From a living room that finally sounds as good as it looks to a dedicated theater with projection, Dolby Atmos and tiered seating, we design and install rooms that are built around the picture and the sound rather than around a box of equipment.
We work with everyone, small or big. The scope changes with the project. The standard of the work does not.
A theater is a room first. Screen size and seating distance, speaker placement, where the subwoofers go, how the room absorbs and reflects sound, how light is controlled, and how heat from the equipment is handled all decide the experience long before a brand name does. We start with the room's dimensions and how you want to use it and we design from there.
That design produces a drawing showing the screen, the speakers, the seating and the equipment location, plus a written specification. You see the whole plan and the costs before anything is ordered.
We install projection and large format direct view displays, and we are candid about which one a given room should have. Projection still wins for a dark dedicated room and a very large image. A high end display wins in a room with windows and daytime use. Both need the right source and the right cabling to deliver what they promise.
On the audio side we design immersive layouts for Dolby Atmos and the related formats, with in wall and in ceiling speakers where the room should stay clean and freestanding speakers where performance is the priority. Every system is calibrated in the room after installation, because a speaker layout on paper is only a starting point.
A theater nobody can operate gets used twice. We program the room so one remote or one touch panel starts the movie, dims the lights, lowers the shades and sets the volume, and so a guest can do the same without instructions. Control4 is our default here and it ties the theater to the rest of the house if you have one.
Equipment lives in a ventilated rack, either in the room or in a closet nearby, with power conditioning and surge protection so a storm does not take the system with it.
The best moment to plan a theater is while the walls are open, because speaker wire, conduit, isolated power and acoustic framing are almost free then and expensive later. We work with builders and architects on dedicated rooms from the framing stage.
An existing room can still become an excellent theater. Surface mounted or freestanding speakers, acoustic panels that look like art, and careful cable routing get most of the way there without reconstruction. We will tell you what the room can and cannot be before you spend anything.
A well designed media room with a large display and a hidden surround system starts in the low five figures. A dedicated theater with projection, acoustic treatment, seating and lighting is a larger project and scales with the size of the room and the performance you want. We design to a budget when you have one and we show equipment and labor separately in every quote.
If the room can be made dark and you want a very large image, projection. If the room has windows and gets daytime use, a large display. There are superb options in both and we will recommend the one that suits the room rather than the one with the higher ticket.
For a dedicated theater, yes. It is the difference between a room that sounds like a cinema and one that sounds like a living room with a loud TV. For a media room it is optional and we can make it look like decor rather than foam.
Regularly, and we prefer it. The theater has to coordinate with framing, electrical, HVAC and finishes, and the earlier we are in that conversation the smoother the project runs.