KEF MUSIC LOUNGE THEATER: A THX CERTIFIED OASIS
The speaker maker’s appointment-only New Jersey demonstration theater combines comfort with state-ofthe-art gear and acoustic treatments
S&V drops in on the speaker maker’s NJ demonstration theater, a space combining comfort with state-of-the-art gear and acoustic treatments.
AFTER ALMOST a year-and-a-half in lockdown, I was honored to be the first member of the press to experience the KEF Music Lounge Theater. In late May, I visited the company’s U.S. headquarters in Marlboro, NJ and received a warm—and long overdue—jersey welcome from KEF VP David Kroll and marketing director Stephanie Scola. Work on the theater was largely finished in February 2020 just weeks before the country went into lockdown so the magnificent space with its 9.10.6 Dolby Atmos speaker layout and 160-inch screen sat largely dormant for more than a year. As restrictions eased in the spring of this year, KEF was finally able to put the last piece of the puzzle in place when the theater received official THX Certification.
The christening, as it turns out, couldn’t be more fitting as it aligns with the 60th anniversary of KEF’S founding. Raymond Cooke, an electrical engineer with a deep passion for music and an unwavering desire to design the perfect speaker, started the company near the country town of Maidstone, 32 miles southeast of London. Sixty years later, Cooke’s legacy lives on and is echoed in words he uttered decades ago:
“Of all art, music is the most indefinable and the most expressive, the most insubstantial and the most immediate, the most transitory and the most imperishable. Transformed to a dance of electrons along a wire, its ghost lives on. When KEF returns music to its rightful habituation, your ears and mind, they aim to do so in the most natural way they can ... without drama, without exaggeration, without artifice.”
If Cooke was here today, there’s little doubt that his dedication to reproducing music as it was meant to be heard would extend to movie soundtracks.
I met Kroll and Scola in the KEF Music Lounge, a homey space with a bar and living room setup just outside the theater and adjacent to a spacious warehouse. I sat at the bar and jokingly ordered a Manhattan and my gracious hosts were ready to oblige. If it was 5 o’clock instead of 10 in the morning, I would have hung out and let the spirits flow. Instead, I was treated to a powerful demo of “We Will Rock You” from the 2018 tribute to Queen, Bohemian Rhapsody, displayed on a TV behind the bar and supported by an inconspicuous 5.2.2 system comprising seven in-wall speakers and a pair of subwoofers concealed in either end of the bar. If only the local sports bar had sound like this…
Kroll and Scola were quick to point out that the lounge is not a showroom. “It’s a space for music and movie lovers to enjoy audio as it was meant to be heard,” Kroll said. “This is the way we want people to experience our brand and our products,
Scola added. “We want them to walk away feeling like they could live here.”
Cavernous Yet Cozy
As we walked into the theater I was immediately struck by how cozy the space felt, despite its 11-foot ceiling and 18-person seating capacity, and how warm and natural the room sounded while we were chatting. “Too many theaters dampen only the highest frequencies, which alters the tone of voices, making them sound nasally,” Kroll observed. Definitely not the case here. Seating is spread over three tiered rows: a back row with bar-height seating and two rows of comfy chaise lounge style seating.
“In 2018 I happened to visit Lagasse’s Stadium Sportsbook at The Palazzo hotel in Las Vegas,” Scola recalled. “The vibe of that space was a big inspiration for how I wanted the seating designed for our theater. Couples were nestled next to each other, drinking and snacking while watching the game and you could tell no one wanted to leave. That is exactly the feel I wanted to offer our dealers and their customers. The space had to be a comfortable, relaxing environment with KEF flair.”
KEF found the perfect design partner in Kingsley Knauss, owner of Westfield, Nj-based KBK Interior Design. “We created a warm and comfortable environment with oversized sectionals instead of theater chairs for a more informal and ‘curl-up and get comfortable’ feel,” she explained. “We specifically used loose seat and back cushions so that the guests could adjust the cushions as needed for comfort. A low-tech seating solution for such a high-tech space.”
And having a high ceiling just adds to the comfort, Kroll noted. “You walk into the room and it feels airy and spacious—you don’t feel like you’re in a cave.”
Though the 9,500-cubic-foot space is relatively unassuming, it’s brimming with hidden technology chosen to deliver, as Kroll put it, “a full sensory cinematic experience to showcase what KEF loudspeakers are capable of. What’s impressively apparent is that even at THX Reference level, the system is smooth and balanced so you can watch movie after movie in complete awe and comfort.”
He’s not kidding. I was treated to a series of extended clips starting with the delicate opera performance of “Never Enough” from The Greatest Showman (2017) in which Rebecca Ferguson portrays “Swedish Nightingale” Jenny Lind (the song is sung by Loren Allred) and ending with the terrifying depth charge scene from the 2000 World War II submarine film, U571. In-between, I buckled up for the exhilarating track scene from Ford v Ferrari, where Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) takes a skeptical Henry Ford II (Tracy Letts) on the ride of his life, and flinched my way through the calamitous VR race scene from 2018’s Ready Player One.
“It’s easy to make the theater sound impressive in a loud action scene but it’s more difficult to have it sound impressive with a single voice singing on stage,” Kroll noted in explaining why The Greatest Showman demo is a KEF favorite. “You can sense the spaciousness of the opera house and hear the instruments coming up from the orchestra pit below her feet. At one point there is a low timpani roll and you can feel the rumble of the large drums even though they’re playing softly—just like when you hear a symphony live. It really does put you right into the scene.”
The Ultimate Warehouse Conversion
The KEF Music Lounge Theater was constructed in what had been a bustling warehouse, two-and-a-half stories tall with thick concrete floors. Why so tall? Turns out the building was a ship manufacturing facility before KEF took over the space some years ago.
“The theater is a rectangular box, inside
a rectangular box, inside a warehouse,” Kroll observed. “Because it’s located inside an active warehouse, sound transmission both inside and outside of the space is of critical importance just as it would be in a home.” With this in mind, KEF tapped the acoustic design experts at Acoustic Innovations (AI) to design and build the showcase theater. The family-run company, which operates out of Boca Raton, Florida, was founded in 1992 by industry veteran Jay Miller whose credits include the completion of more than 2,000 custom theaters over the past 39 years.
The first step toward creating a sonically isolated space was to build a double wall, so the AI crew constructed outer and inner stud walls with a 1-inch air gap in-between and filled the walls with sound-absorbing insulation to prevent sound from entering or leaving the theater. The inner stud frame forms the structure of the theater and houses the acoustical treatments.
“We did one other important thing that differs from what you see in many standard theater installations: Rather than cover the inner stud frame with drywall, we left the stud bays open to give us added depth for thicker absorption and diffusion materials.”
When it comes to the art and science of room acoustics, the strategic selection and placement of acoustical treatments was a fundamental part of the theater’s overall design and it goes a long way toward making the space sound as good as it does.
“Following THX guidelines, one of the primary treatments was to absorb the first reflection point,” Kroll observed. “By moving beyond the surface and also applying treatments within the full stud depth, we absorb a wide range of frequencies so that the room remains balanced and natural sounding with the first reflection completely eliminated.”
Absorptive surfaces were then balanced with hard, flat reflective surfaces (like the ribbon mahogany paneling) to prevent the room from sounding overly damped and ensure equally good results with movies and music. Diffusion was used extensively on the rear and rear-side walls to, as Kroll put it, “provide a scattering effect that breaks up excess energy to create a spacious surround environment.” Diffusers concealed behind fabric panels were also installed across the entire ceiling. “We were lucky to have a visible ceiling at 11 feet with an additional foot above to accommodate the acoustic treatments,” Kroll noted.
To complete the acoustics puzzle, carpet with thick padding was installed and a combination of absorption and diffusion was used along the top and
bottom of the rear walls and rear-side walls to achieve “near perfect RT (reverberation time) decay.” Even the riser built to elevate the middle row of seating was slotted and filled with insulation so it would function as a bass trap. Pretty clever.
As you can see from photos of the finished space, all of the acoustical magic is done under the cover of linen-textured fabrics chosen to create a “moody and timeless environment” that complements the room’s mahogany paneling and sculptural wall sconces.
Speakers Everywhere
All of the system’s 25 (!) KEF speakers (10 of which are subwoofers) are recessed in the walls for a super-clean look. The front sound stage comprises three top-of-the line Reference series CI5160REF-THX in-wall speakers in the left, center, and right positions. Each lists for a cool $10,000 and sandwiches KEF’S signature Uni-q driver—in this case, a 5-inch midrange driver with a 1-inch aluminum-dome tweeter in its “throat”— between two pairs of 6.5-inch woofers in a 42-inch-tall frame that’s only 4 inches deep and fits between the studs.
Surround-sound duties are handled by four CI3160RL-THX in-wall speakers (a shortened version of the Ci5160 with two woofers)— one in the front and one in the rear of each sidewall—and a pair of CI5160RL-THX in-wall speakers in the back wall. The Ci3160s have the same driver layout as the Ci1560s up front but with a 6.5-inch Uni- Q driver. An array of six CI200RR-THX in-ceiling speakers firing from above convey the Dolby Atmos height channels and (literally) take sonic immersion to the next level.
“The wide off-axis response of our
Uni-q technology gave us some unique flexibility in placing the speakers,” Kroll noted. “We were able to put the side and rear speakers higher than normal, which allows direct sound to reach each row without being blocked. Every seat in the house is in the sweet spot—there are no ‘king seats.’” The ability of KEF’S THXcertified in-wall speakers to play low and loud also made it possible to use lower than usual crossover points: The side and rear channels cross over at 40Hz and the Atmos height channels at 60Hz, while the front channels run full range, allowing for “pinpoint accuracy with precise theatrical steering and Atmos height positioning.”
In case you lost count, the theater houses 15 in-wall speakers, powered by five Parasound Halo series amplifiers chosen for their and configuration flexibility and ability to deliver effortless sound at high volumes. A 2 x 400-watt JC 5 lights up the front left and right speakers, while an A21+ operating in its 1,000-watt bridged mode brings the center speaker to life. From there, a pair of 5 x 250-watt A51 amps power the six surround speakers and four of the six Atmos height speakers, while a 5 x 180-watt A52+ drives the two remaining height speakers with three channels to spare. Except for the JC 5, all of the Parasound amps are THX Certified, meaning they have passed a battery of rigorous tests to ensure the highest quality audio reproduction.
Classy room aesthetics aside, the most dramatic aspect of the KEF Music Lounge Theater is its 10 subwoofers. You don’t see them—all are concealed behind fabric grilles— but you most definitely feel them. (The bass was so powerful at times, that I thought a Buttkicker was attached to the sectional.) The low-frequency assault begins with the 22Hz-capable KUBE 12b, a 16-inch cube housing a 12-inch woofer and 300-watt amplifier. Actually, there are four of them: Two in each of the gently angled walls that join the front and side walls on either side of the video screen. The thunder continues with four 18Hz-capable CI200QSB-THX in-wall subwoofers, which come packaged in pairs for a total of eight 8-inch woofers, and two KEF CI3160RLBTHX in-wall subs— boasting three 6.5-inch drivers apiece—in the back wall. All of the in-wall subs are driven by three of KEF’S KASA500 subwoofer amplifiers, each rated to deliver 2 x 250 watts and bridgeable to 500 watts.
When the AI design team decided to go with six Atmos height channels, they knew they needed a serious A/V preamp/ processor— one that would let them select individual crossover points while managing bass in all channels. They chose the Acurus ACT 4, one of only a few pre/ pros able to meet their demands for flexibility (it has 20 channels), sound quality, and operational simplicity.
As you might imagine, a variety of sources are available for your listening and viewing pleasure in the KEF theater, starting with a NAD CI 580 V2 BLUOS network music player and an Innuos
Zenith mk3 server on the music side. Movie thrills come courtesy of a Kaleidescape Strato S 4K movie player/server ( Sound & Vision Top Pick in 2020), Sony’s UBP-X1000ES 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray player, Apple TV 4K, and a Motorola cable box.
Movie viewing in the KEF Music Lounge Theater coalesces around a 13-foot (diagonal) Seymour Screen Excellence Reference Series RF140HD-NEO screen fitted with the company’s most advanced acoustically-transparent fabric to ensure sound from the center speaker, located behind the screen, would not be compromised. “We chose a woven screen so there would be no shift in frequency response compared with the front left and right speakers, which were placed just outside of the screen to improve stereo separation,” Kroll explained, noting that perforated vinyl screens require equalization to compensate for shifts in tonal balance.
Epson’s flagship Pro Cinema 6050UB projector illuminates the screen with stunning 4K images. Kroll would have preferred for it to be enclosed but the 2-foot-thick structural concrete wall at the back of the theater made that impossible so it had to be mounted on the ceiling. Fortunately, the projector is dead quiet and located at the last row of seating so it’s not visible when you’re watching a movie.
All of the A/V gear is showcased in three Middle Atlantic racks located in an alcove off the hallway between the music lounge and theater, which as it turns out, was not the ideal location. “We had an awkward challenge in positioning the racks,” Kroll explained. “We wanted them to be dead center between the theater and music lounge but that exact point happened to be in the restroom!” The solution: Run with it. The installation team ended up creating a space for the equipment between the hallway and bathroom.
“From the hallway you can pop open the glass doors to access the front of the equipment, which is tight to the wood framing so you can’t see through,” Kroll said. “But for those of us who want to gawk lovingly at the gorgeous workmanship behind the racks— or really, to have an easy time servicing units when needed—a custom-built oversized sliding wood door system opens in full on the bathroom side to completely reveal the inner artistry of the wiring. It’s amusing to get a cluster of people in the bathroom to hear their reaction when we pull the doors back to showcase this.”
So, I wanted to know, as I’m sure you do, what it cost to design and build theater of this caliber? Upwards of a half-a-million bucks when you factor in design, engineering, installation, the cost of gear and, of course, start-to-finish construction. Best to start saving now.
“We set out to achieve a theater experience worthy of the THX Certified logo and what we ended up with exceeded even our wildest expectations,” Kroll concluded. Raymond Cooke would be proud.