inside corner of a partition, or along a beam's side face. Each Sonos product also needs power, so speakers go near existing outlets or where your electrician will add one. Under the Manhattan price list a run of up to 25 feet is $99 and a paintable cord cover $59; longer runs are quoted after the walkthrough, with the route marked on the plan so you approve exactly where it goes.
Could the cable run beneath our wide-plank floorboards instead of along the walls?
Sometimes, but rarely in a way that is worth it. In a timber-framed loft the planks are often nailed straight to the joists, and what lies below them is the ceiling of the loft downstairs — someone else's home, and often someone else's exposed beams. Lifting old planks without splitting them is slow, and the space beneath may be packed with old wiring, pipes or fire-stopping. Where a renovation already has the floor up, we gladly lay cable in conduit before it goes back down; that is the time to do it. In a finished loft we prefer a route at the base of a wall. If a board has to come up, we ask the managing agent first and leave the carpentry to a floor specialist.
Is a floor-standing speaker on a stand a real alternative to fixing anything in a loft?
Often it is the better answer, not a compromise. A stand puts the speaker at ear height for seated listeners, can be angled exactly toward the seats and away from the next area, needs no hole in brick, timber or iron, and moves when you rearrange the loft. Stands made to fit Sonos speakers are widely available. The drawbacks are floor space and a visible cable to the outlet, which we route along the floor edge or under a rug. We recommend stands beside a cast-iron column, in the middle of the floor where no wall is close, and in any rental where fixings are restricted; we recommend wall brackets where a brick wall or partition sits in exactly the right place.
Paperwork that already exists
Our renovation already has a DOB permit and an LPC Certificate of No Effect — can the speaker wiring be added to that job?
It can be planned into it, and that is the best time to do it. Under the Commission's rules, interior work in a historic district needs an LPC permit when it needs a Department of Buildings permit, and a Certificate of No Effect is the usual staff-level approval for interior work that does not touch protected features. Low-voltage speaker cable inside new partitions is normally part of the contractor's interior scope rather than a separate filing, but your architect is the person who decides whether anything we propose changes what was approved — for example a new opening in a rear wall or a vent through a window. We work from the architect's drawings, mark our cable and box locations on them for the architect to check, and schedule our rough-in with the general contractor before the walls close.
Our co-op's alteration agreement was written for a gut renovation — does a Sonos install need to go through it at all?
That depends on the building's own rules, so we start by asking the managing agent. Broker guides describe Tribeca co-op boards and condominium associations setting contractor insurance requirements, work hours and elevator use for any work. Many buildings treat placing and setting up speakers as no different from delivering furniture, and treat drilling brick, opening a partition or running cable through a common wall as an alteration. We send a short description of the work, a sketch of fixing points and our certificate of insurance in the wording the agent asks for; the agent tells us whether the full agreement applies. If it does, our part of the package is the scope, drawings and insurance, and any building fee is paid to the building directly.
Neighbours on the same timber
The loft below has asked us to keep it down — how do we find out which part of our sound system they are hearing?
By testing one thing at a time, with their help if they are willing. In a timber building a downstairs neighbour can hear three different things: music carried through the air and the planks, bass carried by the structure, and footsteps and furniture that have nothing to do with the speakers. We play the system at your usual evening level, then turn off the Sub, then the soundbar, then the music speakers, while someone downstairs or a phone recording on their side notes when the sound changes. Most often it is the Sub sitting on the planks, or a soundbar fixed to a wall shared with a column line. The fixes follow from the test: a smaller Sub on isolation feet away from the beams, an evening volume cap, or moving one area. We write down what changed so you can show the neighbour.
Galleries, studios and restaurants
Our gallery rehangs its walls every month — how do speakers stay out of the way of the art?
By keeping them off the hanging walls altogether. In a white-walled gallery the walls belong to the art, and a speaker bracket or cable channel in the wrong place gets in the way of every installation. We look at where your hanging system runs and where work has hung in past shows, then put speakers somewhere art never goes: high on the wall above the rail line, on the ends of partitions, on the underside of a soffit or bulkhead, or on stands behind the front desk. Cable follows the floor edge or the top of a partition rather than crossing a wall. Volume caps and a schedule set in the app give quiet background music during viewing hours, and the same system can be turned up for an opening night.
Our Franklin Street restaurant opens its front doors in summer — how do we keep the music inside the room?
Aim the sound inward and spread it out. The speakers nearest the doors should be the quietest, facing back toward the room rather than out onto the sidewalk, with the main speakers deeper inside where the seating is. Several small speakers at a low level carry better to the tables and less to the street than a couple of loud ones by the entrance. In the Sonos app we cap the front speakers lower than the rest and group them so the staff turn the whole room up together, never just the front. A speaker placed outside, or fixed to the storefront itself, is a different matter: in a historic district anything affecting the exterior needs an LPC permit, and music aimed at the street reaches the apartments above as easily as the passers-by.
