UK distributor AWE is celebrating the success of its AWE Expo event after welcoming 150 industry professionals to its Epsom showroom on May 16 and 17, 2023.
Attendees explored the distributor’s revamped reference and performance cinemas, previewed its new music room, and got an overview of the latest developments from AWE’s brand portfolio.
AWE’s show apartment in Epsom includes a living room, games area and music room, as well as two dedicated home cinemas.
Its reference cinema’s equipment, which retails from around £95k upwards, includes a 15.4.6 channel audio system with five Bowers & Wilkins CWM8.3D Diamond Series in-wall speakers for the front soundstage, all angled towards the reference seating positions.
An additional ten CI800 Diamond Series speakers complete the surround and height channels. Four B&W CDA-2HD DSP amps power four CT SW15 15-in subs with up to 1000 watts. Processing is provided by a Marantz AV 10 15-channel AV processor featuring Dirac live calibration. AWE has all three of Sony’s latest native 4K laser projectors installed, including the 10,000-lumen GTZ-380. A notable upgrade to the room is the ADEO MovieMask LR, a 4m-wide side masking screen capable of aspect ratios from 2.4:1 down to 16:9.
The performance cinema is specified for the equipment to hit a price point of around £45k, with simple configuration options to hit either higher or lower price points. The full 7.4.4 configuration on demo shows what’s possible for a smaller room at a realistic budget. The cinema has four new B&W ISW-8 12-in in-wall subwoofers, powered by B&W CDA-2HD DSP amplifiers. The new Marantz Cinema 50 provides upgraded processing with Dirac Live calibration and powers the height speakers, with additional amplification coming from the new Marantz AMP 10. The room has also been upgraded with a 3.34m wide Adeo FramePro acoustically transparent screen. This provides a bigger, brighter, and more detailed wall-to-wall image from the Epson EH-LS12000B true 4K laser projector without compromising sound quality.
AWE’s new music room includes a range of Bowers & Wilkins loudspeakers including the 803 D4 and 804 D4 800 Diamond Series speakers and the 705 S3 stand-mount speakers. Amplification came from Michi and Marantz. Installers were also able to experience the different performance levels available with a choice of Denon Home multi-room speakers in this room, all of which could be operated stand-alone, or fully integrated via HEOS.
The new Hisense 120L9 Laser TV, with a 120-in ambient light-rejecting screen, is installed in the living room. The Kinetik UST Projector AV Cabinets (KLIF-UST1CS), an AWE exclusive, can also be found in this space. The cabinet comes in a variety of finishes and accommodates the projector, a soundbar or centre speaker, and has optional matching ventilated equipment cabinets too.
Elsewhere in the main AWE apartment, the world's largest OLED TV, LG’s OLED97G29, was shown along with the 2023 G Series and C Series TVs.
The show apartment and cinemas are all automated with URC and AWE Expo visitors saw the first UK showing of the new URC TDC-5100 handheld tabletop controller, a gaming-inspired UI with hard and digital buttons.
Visitors were also able to see the latest reference amplifiers from Michi, Rotel’s powerful amps and multi-channel DT-6000 DAC, as well as HDAnywhere’s new MHubs stackable matrix. There were also live demonstrations from smart home security solution Ring and automated window shading with Silent Gliss – and an opportunity to experience the Base Performance Simulators Blade Racing Simulator.
Stuart Tickle [pictured top], managing director of AWE, said anyone who missed the Expo could book a private visit and added: “We are hugely grateful to all those who attended Expo this year for an exciting two days of previews and demos. We have worked really hard to ensure our show apartment and cinemas are the absolutely best place for installers and their clients to discover the best custom install solutions from AWE’s exceptional portfolio and the amazing feedback was truly rewarding to the whole team at AWE.”