Grimani Systems CEDIA 2018 Show Report

By Anthony Grimani So you claim that you’re putting together a high performance home theater. But do you fully understand what that comprises? Do you know all the little ins and outs of why some products work better than others in selected applications? I know that it’s hard to take time to read through technology reports, research papers, and product reviews to learn how to design the best possible theaters. So I’m going to help: I’ll give you some facts along with my honest unbiased opinion of what a home theater is supposed to be. And of course everyone reading this will agree with me… NOT! I know there will be tons of hate mail criticizing this or that position, but we gotta start somewhere; shoot now – we’ll talk later. Let’s first cover what the theater is supposed to do. It is supposed to reproduce sound and pictures as closely as possible to those intended by the creators of the program material. If the creator was good at it, you can get a realistic representation of natural...

by Anthony Grimani Home theater acoustical treatments need to be at least two inches thick, and preferably four inches thick for decent audio quality. Why? Because one-inch materials only treat sounds down to 1 kHz. Everything down below that is freely bouncing around the walls of the room.  For proper audio imaging and articulation, you need to control sound reflections down to at least 500 Hz, and preferably down to 250 Hz. Remember that the Middle A on a piano keyboard is 440 Hz, and you want to go down to that, at least. Just as bad, however, is creating an acoustically "dead" room. It is convenient to go in with one of the franchised stretched fabric wall systems to cover up all of the walls in a theater. They are simple, quick, clean, cost-predictable, but very wrong.  Read more - full article published in Residential Systems Magazine .

A Job Specification Document Can Help You Avoid Headaches I find that, more often than not, the best way to avoid project problems is by spending time up front creating a job specification document. This should be a multi-page paper that describes what the client is going to get, what the performance specifications are, who is responsible for what portions of the work, who will sign off on proper delivery of each portion, what each portion is going to cost, and what the deliverable deadlines are going to be. Keeping You Out of Trouble The mere process of having to take a time out to sit down and reflect on the all these issues will help you clarify the planning in your own mind. Once the document is written, it will help your staff in comprehending the intent of the work. It will help your client, the builder, the architect, and the interior designer, understand the degree of detail that goes into doing a properly integrated theater, whole-house audio/video/lighting system, etc. The p...

Having designed over 400 pro, commercial, and residential projects, and tuned over 300 systems, we have a certain way of doing things that we consider "the right way." You'll hear us talk about the right way a lot because we just don't believe any client is going to get the best possible result from cutting corners. So here's a little primer from PMI. Calibration is the last step in the design/build phase of a project. Once all of the gear is in place, the panels positioned, the decor defined, then it's time to calibrate. We believe the job of a calibrator is to check and validate that everything was built and installed properly before beginning to tune the room.    Step 1:  Check that every piece of gear is installed and connected correctly    Step 2:  Verify that every piece of gear is actually working    Step 3:  Set up configurations and verify proper operation    Step 4:  Tune the speaker system to the room...

There is definitely a return to high-quality music in the works. If you don’t provide it to your clients, then they’ll get it somewhere else. You can sell high-quality, high-margin equipment if you just demonstrate it for them. Let them rekindle the emotion. Case in point: I was recently with a client in Las Vegas for whom we designed a high-end room. After the calibration, I played him a 5.1 music demo from the handy multi-channel sampler disc I’ve had for ages. He loved it, and he actually begged me to let him keep the disc. Music’s not for everyone, but some people will love it, so don’t miss the boat.  > READ MORE Excerpted from article published February 2, 2011 by Residential Systems magazine. Chase Walton contributed to this article.

Everyone loves bass (especially men, which is an interesting study that I will leave to someone with a PhD in somatic psychology). This is evidenced by the million ways that people have dreamed up to produce ultimate bass. There is everything from full-range speakers all around, to small speakers with one subwoofer stashed in a corner, to the unbelievable room-under-the-listening-room filled with a labyrinth of passages and transducers. If you are an enthusiast, you may have the time and resources to try (and discard) random solutions to your heart's content. But custom integrators need something a little more concrete--a more scientific approach that yields predictable and repeatable results.  > READ MORE Excerpted from article published January 30, 2009 by Residential Systems magazine. Chase Walton contributed to this article.

Selling a Theater as a Complete Room Can Help Ease Sticker Shock “How much will this home theater cost, and what is included in this price?” These questions sound familiar, right? I deal with them every day, even though, in my work, we don’t handle the construction, equipment sales, integration, or programming. Fortunately, an approach that I have been using seems to work very well for answering the “price” question without triggering sticker shock. > READ MORE Excerpted from article published June 27, 2010 by Residential Systems magazine.