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Home Entertainment Technology

The Guys Who Get Design

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The Guys Who Get Design

The Guys Who Get Design

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“since everyone is more reliant on technology than ever, clients, architects, designers, and builders don’t fight that conversation as much anymore”

SAV Digital Environments, Bozeman, MT

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The HTA’s Josh Christian talks about his efforts to make integrators more design savvy and to get architects & interior designers to bring integrators into the design fold

by Michael Gaughn
February 28, 2023

As technology becomes more and more deeply woven into the fabric of the home environment, the need increases for professionals who can integrate it not just seamlessly but with some flair. But while architects and interior designers will turn to custom integrators to supply the required wire and gear, they tend to cast a wary eye in their direction when it comes to anything involving design, seeing the integrator’s efforts as more a necessary evil than a desired complement to their work. The upshot is that integrators tend to find their involvement in the overall creation of a home minimized, and postponed in the process for as long as possible, which often leads to major changes and delays that can bring construction to a frustrating and expensive halt.

Josh Christian is working to change all that, using his organization, the Home Technology Association (HTA)—which was created to separate the custom integration wheat from the chaff—to not just help integrators become more design savvy but to urge architects, designers, and builders to engage those HTA integrators who have their design act together from the very beginning of the planning of a home. Below, Josh talks about how this effort arose from his own early years as an integrator in the LA market and how he and his organization have made some headway but still have a ways to go.

Is it fair to say that integrators are often left out of the design loop until it’s too late to have any meaningful impact?

Typically speaking, yes, that’s a big problem for integrators. Bringing them in too late leads to all sorts of problems. It means a lot of the client’s technology wishes will be compromised, which often leads to having to do a change order or an expensive retrofit and other delays with the project.

Is there a subset of integrators who have figured out how to ensure they’re in there early, and do they have any strategies that are the equivalent of waving their arms and saying, “You’d be crazy to start without us.”

My guesstimate of all the integrators out there, less than 3% have figured this out in any meaningful way, where it’s a serious goal of theirs to improve their working relationships with architects, designers, and builders. The successful ones are just doing really great marketing business practices. They’ll join the associations for those trades and use them to meet up with the builders, designers, and architects in their community. They’ll also reach out and connect on social media.

That’s what I did when I got into the luxury end of custom integration back in 1998 working with DSI Entertainment Systems. I did a lot of research to find out who were the top architects, designers, and builders—I’m just going to call them “trade partners,” to make it easy—and see if any of them were in magazines like Architectural Digest. I’d pick up the phone and call and and even literally drive by—good old door knocking—and introduce myself as an integrator that understands them.

Where many integrators fail is that they talk all about “me, me, me”—O, we’re the best integrator in town; we do this, we do that; we do home theater, we do home automation—but they don’t talk about their process so much and show that they respect what their trade partners do. Because it’s really important for an integrator to be able to think like the people they work with. Those other people typically aren’t interested in audio, video, or controls, and because of that they think their clients don’t care either. So integrators shouldn’t talk about those techie things when they introduce themselves but should instead present themselves as a solution to their client’s technology needs, because the truth is that there’s going to be technology in every single home their trade partners are working on, even if a client’s not a techie person.

At a minimum, a home needs to be prewired; it’s probably going to have a network and the client is probably going to want robust wi-fi, and they probably want a security system or a surveillance system. So it’s best for an integrator to say, “Hey, I’m a solution provider. No matter how simple or how complex, I’ll help design the client’s technology needs into your plans and make sure everything gets installed in the best, most aesthetically pleasing way possible. And if any of our products will be visible on the structure or in the interior, I’ll get your input so you’re OK with the way they look.” The trade partners love that, because they’re been included in the process.

That’s how it started back in the late ‘90s, just showing empathy. Today, the better integrators have learned to pique the interest of their trade partners by first talking about things most likely to be on the client’s mind—things like wellness, energy management, and motorized shading and lighting. If integrators can position themselves as system designers who know how to integrate these priorities into their trade partners’ plans, they’re seen as a valuable designer and consultant and not just a contractor or sub-contractor who’s only there to install something and leave.

Do you find that there are many integrators who have a strong grasp of design?

The awareness still needs to come up with that quite a bit. When I started with the Home Technology Association, I expected to find that many more integrators are doing this than they are, so we’re providing guidelines to help the ones that aren’t yet performing at that level to show what the architects, designers, and builders want out of them. It’s slowly getting better but it has to happen a lot quicker.

Interior designers used to want nothing to do with technology because they saw it as just gumming up what they were trying to do, which frequently led to tension between them and the integrator. Younger designers and architects seem much more comfortable with the technology and are more willing to accommodate the integrator. But what’s your recent experience been like? Is it still a battle to get designers to accept the tech?

It is a bit of a battle but it is getting better. It’s important to remember that back when I got my start in this, the technology tended to be a lot more obvious, a lot less flexible, a lot more expensive, and wasn’t as central to people’s lives. But now everybody is effected by technology, and since everyone, including the architects, designers, and builders themselves, are more reliant on it than ever, the clients and trade partners don’t fight that conversation as much anymore.

Are you aware of many integrators who have interior designers on staff?

I know very few. I think there are maybe two integrators out there who have one on staff. And I think the reason it’s uncommon is that, if an interior designer knew an integrator had someone who does what they do, they’d be less apt to refer that integrator, thinking the integrator might take that client’s interior design business in the future and create a conflict of interest. Plus, it’s such a different field.

Could you cite any integrators that are particularly good at getting in there early on projects, at bringing the design elements together, and at creating a strong bond with the other trades?

There are a few in our industry that do a really great job of that. But SAV Digital Environments in Montana stands out because they do a phenomenal job of marketing. They do a lot of lunch ’n’ learns for architects and designers, they get their CEU credits, and they do quite a few events at their showroom. There’s also Joe Calise at Sights N Sounds in Seaford, New York. He’s the chapter president of the interior design society chapter there so he’s well known in the interior designer circle in New York, which is phenomenal.

Another one to call out is Jamie Briesemeister from Integration Controls in Missouri. She’s working on a showroom remodel that’s going to be a great place for hosting events for architects, designers, and builders. I’m seeing more integrators instead of moving away from showrooms, building new ones, and they’re building them to be interior designer and architect resources.

That’s a great trend, and I hope it continues, because you can talk about human-centric lighting but when you see it, it really has an impact. That’s especially true with something that’s near and dear to this industry’s heart—a high-performance home theater. Home theater has become such a diluted term. A client sometimes thinks it’s a three-hundred-dollar soundbar system they can find at a big-box store because it says “home theater.” So they think that if that’s three hundred dollars, if they spend five thousand dollars they must be getting something just ridiculously, phenomenally top of the line. But, as you and I know, you can spend multi hundreds of thousands of dollars on a home theater, if not millions. But it has to be done right. It’s not just the components—it’s the design, it’s the acoustics, it’s the space. So I like that high-performance theater is being focused on again, where there are truly wow experiences that can convince even a jaded client. Clients will spend the money when they know what experience is they’re going to get.

The Guys Who Get Design

Josh Christian

“the better integrators have learned to pique the interest of architects, designers, and builders by first talking about things most likely to be on the client’s mind—things like wellness, energy management, and motorized shading and lighting”

Sights N Sounds, Seaford, NY

Integration Controls, Rock Hill, MO

Michael Gaughn—The Absolute Sound, The Perfect Vision, Wideband, Stereo Review, Sound & Vision, The Rayva Roundtablemarketing, product design, some theater designs, a couple TV shows, some commercials, and now this.

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Making a Statement

Making a Statement

A bells & whistles home theater sets the tone for smart living in this unassuming high-tech home

by Lisa Montgomery
February 25, 2022

High-performance video presented on a larger-than-life screen is often deemed the eye-candy of a fully automated home. While other tech amenities might be installed in a way that makes them all but disappear, the beautifully integrated AV trappings in this elegant home theater are meant to be admired, a statement piece on a grand scale that sets the tone for the magic that unfolds daily in this modern yet inviting custom home.

A simple tap of a button on a handheld remote, lighting keypad, wall-mounted touchscreen, or app on a smartphone or tablet sets the wheels in motion in the custom-crafted theater and everywhere else. Received by a Control 4 controller neatly stowed from sight in a well-stocked equipment rack, this one command is translated into a perfectly orchestrated series of instructions to all the right equipment.

In the theater, the Control 4 EA controller cues a Sony 4K video projector and Denon AV receiver. From there the family can pick and choose any type of content they desire from a variety of integrated AV sources. Family members never need to touch, much less look at, the components to twist a dial or toggle a switch. By the time they settle in, the room and the gear are ready to transport them to a world of entertainment delights, where a sleek, modern 110-inch Zero Edge screen from Screen Innovations presents clear, vivid, bright imagery, and nine barely-there Paradigm Pro speakers, plus a Paradigm Defiance subwoofer, envelop the space with immersive three-dimensional audio.

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Certainly, superior performance was vital to the enjoyment of this family-friendly space, but the Australian integration team at Life Style Store also prioritized cosmetics when curating the cutting-edge components. They needed to impart the same light, airy vibe as the furnishings and preserve the room’s original design intent. The screen’s super-skinny ½” bezel and the speakers’ built-in finish do the trick.

Entertainment extends beyond the confines of statement theater. The family is privy to high-res music throughout the home, thanks to a Control 4 wholehouse audio system and a variety of discreetly mounted speakers. Again, all the controls for this system populate on touchscreens, remotes, keypads, and smartphones. The music streamer built into each of four Control 4 controllers provides unlimited access to a multitude of online music platforms, so there’s always something to suit the mood, occasion, and each user’s preferences. The Control 4 system enables multiple streams of music to be distributed to different areas of the house simultaneously and at different volume levels. Guests can mingle at the outdoor living space to quiet, classic background music while the kids crank out the latest pop tunes in the living room.

Whether family and friends escape to the theater or add music to the mix, the Control 4 system makes sure the climate and lighting are perfect and the home is safe and secure. All of these parameters are controllable via any user interface. Rather than leaving a social circle or the sofa to dim the lights in preparation for a movie, for example, the family can quickly tweak the fixtures directly from their Control 4 app. The same goes for thermostats and window shades. It’s all just a button press away from complete, convenient, instantaneous control.

With more than 20 years under her belt covering all things electronic for the home, Lisa Montgomery has developed a knack for knowing what types of products and systems make sense for homeowners looking to update their abodes. When she’s not exploring innovative ways to introduce technology into homes, Lisa breaks away from the electronics world on a bike, kayak, or a towel on the beach.

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Making Video Walls Better

Making Video Walls Better

making video walls better

“we can create spectacular whites and phenomenally dark blacks simultaneously, so if you’ve downloaded a 4K HDR movie from Kaleidescape, you’ll be getting everything that picture has to deliver”

Quantum Media Systems’ Ken Hoffman on what he’s doing to create video walls that live up to the technology’s potential

by Dennis Burger
January 31, 2023

It may seem odd to single out one provider of LED video walls as a luxury-focused solution when the entire category operates in the stratosphere of the high-end entertainment market. But as we speak with integrators installing these solutions about the pros and cons of such gargantuan screens, one name continues to rise above the buzz surrounding any nascent technology. Quantum Media Systems is quickly establishing itself as the go-to provider of video walls that stand out not merely in terms of sheer size but also image quality, reliability, scalability, and—believe it or not—comfort. What follows is a conversation with company CEO Ken Hoffman, an industry veteran with more than two decades of experience creating world-class private screening rooms, luxury commercial cinemas, post-production facilities, and more, about why Quantum created its Cinematic XDR LED video wall.

Since there are quite a few video wall solutions already, why did you feel it necessary to develop your own? What problems was the XDR system intended to address?

For many years, we worked in digital cinema either building or being part of teams that built screening rooms, post-production facilities, color suites, etc. But we decided around 2014 that we wanted to get back into the residential space and work with integrators, particularly on projects where the clients were approved to be on the Bel Air Circuit. That required Digital Cinema projectors, servers, video processors, etc.

Over the years, we’ve looked at using LED walls as opposed to projection, but the technology just wasn’t there yet. It looked good, but it wasn’t the high-end image quality needed in installations at that level.

So, after more than five years of R&D, we took the plunge about three years ago and decided to see if we could come up with our own approach, and instead of just buying somebody else’s wall and trying to make it better, we became an original equipment manufacturer working directly with component manufacturers. We specify the components—which diodes and integrated circuits to use—and create our own control and processing systems, taking the knowledge about image science we’ve accumulated from years of working at the very high end and from the motion-picture industry and applying that to video walls.

Which problems with the existing technology were you most interested in solving and how successful have you been?

One of the major advantages—aside from purity of color—is light output. Most LED walls will give you 600 or 800 nits, tops, in terms of peak brightness. Our newest wall is rated at 1,200 nits, and that’s calibrated. Uncalibrated, it’s more like 1,600 nits. Once you calibrate it for accurate color, you do lose a little brightness but that still enables us to do HDR better than not only other video walls but than many televisions.

Most HDR content has been created with 1,000 nits as the peak brightness target, and we’re able to provide that and typically more. By doing that, we can produce spectacular whites and phenomenally dark blacks simultaneously, so if you’ve downloaded a 4K HDR movie from Kaleidescape, you’ll be getting everything that picture has to deliver.

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Making Video Walls Better

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Many integrators are concerned about the intense heat coming off video walls from many of the established manufacturers. People have joked that they feel like they’re going to get radiation burns standing in front of those things. Have you done anything to address that?

It is a big problem. That was part of our motivation for making a better wall. We wanted to make our system much more power-efficient. Simply put, if you get better results while using much less power, you generate less heat. We also use other techniques to dissipate heat better.

Nothing kills electronics quicker than excessive heat. Is that a contributing factor to the reports we’re hearing about reliability issues and longevity concerns with other video-wall solutions?

It could be. I agree with you: Heat is always an enemy. So, by generating a lot less heat and dissipating what little heat we do generate, that’s not as much of an issue for us. But in addition, we’re basically theater guys, and we’re helping our integration partners with theaters and media rooms where comfort is a real issue. With many video walls, you need a lot more air conditioning. If your front row is ten feet away and you’re feeling all this heat radiating off the screen, is that really conducive to enjoying a film? That was also a big consideration for us. You can walk right up to our wall and hardly feel any change in temperature.

You mentioned seating distance, which brings up the issue of screen size. What are the theoretical upper limits for the size of your wall?

Functionally, there are no limits. Our LED walls consist of a multitude individual cabinets, and within our cabinets, we have multiple modules. Each cabinet is basically a building block and we install those together to create a screen as large as the client wants, or as large as the room will accommodate.

The only issue is that as you get a lot bigger, the video processing gets a little more involved and you need more processing power, but we have the ability to do very large walls. If someone wanted a 100-foot wall or greater, no problem. It just takes a lot more processing power.

LED video walls are sort of akin to what OLED was ten years ago. Back then, people were paying $25,000 for a 55-inch OLED TV. Their failure rate was super high and the longevity wasn’t great, even on panels that didn’t fail within a year or so. But we’ve come a long way since then. So what would you say to the tech-savvy luxury homeowner who assumes LED video walls are going to follow the same trajectory?

I think there are some similarities but it’s not one-to-one. You can’t just treat this like a large TV. Some companies are trying to move in that direction. By making the installation of their video walls simpler, they’re trying to create economies of scale, so instead of a 100-inch TV, they can sell you a 120- or 130-inch video wall and treat them functionally interchangeably. It works, and the pricing is coming down, but the quality isn’t there. You’re going to see lines in between the modular elements, for example.

Do you mean the lines between each module or the lines between each row of pixels?

If the cabinets and internal modules aren’t aligned correctly you’ll see those lines. And the closer you get to the wall, the more you’ll see them. We’re spending a lot of time during the installation process so that we’re aligning the modules and cabinets optimally. We’re also spending a lot of time in the calibration process.

Would it be fair to say that what you offer is as much a service as a product?

It’s a combination of the two. It’s a much better LED wall, it’s a dramatically better video processing system—it’s a complete package. And then we provide on-site installation and calibration where we spend not just one or two but many days getting everything installed, aligned, integrated, and calibrated. It’s a turnkey solution. We’re focused on the pinnacle of image quality in cinematic environments.

What else might influence a high-end client to decide between a luxury projection system and a QMS Cinematic XDR video wall system?

Since we have a lot of experience with all different brands of projectors, we can explain that projectors can’t provide uniform light across the screen. When we do calibration on projectors, on a typical screen we look at 25 locations, and we get 25 different brightness values. Sometimes the differences are small, sometimes they’re large, but with the LED wall, it’s one value. The screen is 100 percent uniform.

Another consideration is convergence. Many projectors use different chips for red, green, and blue elements of the image, and you have to align those three chips as best you can. Usually, you can get most of the pixels converged but some of them aren’t. In movie theaters, there can be multiple pixels off on convergence. In the home, you’re so close to screen that you can’t be off that much. With LED walls, there are no convergence issues. Each red, green, and blue element lines up perfectly with its mates.

Another issue is that no matter how good your lens is, with a projection system, you can’t have perfect focus over the entire screen. You’re going to lose some focus, especially toward the edges of the screen. So having uniform focus, uniform convergence, and uniform light are major advantages. Add to that the truly deep blacks no projection system can deliver, along with the enhanced brightness no projector can give you, which helps with things like HDR, it’s just a dramatic advantage over projection.

“the truly deep blacks no projection system can deliver along with the enhanced brightness no projector can give you, give our video wall a dramatic advantage over projection”

Dennis Burger is an avid Star Wars scholar, Tolkien fanatic, and Corvette enthusiast who somehow also manages to find time for technological passions including high-end audio, home automation, and video gaming. He lives in the armpit of Alabama with his wife Bethany and their four-legged child Bruno, a 75-pound American Staffordshire Terrier who thinks he’s a Pomeranian.

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Great Video Wall Sound Is Here

Great Video Wall Sound Is Here

“Using the TPI controller, I was able to place the sonic image in the exact vertical position where my traditional center speaker
is located”

An opportunity to audition a center-channel solution in his own home theater showed the author you can have a micro LED wall without compromising the sound

by Steve Haas
January 19, 2023

Last June, in “Million-Dollar Wall, Hundred-Dollar Sound,” I talked about how difficult it can be to achieve acceptable sound when using a video wall in a home theater since the front speakers can’t be placed behind the screen as they can when using a projection screen. I mentioned that almost all of the solutions I had encountered resulted in significant compromises but that TPI’s Movement System showed promise, mainly because it includes a controller that uses digital signal processing (DSP) to allow you to adjust the height of the sonic image created by the front speakers.

I recently had a chance to audition the Movement System in my own home theater and was extremely happy with the results. This system uses speakers placed both above and below the video wall to create a phantom sonic image (similar to the horizontal imaging of stereo speakers except done vertically) to match the effect of a traditional center-channel speaker mounted at ear level. And it can accomplish this without the use of additional DSP and without having to employ the services of a professional calibrator (although both are still necessary to achieve optimal performance). Based on my hands-on experience with the TPI system, I have every reason to believe that this solution, along with others based on the same concept, will significantly accelerate the use of video walls in home theaters in place of projection systems.

 

from theory to reality

I know from my work with solid video screens in museum and commercial environments that effectively placing the sonic image vertically is both achievable and worth the effort. Some people contend that our brains can’t comprehend a vertical image shift as readily as a horizontal one. While there is some truth to that, A/B comparisons of vertical placement show that it can allow the sound of dialogue to be placed where we expect to hear it emanate from when watching a movie or a TV show, which is between half and two-thirds of the way up from the bottom of the screen. 

I had been eager to evaluate the TPI system because of its potential to create precise vertical positioning in a home theater environment—particularly since I will soon be calibrating a very large residential project in Florida that uses the Movement speakers.

TPI sent me the two speakers and controller necessary to create a virtual center channel. While I could have requested additional speakers for the left and right front channels as well, I decided to use just the center so I could focus on dialogue. If the system could do dialogue well, I knew it would also be able to handle the left and right positions.

above | Quantum Media Systems‘ Cinematic LED Wall

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TPI’s Movement System uses speakers placed both above and below a video wall for the left, center, and right front positions. A controller is used to adjust the vertical position of the sound coming from each top/bottom pair, to create the same effect as if the speakers had been placed behind the screen.  

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I set the system up in my home theater, which uses a traditional left-center-right (LCR) speaker array positioned behind an acoustically transparent Stewart projection screen. I then used both objective measurements done with pink noise and subjective listening with program material that contained a lot of dialogue to position the phantom sonic image by way of the controller. I also employed Symetrix DSP to assist with the A/B comparisons of the top/bottom vs. behind-the-screen imaging, as well as with top-only, bottom-only, and top/bottom image comparisons.

Using the TPI controller, I was able to place the sonic image in the exact vertical position where my traditional center speaker is located. I then used the Symetrix DSP to tonally optimize the system so the sound from the top and bottom speakers closely matched that of my existing center speaker, even though they are from two different brands.

What was especially interesting is that the top and bottom pair exhibited a unique fullness of sound that wasn’t due to any type of distortion or phasing but that only added to their presence. Even though I had set the sound from the speakers to arrive at the listening location at exactly the same time, this presence took on an immersive quality because the sound was coming from two different directions, even though it created a solid sonic image in one specific location.

problem solved

The combination of objective measurements and extensive listening has convinced me the top-and-bottom-speaker solution will work. And it has significant advantages over the other existing approaches. By using direct-radiating sound as opposed to reflecting—or bouncing—sound off the video-wall screen, it avoids problems with the reflected sound from the screen becoming mixed with direct sound from the speakers, which creates distortion. Also, having large speakers mounted on the ceiling and aimed at the screen can be both unattractive and distracting. The top-and-bottom approach is especially effective with larger video walls where it can be difficult, if not impossible, to place the center-channel image at an acceptable height using LCR speakers mounted either above or below the screen.

Another advantage is that sound can be optimized for positions in addition to the traditional sweet spot in a theater, which isn’t possible with a single speaker no matter how well it has been calibrated. The type of system considered here would allow for the creation of presets to shift the sweet spot if the homeowners, for instance, wanted to sit in the front row instead of the center row because of the type of programming they were watching.

Also, the shallow height and depth of the Movement speaker cabinets allows them to be easily placed in the relatively small areas available above and below large video walls and allows for flexible placement within those areas. Admittedly, they can’t be used if a client wants an LED screen to fill the whole wall, but doing so would also create basic, non-audio-related problems with things like sight lines. It would be possible, though, to incorporate the speakers into a angled proscenium that would allow them to be positioned forward of the screen, an arrangement that could accommodate any desired screen size.

To have a speaker system that can be optimized without compromise, allowing you to place a pure, strong sonic image exactly where you want it, is going to be a game-changer for creating high-quality sound to go with LED video walls. Given the potential of what I experienced with this system in my own theater, I am looking forward to calibrating the system in the Florida installation next month, which will allow me to take the Movement System from an experimental situation into a real-world home theater environment.

Steve Haas is the Principal Consultant of SH Acoustics, with offices in the NYC & LA areas. Steve has been a leading acoustic and audio design & calibration expert for over 25 years in high-end spaces ranging from home theaters, studios, and live music rooms to major museums and performance venues.

Million-Dollar Wall, Hundred-Dollar Sound

a rendering of TPI’s Movement L center speaker

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After the Storm

After the Storm

After the Storm

The outdoor entertainment system in this Florida home was so well executed that even the wrath of Ian couldn’t faze it

by Lisa Montgomery
November 29, 2022

Coastal living comes with many perks. The wrath of Mother Nature isn’t one of them. This spacious, elegantly appointed outdoor entertainment space, however, managed to withstand a recent beating from Hurricane Ian, thanks to a well-designed, expertly-executed seaside installation of durable AV equipment by Wicked Smart Homes of Sarasota, Florida. 

Is endowing the outdoors with sensitive AV equipment risky? Certainly. But it’s a practice Wicked Smart Homes does on the regular for its base of waterfront clients. “For boating families like the owners of this property who spend the majority of their time outside, having an open-air living space like this is a premium amenity that provides a seamless transition from the boat to the house,” says company president Mark Bolduc.

Although an entertainment system like this is a fairly standard feature for outdoor areas in Sarasota, this residence takes it to a whole new level. A trio of waterproof, weather-resistant Seura displays graces the area. The homeowners didn’t skimp on size in their choices. An 85-incher hangs in the lanai (shown below), a 65-inch unit occupies another recreational area, and friends and family can even catch of glimpse of a 75-inch display as they float in the grotto. 

What’s playing? Anything their hearts desire. From movies to sporting events, YouTube videos to footage captured by Visualint surveillance cameras peppering the property, a huge library of high-def content is at their fingertips. Family members see and select from a custom menu via a Savant home-control app on their mobile devices, direct the video to any or all displays, and control the volume just as they would if they were using the home theater inside their house.

Securely mounted to exterior structures and engineered to weather the elements, the displays don’t let windy, wet days hamper their performance. “Of course, hurricanes are an entirely different matter. As part of our exclusive Hurricane Service, we temporarily remove TVs and other gear from the premises,” Bolduc says. 

This goes for the speakers as well, and this outdoor living space is filled to the gills with sublime audio. Music chosen via the Savant app streams to visually discreet speakers occupying six independent listening zones for full, even coverage throughout the property. These same speakers deliver audio for the displays, which is “a much better approach than relying on each display’s built-in speakers to do the job. They would definitely struggle to be heard in an active, open-air environment like this,” Bolduc explains. 

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Despite the widespread audio, the speakers go virtually unnoticed, with Sonance Visual Performance Extreme speakers flush-mounted into ceilings and Coastal Source speakers tucked within the landscape. Bolduc took great care to nail down the placement of each speaker before artificial turf was laid. “Unlike sod, once turf is down, it’s impossible to trench into it to make adjustments,” he says. 

Another important factor to the speaker installation was structural durability. Although the Coastal Source speakers are engineered to withstand harsh weather conditions, Wicked Smart Homes went a step further by mounting each speaker to a concrete form. “The speakers are structurally sound and going nowhere, but for extra assurance, we made them detachable for temporary removal during our prep for hurricanes like Ian,” Bolduc continues. 

Now that the storm has passed and the AV is back in action, al fresco entertainment brings this luxurious backyard to life. No matter where the party happens, there’s a beautiful display and invisible speakers to keep friends and family entertained for hours. 

With more than 20 years under her belt covering all things electronic for the home, Lisa Montgomery has developed a knack for knowing what types of products and systems make sense for homeowners looking to update their abodes. When she’s not exploring innovative ways to introduce technology into homes, Lisa breaks away from the electronics world on a bike, kayak, or a towel on the beach.

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Video Walls Go Boutique

Video Walls Go Boutique

Video Walls Go Boutique

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Video walls from the mainstream brands remain a big investment, but that doesn’t mean they’ve worked out all the bugs yet

by Dennis Burger
October 31, 2022

It’s not hard to understand why people lust after video walls. These modular, direct-view screens combine the scale and scope of a traditional projector & screen setup with the viewing flexibility and brightness of TVs. But even though they come mainly from mass-market brands like Sony and Samsung, there’s nothing mass-market about their sizes—or their prices. And while they’re the hottest thing going in luxury home-entertainment spaces, we’ve been hearing reports from the field that there can be problems with both quality and reliability. 

Mind you, that’s to be expected with any new display technology. When OLED TVs first became available a decade ago, those tiny but exorbitantly priced screens had the life expectancy of a goldfish won with a ping pong toss at a county fair. Fast-forward to 2022 and OLEDs are ubiquitous. But LG and other OLED manufacturers had one advantage the makers of LED video walls don’t—economies of scale. In other words, the need to keep up with the tremendous demand for OLEDs spurred the technology to evolve more quickly.

But the six-figure price of admission for video walls—a number unlikely to come down any time soon—has led to them just beginning to appear in high-end homes. And given that they’ve been released into the wild before being fully weaned, issues have emerged with performance and reliability, leading to some smaller, more boutique companies offering a more custom approach to these high-end displays. 

One of the companies working to make video walls more viable is Quantum Media Systems, which recently launched its customized Cinematic XDR LED video wall, designed to address the issues that specifically affect luxury entertainment spaces. By investing in upgraded electronics, processing, and image-enhancement and heat-mitigation technology (important, given that most video walls seem to generate more heat than light), QMS has developed an expandable, highly customizable wall that can be configured for virtually any screen size and shape. 

Quantum claims its display systems can deliver color rendering and brightness as good as high-performance HDR TVs, and that it can achieve screen sizes every bit as big as a two-piece projection system, but with only four inches of space required behind the screen. What’s more, because the Cinematic XDR LED video wall produces as much light as it does, its image can be clearly seen even in fully sunlit rooms.

LED walls will inevitably shed their training wheels and continue to improve as time goes on—although perhaps not as quickly as other residential video-display technologies. In the meantime, companies like Quantum will attempt to bridge the performance and reliability gaps with highly customized premium offerings like the Cinematic XDR.

Dennis Burger is an avid Star Wars scholar, Tolkien fanatic, and Corvette enthusiast who somehow also manages to find time for technological passions including high-end audio, home automation, and video gaming. He lives in the armpit of Alabama with his wife Bethany and their four-legged child Bruno, a 75-pound American Staffordshire Terrier who thinks he’s a Pomeranian.

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Let’s Talk to Josh

LET’S TALK TO JOSH

CEO Alex Capecelatro discusses how Josh AI provides a level of voice control Google and Amazon can’t match—and without any of the snooping

by Dennis Burger
October 21, 2022

The explosion of voice control over the past few years has changed the way people interact with their lights and locks and entertainment systems. But all of this comes at a cost—mainly, legitimate privacy concerns. There is a luxury alternative to the Alexas and Siris and OK Googles of the world, however, known as Josh AI—or simply Josh—that allows you to talk to your Control 4, Crestron, or Lutron control system

Alex Capecelatro

Alex Capecelatro

as an alternative to using touchscreens, keypads, or wand-style remotes—and without the risk of violating your privacy. In the conversation  below, CEO Alex Capecelatro talks about Josh’s approach to privacy, customization, and the unique needs of the custom luxury market.

Amazon has done a pretty good job of selling voice control to the masses but it doesn’t seem to have moved the needle as much with high-end custom homes. Why do you think that is?

Amazon doesn’t really care about the problems and situations we deal with in catering to the luxury market. They’re just trying to get millions upon millions of listening devices into people’s homes. So while it’s good that they’ve moved people towards acceptance of voice control, it also presents this opportunity where people are saying, “I see the benefits but I also see the concerns.” And that’s a dilemma we can speak to. You don’t have to give up your privacy just to have good voice control.

Also, Amazon’s approach relies more on mapping simple commands to simple actions. For example, Alexa can create a scene that controls your lights but if you want to be able to walk into

The Josh mobile interface lets you talk to your system from poolside or the other side of the world

Let's Talk to Josh

The Josh mobile interface lets you talk to your system from poolside or the other side of the world

any room and say “Turn it up”—something like that is room-dependent, device-dependent. Josh, by contrast, understands what’s going on with the state of the home so the homeowner can speak very naturally.

This isn’t as much of a problem when you’re dealing with a single-bedroom apartment or a smaller-footprint home. But when you’re getting into 5,000-to-10,000-square-foot homes or larger, it’s going to make a difference because in homes like that, you can have hundreds of connected devices across dozens of rooms.

I assume data privacy is also a big part of the appeal of your system for a high-end clientele. 

Exactly. We don’t upload your voice to the cloud unless we need to. We don’t believe it’s actually required, and it’s not the right thing to do except in very specific cases.

With Amazon, they do practically no processing on the device itself. They’re sending everything out to the cloud. When you do that, it’s very tempting to start using that information to serve up ads and other things. And we see it when Amazon files patents. They’re building passive listening devices that are monitoring what you say even if they’re not invoked, and specifically listening for words like “vacation” or “Florida” so then it knows to serve you ads for airlines and stuff.

I was always under the impression all of the processing for Josh was done locally, but looking at your FAQ, I see that Josh does require minimal access to the Josh Cloud. Is that a new development?

No, we’ve always had that. Reason being, if you want to be able to connect to cloud services—streaming music from Spotify, for example, or streaming video from Netflix—that has to go out to the cloud. If you want to be able to ask questions like, “What’s the weather forecast?” you’re

Let's Talk to Josh

the Josh Micro voice-control module

the Josh Micro voice-control module

hitting a weather API that’s going to be out in the cloud. The local processing is simply not going to be able to know or access all of that. 

That said, the way our hardware in the home communicates with the Josh Cloud is very similar to the way banking-app encryption works so it’s very secure. It’s just to a trusted endpoint; it’s not going out to any third parties that aren’t controlled by us.

You were talking earlier about what “Turn it up” might mean on a room-by-room basis. Is that adaptability—the ability to have a command mean something different in one room from another—based on programming done by the installer or is that machine learning?

That’s using a few different technologies. Basically, it’s looking at a mapping of the home, what devices are in the rooms, and what capabilities those devices have, in addition to what things have been recently asked for. So when you walk into the living room and say, “Turn it up,” Josh knows the living room has three devices capable of being turned up.

That could refer to the volume of music, the temperature on the thermostat, or the brightness of the lights. Josh says to itself, “Which of these devices are currently running and have the ability to be turned up?” So if there’s music playing and nothing else is active, “Turn it up” is almost certainly referring to the music volume. On the other hand, if there’s no music playing but you have a thermostat connected to an HVAC zone currently engaged in heating, “Turn it up” is likely going to refer to the temperature.

Josh is constantly looking at the context of the environment you’re in, which involves retaining the context of your recent commands. The system understands the context of the way we naturally speak. 

Do you have Josh users who are uncomfortable that the system analyzes how they use different devices and systems throughout the home and over time and retains that information? 

Yes. There’s a lot of value to keeping a history of commands, in that you might want to know why the fireplace was on or why the music was playing in a certain room. Maybe it’s because the kids gave it a command. But some people would rather have the utmost privacy, where there’s no history or logging, and so we give the ability to put Josh into incognito mode where you give a command, the action happens, but it never gets written to a database, even on your local hardware.

We also thought about the middle ground. What about someone who wants to be able to see what the microphones heard last night that made their music start playing at bedtime but maybe they don’t care about a week ago because that’s old news? We allow the homeowner to set up a trigger that automatically deletes their history every day, week, or month. So that effectively allows you to say, “Hey, keep my command logs for as long as they’re useful to me, but don’t keep them forever.”

Do the settings that let a user delete their command history affect the system’s ability to adapt to their habits or preferences? Or is that just an irrelevant question?

It’s relevant, but it’s something that matters less when you have a professional installer because there are a lot of things you can program into the system. For example, an integrator can program it such that when the client says, “Play some music,” if it’s in the morning it plays classical and if it’s in the evening it plays jazz, or whatever genres might match the homeowner’s preferences throughout the day to set the right mood.

That being said, if you don’t have your commands being erased and you haven’t specified what you want it to do, when you walk into a room and ask it to simply “Play music,” Josh has the ability to look

the Nano embedded in a Lutron wall plate with the privacy switch visible near the bottom of the microphone

Let's Talk to Josh

the Nano embedded in a Lutron wall plate with the privacy switch visible near the bottom of the microphone

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at what music you’ve historically asked for at any given time of the day and pick something it thinks is appropriate. If you are deleting your logs, though, we’re not going to be able to do those types of things without some extra programming ahead of time.

Let’s talk about the privacy switch on the Josh Nano. It’s a little switch that turns red when you flip it off, giving the user more confidence that the system is indeed unable to listen to them. How did that come about?

There are a number of microphone devices out there that have the ability to mute but typically it’s a software-controlled mute, and I remember hearing people saying in the early days of the Amazon Echo that they didn’t trust its mute function. Did it really disable the microphone? Is it really not listening or is it just turning on a red light that makes you think it’s not listening? I’m not sure.

When you flip that switch on the Josh Nano, though, we physically disconnect the microphone. There’s a physical connection that’s broken. There’s no way that device could be listening to you. 

Also, on a lot of other devices from mass-market companies, the mute is on the back or on the bottom or somewhere that’s hard to see. We decided to make it the only physical switch on the face of the product, so when you approach it and see that one switch, it’s super easy to know what it does. 

Dennis Burger is an avid Star Wars scholar, Tolkien fanatic, and Corvette enthusiast who somehow also manages to find time for technological passions including high-end audio, home automation, and video gaming. He lives in the armpit of Alabama with his wife Bethany and their four-legged child Bruno, a 75-pound American Staffordshire Terrier who thinks he’s a Pomeranian.

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Eric Thies: Bringing the Movies Home for Hollywood

Eric Thies: Bringing the Movies Home for Hollywood

Eric Thies: Bringing the Movies Home for Hollywood

“The bar for home cinemas is pretty high in Southern California. People are spending enormous amounts of money on making them great.”

The head of LA-based DSI Luxury Technology pulls no punches offering up his thoughts on private cinemas, outdoor theaters, and mega billionaires who expect the impossible

by D. Craig MacCormack
June 16, 2022

Most high-end integrators do private cinemas, but only a handful specialize in private cinemas for people who are actually in the movie industry. Eric Thies is one of them—and possibly the preeminent one—creating premium home entertainment spaces for directors, producers, actors—all kinds of spaces for all kinds of talent both above and below the line. But the efforts of his LA-based DSI Luxury Technology extend well beyond the film community, and well beyond rooms in the service of movie-watching, creating flexible and responsive smart homes as well. 

We recently talked to Eric about the diversity of his company’s capabilities and specifically about the challenges and opportunities of servicing the market in and around LA.

What is unique about how you approach doing a home theater, compared to integrators who work elsewhere in the country?

Since we’re in Southern California, the first question we ask clients is, “Are you in the entertainment industry?” That can change the direction of where we take the theater.

If they are in the industry and have access to studio content, then we’re going to be doing a full DCI [Digital Cinema Initiatives] theater, which means we’re going to be installing a professional projector and movie server since they’re going to be able to get the same version of a film that’s released in theaters on a hard drive that’s messengered to the house or perhaps over the air to a streaming device—not an Apple TV, but something more elaborate than that.

Then there are going to be a lot of considerations to make that professional theater work in a residential environment. If they’re in the Bel Air Circuit, we’ve got to get all that equipment in the house some way, which means we need lots more space than we would in a standard theater because a 4K DCI projector is much bigger than a 4K residential 

Eric Thies is the founder of DSI Luxury Technology, the most awarded custom installation firm in North America. He is a member of the Home Technology Association and helped develop the HTA certification system. He is also a member of The Guild Integrator’s Alliance—an invitation-only group of 13 of the premier integration firms in the US.

Eric Thies: Bringing the Movies Home for Hollywood

The private cinemas on the Bel Air Circuit allow an exclusive group of people in the film industry to view the same digital version of a movie that’s distributed to commercial theaters

projector. Also, if we want to have Dolby Atmos content in our DCI playback, we have to get Dolby approval. Dolby has to sign off on the speaker placement, the speaker types we’re using—the SPL [sound-pressure level] is super important in that regard. 

The other thing to consider is that the bar for home cinemas is pretty high in Southern California. Almost any luxury home we do has a space for one and people are spending enormous amounts of money on them and on making them great.

Given how complex these installations can be, what do you do when you have a client with unrealistic expectations?

We had a very famous billionaire who is very outspoken on Twitter—I can’t say who he is, but he’s trying to save the world by not using fossil fuels. We got a call on a Friday afternoon saying he needed a theater installed by the weekend. And we said, “That’s not how it works, sorry. If that’s what it takes to keep you as a client, we’re going to have to pass because we just can’t produce something we’re happy with in a few hours.”

There are a lot of factors that determine the time it takes to build a theater. One, are we doing a full isolation and acoustics package? Meaning, are we rebuilding the walls to keep sound from going out or from coming in? Are we going to do acoustic treatments on the walls, which needs acoustic design ahead of that and then fabric stretching? Rarely do we go in and just fill a drywall box and put speakers in the wall and a screen up with a projector. Typically, our rooms are constructed or demoed and then rebuilt.

DSI does many types of entertainment spaces beyond private theaters and is also known for its sophisticated whole-house automation

Eric Thies: Bringing the Movies Home for Hollywood

DSI does many types of entertainment spaces beyond private theaters and is also known for its sophisticated whole-house automation

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If we’re doing the construction—acoustics and everything—that’s typically a four- to six-month process. If we’re just coming in and putting up a screen and fixing the room acoustically via electronics, that’s probably two or three months before we finish it, depending on our lead time and the supply chain and all those things we’re dealing with right now.

What kind of price range are we talking about for a project of this magnitude and size?

I don’t think we’ve done a theater in a long time that’s any less than $50,000, and our theaters can go up to $2 million. I think our sweet spot, if you’re talking electronics and room buildout, is probably in the $500,000 to $700,000 range.

How do you make sure every project stays on time, on budget, and according to plan?

Theaters are a lot more contained, a lot easier to manage, with a lot less unpredictability than some of the other things we do because it’s usually only one room. There’s plenty to go wrong from a technology standpoint, and there are clients to manage with their grand ideas and changing their minds and all that other stuff, but for the most part, of all the things an integrator does, a theater is complex but predictable.

If you’re not used to doing high-performance theaters or you’re trying to reinvent the wheel every time you do one, that’s going to be painful. But if you’ve got a system in place, it’s a pretty predictable process and outcome. A construction manager I work with has a phrase: Get a client with a blank piece of land and a set of plans. The client is the variable, because they tend to change their mind and want something different or talk to a friend who has a different idea about the room and how they should use it.

Is there anything else you do that’s unique to the Southern California market?

Since we can actually watch movies outside 365 days a year, we do pretty elaborate outdoor living spaces with great audio and also great video. And that’s a trend that’s definitely going up. We’re getting a lot more requests for outdoor theaters.

Those are the most difficult because they want the experience but they don’t want to see anything. They don’t want a permanent screen up in their backyard, so either we’ve got to think of ways for screens to pop out of things or we have to think about bringing in a temporary screen, and how to have speakers, whether that be temporary or permanent. It’s a lot trickier than in home theaters.

Craig MacCormack is a Massachusetts-based writer and editor with more than a decade’s experience covering the AV integration industry. He was the executive editor for Commercial Integrator and has also written about digital finance, architecture and engineering, and local and national news and sports in his 27-year journalism career. You can connect with him on Twitter at @CraigMacCormack, but be warned, there’s a heavy Boston sports component to his tweets.

“Since we can actually watch movies outside 365 days a year, DSI does pretty elaborate outdoor living spaces with great audio and video. That’s a trend that’s definitely going up.”

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Achieving Serenity: The Speaker System

Achieving Serenity: The Speaker System

Achieving Serenity | The Speaker System

THE SPEAKERS IN SERENITY

14  custom Gold Monitors
  4  standard Gold Monitors
  2  custom Gold 10 Monitors
  2  custom Gold 8 Monitors
  4  on-wall Silver Subs
  4  Cinema Reference Surrounds
  2  Cinema Reference LCR
  1  custom Cinema Reference center
  2  custom Cinema Reference 121
      subwoofers

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The tech team faced every imaginable hurdle installing a
35-speaker Atmos system in the theater but still achieved stellar results

by John Sciacca
May 20, 2022

The home theater is Serenity’s audio video crown jewel but it offered by far the most significant design and installation challenges. “It wasn’t as if the theater could have been redesigned with walls or with better acoustical speaker placement. It just wasn’t possible,” integrator Jeff Williams stated. “So, it was a big challenge, especially with the number of speakers required for Dolby Atmos.” 

From the get-go, Williams knew he was going to need expert help, and he went to Triad Speakers and its design team to see what was possible. “They were really the ones that spearheaded that entire design, which was really nice for us.”

Triad and Control 4 Regional Manager Robert Melendez recalled: “I remember Jeff saying, ‘You know, I have this awesome opportunity , but I don’t know how we’re going to do it. They want to do a Zen Garden on the side and they want to have a glass wall.’ 

“I think it’s the most unique residential space I’ve ever worked on. The owner said, ‘We want the theater right there.’ Right outside of there they had the car room and a dance floor, and that is all completely open, but they still wanted to have a dedicated theater experience.”

One of the benefits of working with Triad was the company’s acoustical engineering and customization, and using their technical expertise to get excellent sound from a room that offered numerous sonic and construction challenges. “From Triad’s standpoint, we could pretty much adapt to anything because everything’s engineered and made according to spec,” Melendez said. “It was a matter of dealing with whatever infrastructure was there.”

Getting the best possible Dolby Atmos performance in a room that didn’t allow for optimal speaker placement meant getting creative. It also meant taking advantage of the speaker remapping feature into the Trinnov Altitude processor to create phantom or virtual speaker locations. “Triad was able to design it in virtual reality,” Williams explained, “where they could manipulate the soundwaves to create phantom speaker points at ear level around you. The engineers worked on it for several months, using their incredible design team and the acoustic rooms they have.”

“They got to certain points and realized, OK, for the space, the layout of the room, and the seating, we need to place these speakers here to create this virtual zone,” Melendez stated.

But just because that’s where a speaker should go, doesn’t mean it could. And that meant being flexible and able to customize. “The whole project was in motion the same time as the design was under construction, so we had to throw quite a few audibles,” Melendez said, “There were around five or six times we had to go back and move and redesign and customize because there was something going on in the space we needed the sound to come from, so we had to reposition speakers and create virtual zones. Or they used that portion of the ceiling for things like wire runs or pipes, which killed the area we had originally allocated for speakers. And that meant going to our design team and having them restructure the size or placement of speakers.

“At one point, a spot we needed for a speaker had a huge pipe going through it, so we re-engineered the speaker to fit around the pipe at the necessary angle and give us the right performance. A good majority of the speakers in the theater were completely custom in order to get the acoustics and experience we were looking for.”

Delivering cinematic performance with reference volume levels required using Triad’s Cinema Reference Series for the three front channels as well as for the side-wall surround channels. Seismic bass is delivered from two 21-inch subs in the front. But even with the size and number of speakers required—a total channel layout of 19.6.10, with 19 listener-level speakers, six subwoofers, and ten height channels—the room retains a clean luxury look, without any electronics detracting from the experience.

“Almost every speaker is hidden by cloth,” Williams explained. “There are also very few speakers in the system that are flat baffled—most are angled. And they’re placed within an inch of where we’d planned so that the sound acoustics are correct in the space. The cabinet behind the last row of furniture actually has a speaker in each end of it at chair level. And then we have multiple speakers in the soffit and the lid.”

“When you play your movie clips for people and demonstrate what the theater can do, it completely blows them away,” Melendez said. “And comments like ‘This is completely amazing!’ or, ‘This is one of the best theaters I’ve ever heard!’ are often followed by, ‘I don’t know how you guys accomplished this!'”

Probably the most experienced writer on custom installation in the industry, John Sciacca is co-owner of Custom Theater & Audio in Murrells Inlet, South Carolina, & is known for his writing for such publications as Residential Systems and Sound & Vision. Follow him on Twitter at @SciaccaTweets and at johnsciacca.com.

a closer look

the theater

the sound processing

the home automation

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Achieving Serenity: The Home Automation

Achieving Serenity: The Home Automation

Achieving Serenity | The Home Automation

“Integrator Jeff Williams had two mandates for the control system: Ease of use for the homeowner and not overcomplicating it”

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This sprawling, entertainment-oriented home put such big demands on its control system, the company had to design new gear just to handle the load

by John Sciacca
May 20, 2022

The heart of every smart home is the automation system but when you’re talking about a home the size of Serenity, with this many sub-systems being managed and controlled, not just any control system will do. The homeowner specifically wanted to use Control4, which was how integrator Jeff Williams was brought into the job. “Someone the owner knew had Control4 and loved it,” Williams said, “and when we started the project, he said to us, ‘If it can be on Control4, I want it on that system. Period.’” That went on to include not just control over the reference home theater system but hundreds of circuits of lighting, 28 zones of HVAC, pool systems like fountains and pumps, more than 20 distributed audio video zones, and motorized drapery. 

While Control4 has always been able to handle large projects, this would count among its largest. Because of the size, there was some concern it would stress the capabilities of the flagship Control4 processor, so there was talk about scaling the system back. “We went to the people we knew at Control 4 and said, ‘Cost is not the issue here. Build me something,” Williams said. 

Which was when Robert Melendez, regional manager for both Control 4 and Triad Speakers, got involved. “Engineers had been working on something capable of handling truly large projects,” he explained. “As this one started coming together, we realized we needed to make that available as a product, so a lot of effort went into getting it ready for this home specifically.”

Beyond having the power to handle the massive number of systems in a home this big, the processor also needed to include next-level redundancy and the ability to automatically and seamlessly switch to the backup system to ensure the system had 100% uptime. The resulting product—the CA-10 controller—features improved design and build-quality along with redundancy for all of the controller’s functions: Power, network, disc storage, and fans. 

The entire home has an enormous number of features that all coincide and work seamlessly together with the theater, but one of the theater’s biggest tricks is auto-magically transforming from a beautiful open space to a reference-quality viewing and listening environment at the touch of a button. 

“You go in the room and it’s an open-landscape form,” Melendez noted, “and then you hit a button and the curtains cover the walls, and you get that amazing acoustic space.”

The Control4 system ensures the proper audio calibration setting is selected for the Trinnov system. “The system knows when the theater drapes are open or closed,” Williams explained, “and sends a signal to the Trinnov Audio processor to change its surround sound parameters accordingly.”

Williams had two other mandates for the control system: Ease of use for the homeowner and not overcomplicating it. “It’s as if we’re the valet for their new Bentley. ‘Here’s the keys—I trust you to do what you do. I don’t need to know all the working parts.’” he said. “They just want to go down and when they hit ‘Watch DirecTV’ have the TV and the sports channel come on, and they want it to sound good. They don’t care about all the backbone to it. Ease of use is really what it comes down to.”

Also important was the system’s longevity and serviceability. “I can do more with the Control 4 platform because it’s being more widely accepted by third-party companies, so there are a lot of companies designing and developing drivers for it,” Williams commented, “And unlike with other automation systems, with Control 4, the programming resides on the platform locally. So if anything would happen to me, a dealer can log in and has all the information and all the programming right there.”

One of the big updates with Control4’s latest Smart Home Operating System, OS3, was allowing the homeowner to more easily customize the interface, such as by being able to add smart-home scenes or favorites icons or tasks to the control screens, making it more user-friendly. “As an integrator, we don’t make good mind readers. I could put in the best system in the world but I don’t know how the homeowner is going to end up using it. I can only use what I know and my best judgment to do that, but they’ve given the end user a lot of flexibility, where he doesn’t have to call me.”

Ultimately it comes down to one thing for Williams: Reliability. “The homeowner doesn’t care how it works, it just has to work,” he stressed. “In my experience, Control 4 offers many plusses. I mean, this system, the house that we did, I’m not sure other companies even have the equipment to do it.”

Probably the most experienced writer on custom installation in the industry, John Sciacca is co-owner of Custom Theater & Audio in Murrells Inlet, South Carolina, & is known for his writing for such publications as Residential Systems and Sound & Vision. Follow him on Twitter at @SciaccaTweets and at johnsciacca.com.

a closer look

the theater

the speaker system

the sound processing

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