Planning. The most important part of any project!
This was one of our all-time-favorite projects. Not only because of the gear used but because the owners came to us with the house plans before the construction has even started! This is how all A/V projects should be. Planning is of outmost importance and having your favorite A/V Engineer and System Integrator involved from the very beginning will save you time and money. It will also reduce the stress that is always accompanying the owners of house while it is being built.
This time we undertook the following tasks: Home Cinema Design, Multi-Room Audio Design, Home Network and Wi-Fi Coverage!
The owners had only one request from us. To make the installation and the setup as seamless as possible. They did not want any speakers around the TV or on the furniture below it. This meant that we could only work on the ceiling and that the Focal angled speakers will need to be deployed once again!
A Full Focal Setup – 7.1.2 Dolby Atmos.
Focal has solutions for virtually any situation that needs Audio related products of the best possible quality. In this setup the mighty Focal 100 ICLCR 5 were chosen for the front 3 speakers (Front Left, Center and Front Right) because they feature angled drivers that direct the sound at the MLP (Main Listening Position). The rest of the speakers are the Focal 100 ICW 6 that were selected for the remaining channels. The Focal Sub Air subwoofer provides the bass to this lovely and clean setup.
The TV Problem and the Solution.
As you can see, the TV (chosen, supplied and installed by us, it’s a Sony OLED Master Series and one of our favorites!) is installed at an offset position in relation to the MLP (Main Listening Position) because of the fireplace placement and that can be awkward which is never the desired situation. What can be done about this? Fear not! By using the correct Peerless TV Mount, the TV can be moved into the correct position during usage and then moved back to its resting position. Lovely.
It looks incredible.
We love the end product of this project. It is simply exquisite and oozes class and elegance. The Home Cinema Setup sounds fantastic without interfering too much with the design of the living room but also without sacrificing performance. Did you notice that no electronics are visible anywhere? Where could they be? You will find out about them later! Read on!
The Kitchen Needs Music too!
Well, this is not actually just the kitchen. It is the gaming area as well. So good sound is really important. The Naim Audio Mu-so 2 was the perfect choice. It has a full, authoritative sound from a small enclosure such as this. It is also compatible with Chromecast, AirPlay 2 so anyone can stream music to it through their smartphone or tablet. Of course it is connected to the TV providing the kitchen with the sound it deserves.
The kitchen has also 2 more ceiling speakers, the Cabasse Archipel that are controlled by the centralized Multi-Room amplifiers. More on that later on!
The Covered Veranda
The Cabasse Archipel speakers are also deployed at the outdoor covered veranda which are controlled by the centralized Multi-Room system just like the rest of the common areas. They are weather resistance so they are not afraid of the outdoors. The same goes for the Wi-Fi access points. Double-glazed windows are “Wi-Fi Killers” as we call them, so an access point was a must for the outdoor area.
Where are all the electronics hidden?
Imagine if we were to accept the general consensus that all the electronics are supposed to be installed below the TV, on or in the furniture. That is not the correct way to address this issue… to say the least. Unless you want a sea of cables in your living room that will be hard to move, hard to clean and they will make you never want to open the drawer of your TV Furniture. Also what must be taken into consideration, is servicing. You do not want anyone messing about in your living room right? So why not think ahead and install all the electronics in a centralized location, preferably a storage area, where an AV rack can be installed and house all the electronics?
As you will see below, the rack houses the AV Receiver that drives the speakers in the living room, the 4 Multi-Room amplifiers responsible for the Cabasse Ceiling Speakers at the Covered Veranda, Kitchen and 2 Bedrooms, the Network Controllers and Switch, the UPS, the Alarm Hardware and the Camera’s hardware. Everything at one place. Out of sight!
Calibration of the Anthem AV Receiver
Anthem Room Correction (ARC®) puts the sophistication and power of an advanced audio lab in your hands so that you can achieve perfect sound at home. Our PhDs did the hard work, so you don’t need an engineering degree to use it. ARC is sophisticated enough to produce real results that you can hear, easy enough to be used by anyone, advanced enough to allow you to customize the settings, and professional enough to give you the kind of results you’d expect from software and hardware costing thousands of euros.
The most significant detriment to the sound of an audio system is almost always the room it resides within—especially true in the realm of bass. Even in a professionally treated sound room, bass can quickly become boomy or anemic. Anthem Room Correction helps audio systems sound their best in any space. ARC offers a robust suite of tools to tame your wild sonic frontier, whether you have a tricked-out home theater, a traditional living room with carpet and thick drapes, or a modern floor plan with large open spaces and acoustically reflective furniture and windows.
To compensate for this and to optimize the in-room response of your speakers, Anthem Room Correction measures the output of each speaker relative to the listening area then, through a series of calculations, adjusts its output. Not only does ARC correct peaks and dips in a speaker’s frequency response, but it also preserves the beneficial acoustic attributes of a room—attributes based on proven psychoacoustic science (the study of how humans hear and experience sound).
Conclusion
This has been a truly lovely project that was planned correctly from the very beginning. We cannot stress enough how important that is. The owners are really happy they agreed with our suggestion regarding the implementation and system design of their home. We in turn, are happy that our system will offer them years of reliability and entertainment!