Best Home Cinema ◆ Level III

Len Wallis Audio

This first contender in CEDIA’s Level III Home Cinemas sees Len Wallis Audio delivering the largest channel count of any Meridianbased theatre system in the world — for a young family of five “who were knowledgeable and experienced with home cinemas, owning a luxury cinema in another of their homes.”

Yet it was a challenging space — a 1960s home with a room built entirely from structural concrete. The client requested (as do nearly all clients) the largest possible screen; the calculations allowed a wall-to-wall 157-inch Stewart Filmscreen CinemaScope screen, with a calibrated Sony 4K laser projector, and again a Lumagen video processor making use of its non-linear stretch modes on 16:9 material.

The all-Meridian active system has three DSP7200SE floorstanders behind the screen (pictured middle right), 10 DSP640 in-wall side and rear speakers (part of the rear wall is shown below), plus six DSP320 in-ceiling speakers for height. With music preferences predominantly electronic and hip-hop, there was an emphasis on heavy bass for music; subwoofers were strategically placed in the quarter-points of the room, eliminating four room modes before the Trinnov processor’s digital acoustic correction. Power management was also significant given the system’s draw of close to 60 amps across the full 23 speaker channels in a Reference 13.4.6 Atmos configuration.

Along with the stabilisation of significant acoustic treatment, each of the eight (8) seats in the room has an individual Trinnov acoustic calibration, then weighted for various seating combinations — a ‘Couple’ mode targeting the front middle ‘love seat’, a ‘Family’ mode for the middle four seats, and a ‘Guest’ mode spreading the entire image over all eight seats, these settings selectable through the Savant control application. “Unsurprisingly we have very happy clients”, says the team at Len Wallis Audio.