Upgrading to a Samsung The Wall and Steinway Lyngdorf speakers, this new media room packs a punch for an immersive cinema experience. Amy Stoneham finds out more.
Film fanatics who have a cinema in their home are always keen to have the best performing system, usually matching or exceeding the performance of a commercial cinema, in order to enjoy movies in the luxury of their own home. In this project, you can’t get much more high-performance than this system.
Featuring Steinway Lyngdorf audio and a Samsung The Wall, this multifunctional cinema system delivers a high-performance, immersive experience for any of its media uses.
Audio upgrade
This film-loving homeowner already had a cinema set up in this new home, which had been transferred from his old house. However, while doing upgrades to the rest of the house, the integrator mentioned that he should try a system from Steinway Lyngdorf and the process began.
“The client already had a cinema room when we met him,” says Dennis Sørensen, founder of Room AV, the integration company responsible for the systems within this property. “When he built his new house, we brought all of his equipment from his old house and set it all up in his new media room. We fit it all in and made it sound really nice but then we discussed the possibility of Steinway Lyngdorf in the room. He wasn’t sure at first as he already had an expensive system that he really liked. However, we spoke to Steinway Lyngdorf and got the approval to loan us a pair of speakers. We took them to his house and put them up and said he could use them for two weeks. He was hooked immediately.”
Always wanting the best of the best, when the client decided to upgrade to a Steinway Lyngdorf system, he wanted the biggest system Steinway offered. “It is almost the biggest system,” Sørensen illustrates. “There is one speaker that is slightly higher spec than the one we went with, but it wouldn’t fit in the ceiling arrangements. Therefore, we chose the line source speakers to fit into the ceiling. It has to be as high as the last chair in the back row because it is playing in a straight line.”
Although the room is mainly used for movie watching, it is also used for watching TV, gaming and the client also enjoys listening to his music in there, so it had to be multifunctional.
“We used a Crestron system for the interface which is exactly the same as throughout the rest of the house, so everyone knows how to use it,” adds Sørensen. “We have also programmed presets into the system for each different component, so for example if the children want to play PlayStation, the cinema screen will go into a special mode with faster refresh rates and the surround system will kick in. The client also likes to listen to his CDs or a normal streamer from Naim, so that preset puts the system into a two-channel mode so he can just focus on listening to the music. He can also use the interface to change it to surround sound if there’s any music in Dolby Atmos, for example. Otherwise, it will go into a default stereo mode.”
Perfect treatment
The client wanted the room to be a normal room for multiple uses instead of a dedicated cinema room. This meant that acoustic treatments that would usually be put into a home cinema was not going to be possible. “He has acoustic treatment on the ceilings, but not in the walls as he didn’t want the room to be a dedicated cinema,” explains Sørensen. “And that was one of the reasons Steinway Lyngdorf was such a good choice for this room because of its built-in Room Perfect. They have a unique system that can really help make this kind of room sound great without putting treatment on the walls, otherwise it’s a real hassle.”
The ceiling had a unique treatment on it which was sprayed on. This was not done by the integrators but by a specialist in this kind of acoustic treatment. “You spray it on and then clean it out and it still looks like a normal ceiling but it’s really acoustically treated,” says Sørensen. “It’s a really specialised product that you need to know everything about. You have to wear a special suit and you need a special piece of machinery to blow it out of the ceiling. I’ve never seen anything like it, but the results are fantastic.”
“We needed to put 10 subwoofers into the system, some of which needed to be inside the furniture.”
To ensure the speakers were programmed correctly and sounding the best they possibly could in that room, Claus Glæsner, a Steinway & Lyngdorf specialist came to the property to calibrate the system. Sørensen continues: “He has a special calibration software he uses to measure the zero point for the client’s focus point in the room. We had to measure the acoustical zero point rather than the measurement zero point because there is a difference when the room is not really treated as the sound will bounce a bit, so the acoustic measurement for each driver has to be totally right. He took around a day to do all of this and it has come out really well. It sounds great!”
Seen & heard
Another requirement for the speakers was that they should be seen. As well as being a film fanatic, the client is a keen audiophile and liked to have his speakers on show. In his previous cinema, his speakers were stood either side of the screen as well as on the floor in front.
He had a special veneer made for his old speakers to match the furniture throughout the entire house, so the integrator also had to put this on the front speakers. The furniture was custom made for his old cinema room, but this posed a slight issue.
“We needed to put 10 subwoofers into the system, some of which needed to be inside the furniture,” analyses Sørensen. “The furniture he had designed himself and had made were not really built for that. So, we had to dismantle them and do it all from scratch, but we made sure the appearance from the outside was the same. We put the subwoofers beneath the seats and stacked some subwoofers into the sides of the screen so there are 10 in total in the room. It really packs a punch!”
The Wall
It's not just the Steinway Lyngdorf that the client upgraded the room with; he also chose to have a Samsung The Wall cinema screen, one of the first to be installed into a residential cinema. The screen is 4.8-metres-wide to give a highly immersive visual experience.
The integrators originally looked at installing a projector and screen so that the speakers could go behind the screen for a more immersive cinema performance. However, the client wanted a hushbox for the projector which wouldn’t fit in the ceiling. “That’s the reason we chose Samsung The Wall,” says Sørensen. “It was also the only screen on the market at the time that we could do a 21:9 aspect ratio with.”
The Wall is a great product and ideal for high-end home cinema applications. The LED panels give bright, colourful and realistic images, creating immersive experiences when watching films, TV or gaming.
The room itself has a gable ceiling making it slightly more challenging to position the screen. The client also didn’t want the screen hanging on the back wall because he wanted subwoofers behind it and to the sides. Therefore, he designed and created a bracket for the screen.
“He wanted the screen to extend one-metre from the back wall out into the main area,” explains Sørensen. “It’s a really heavy screen that is 4.8-metres-wide and the specially made bracket allows it to hang out one metre from the back wall. However, it did cause issues. The first draft of the bracket that he did was not stable enough. And when you’ve got 4.8-metres of panels getting hot, the aluminium in the brackets will shift and then you see the tiles shifting in the screen. You can see that the edges come apart very slightly when the metal heats up.
“We ditched that one and he redesigned and built a new one. He had to do it himself as it is not a typical product. It was a first for everyone. The engineers, as well as the Samsung engineers, didn’t calculate enough heat dissipation from the screen. But the second iteration works well and gives him the result he was after.”
Because of the heat from the screen, an air conditioning system had to be installed behind the screen. “It’s totally quiet so it doesn’t disturb the viewing,” says Sørensen. “It is turned on and off via the KNX system and we also turn The Wall off completely too when it’s not in use as it still produces power and heat in standby mode, so this saves energy.”
A Lumagen scaler was installed to help the screen adjust to its content. Sørensen adds: “Although it’s a normal screen, we have built it as a cinema screen. It’s a 21:9 cinema scope aspect ratio but the screen itself has some limitations on how to perform when inputting different pieces of content. So, the scaler rescales some of the pictures coming in to fit the screen properly.”
Control
Using KNX and Crestron throughout the home, the residents can easily control all systems throughout the property and the KNX ensures that it is also energy efficient.
Sørensen explains: “KNX controls everything from heating and cooling to lighting throughout the house. We combine this with either a Crestron or Control4 system, whichever suits the house and clients the best. We do this because the only thing missing from the KNX is the visualisation for the client. It’s easy with push buttons from different manufacturers but the visualisation on a phone, tablet or touch panel isn’t great with KNX but can easily be done through Crestron and Control4 systems.”
“It was also the only screen on the market at the time that we could do a 21:9 aspect ratio with.”
The integrator chose a Crestron system for this property due to its floorplan function. “Crestron can be difficult to work with if you’re a smaller installer without a programmer because it can be difficult to programme. But not many houses differ too much. They often have multiple rooms, a cinema room, some TVs and speakers, so it’s mostly a copy and paste job and then you can modify little bits.
“Also, if you want to put in a floorplan, you can do that in the Crestron system to easily visualise the house on the touch panel. You can’t do that with a Control4 system. The Control4 system gives a drop-down menu, and you have to find the room you want. But with Crestron, you can have a full touch panel where the rooms are lined out in the floorplan. That suited this house and the residents much better for this project.”
Technical room
Behind the AV in the room is everything that drives it. The integrator was given a dedicated room to house the technical equipment.
“We have a technical room for everything running the systems,” Sørensen says. “We only have local sources, like the PlayStation, a Panasonic UHD Blu-ray player and the scaler, in the room itself. Otherwise, everything is in the technical room, including the Crestron DM system and the Kaleidescape.”
Décor & design
Headstrong, this client knew how he wanted his room to look and has very particular tastes. The integrators took his lead with the design and décor of the room. The furniture he had custom built is positioned on a podium, which has been painted to match the furniture. The furniture also has special joinery so that it can be easily dismantled, as can the podium, if he wants to have a big party.
“He has staff who come in and redesign the room if he is having a big party,” Sørensen adds. “The chairs and podium and all the other furniture can be dismantled in one hour to make room for a party.”
Maintenance & additions
Room AV has a maintenance and support package with the client which means the integrator usually visits every quarter to carry out maintenance and any upgrades. However, they are currently extending the systems to make the home even more energy efficient and eco-friendly.
“Right now, we are working on a kind of energy consumption lockdown,” explains Sørensen. “After midnight, everything turns down and then it goes up again at 7am. But if he is using a room, we have to programme sensors that will tell the system the room is in use so that room isn’t switched off or turned down. There’s a lot of coding and we can only do that with the Crestron system. Then we use KNX to turn everything off.”
Tech Spec
Crestron Control System
Fortress Seating Bespoke
Kaleidescape
KNX
Lumagen / Wolf Cinema ProScaler
Panasonic 9000 UHD Blu-ray Player
PlayStation 5
Samsung The Wall
Steinway Lyngdorf 4-Channel A2 Amplifiers
Steinway Lyngdorf IC-16 Atmos Speakers
Steinway Lyngdorf IW-26v Atmos Speakers
Steinway Lyngdorf LS-212 Boundary Woofers
Steinway Lyngdorf LS BW Boundary Woofers
Steinway Lyngdorf LS Concert Speakers
Steinway Lyngdorf Model M Centre Speakers
Steinway Lyngdorf Model M as Wide Channels
Steinway Lyngdorf Model S-15 Speakers
Steinway Lyngdorf P300 2.1 Surround Sound Processor