March 2009

The idea of a ‘room within a room’ may have its roots in music recording studios, but it is a sign of the times that it is becoming increasingly associated with home theatre. As customer expectations of sound quality rise, so custom installers are becoming ever more open to design techniques from the professional sphere.

A case in point can be found in the exclusive, gated island community of Bal Harbor, just north of Miami Beach. Here, installation firm Showtime Audio & Video has built a no-compromise private cinema as part of a fully integrated ‘whole house’ AV project in an impressive waterfront residence.

Using extensive acoustic treatments, careful construction methods and an active loudspeaker system from Genelec, Showtime has created a home theatre that genuinely rivals professional movie facilities for audio fidelity.

“When the house was first built, this was a bedroom,” reveals Showtime’s project manager Seth Jacoby. “Among other things we had to fill in a window aperture so that it was all concrete, suspend a false ceiling on 64 springs, and install a false floor that floats on a network of fibreglass discs. Underneath the room there is now an 8-inch thick concrete block, with a 2-inch gap for air above that, and then the floating floor. The entire floor of the house had to be raised half an inch to accommodate it.”

Despite all the efforts made to ensure that the cinema was acoustically isolated from the outside world, the choice, positioning, and tuning of the room’s loudspeakers still had to be taken with great care. Audio system design was a joint effort between Jacoby and consultant Michael Chafee, who also tuned the system once it was in place.

A frameless, 83-inch wide projection screen from Screen Research conceals a Genelec HT312B 3-way active loudspeaker that’s used for the system’s centre channel and which Jacoby describes as “my centrepoint for the room – the depth of the speaker is so minimal that we were able to accommodate all the amps, power supplies, crossovers and air ducting behind the screen, as well as the enclosure itself”.

The main left-right channels are handled by Genelec AIW26 2-way in-wall speakers, positioned either side of the screen and covered with an acoustically transparent fabric. Six further in-wall Genelecs – this time the smaller AIW25 – are located along the side and rear walls for surround effects, with an acoustical membrane fitted around them to aid diffusion. The lowest frequencies are taken care of by a Genelec HTS6 sub, concealed within a cabinet under the screen along with step-down AC transformers, and capable of delivering sound pressure levels of up to 124dB.

The end result is a product of more than 18 months’ on-site work by the Showtime team, with Jacoby concluding: “We had a very understanding client who gave us a fixed budget but allowed us to run over on the time so that we could get the job done properly. The results are awesome – everyone agrees that it was worth the wait!”