Grimani Systems CEDIA 2018 Show Report

An audiophile family dedicated the living room of their single-family home in San Jose, California to the pursuit of high-quality sound and picture. They had already purchased top-of-the-line electronics and loudspeakers, and after attending a presentation by Anthony Grimani at Century Stereo last fall, decided it was time to upgrade the acoustics of their listening room. Anthony measured the space, ran acoustical tests on the room, and determined the needed corrections and upgrades. MSR supplied an acoustical tuning system mainly composed of Dimension4 Symphony modules and coordinated the installation.    This is one of the first installation of MSR's new Eclypse Drape - it has the look of a rich velour fabric, but is actually acoustically-transparent fabric on top of blackout vinyl with thick strips of flannel absorptive material. This drape provides the correct balance of absorption and diffusion, while avoiding the common effect of ...

PMI and integrator Audio Images won five of the top awards for Home Theater Technical Design excellence at this year’s CEDIA Electronic Lifestyles® Awards, more than any other company in this year’s Home Theater category! Winning the Best Overall Home Theater and a Gold Technical Design award (in the $1M & up category) was an opulent theater that is part of a drop-dead gorgeous entertainment wing of an extravagant estate in Irvine, California. In addition to a state-of-the-art home theater, the entertainment wing includes a pizzeria, nightclub, and vintage arcade. A monumental project like this needed an equally monumental team which included TK Theaters (designer) and SH Acoustics (engineering design). This project was also featured on HGTV’s “Million Dollar Rooms” where Theo Kalomirakis gave a personal tour of this amazing space. Click to read the full story on this project.  Click here to see the HGTV video. Winning a Gold Technical Design award (in the $251-...

With this Newport Beach, California project, the client wanted a dedicated home theater that could open up into the rest of the house for a variety of entertaining options. They wanted a rustic look to match the rest of the entertainment area of their waterfront property, evoking a comfortable feeling with a soft, light décor. In the lifestyle uses of the room, sometimes it would be open for entertaining and sometimes it would be closed down for private screenings. A large opening with sliding door was a huge challenge for the sound isolation and the acoustical reflections in this room. A door system was designed with acoustic absorbers built into the panels and seals all around the frames. The room had limited height so the sight lines had to be very carefully studied. A layer of resiliently suspended sheet rock was added to the concrete structure in order to reduce standing wave resonances. Structural posts in the right concrete wall were enclosed in resilient wall structures and c...

This is a jewel box dedicated theater in an ultra-modern home. Sleek décor and lighting with comfortable seating. The objective was to give a really small room the feeling of a big-sound, big-picture screening room, with high-quality styling and equipment. The clients wanted a sleek and elegant look to match the luxurious aesthetic of rest of their modern home, with high-end architectural values. They wanted a room with a warm vibe, with styling that departed from the traditional theater with columns and proscenium. before after The left wall door was at a critical acoustical location and we placed an absorber panel on it. The entire back wall was originally hard wood cabinetry, so we cut out some of the doors and installed fabric panels, both to conceal wideband absorbers and to take advantage of diffusion from inside the cabinets which contained shelving, CDs, gear, etc. We specified a 153” PMI 2.0 acoustically-transparent screen with 2:1 aspect ratio, along with a 4k proje...

The main objectives for this project were to create a 10-seat home cinema with outstanding picture and sound, privacy from the main living spaces of the residence, and a design style that flowed naturally into the rest of the home. The client wanted the basement cinema in their new custom beachfront home in Dana Point, California to follow the traditional architectural look of the house. It had to retain the classical decor while being comfortable and delivering high performance quality. Located underneath the Great room, the initial plans for the cinema made no effort to provide sound isolation or noise control. So we redesigned and reconstructed the wall structures, ceiling structures, and floor layouts to provide STC65 sound isolation, proper sightlines, and proper sound reflection decay times, all while respecting the original architectural style.   A ventilation supply duct for the Great room transitioned through the top right corner of the cinema, so we had to ful...

This refined high-quality Orange County, California, dedicated home cinema features full-on sound isolation, carefully engineered AV, acoustics, ventilation and noise control, along with an interior style that matches a modern-whimsical interior décor in the rest of the artistically conceived house.   The homeowner is a fan of high-quality products, but couldn’t tolerate any level of product failure or control system uncertainties, so t he project had to yield a dedicated home cinema room with high quality sound and picture, proper sound privacy, carefully crafted esthetics standards, and ease of use. The original framing scheme in this basement room tied the wood structures to the joists of the ceiling system. We had to rebuild the framing to isolate it from the joists, in order to reach the requisite sound isolation. The traffic flow and ergonomics required a rework of the doorway, and the size and location of the equipment closet on back right of room. The original ventila...

PMI offers a whole range of services, from acoustical layouts of the simplest entertainment space, to interior and lighting design, full space 3D renderings, and concierge service. This is an example of a project where we helped a small integrator by providing a full suite of services including complete project management. In a small town in Virginia, this was the first large-scale project for a local integrator who called upon the experts at PMI to not just engineer the space, but to roll out white-glove concierge service for his discerning client. What the integrator also realized was that bringing in a higher level of expertise and big-picture thinking enabled him to build increased revenue into the budget by getting the client excited about the additional value and functionality he could achieve with the space.  The homeowner is CEO of a large coal mining company and he had very clear ideas about what he wanted for his dedicated – and not at all prototypical...

PMI is a team of highly organized and seasoned professionals who sweat the details. In fact, we’ve been known to spend dozens of hours on wiring diagrams alone! Our services run the gamut from room design and layout through to audio + video commissioning and calibration.  We offer excellent project management to orchestrate any level of process, from the simplest project to the most complex. Having designed and engineered more than 500 purpose-built and multi-purpose entertainment spaces, we've pretty much seen it all, and yet we continually encounter new challenges along the way. Our expertise lies in the detail with which we approach each project, and the many tools and resources we’ve developed to fulfill our mission of “doing it the right way.”   PROJECT BRIEF   This project is a sleek, modern home with an industrial flair in the trendy South of Market neighborhood of San Francisco. The interior of the home feels cool and spacious, not what you’d expect from c...