Kick off your shoes and feel the grass between your toes, crank the music and grab a cold one. Your guests will automati-cally be welcomed by driveway sensors, which illuminate a path of lights up to the fes-tivities. As the sun sets, the lights gradually brighten, and adjust in synch to the music. Your only task for the evening is to keep an eye on the barbie.
Nothing gets a party going better than music. Speakers designed to withstand year-round exposure to the elements are available in all shapes, sizes and prices ($975 to $1650 a pair). Designed to look like rocks, speakers like the Rox Landscape Speakers from
(distributed by Leisuretech Electronics) blend in with the landscape. Others, like the Stereo Stone from Audio Works, combine speaker drivers and light fixtures in a single enclosure.
It's tough to achieve sonic perfection in an outdoor environment, but there are certain speaker designs that work better outdoors than others. Wide-coverage, or omnidirec-tional, speakers radiate the sound in multiple directions so that unlike indoor speakers you don't have to sit right in front of them to hear the music. You can move freely about the yard and hear the music as clearly from the garden as you can from the pool.
Another type of speaker that accommodates movement is a ‘centrepoint' speaker. This relatively new technology reproduces stereo from one speaker, ensuring balanced sound even as you move about the yard. Manufacturers including Sonance and SpeakerCraft offer them for between $495 and $595 apiece. Of course, if there's a particular area of the yard where you park it – like a patio – two stereo speakers is the way to go, says Mark House, spokesperson for SpeakerCraft. To keep the outdoor speakers off until you walk outside, outfit your stereo amplifier with a speaker selector switch, available from Niles Audio (distributed by Audio Products Australia), and AudioPlex Technology (distributed by Hi Fi Video & Marketing), for around $269 and $300, respectively. The speakers are activated by pushing a button on the selector.
There are several ways to control the stereo from outside. You can adjust the volume from a weatherproof volume control like the WVC-1 or WVC-2 ($249 to $189) from Niles (available from Audio Products Australia), or use an infra-red extension system. A small infrared receiver eye mounted to a structure outside catches the commands from your existing handheld remote and transmits them over low-voltage cabling to the stereo.
Ordinarily, infrared extension systems aren't used outside because sunshine botches the
