Hi-Fi Home Cinema—Gerrards Cross

Again, the cinema room had been left partially completed.

Equipment had been supplied and some of it already installed. A metal framework system was installed in the room and stretched fabric walls were in place. The first thing Cyberhomes did was a frequency sweep test, as the specified system would be capable of producing some very high sound pressure levels.

To ensure no resonance, even at high volumes, the existing framework was enhanced with a timber-based design with solid bracing throughout to eliminate every possible room vibration.

Fortunately, the equipment that had been supplied for the cinema room was a high-specification and so Cyberhomes were happy to work with the kit that had already been procured.

A Datasat processor provided the Dolby® Atmos™ 9.4.4 decoding which fed an array of Procella horn loaded speakers. There was also sufficient Furman power conditioning already available although Cyberhomes replaced the very basic mains power strips with IP-controlled power distribution units.

The AV equipment racks were rebuilt and re-cabled to Cyberhomes exacting standards to ensure long-term reliability.

Stunning visuals

A 173” curved 2.40:1 Stewart screen incorporating motorised side masking had already been delivered to site; but no projector was there. Cyberhomes therefore specified a Barco Balder CinemaScope 4K with native 2.37:1 native aspect DLP engine and 5,600 ANSI lumens laser light source.

This is a perfect match for the Studiotek 100 Microperf fabric of the screen and with its 5,120 x 2,160 (5K UHD) native resolution ensures no loss of detail even when watching ultra-widescreen films.

Existing sources of Sky Q and Apple TV were enhanced with the supply of a Sony Ultra-HD Blu-Ray player and a Kaleidescape 4K movie player capable of storing DVD and Blu-Ray discs for playback without any compression in either the picture or sound.

Exciting aesthetics

Cineak cinema seating was chosen for the room and this consisted of a chaise lounge in the primary seating position along with a luxurious Largo seat either side. The rear row of seating comprised of five Fortuny seats. DMX-controlled coloured LED lighting was incorporated into the ceiling coffer allowing the whole ambience of the room to be easily altered to suit what is being watched. Taking inspiration from the project that won Cyberhomes the 2018 Best Home Cinema award, vertical LED lighting was also incorporated into the sawtooth design of the textured fabric walls.

A custom-designed projector housing was built by the Cyberhomes in-house fabrication team, which incorporates a Future Automation PST Projector Slide to allow for easy servicing of the Barco projector.

The Control4 home automation and control system that already controlled the rest of the house was programmed to make use of the cinema room as simple as possible with lighting automatically dimming and raising as play starts and stops.

Sound to be reckoned with.

With the new framework now rock solid, the in-wall and in-ceiling speakers could be installed with the confidence that the room (and its audience) could withstand the volume levels the equipment was capable of generating without distortion.

The LCR speakers were Procella Audio P815 which were installed behind the screen. Surround, rear and Atmos height channel speakers were all Procella Audio P8. The Procella speaker array is driven by a combination of Datasat and Procella Audio amplifiers; with the low-end being supplemented by four subwoofers, two Procella Audio P18 FP at the front of the room and two Procella Audio P15 FP at the rear.

Vicoustic acoustic panels were installed to ensure the designed RT60 reverb performance could be achieved and then everything located out-of-sight behind new acoustically-transparent fabric walls. The finishing touch was a starfield ceiling that also disguised the speakers installed there.