Should digital signage include sound and when is it appropriate?

Applications, where it makes perfectly good sense to have sound it actually helps embellish the content that’s on the screen - there’s a lot of places where it is completely inappropriate. It really depends on the environment. In an office environment it’s typically very inappropriate. That’s one of the challenges on news TV that has plagued a lot of offices is that without the audio it is useless and with the audio its disruptive and so digital signage is a lot better way to provide that information then typically your headlines are coming n the form of text within it.

But in a retailing environment audio has a huge impact on people. It gets attention. It reinforces the product and quite often that sound is part of the product branding message and so it needs to be there, it’s very appropriate. But then you’re getting into how you target in a loud noisy environment which is always a challenge and there you get into acoustic issues that your good AV engineers (that’s why you hire those guys is because they are very good) at how you place and direct sound. But certainly not constant sound - it should only be targeted at certain points within the content.