A Higher Power... Our team undertakes a huge theatre upgrade
An existing home theatre gets a comprehensive upgrade, including 4K projection and the new heights of Dolby Atmos.
At Len Wallis Audio we are often asked to upgrade existing installations. This home theatre was just such a case, after the client had purchased a substantial residence which came with an existing dedicated home theatre room.
The starting configuration for the room was already well established. It included a star-light ceiling, cabinetry, lighting control and even some acoustic panelling. Unfortunately as is often the case with the sale of a home, the original owners removed the majority of the electronics. But on the up side, this left a blank canvas for the new owner to do something exciting, building upon what was already in place to make a truly magical space.
Achieving balance
After a visit to our Lane Cove Showroom the new owner fell in love with some big Focal Viva speakers from the Utopia range. These became the starting point of the whole system, and as our Senior Custom Consultant Jono Dorset says, any system should be well balanced in regards to the equipment.
“It’s only as good as its weakest link,” says Jono. “So designing around these Viva fronts gave us scope to get creative in specifications to provide something uniquely tailored to the brief”.
Working closely with the client, Jono specified a matching Focal Utopia centre channel, with Focal Diablo bookshelf speakers on stands as the logical choice for rear speaker duties. The room’s existing raised plinth provided the perfect height platform for rear speaker placement.
For the bottom end, the client already had an existing Sunfire HRS12 subwoofer so an additional HRS12 was added to ensure even bass dispersion across all listening positions in the room.
With Dolby Atmos surround being the goal for audio delivery, there’s now that extra height dimension to consider.
“The existing ceiling speakers were simply not going to provide the
performance required to complement the Focal front-end,” says Jono. “To ensure a superb Atmos surround experience, a pair of SpeakerCraft AIM10 10-inch in-ceiling speakers was chosen. These have the output and power handling to complement the specification.”
Top-of-the-range Rotel power amplifiers drive the speakers, with an RMB1585 providing 5 x 200 watts for ceiling speakers, rears and centre, an RB1590 providing 350 watts to each of the front speakers. So there’s plenty of power in reserve when it’s needed!
The Class-A/B Rotels have a customdesigned ventilation system, using superquiet fans that run from a thermostat and fan speed controller. When the cabinet reaches 28 degrees the fans slowly begin extracting heat into the ceiling space.
Processing is handled by a Marantz AV8802A, chosen as an excellent futureproofing solution given it offers not only Atmos but both HDMI 2.0 and HDCP2.2 connectivity — so it can easily manage 4K content as it becomes more common.
The projector is also true 4K, the impressive Sony VPL-VW520ES projector throwing onto the existing 120-inch wide 16:9 ratio screen. High-quality AudioQuest cabling ensures the best possible fidelity throughout the system.
The revised layout also presented the challenge of seamlessly integrating the new larger componentry. But after extensive cabinet modification and expert installation by our team, it’s impossible to guess that this wasn’t an original design custom-built for this space.
And the resulting performance of this room is nothing short of stunning.
“With our calibration completed, the system proved capable of highly articulate audio performances even at levels in excess of 105dB!”, says Jono.
So whether you’re thinking about an entirely new home theatre or an effective upgrade (perhaps to Atmos!) for your existing system, come in and have a chat with us about what amazing results we might achieve together.