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A home-cinema with style in the heart of Bourgogne (2/7/2009) By Dark Side of the Room The brief One of the manufacturers we work with sent us a lead for a home cinema installation. The owner wanted a spare room in his large Bourgogne house to become a leisure room for adults and children, with a home cinema as just another facet of the room. After the first client interview however, his brief changed into a fully-blown dedicated home cinema! We had to build a room with the feel of an old library - a room where Colonel Francis Blake and Professor Philip Mortimer could have spent time considering their next epic: Victorian style, wooden and cosy. The room also had to house the owner's vast collection of comics in an equally large bookcase, and the project had to be completed by Christmas, as it was to be a gift to the owner's children. We had to get things moving fast as we only had 53 days in which to design the room, send blueprints to the contractors, and have all the work carried out. Planning The first steps were to take geometrical and other physical considerations into account, considering that the room was only half-completed. Drywalling was already done, a large glass double-door occupied most of the back wall, and the air conditioning plenum protruded from the ceiling. We created a 3D view from scratch in order to give the customer and good idea of what he could expect, and to gain his feedback. His answer was "Build it just like this!"
After putting together an equipment list and presenting it to the customer, we started with our usual study of the room's acoustics. The major problems were identified, and the placement of the speakers and the listening positions compensated for the room modes. When building the room, the reverberation time was adjusted by a calculated quantity of acoustical foam. In addition, diffuser panels were used to compensate for the inherent asymmetry of the home cinema.
The key man was the cabinet builder. He drew CAD blueprints for the whole room, a task that we or the architect normally undertake. A few emails later, the speakers and their backboxes, the acoustically transparent projection screen, the two sub-woofers, the panels and the foam had their positions and fittings defined, and were integrated into the blueprints.
We double and triple-checked each and every detail, went four times to the site while the room was being built. and then spent three whole days with our crew installing the speakers, the projector and its screen, the rack enclosure and the control system. All in all, the AV part was completed in ten man-days. Installation The electrical contractor and our acoustical ceiling installer did their job, the cabinets and wood panelling were fitted, so all that was left to do was install our equipment and roll the AV rack enclosure into the back of the room. The control system had been programmed already, and only required on-site debugging, and every piece of wire we couldn't cut to size had been listed and was in our trunk.
The main challenge was meeting the deadline. Thanks to the great work by all of the contractors and careful CAD and planning, we indeed delivered the room in time for Santa to take credit! We were to come back to calibrate the audio and video again after the mandatory break-in period, which would no doubt be completed soon, thanks to the holiday season. Experience from the project All in all, the installation went very smoothly, and we learned that a thorough design and good contractors were all that we needed. However, as this was the first home cinema we created that didn't look like a miniature cinema (at all), we learned that to eradicate most rattles from such a large bookcase takes quite a lot of effort! Playing low-frequency pink noise and frequency sweeps at high level, it took a lot of damper felt, glue, and urethane to get rid of all the vibrations. The spaces behind the large wooden panelling had to be filled with mineral wool to stop them from rumbling. We tweaked the doors and windows, re-tightened some screws, and didn't give up until when we knew we'd done the best we could. The result was a large improvement of the subjective bass response; tighter, faster bass, compared to when the whole room played along with the speakers. We could have done better by anticipating more of these issues - next time we will.
Conclusion The feedback from the customer and some of his friends has been very impressive. The Blu-ray shelf is getting crowded, and the owners enjoy sport events in high definition whenever possible. In fact this year's Roland Garros broadcasts were nothing short of stunning on the 3m wide screen. We added the pre-wired outdoor speakers this spring, along with a waterproof remote and an iPod dock. The next addition to this system might very well be a nice turntable for the customer to enjoy his LPs again - after all, the audio system from B&W and Rotel could satisfy most audiophiles, providing a great analogue sound in digital times! Equipment list Projector: JVC HD-750 (THX dILA).
Blu-ray disc player: Pioneer BDP LX-71.
Dock iPod: Pioneer IDK-01.
Wiring: Kramer HDMI wires, Belden and F-Conn custom-made coax. Rack ventilation: Rotel RKF-100.
Dark Side of the Room is based in France and has been a specialist in home cinema, multiroom and lighting control since 2002.
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