Audio Advice — Attraction in Chesterfield

My wife and I recently went through the new construction home process in the St. Charles area from June to November. The builder stated they subcontracted part of their work to The Sound Room and that we would have the ability to choose 6 low voltage outlets included in our purchase price as well as any other upgrades for entertainment, security, or home automation purposes at an additional cost.

After the initial meeting, we picked our included outlets, and decided on moving a few electrical outlets 4 feet up so they would be covered when we hung TV's. We even spent more money to upgrade the house for a whole home Ethernet system and pre-wired the house for a security system. During the build The Sound Room's technicians came and installed the tech tubing behind the television and had everything in place and ready to go, all we had to do was move in and get our internet up and running and they would come out and set up the whole home Ethernet. My wife was out on medical leave, so once our ISP had setup our service she called TSR and they came out and finished the setup.

Now for the most part, everything has worked very smoothly. We have had has been some minor blips in connectivity that i attribute to ISP problems and general slowdowns.

Fast forward to this week. We decided on a security company to come in and setup using the pre-existing wiring TSR installed. Everything seemed to go well until the internet dropped. The installers apologized but did the best they could trying to figure out how TSR wired the Ethernet system in the first place. A real headscratcher, I know this because TSR didn't leave any sort of documentation about how the Ethernet switch worked, what to do if it stopped working, whom to contact about issues or even a basic diagram of what wires should go in which outlets.

I decided to call TSR today and got in touch with their Tech Support. I was told that how the system was setup was wrong, to which I responded, "That's how it's always been setup, you guys installed it" then proceeded to explain to him how they didn't leave any of the documentation I had previously mentioned above. His response was "You set up the system wrong." Whatever, agree to disagree. Anyway I tell them I need them to come out and fix this and they tell me they will call back and let me know when they can fit me into their schedule. I finally get a call at the end of the day to let me know they can come out tomorrow, even though I'm at work tomorrow and was off today, so I'll have to take off another day. Also, just for them to come to my house in St. Charles, MO from Chesterfield, MO and the first 30 minutes of service included would cost approximately $130 and every half hour after that would cost me $40-$45.

In the end I called back and left them a message cancelling the appointment and ended up getting WIFI functionality back but can't get the ethernet ports to work. This was not what I paid for when I had this house built and I'm wondering if I had gone to the builder first if things would have been fixed. I guess I'll never know.

I do know this. The one time I was in the store they made it abundantly clear that consumers should shop local and support the little guy in the area. That may be true but the prices for the products they sell will make your head spin and the clear lack of any sort of customer service makes me glad I will never shop your store again.

In the end, if you have a choice where you buy your tech, go to the place that has blue and yellow logo and not...

Even with a few setbacks, we had a great experience with the sound room. We worked with Jared to get a home theater audio setup. This was my first voyage into a real home audio set, as before coming in, my only experience was with soundbars and surround sound in a box options. You could tell that Jared was pasionate about audio, because he was super patient and enthusiastic about answering all of my dumb newbie audio questions and really knew his stuff. We spent a good hour+ in the audio room listening to different systems and seeing which system appealed most to my preferences and also fit the budget. Jared talked me through setting things up and how to tune the system for the room. He gave us his card and said to call if we had any questions at all.

We got back to the house, and I started setting up the system immediately. After plugging things in, we quickly ran into an issue where the receiver would only recognize inputs for a short amount of time and cut out. I am pretty tech savvy, but being a newbie, I figured that I was making a mistake somewhere. I gave Jared a call, and after running through the basics, (is it plugged in, etc) he asked if it would be ok for him to come and look at it. He came out right away. Jared was also unable to fix the issue, but we narrowed it down to a bad receiver or bad HDMI cables. Jared left and came back with a new receiver and cables within an hour. It turns out the issue was the receiver (DOA electronics happen), and while he was here, Jared helped to set up the system and make sure that everything was tuned and calibrated correctly.

The system sounds amazing. I have never heard home audio like it. Be warned that the Sound Room is not a place where you can really get a cheap audio setup. Be ready to spend at least 3-4k for a standard setup (the sky is the limit on audio equipment). However, if you are looking for a personally tailored solution with great service, this is the place. It blows my mind that Jared spent 2.5 hours in store making sure that we got the perfect system for our taste and budget, and another 3 hours at our house (even after store hours were over) changing out the faulty receiver, answering all of my dumb questions, and making sure that everything worked and was tuned correctly. All he asked for in return was our thanks and possibly a review. We got a good starter system, but we will for sure be back to the Sound Room to add more audio...

I bought my system for both my bedroom and my living room with a sound bar and a TV from Samsung and Sonos was the sound bar producer in December 2023. Jordan was my sales person and he assured me that this would all work just fine no problem. There would be a person out to help me with it and there was, four different times. Quite honestly, I felt as if Jordan didn’t know the systems he was selling well enough to provide me with a system that didn’t require technical support every time I turned around. In April because I had been out of state I begin to have second thoughts about this whole system so I called The Sound Room back and I said you know if we can’t get this fixed I would like you to take it back, they sent out two different techs and a few of the problems solved. However, I would like to give credit to Tony who was the manager in charge when I made my final plea for help because the sales person that I called about getting to Service was very rude to me and that I would have to pay for this visit. Tony said he would send out his very best technician and I would not have to pay. I assume he could look at the records and see how many times I’ve had people out, so he sent Nick who actually been here before Nick is very thorough and very tech knew the system well. He didn’t quit looking for answers until we found them. There were several quirky things going on with my system that one of which Nick had never seen before, 25 June this system in both the bedroom and the living room are working as they should. I’ve been able to load pictures onto my TV and have gone through this system with Nick multiple times to be sure I understood everything. my suggestion to The Sound Room is that the sales people need to talk to the tech people find out which systems work best and the tech people need to share information. Thank you for finally getting that I...