PMC has built a new 22sqm Dolby Atmos home cinema demo facility at its headquarters in the UK, designed to showcase its dedicated installation loudspeakers to integrators and their customers.
Conceived by Ian Sutton, PMC Distribution’s director, the vision was to create a space in which PMC could invite its clients from around the world to experience the best it can offer in the home cinema market.
Well known for its involvement in the movie industry, designing many speakers used by major studios to create film soundtracks, the new facility is the perfect place to demonstrate the immersive cinema experience that can be achieved with PMC speakers.
To achieve this, the company enlisted the services of Guy Singleton, owner of renowned and multi award-winning installation business, Imagine This. His role was to take over a space within the Georgian mansion, which has been PMC’s headquarters since 2014, and overcome the obstacles a building of this age presents to produce an acoustically and aesthetically perfect cinema space.
“We were working with a number of challenges during this design and build project,” said Singleton. “We had to overcome the issues presented by such things as traditional sash windows which vibrated with low frequencies and a large void under the floorboards that acted as a bass resonator. These were coupled with the global supply chain issues thrown up by the pandemic, which meant obtaining some materials proved to be very tricky.”
Ian Sutton added: “But he managed it with astonishing results. We have a cinema space which is worthy of the superb new PMC ci series speakers, that we can now show off in the kind of environment they were designed for.”
The new cinema facility consists of three of the flagship ci140 speakers as well as two ci140 subwoofers for the front LCR channels, mounted behind the acoustically transparent screen in a very sturdy and inert baffle wall which is built to THX standards.
The 9.1.6 cinema features surround channels which are shared between six of the ci65 models for the walls with six ci30s mounted in the ceiling for the height channels. While this is designated as a .1 LFE installation, there are actually three subwoofers in operation in addition to the two ci140 subwoofers. Two of the company’s active PMC SUB 2s are mounted in the front wall beneath the screen, with a passive XB3 mounted underneath the rear seating stage area.
PMC’s long-term electronics partner, Bryston, provides the processing and power amplification, with the company’s SP4 16-channel immersive theatre processor at the heart of the system. Amplification is provided by an array of Bryston amps, including the multichannel 9B cubed.
Many companies were involved in supplying product, including Barco which provided a Balder 4K Laser Projector, Acoustic GRG Products which supplied the acoustic treatments and fabric walls, Kordz equipped all of the cabling, Crestron provided the control system and Acoustic Innovations supplied the luxurious seating.
Now the PMC Cinema is complete, it will open its doors to its first trade visitors from the UK’s custom installation and retail sectors, as well as PMC’s overseas distributors very soon.