COMMERCIAL AUDIO/VISUAL FOR NJ, PA, AND DE
Design · Engineering · Documentation
Audio Visual Consultants for NJ, PA & DE
Measured acoustics, RF spectrum scans, modeled loudspeaker coverage, and drawings a contractor can build from — produced by a CTS-D certified designer.
What usually brings people here
Almost nobody calls asking for an av consultant. They call because something in the room is not working, or because a budget number is due and nobody can defend it. These are the ones we hear most.
- The wireless microphones cut out, and it is worse when the room is full.
- You can hear that someone is talking but you cannot understand the words.
- The architect needs an AV number and the allowance in the budget came from nowhere.
- Three integrators quoted three completely different systems and none of them explained why.
- The back rows cannot read the screen.
- The room echoes, and we have been told to buy speakers to fix it.
- We are in design or under construction and do not know what to ask for.
- The spec we were handed locks us into one manufacturer and we want a second opinion.
If any of that sounds like your building, the useful next step is a walkthrough, not a proposal. Get in touch and tell us what fails and when.
The process
How an engagement runs
Four stages. You get something usable at the end of each one, and you can stop after any of them.
1
Walk the room
We come out and take measurements rather than opinions — reverberation and background noise, an RF spectrum scan of the bands your wireless lives in, seat positions and sightlines, ceiling structure, existing infrastructure. We also ask the people who run the room what actually goes wrong.
2
Model and scope
Room geometry and measured loudspeaker data go into acoustic prediction software to check coverage and intelligibility seat by seat. Screen sizes get checked against real viewing distances. Out of that comes a written concept and a preliminary budget range you can put in a capital request.
3
Document it
AV functionals and signal flow, device locations, rack elevations, riser diagrams, wall plate details, wire pull sheets, specifications and equipment lists — drawn to one consistent standard so the electrician, the general contractor and the AV installer are reading the same set.
4
Stay on it
Bid review and shop drawing review if it goes out competitively, then commissioning against the predictions, as-built drawings, configuration backups and training for the staff or volunteers who inherit the system.
Wireless
RF scanning and wireless microphone coordination
Wireless dropouts are the single most common complaint we get, and they are almost never fixed by buying different microphones.
We come to the building with a handheld RF spectrum analyzer — an RF Explorer, which sweeps continuously up to 6.1 GHz and logs what it sees to a laptop. That covers the UHF bands your microphones use, the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands your Wi-Fi and some newer wireless systems use, and everything in between. We scan at the times of day you actually use the room, because a Sunday morning and a Tuesday afternoon do not look the same.
The scan gets exported and imported into coordination software — Shure Wireless Workbench, plus the manufacturer’s own utilities depending on what is in the rack — which calculates a set of frequencies that are clear of local broadcast television, clear of the other wireless in your building, and clear of each other’s intermodulation products. That last part is the one guesswork misses.
What a scan actually finds
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Local DTV occupancy
Which television channels are live at your address, which is what determines the UHF spectrum you are allowed to work in. -
Systems nobody told you about
Intercoms, assistive listening, another department's wireless, a contractor's gear left powered on. -
Broadband noise sources
LED wall and display power supplies, dimmers, and cheap switching supplies that raise the noise floor across a whole band. -
Coverage and antenna problems
A large share of dropouts are antenna placement, cable loss or gain structure — not frequency choice at all.
A live scan in the room, taken at the console position. The marker is sitting on an occupied carrier at 549.575 MHz at −39.5 dBm — strong enough to matter, and invisible until somebody looks.
The same analyzer over USB to a laptop. Spectrum on top, waterfall underneath so intermittent hits show up over time, then the scan gets exported into the coordination software to build the frequency plan.
A directional antenna mounted where it can see the stage. Antenna type and placement fix more dropouts than changing frequencies does.
Twenty-four coordinated channels in one rack. At this density every frequency has to be calculated against every other one.
Why a frequency plan does not travel. Most UHF wireless microphones share spectrum with broadcast television, so the channels you can safely use depend on which DTV stations are licensed near your building. New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware sit under a crowded overlap of the Philadelphia and New York markets, and Voorhees does not look like Trenton, Newark or Wilmington. Copying a frequency list from another site is a guess. A plan built from a scan taken in your room is not.
A design is only worth the install behind it
We draw systems we then have to stand behind, which tends to keep the drawings honest.
Acoustics
Acoustic consulting, in house and with an engineer
Sound systems get blamed for problems the room is causing. Measuring first is what tells you which one you are dealing with.
What we measure in house
Reverberation time across the octave bands, background noise level from mechanical systems, and where the strong reflections are coming from. In a gym, cafeteria, sanctuary or multipurpose room that is normally enough to decide how much absorption the space needs and where it has to go to matter.
What that changes about the system
A long reverberation time smears speech no matter how good the loudspeakers are, so past a certain point you cannot buy your way out of it with electronics. But panels are not free either, and in some rooms a tighter-pattern loudspeaker aimed only at the seats fixes intelligibility for a fraction of the cost of treatment.
When we bring in an acoustical engineer
For new construction, sound isolation between spaces, mechanical noise criteria, or anything a design team needs from an independent professional, we bring in an outside acoustical consultant and coordinate our system design against their report rather than around it.
Panel layout modeled in three dimensions before anything is ordered, so the absorption lands where the reflections actually are.
Treatment installed in a middle school band room. Rooms built for volume are rarely built for clarity.
There is a fuller explanation of measurement, treatment types and what they cost on our commercial acoustics page, and sound masking covers the opposite problem — open offices where speech carries too well.
Prediction
Coverage modeling and video sightlines
Both of these are cheap to check on a computer and expensive to discover after the lift has gone back to the rental yard.
Predicted direct sound pressure level across the seating of an auditorium. The colour bands show where coverage is even and where it is not, before a single bracket is ordered.
Audio coverage mapping
Room geometry and the manufacturer’s measured loudspeaker data go into acoustic prediction software, which returns level and intelligibility across every seating area. That is how you find the dead spot under the balcony, the row that gets several decibels more than the rest, and the aiming angle that keeps energy off a hard rear wall.
Video sightlines
Screen size and mounting height get checked against actual seat positions, eye heights, standing rows and any structure in the way, then the resulting image is checked against readable text size for the content you plan to show. It is the difference between a display that fits the wall and one the back row can read.
The same room built as a three-dimensional model, with loudspeaker positions and coverage tested against the seating plan.
A 189-inch screen and a 9,000-lumen laser projector in a gym — sized from viewing distance and ambient light, not from the wall.
Budgets and construction-phase planning
The earlier we are in the conversation, the more of your money we can protect. Once the walls close, the cheap fixes are gone.
Planning and pre-design
Before there are drawings, we can give a planning budget range for the rooms you are describing, along with the assumptions behind it and what would move it. That is usually what a capital request, a bond referendum or a building committee needs. It is a range, not a quote, and we will say so in writing.
Design and bid phase
We coordinate with the architect and engineers on conduit, back boxes, power, ceiling structure and rigging attachment while it is still lines on paper. Then we produce documents that can go out for competitive bid — which public schools and municipalities frequently need — and review the bids that come back.
Under construction
Existing conditions never match the drawings exactly. We do site observation, respond to RFIs, review shop drawings and submittals, catch the pathway that got value-engineered out, and adjust the design when the building tells us something new.
We have joined projects at every stage, including after another vendor walked away. If your building is already framed, that is still worth a phone call: 800-650-5378.
Product selection
Factory direct, not brand loyal
We are a small company that holds direct relationships and manufacturer certifications across a wide range of lines. The practical effect is that the design starts from what the room needs instead of from what happens to be in the warehouse.
Why it matters to you
An integrator who carries two brands will design two-brand systems, because that is the honest limit of what they can support. When the right answer for your sanctuary is a point-source box from one manufacturer and the right answer for your gym is a different pattern from another, you want a designer who can specify both and still service them.
What we will tell you
Which lines we are direct with, what we recommend for your room and why, and where a competitor’s product would be the better fit. If the answer is that your existing loudspeakers are fine and you need processing, amplification or treatment instead, that is what the report will say.
Lines currently listed on our products page
AtlonaDanley Sound LabsEikiMiddle AtlanticQSC / Q-SYSRenkus-HeinzShureSymetrixWest Penn Wire
That list is what is published on our products page and is not the whole story — ask about a specific manufacturer and we will tell you straight whether we are direct, whether we can get it, or whether we would steer you elsewhere.
What CTS-D means, and what it takes to hold it
Two of our engineers hold CTS-D. One of them also holds CTS-I. Here is why that is worth more to you than a wall of product logos.
The credential
CTS-D is the Certified Technology Specialist — Design credential issued by AVIXA, the audiovisual industry’s trade association. It is vendor-neutral: no manufacturer sponsors it and no product training earns it. The underlying CTS program is accredited to the international ISO/IEC 17024 standard for personnel certification bodies.
What it takes to sit for it
You must already hold a current, valid general CTS in good standing. On top of that, a minimum of two years of audiovisual design experience has to be verified by a third party — a supervisor, an employer or client documentation. Then a proctored, computer-based exam at an independent testing centre, and agreement to the CTS code of ethics.
Keeping it
It expires. Renewal is every three years and requires 30 documented renewal units, of which at least 15 must come from design-specific training for a CTS-D holder, plus reaffirming the code of ethics. Letting the underlying CTS lapse takes the CTS-D with it.
What it actually changes about your project
The exam is built around design work, not products — loudspeaker coverage and gain structure, speech intelligibility, signal flow, sightlines and image size, electrical and structural coordination, and how to document all of it so somebody else can build it. So when we tell you the back third of your gym will be 6 dB down with the layout in the drawing, or that the screen on the plan is too small for the last row, that is a calculation rather than an opinion. Details of the requirements are published by AVIXA and the renewal rules by AVIXA certification renewal.
Credentials
Manufacturer and platform certifications
Vendor-neutral design certification tells you the system will be designed correctly. Platform certifications are what let us configure, program and support it afterwards instead of handing you off.
AVIXA CTSAVIXA CTS-DAVIXA CTS-IQSC Q-SYS Level 1QSC Q-SYS Level 2Crestron Certified Audio TechnicianCrestron CTI P101 / P201 / P301Crestron DMC-E-4KCrestron DMC-T-4KCrestron DMC-D-4KExtron AV AssociateExtron Systems DesignExtron XTPAudinate Dante CertifiedShure Microflex AdvanceSymetrix Certified ProAtlona Certified ProfessionalRenkus-HeinzPlanar Certified InstallerChief CertifiedOSHA 30
We are members of AVIXA and of AQAV, the Association for Quality in Audio Visual Technology. The current list is maintained on our certifications page.
Deliverables
What you actually receive
Drawings are the product. A design nobody can build from is just an opinion with a title block.
Engineered drawing set
AV functional and signal-flow diagrams, device location plans, rack elevations, riser diagrams, wall plate and floor box details, and wire pull sheets — all drawn to one consistent standard so the electrician, the general contractor and the AV installer work from the same information.
Specification and equipment list
A written specification describing performance requirements and installation standards, plus a line-item equipment list. Written for competitive bid where that is what you need, so more than one integrator can price the same scope.
Prediction and analysis output
Loudspeaker coverage and intelligibility maps, acoustic measurement results, sightline studies and RF scan and coordination data — the evidence behind the recommendations, not just the conclusions.
Configuration and programming
DSP configuration and control programming, with a strong bench on the QSC Q-SYS platform. Files are handed over and documented so you are not locked to us to change a preset.
Commissioning report
The installed system measured and tuned against what was predicted, with the results written down. If reality and the model disagree, you get told why.
As-builts and training
Drawings updated to match what was actually installed, configuration backups, and hands-on training for the staff or volunteers who have to run the room on a Sunday morning or a Friday night.
DSP configuration and control programming, documented and handed over.
A rack built to the elevation drawing. Labelled, dressed and documented so the next technician is not guessing.
What our clients say
Verified Google reviews from schools, churches, municipalities and businesses across New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware.
R
Ryan Schugar
I work in this industry and their system design and commissioning quality is as good as it gets. They do the work properly the first time.
C
Chuck Messer
We are a small congregation in Salem County and needed livestreaming and sound in a 300-year-old sanctuary. They understood the building and made it work. Their tech Oliver was excellent.
A
Alex Shourds
Kingsway Church
They came out to inspect our speaker rigging and were thorough and professional about it. Good people to have on your side.
C
Chris Eddy
Joe, Jill, and crew at JD Sound are great people. From start to finish they are a class act and pleasure to work with. Our new stadium and gym sound systems are amazing!
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Peter Bader
Outstanding customer service and technical support in my 4+ years of working with JD Sound & Video. Would highly recommend for facility operations or athletic competitions at the high school or collegiate level.
D
Dan Antonelli
Sound board was down and graduation was the next day. I made a call and a rep was helping while waiting for a flight, then a tech was out there in 25 minutes. These guys are top notch and the sound is great!
S
Sam Mountain
Asbury United Methodist Church, Woodstown NJ
JD Sound and Video did a fantastic job for our church. Professional, responsive, and the results speak for themselves.
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Vincent Sileo
What a fantastic experience! Super professional, detail oriented and excellent workmanship!
NJ · PA · DE
Where we consult
Our office is in Voorhees, New Jersey, twenty minutes from Philadelphia. Design and consulting work goes out across three states.
New Jersey
Camden, Burlington and Gloucester counties out of Voorhees, plus Cherry Hill, Marlton, Mount Laurel, Trenton and Princeton, north through Newark and the Route 1 corridor, and east to the shore. Schools, churches, municipal buildings and courtrooms make up most of the work.
Pennsylvania
Philadelphia and the surrounding counties — Bucks, Montgomery, Delaware and Chester — plus Lehigh Valley and Reading. Same drawings, same standards, and close enough that a site visit is not a production.
Delaware
Wilmington, Newark and down through Dover. Worth knowing that the wireless spectrum picture in northern Delaware is shaped by the Philadelphia market, which is exactly the kind of thing a scan catches and a copied frequency list does not.
Sector pages with real project write-ups: churches, schools, courtrooms and government, conference rooms, athletic venues and auditoriums.
Straight answers
Frequently asked questions
If your question is not here, ask it. We would rather answer it once properly than have you guess.
An installer prices and mounts equipment. A consultant establishes what the room requires before anyone picks a product — measuring the acoustics, predicting loudspeaker coverage, checking sightlines, scanning the RF environment, and then documenting all of it well enough that a contractor can build from the drawings and an owner can hold them to it. We do both, which means the design is written by the people who have to make it work on opening day.
Both models exist and we will tell you up front which one applies. Early feasibility conversations and a walkthrough are normally no charge. Formal deliverables — measured acoustic reports, coverage models, full drawing sets, bid-ready specifications, or owner’s-representative work on a project we are not installing — are quoted as a design fee. If we go on to build the system, we will tell you in writing how the design fee is treated.
Yes. We produce bid documents that any qualified integrator can price, which is often what a school district or municipality needs in order to satisfy public bidding requirements. Say so at the start so the deliverables are written for competitive bid rather than for our own crew.
We come to the building with a handheld RF spectrum analyzer and scan the bands your systems live in, at the times of day you actually use the room. That scan shows what else is transmitting — local DTV stations, other wireless systems in the building, LED wall power supplies, Wi-Fi and other noise sources. The scan then goes into coordination software to calculate a set of frequencies that will not interfere with each other or with what is already in the air. Antenna type and placement, cable loss and gain structure get checked at the same time, because a large share of dropouts turn out to be antenna and coverage problems rather than frequency problems.
Most UHF wireless microphones share spectrum with broadcast television, so the usable channels depend on which DTV stations are licensed nearby. New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware sit under a crowded overlap of the Philadelphia and New York markets, and the picture is not the same in Voorhees as it is in Trenton, Newark or Wilmington. A frequency plan copied from another building is a guess. A plan built from a scan taken in your building is not.
That depends on the band, the equipment and how crowded the local spectrum is, which is exactly why the answer comes from a scan rather than from a brochure. Coordination also has to leave room for intermodulation products, so the honest number is usually lower than the marketing count. We would rather tell you the system will support twelve reliable channels than sell you sixteen that fight each other.
In house we measure the room — reverberation, background noise level, and where reflections are coming from — and use that to decide how much absorption the space needs and what loudspeaker pattern will survive the room that is left. For most gyms, cafeterias, sanctuaries and multipurpose rooms that is the right level of rigor. For more demanding work, new construction, sound isolation between spaces, mechanical noise, or anything a design team needs stamped, we bring in an independent acoustical consultant and coordinate our system design against their recommendations.
Often it is both, and the order matters. A room with a long reverberation time will smear speech no matter how good the loudspeakers are, so above a certain point you cannot buy your way out of it with electronics. But treatment is not free either, and in some rooms a tighter-pattern loudspeaker aimed only at the seats will fix intelligibility for a fraction of the cost of panels. Measuring first is what tells you which room you have. There is more detail on our commercial acoustics page.
As early as anyone will let you. During planning and design development we can give the architect realistic budget numbers, tell you where conduit and back boxes need to go, flag ceiling structure that will not support what is being drawn, and keep an AV allowance from being set at a figure nobody can build to. Once walls are closed the cheap fixes are gone. We have joined projects at every stage, including after another vendor walked away, but the earlier the call the more we can save you.
Yes, and we will be clear about how firm it is. Given a room, a use case and a drawing or a site visit we can give a planning range good enough to put in a capital request or a bond referendum, along with the assumptions behind it and what would push it up or down. That is different from a proposal, and we will not present a range as if it were a quote.
It works the other way around. We hold factory-direct relationships and manufacturer certifications across a wide range of lines, so the design starts from what the room needs rather than from the two brands we happen to stock. When a competitor’s product is the better fit for your room, that is what goes in the drawing. Our current lines are listed on the products page.
CTS-D is the Certified Technology Specialist — Design credential from AVIXA, the audiovisual industry’s trade association. It is not a manufacturer course. To sit for it you must already hold a current general CTS in good standing and have a third party verify at least two years of AV design experience, then pass a proctored exam at an independent testing center. It has to be renewed every three years with documented continuing education. In practical terms it means the person drawing your system has been independently tested on the design math — coverage, gain structure, intelligibility, sightlines, electrical and structural coordination — rather than on a product catalog.
AVIXA requires 30 renewal units every three-year cycle, at least half of which must come from design-specific training for a CTS-D holder, plus reaffirming the code of ethics. Manufacturer certifications have their own cycles and get renewed as platforms change. Our full current list is on the certifications page.
It depends on the scope, but a full design package typically includes AV functional and signal-flow drawings, device location plans, rack elevations, riser diagrams, wall plate and floor box details, wire pull sheets, a written specification, an equipment list, and loudspeaker coverage predictions. Everything is drawn to a consistent standard so an electrician, a general contractor and an AV installer can all work from the same set.
We model it. Room geometry and the manufacturer’s measured loudspeaker data go into acoustic prediction software, which returns direct sound pressure level and intelligibility across the seating areas before anything is ordered. That is how you find the dead spot under the balcony or the row that gets 8 dB more than the rest while it is still cheap to fix. Examples are published throughout our project write-ups.
Yes. Sightline analysis compares screen size and mounting height against seat positions, eye heights, sub-standing rows and any structure in the way, then checks the resulting image against readable text size for the content you plan to show. It is the difference between a display that technically fits the wall and one the back row can actually read.
Assembly spaces generally have to provide assistive listening, and the required receiver and neck-loop counts scale with seating capacity. We size and document those systems as part of the design rather than leaving them as a punch-list surprise at inspection. See our assistive listening page.
New Jersey, eastern Pennsylvania and Delaware, from our office in Voorhees. That includes Camden and Burlington counties, the Philadelphia suburbs, Trenton and Princeton, north Jersey, the shore, and Wilmington and Dover in Delaware. Travel beyond that is possible for the right project — ask.
Yes, and it is one of the more useful things we do. A second set of eyes on someone else’s design will usually surface coverage assumptions that were never checked, wireless channel counts that will not coordinate, missing infrastructure, or an equipment list that does not match the drawings. We will tell you when the proposal in front of you is good, too.
Commissioning, documentation and training are part of the design intent, not extras. We tune and verify the system against what was predicted, hand over as-built drawings and configuration files, and train the volunteers or staff who will actually run it. Ongoing service and maintenance is available after that, including for systems we did not install.
Start with a walkthrough
Tell us the room, what fails in it, and where you are in the process. If a site visit is the right next step we will say so, and if you do not need a consultant we will tell you that too.
◉Voorhees, New Jersey — serving NJ, PA & DE
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