Grimani Systems CEDIA 2018 Show Report

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 ...

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...

Therapy Studios is a busy post-production house in West Los Angeles. With a big feature film project in the works, they realized it was important to improve their main sound room. Initially, they thought they just needed some acoustical tuning materials. After contacting PMI and meeting with Anthony Grimani, they learned the room needed complete renovation - and talk about "asap" they needed it done in less than a week!  The main problem was sound isolation – the room had essentially no isolation on the right wall and the ceiling so sounds from adjacent spaces were seeping into the studio. Moving at warp speed, PMI engineered the space, contracted the building and installation, specified and secured the gear, and actually got the whole project completed in four days from start to finish. Here’s some of what we achieved in record time:   Completely reconstructed the right side wall with a resilient framing system.  Reconstructed the ceiling with a sound-isolat...

One of our more complex projects has recently been recognized with several prestigious industry awards: the 2011 CEDIA Lifestyle Award for Home Theaters Bronze Level VII, Best Documentation, People’s Home Theater, and more recently the 2012 Electronic House Bronze Award in the Best Home Theater category ($15k+). While on the surface this project has all the beauty and glamour to win these awards, what you don’t see is all the engineering, creativity, problem-solving, and hard work that went into making it a brilliant success. Nestled just outside the western foothills of the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles County is the quietly posh community of Hidden Hills. Its beautiful and peaceful ambiance make it an example of small town Southern California living at its finest. The project was brought to us by one of SoCal’s premier integrators, DSI Entertainment, and was a remodel from what was originally an ill-conceived home theater with a bar and a large sliding glass window. We ...