Quick answer
Great curation fails on bad speakers. What ceiling height, spacing and zoning actually do to the sound your customers hear.
The most common complaint about background music is not the music. It is that one table sits under a speaker while another hears nothing, so the volume gets pushed up until the loud spot becomes unbearable. The playlist gets blamed for an acoustics problem.
Spacing follows ceiling height
A ceiling speaker projects sound in a cone. The higher the ceiling, the wider that cone is by the time it reaches ear level — roughly 1.4 to 1.5 metres above the floor — and the further apart the speakers can sit while their cones still overlap. The practical rule of thumb: spacing is approximately equal to the height of the speaker above the listeners' ears.
| Ceiling height | Cone width at ear level (approx.) | Typical spacing |
|---|---|---|
| 2.4 m (low retail, corridors) | ~1 m radius | 2-3 m apart — many small speakers |
| 3-4 m (typical retail, restaurants) | ~2-2.5 m radius | 4-5 m apart |
| 5 m+ (atria, malls, lobbies) | wide dispersion | Fewer, larger or pendant speakers |
The mistake is always the same direction: low ceilings fitted with too few speakers, turned up to reach the gaps. More units at lower volume always sounds better than fewer units pushed harder — the sound arrives from everywhere at conversation level instead of blasting from one point.
Things that quietly ruin coverage
- Hard surfaces: glass, polished concrete and tile lengthen reverb and blur detail — common in modern fit-outs.
- Open kitchens and coffee machines: background noise raises the level you need at the far end of the room.
- Retrofits: speakers placed where cable already runs, rather than where sound is needed.
- Undersized amplifiers: no headroom means distortion long before it gets loud. Size amplifiers with roughly 20-25% spare capacity.
- Mixed speaker types on one zone: different units have different tonal characters; the ear notices.
How loud should each zone be?
Background music should sit just above the ambient noise floor — present, never competing with conversation. As working targets:
| Zone type | Working level (approx.) | Character |
|---|---|---|
| Spa, clinic waiting, fine dining | 50-55 dB | Felt more than heard |
| Retail floor, cafe, hotel lobby | 55-65 dB | Clearly present, conversation easy |
| Bar, gym floor, QSR at peak | 65-72 dB | Energising, still below shouting level |
These levels only hold when coverage is even. In a patchy room, the loud spots are already over target before the quiet spots are audible — which is why the spacing math comes first.
Zone before you specify
Draw the zones first. Entrance, main floor, quiet corner, terrace and back of house all behave differently and want their own volume and, often, their own programme. Once the zones are agreed on paper, speaker count, amplifier channels and cabling follow logically. Doing it in reverse — buying hardware first — is how venues end up with a corridor louder than the dining room.
Pre-install checklist
- Zone map agreed: which areas share a programme and volume, which are independent.
- Ceiling heights measured per zone — spacing follows from this.
- Surface audit: glass, stone and tile flagged for acoustic treatment or tighter spacing.
- Noise sources mapped: kitchens, coffee machines, entrances, roads.
- Amplifier headroom confirmed at 20-25% above working load.
- Cabling routes agreed before fit-out closes the ceilings.
In the UAE, Araya surveys the space, plans coverage and installs the hardware, so curation and acoustics are solved together rather than by two suppliers blaming each other. Elsewhere, the music streams through the speakers you already have.