Commercial audio visual consulting and design-build for Charlotte offices, hotels, restaurants, and retail. We design the system, specify it, hand your architect and GC requirements they can build to, then install and support what we designed.
On most Charlotte projects nobody owns the audiovisual scope. The architect puts screens on an elevation without knowing where the speakers go or how loud the room has to be. The IT group wants the simplest system that stays off their desk. By the time somebody asks the operator what the space is supposed to do, the walls are closed, the conduit is in the wrong place, and the change order is expensive. The system gets installed anyway, and then nobody on staff can run it.
An AV consultant is there to stop that from happening. We come onto the project as the audiovisual partner: we ask what the space has to accomplish, design the system around that answer, and give your architect and general contractor requirements they can actually build to. Then we install, commission, and support what we designed, so one company is accountable instead of a designer and an installer pointing at each other. We have been doing this since 2008, and in Charlotte most of that work is corporate offices, hospitality, and retail.
What We Do Here
Every system is designed, installed, and supported by our own team in Charlotte — never subcontracted.
Design-build digital signage for hospitality and enterprise: commercial displays, content management, and installation that keeps your screens selling and current.
Digital Signage Services in Charlottearrow_forward
Commercial video walls across LED, LCD and Direct View. Designed, integrated, installed and supported by a national design-build AV integrator.
Video Wall Solutions in Charlottearrow_forwardWho We Serve
Spaces we've wired across Charlotte — each built and supported by the same local crew.
From Uptown office towers to South End restaurants and Ballantyne corporate parks, we consult on audiovisual design for Charlotte offices, hotels, restaurants, and retail, then install and support the systems we draw.
Humid subtropical summers are hard on equipment closets, so we specify cooling that holds the AV room at or below 75 degrees, because a hot rack of amplifiers cooks itself and collects dust.
Charlotte gets severe afternoon storms through the warm months, so surge protection and backup power for the rack are part of the design rather than an add-on after the first outage.
Carolina pollen loads filters and cooling fans fast, so racks get enclosed and filtration gets a place in the maintenance plan from the start.
Occasional ice events shut down site access for days at a time, so install schedules carry slack through the winter months instead of assuming a clean run.
What we consult on
Most of our Charlotte consulting work sits in four places. The design question is different in each one, and the equipment list always comes last.
Most conference room complaints trace back to a room size assumption made early and never checked. Manufacturer marketing sells a system built for five people into a room that seats twenty, and the people at the far end of the table spend the next year being hard to hear on calls. Charlotte adds its own version of the problem, because a bank, an energy company, or a healthcare group usually needs the same room to behave the same way on floor three and floor twenty-eight of an Uptown tower. We design from the space instead: dimensions, acoustics, whether the walls are glass or concrete, what actually happens in the room, and which platforms your people and your clients use, whether that is Microsoft Teams Rooms, Zoom Rooms, or Google Meet. Where your IT team owns the network, we work with them on it rather than around them.
A Charlotte hotel is several venues under one roof, and treating it as one system is the usual mistake. The lobby needs sound that sets a tone without fighting the front desk. The bar and restaurant need their own zones, and they carry a weekday business traveler and a weekend crowd who want very different rooms. Meeting floors need conferencing that works for whoever booked the space, including the guest who has never seen the room before. We design zone by zone: distributed audio where each area holds its own level and program, displays specified for the light they actually sit in, signage for event boards and directions, and meeting rooms built around the platforms your guests arrive with. Pool decks and patios get weather-rated equipment on a separate zone, because indoor speakers do not survive a Carolina summer outside.
Two things tell you a restaurant's audio was never designed. You cannot hold a conversation, or you cannot hear what the operator wants playing. Both come from speakers mounted without accounting for direction, height, and a room full of hard surfaces, often run around the perimeter so the middle has no coverage and the edges are too loud. We zone the audio so the dining room, the bar, and the patio each get tuned to the concept instead of sharing one master volume. Displays go off the main sightlines, so a screen is a content source rather than an intrusion. Control stays simple enough that a manager can change the room on a Friday night without calling anyone. In South End and NoDa, where much of the building stock is converted brick with open ceilings, speaker placement gets worked out around the acoustics first.
Screens are where the most money gets wasted, usually because the size and the mounting were decided before anyone measured the room. A lobby video wall picked off a rendering ends up too bright, too dim, or hung on a wall with nothing behind it to carry the weight. Signage gets installed with no plan for who updates it, so it shows last quarter's content a year later. We start with the viewing distance, the ambient light, and the structural backing, then specify the display and the mount to match. Content and playback get planned around the person who will actually be running it, whether that is a marketing team across several Charlotte locations or one manager. Control ties the sources, the displays, and the audio zones together on one interface, so the room can be changed without a technician.
When your architect produces a first floor plan, which is earlier than most people expect. There is no reason your technology partner is not at the architectural phase, because by the time the venue is being built the mark has already been missed. A project a year out does not need a large upfront spend. It needs the technology requirements in the architectural plan, since you cannot submit a clean permit set or get an honest GC bid without them. Bring us in at that point and we model what the space needs, then send requirements back for the plan set: conduit sizing, pathway plans for open ceilings, blocking and backing behind every display, power for the rack, and cooling for the AV room. Projects that start with us at the architectural phase see roughly 95% fewer change orders than projects where we show up after construction is underway. In Charlotte that matters most on Uptown floors and converted South End buildings, where reopening a wall means another approval and another crew.
Both, and the accountability is the point. Most consultants hand over a specification and leave, and they are not answerable for whether the room works on opening night, which is how you end up with a designer and an installer blaming each other. We design, specify, procure, build the rack in our shop, install, commission, train your staff, document the system, and support it afterward. One company, one point of accountability. A bid-spec document is only as good as whoever wrote it, and it usually originates with someone unqualified to write it, so we would rather own the whole path. If you want to use us for design only we will do that, and we will be straight with you about the risk of handing our drawings to a low bidder. We will also quote a fixed bid when the scope is genuinely settled.
Drawings and documentation your trades can build from, not a recommendation memo. That means system elevations and equipment locations, signal flow and single-line drawings, an equipment schedule, conduit and pathway requirements, power and cooling requirements for the rack and the AV room, mounting and structural backing details, and network requirements. On new construction our drawings go into the GC's permitting set, so the technology gets reviewed alongside the building rather than chased later. Approvals get confirmed per site across Charlotte and the surrounding towns, and we design to whatever review the address falls under. On timing, engineering and design run two to three weeks after contract, equipment lands in thirty to forty-five days, and a new build is generally nine to twelve months to opening.
Usually, after we look at it. Where an internal IT team owns the network we work with them on it rather than around them, since the AV traffic has to live on infrastructure they are responsible for. If you already own displays or inherited a system, we will review the documentation and run our engineering process before saying yes, and the answer ranges from broadly right with a few changes to needs to be reworked. Commercial displays you already have are often fine once we confirm the make and model can be controlled the way the system needs. A few things fall outside what we do: equipment rentals, video production, and livestreaming as a service are not part of our scope. We also generally do not take install-only work, because we need to understand the design to stand behind it.
Client successes drive Crunchy Tech to become better. Below is how our customers feel about us.
Just do it. Spend the money. It’s well worth it. It’s not worth your time, hassle, energy, and stress of trying to make it look right and do it right when there’s somebody who has been doing it for years and has perfected the craft.
You're a great partner with Florida Hospital and this project will make a difference in Children's Health.
Working with Crunchy Tech was a fantastic experience from start to finish. They handled the sale and installation of all our sound and TV equipment at The County Bar in Aviston, IL, and absolutely nailed it. We were on a very tight deadline, and they not only met it—they delivered top-notch quality and service the entire way. Highly professional, responsive, and easy to work with. We couldn't be happier with the results.
Crunchy's AV Services are outstanding. Staff members are experts, who really extend themselves to find the right technology for helping us reach our marketing goals in creative ways. The best thing about working with Crunchy is collaborating with the staff – they are patient, responsive, knowledgeable, and available.
Crunchy has been great to work with. They communicate well and deliver as promised.
The work Crunchy has been doing is a game changer for this industry.
Being able to reuse the existing structure created a much lower cost for the client and they were ecstatic.
Crunchy has done an amazing job on our A/V install. The sound is perfectly balanced throughout our many zones and the entire system is super simple to use.
Just do it. Spend the money. It’s well worth it. It’s not worth your time, hassle, energy, and stress of trying to make it look right and do it right when there’s somebody who has been doing it for years and has perfected the craft.
You're a great partner with Florida Hospital and this project will make a difference in Children's Health.
Working with Crunchy Tech was a fantastic experience from start to finish. They handled the sale and installation of all our sound and TV equipment at The County Bar in Aviston, IL, and absolutely nailed it. We were on a very tight deadline, and they not only met it—they delivered top-notch quality and service the entire way. Highly professional, responsive, and easy to work with. We couldn't be happier with the results.
Crunchy's AV Services are outstanding. Staff members are experts, who really extend themselves to find the right technology for helping us reach our marketing goals in creative ways. The best thing about working with Crunchy is collaborating with the staff – they are patient, responsive, knowledgeable, and available.
Crunchy has been great to work with. They communicate well and deliver as promised.
The work Crunchy has been doing is a game changer for this industry.
Being able to reuse the existing structure created a much lower cost for the client and they were ecstatic.
Crunchy has done an amazing job on our A/V install. The sound is perfectly balanced throughout our many zones and the entire system is super simple to use.
We don’t sell you what we have. We design what you need. That line is the operating principle I’ve built Crunchy Tech around for the last 20 years. And it’s the single sentence that separates us - and the small handful of firms like us - from the other 97% of the commercial AV industry.
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There’s a pattern I’ve watched play out for 20 years in hospitality AV, and it always ends the same way...
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"Where's my quote?"
Read article arrow_forwardTell us about the project: the address, the phase it is in, who the architect and GC are, what is decided and what is still open. If construction has not started we will work from the drawings. If it has, the consult includes a look at the site so we can confirm what the building and the jurisdiction allow, and we come back with one engineered scope rather than a parts list.
