January 2009

Just because a home has insufficient space for a dedicated home theatre, doesn’t mean to say that excellent cinema sound quality is out of the question. At a spacious penthouse apartment in the exclusive Miami suburb of Key Biscayne, audio consultant Michael Chafee has designed a home-cinema setup that largely disappears from view when not in use – yet lacks for nothing in dynamics, power, or imaging.

“The owners of the penthouse wanted a home-theatre system in their lounge, but the room has a corner location with great views out across the ocean and toward downtown Miami, so turning the space into a dedicated movie theatre was out of the question,” explains Chafee.

His solution was to mount three Genelec HT206B compact active loudspeakers on electrically controlled projector lifts – two either side of the room’s drop-down projection screen for left-right signals, and a third behind the screen for the centre channel.

These are augmented by custom enclosures for the rear and sub effects channels which have been built into lounge’s masonry by local custom installation firm Bay Audio.

At the touch of a button on the AMX control panel that sits on a convenient coffee table, the whole screen-and-speaker setup descends out of the ceiling – and, just as easily, ascends again so that it is out of sight when not in use. The room’s SIM2 video projector is also lift-mounted and synchronises automatically with the screen and the Genelecs.

“The Genelecs have a wide range of acoustic adjustments and the whole system has been tuned to the room, which is a typical modern living space that is quite reverberant,” says Chafee, who adds that the Directivity Control Waveguide (DCW) that is part of the HT206B’s design makes the speaker particularly suited to difficult acoustic environments such as this. The fact that the unit houses power amplifiers, active crossover filtering and protection circuitry within an enclosure little more than 300mm wide is also a bonus in a location where rack space is at a premium.

“Even though it is invisible, this is a sophisticated AV system that delivers everything the customer asked for,” Chafee concludes. “The Genelec speakers offer not just high quality but high value – and they are an excellent investment.