OTHER TECH

This August will mark my four-year anniversary of writing "The Custom Installer" in Sound & Vision, a column covering various aspects of custom installation. (Shameless plug: Nearly every column is available online for your reading/learning pleasure here!) For my second installment, published way back in September 2003, I tackled the topic of intercom systems.

•Photo Gallery

The gist of the column was this: All too often, when customers walk into my custom installation showroom and say they want an intercom system, it turns out what they really want is an audio-distribution system. Usually they've lived with an intercom system and liked that it can pipe music throughout the house. Often they don't use it for actual intercommunication at all.

After that column ran, I was contacted by a couple of intercom companies who felt that I was down on intercoms altogether. Absolutely not true. In fact, dating back to when Alexander Graham Bell called out to Mr. Watson, there are times when an intercom system is the perfect prescription. Maybe you have a house that is large or spread over several stories, or a large family to keep tabs on, or you have family members who spend time behind closed doors in playrooms or home offices.

Before you mouse-click away to another page with a loud groan and sigh thinking, "Intercoms?! What do I care about intercoms?", you should know that this is not your typical intercom system. If you've been turned off by giant, button-festooned main stations or poor audio quality in the past, you're going to want to read this review. Russound calls its ComPoint system "the music lover's intercom solution," and it not only looks modern and cool but also promises to integrate with nearly any distributed-audio system.