AWE Europe, a distributor of custom install and smart home technology, has opened its doors to dealers today on the first day of AWE Expo.
Built to create experiences for its dealers and their customers, AWE displays its brands and their products in different areas of a show apartment to demonstrate products to suit different scenarios and budgets.
Visiting on press day yesterday, I went to Epsom in the UK to get a preview of what will be on show this week.
Starting in the study as you walk into the show apartment, this has been updated to include a pair of Bowers & Wilkins floor-standing speakers to reflect the recent distribution partnership between the two companies. The speakers are connected to a Michi by Rotel Amplifier and a Marantz CD player, all controlled by URC. Complementing the sound, the study also features a 42” LG OLED C Series TV.
Opposite the study is a large TV gallery displaying the latest 77” OLEDs from LG and Sony along with a 100” Sony Pro BRAVIA display.
The living room area has been set up as a mid-budget, easy to install 5.1 media room which includes Sony’s 65” A95K QD-OLED TV, a new panel that combines OLED with quantum dot technology to give ultimate brightness and image performance. Again, the visuals are complemented with immersive audio from Bowers & Wilkins floor-standing 7-series surround and an active subwoofer. Providing power to this room, AWE uses a Marantz SR5015 7.2ch 8K AV receiver.
To reflect the recent growth in the home gaming market, AWE has added a games room. This area features a BPS Blade Sim, a custom built professional-grade race simulator. The Precision Sim GPX Steering Wheel and professional steering motor delivers a very realistic simulation.
To show more variety of products, AWE has updated its product gallery and added a Bowers & Wilkins hallway. The dedicated hallway shows Bowers & Wilkins portfolio of products ranging from in-wall to floor-standing speakers from mid-range to high-end.
After walking through the Bowers & Wilkins dedicated hallway, guests reach the product gallery where they will find the latest 4K OLED TVs from Sony and Panasonic and a QNED mini-LED TV from LG. Also on display is the best of the Ring X Line, Kinetik speakers, cable, firehoods, and brackets and rack cabinet solutions from Sanus. It also features URC’s individual stations for in-ceiling speakers, remote and an interactive display for table and on-wall keypads.
For a cosy media experience, the newly updated Den features a URC desktop controller which reveals the 104” Euroscreen in-ceiling projection screen with just one touch. An Epson EH-TW7100 4K PRO-UHD projector displays a bright and clear image on the screen with the option to switch to the ultra-short-throw 4K PRO-UHD laser projector. A selection of other Epson projectors is also on display with a pair of Bowers & Wilkins floor-standing speakers to complete the room.
One of the main features of the new apartment is the newly refurbished Performance Cinema. This room is designed to give customers a cinema experience that doesn’t break the bank in high-end projects. Using a room of a similar size to a garage or basement, the brand-new system is a combination of Bowers & Wilkins 700 Series architectural loudspeakers and in-wall cabinet subwoofers, driven by a single 11-channel Denon AV amplifier and dedicated sub amps, all located in the room.
Epson’s recently launched EH-LS12000B projector is used in the Performance Cinema, which features a high 2,500,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio, 4K resolution (8.3m pixels on-screen), HDR10+ support, 3LCD and a laser light source. Ideal for both movies and gaming, the projector offers 4K resolution at 120fps, along with input lag times below 20ms.
For seamless control in this room, URC is used. This also controls the decorative lighting used from Philips Hue. AWE also teamed up with Cinema Build Systems for the aesthetics of the room.
The Performance Cinema audio has an SRP of £19.5K while the video is £4.4K.
To the main attraction now; the Reference Cinema is designed to give customers the ultimate home cinema experience, featuring only the best technology from its various brands. Using Bowers & Wilkins CI 800 Series Diamond speakers and Custom Theatre subwoofers in a 7.4.6 configuration, the room demonstrates immersive audio at its best. A Marantz processor feeds into a stack of five Rotel power amplifiers housed in one of three Sanus 44U racks located in the adjacent comms room. Four cabinet subwoofers (CTSW15) with 15” bass drivers powered by additional dedicated amplification provides a powerful bass that completes the high-performing and versatile loudspeaker set up.
Complementing the sound, AWE has installed a Euroscreen 4m-wide projector screen with the picture provided by a choice of two Sony projectors. The first is the Sony VPL-VW790 4K laser projector which provides a clear and crisp image. For a step-up in image performance, the cinema also includes the Sony VPL-GTZ380 flagship home cinema laser projector, capable of native 4K, 10,000 lumen white and colour output, 100% DCI-P3 wide-colour gamut. URC control is again used in this room to give full control over the cinema.
The audio installation in this room has an SRP of £65K while video is £88K.
The final room to see after demoing the Reference Cinema is the comms room at the back of the Reference Cinema. Holding all of the equipment for the entire show apartment, this room hosts three Sanus racks. Housed in the racks includes URC’s MRX-30 network controller, HDA4100 and HDA8100 multiroom audio high-definition amplifiers, HDANYWHERE 8x8 4K video matrix and associated source equipment.
This room also holds the audio systems for the Reference Cinema which includes three Rotel RB-1590 power amps that can deliver up to 700W per channel to the front LCR speakers and two Rotel RMB-1585 delivering 200W per channel driving the height speakers. The Marantz AV8805A performs 13-channel processing and sources are two 4K HDR Blu-ray players from Sony, a Sky Q box and Xbox.
You can watch a video walkthrough of the new Reference Cinema here.
You can also book to visit the AWE show apartment.