Grimani Systems CEDIA 2018 Show Report

Calibrate it All! Is it worth doing a specialty audio calibration in areas of a residence outside the dedicated theater? Absolutely!  Getting the spectral balance, bass management, and time synchronization of audio systems tuned for each and every environment is a pretty simple and cost effective way to upgrade the sonic experience. You can get good dialog clarity, smooth bass, and a reasonably good spatial rendition with an hour or two spent in every space. You do need to have some digital EQ functionality in the system, and that is getting pretty easy these days. I am not talking about auto-EQ, which I contend still doesn’t work right (unfortunately). I mean some number of bands of EQ for each channel that you can adjust while monitoring an analyzer application running on a laptop. That function is available in a number of multichannel amps (Sonance, Ashly, Powersoft, to name a few), in a number of receivers and decoders, and of course, as stand-along EQ devices placed b...

In Deep Thank you for reading the high level article, now we will go into a detailed explanation of this project. This blog expands on the details from the " Home Theater Has Come Out of the Cave " article. The integration firm responsible for building this masterpiece is  Audio Images  of Tustin California. Our designs and engineering is only as good as the implementation and AudioImages came through on every detail. The Room Shell The physical issues that needed to be dealt with to accomplish these goals dictated a few design solutions: Sound Isolation The room had to be decoupled from the Great Room that is located directly above it. This prevents the sound leakage from disturbing the adults. Decoupling loosely means to build resilient wall and floor-ceiling structures with little to no connections to the house’s framing structures. The purpose is to limit every contact point that could mechanically transfer sound energy and interfere with daily use ...

Welcome to the Fun Room Light, bright, and inviting. Walls & Ceiling look like drywall Comfortable seating for friends and family. Glass wall visually connects the Fun Room and Courtyard  High Points Think beyond the theater box Great entertainment can be in nearly any space New technology provides more flexibility New design solutions open the door for Interior Designers Overview Good news! With the latest technologies, we can move past the dark and secluded home theaters of the late 20th century! No more man caves isolated from the rest of the house. No more rows of theater seats formally lined up, as if ready for battle with action heroes. Imagine even having a glass wall or window so we can stay connected to the rest of the world? Instead of just a "Home Theater", we want a "Fun Room". But, and this is a big but, can we still have all of this and a great cinematic experience? The answer is Yes , and...

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-...

Hot off the press! This extraordinary home theater just won CEDIA's 2013 Electronic Lifestyles Award for Best Overall Home Theater ($1m & up) and a Gold Technical Award for design and engineering excellence. Congratulations to our partners Audio Images, TK Theaters, and SH Acoustics! This home cinema project is part of a drop-dead gorgeous entertainment wing of an extravagant estate in Irvine, California, which also includes a pizzeria, nightclub, and vintage arcade. The objectives with “Cinema Paradiso” were to create best-in-the-world audio and video performance along with motion-activated speakers, complete sound isolation, and simplicity of use. PMI worked with integrator Mark Ontiveros and his company Audio Images , designer Theo Kalomirakis of TK Theaters . And we engineered the project in collaboration with Steve Haas at SH Acoustics . The architecture of the wing was modeled after one of the homeowner’s favorite places: the center piazza in Sienna, Italy...

Check out Anthony Grimani's column in the May issue of Residential Systems... "I am standing in my backyard in disbelief, looking at the partially complete fence that I asked a contractor to build to keep the ravenous Northern California deer from eating my priceless heirloom tomatoes. These deer are gymnasts. They can jump over a 6-foot fence from a standing position all day long, especially if a salad buffet is open on the other side. My disbelief comes from the fact that the fence ended up being different from what we agreed upon. The contractor had showed me a picture on his iPhone that was exactly what I wanted: a nice, simple fence. What he built was totally different…time to disassemble and start over. What went wrong here? It wasn’t communication. We were clear about what was to be built, and he even proposed the design! The problem was documentation. In my haste to get back to the office to continue designing the world’s top home cinemas, I failed to draw the agr...

Read Anthony Grimani's column in the May issue of Residential Systems... "We need to stop reinventing the wheel where bass is concerned. I’ve met two industry veterans recently who’ve espoused very antiquated ideas as if they were new revelations of “purist” audio. We abandoned these ideas more than 10 years ago because they don’t produce smooth, tight bass for the whole audience. There’s a better way to do it. We don’t use full-range speakers to play bass anymore. We don’t have separate subwoofers for each main channel or the LFE. That’s because in the worst-case scenario, that approach can lead to absolutely no bass in the main seating area of a home cinema because of inherent standing wave resonance issues. Let’s review." > CLICK TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE For more info on our products and services, please visit our website .

A few years ago, PMI partnered with Triad to launch three new home theater audio packages for customers desiring complete turnkey design + product solutions. Each package includes a fully engineered design, a set of loudspeakers appropriate for the room, and an acoustical treatment package that takes control of the speaker-room-listener interface.   This project in the Buckhead district of Atlanta, Georgia, started off as a PMI/ Triad Cinema Plus project, working with Design Media Group . The brief was to add a room into the upper area of a high-ceilinged condo penthouse - literally hanging from the roof structure! PMI designed the layout of the room architecture and specified the audio/video system. We supported the construction process and calibrated the system in its final stages. "Sonically, this room is quite spectacular, and the client is very happy," says Peter Chakales with Design Media Group. "We recently played a virgin vinyl copy of Steely Dan's ...

In October, PMI was recognized as the specialty consultant for technical excellence on six winning design rooms in CEDIA's 2011 Electronic Lifestyles® Awards. For each of these projects, PMI created engineering plans and specifications to ensure optimized sound and picture performance for best return on the client's investment. Read on for descriptions and photos.   LEVEL V GOLD AWARD PMI partnered with Sublime Integration to remodel this space from a playroom into a world-class theater. The walls were rebuilt to improve sound isolation, especially from a very noisy boiler room next door. The ventilation was re-engineered to make the HVAC systems more quiet and efficient. The bathroom was converted into an equipment room at the back of the theater. This is a great sounding room with state-of-the-art electronics and loudspeakers. LEVEL VI GOLD AWARD In Mexico, this new dedicated theater was made entirely of solid concrete. Working with IteliKsa , PMI turned what wo...