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 ...

This client was referred to us by the integrator, who completed this installation about 10 years ago. The room was a dedicated three-row home theater in an upscale neighborhood of Detroit. All the gear was state-of-the-art for its time - from the studio-grade speakers, to the professional HD video projection system. But the surround decoder finally gave up the ghost after several years of faithful service. The client heard that Dolby Atmos® was the latest thing, so he sourced a new processor. He expected it to be an automatic upgrade, but wasn’t aware that he also needed to add speakers for the Top and Wide locations. At any rate, it was time to install, configure, and tune the system for the new processor. I took the job and carved out two days - right before Christmas - for a quick jaunt from my temperate San Francisco Bay Area home to frigid Detroit. (Who doesn't like a little cold for the holidays?) While planning the trip, I found out that the system didn’t include any ...

Anthony Grimani was invited to speak to the San Diego Music and Audio Guild on the importance of acoustics for listening rooms and home theaters; more than 50 audio hobbyists attended.  In a thank-you note, Guild organizers B. Jan Montana and Jim Lindstrom said, “Your presentation was entertaining, logical, progressive and comprehensible by neophytes. It removed all doubts about the importance of acoustics. We’ve been advocating room treatment and EQ for years, but they keep wasting money on wires and turntable stands, rather than dealing with the real problems. You've brought God's honest truth home to them. You're doing more for accurate sound reproduction than any audio magazine.” 

Working on another great project with Karl Mautner and Integr8 in China , Anthony Grimani flew to Shanghai to do the final calibration on a world-class home theater. The home is marvelously appointed with the finest materials. Located next to an indoor lap pool, the theater is a fusion of classical and Chinese design form, and is dressed with Cine-Living fabrics. The Triad Cinema Plus speaker package is driven by a set of Theta Dreadnought amps, all controlled by AMX. The system includes a 16 channel Ashly digital audio processor to fine-tune the nine speakers and 12 subwoofers. An awesome dual-stacked Runco  D-113d projector lights up the 180” wide 2.39 screen. Wow! World class! While in China, Tony also met with several AV technology, design and architecture press, including Insider and LP - click the links below to see these articles.   http://www.evolife.cn/html/2014/75365.html   http://dh.yesky.com/hometheater/336/35896836.shtml#top

At the 2014 International CES we participated in the Elite Home Entertainment Experience, lauded as an "over-the-top, killer home theater demo experience" by reporter John Sciacca from Residential System s magazine!   MSR supplied a Dimension4 Symphony 550 acoustical tuning system to control the room's internal acoustics. PMI engineered the room acoustics, optics, room and audio system layout, and screen specifications. In a matter of a day and half, our group created a world-class private screening room inside a basic ballroom of the Venetian congress area.   In partnership with the fine people from Triad Speakers, ADA, BitWise, Digital Projections, Screen Excellence, D-BOX, Fortress, Kaleidescape, PPC, and Torus Power, we set up the speakers, lighting, video, programming, source material, etc. Great picture, great sound, motion seats, easily controlled; a dream come true for any discerning AV client. We ran demos every 15 minutes and peo...

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...