Sound Sense from Ahmadabad, India is no new company when it comes to amazing CEDIA award-winning projects and this last one is probably one of the most ambitious they have done so far taking away “Best Cinema Level III” at the 2019 CEDIA Global Awards, we wanted to discuss with them the goals and challenges inherent to such ambitious projects.
- What was the original intent of the project?
The client, one of the country’s premier business persons, was very keen to spend his limited time away from work at home doing something he loved with his family and close circle of friends.
- Which were the challenges and objectives inherent to this home cinema?
The client, an avid movie lover, elucidated the following objectives for this home cinema:
- A larger-than-life screen to bring the viewing experience to life.
- A large seating capacity to accommodate at least 15 persons.
- The ability to offer a private first-day-first-show screening for select movies from across the world.
- A variety of ambient lighting scenarios to set the tone of the room based on the client’s mood.
- The isolation of any noise from the home cinema room located directly above the entertainment area.
As the project had no timeline or budgetary constraints, the only constraints were that of a pre-designed architectural floor plan and the limits of our brainstorming abilities.
We designed a one-of-a-kind, audio-video calibrated, discrete immersive Dolby Atmos 11.4.6 set-up with line speakers offering superlative audio-video results on a monster-sized 234” diagonal fixed frame 2.35:1 screen with a 16-seater set up The Christie DCI Server with its Integrated Media Block (IMB) caters to the client’s request to view movies first-day first show. An intuitive user interface was custom-tailored to offer control of the entire set-up from a single point and at the touch of a single button for a variety of scenarios.
- Did you face any particular (technical) challenges?
Although this was a newly built home, the floor plan had been pre-designed by the architectural team prior to having our team brought on-board for the home cinema design. To facilitate the client’s first-day-first-show movie screening request, a DCI projector was incorporated into the cinema design. Being both bulky and noisy, a separate adjacent room has to be incorporated into the floor plan of the home cinema design.
- How did the Altitude32 become the processor of choice for this luxury home cinema?
There were a variety of variables to be considered before the shortlisting of the processor for a home cinema project of this scale.
In past projects, we have implemented processors from different companies; however, we have always enjoyed the audio experience of the Altitude16. Additionally, we have installed the Altitude32 in our most premier showroom and have found that the experience is always fresh and new every time. The Altitude32 is a very powerful multi-channel processor that offers the highest sound quality, coupled with tremendous flexibility in terms of speaker layout and calibration.
The home cinema design for this project involved 21 speakers by Wisdom Audio – including 11 speakers in the base-layer, 6 in the ceiling for Atmos, and 4 STS subwoofers. As the Wisdom Audio Line 3 speakers needed active crossovers, we required a minimum of 32 discrete channels, making the Altitude32 the obvious choice. Additionally, the following features of the Altitude32 could not be overlooked:
- The unique 3D optimization process which calibrates sound via a 3D microphone.
- It’s individual channel DSP, which offers FIR filters, graphic equalization, amplitude, and delay that can be adjusted to result in the finest outputs for an immersive audio experience.
- How has been the response from the client to the sonic of the final project?
Clients at this level have been to almost all possible cinema and home cinema set-ups. For them to be able to not only appreciate a set-up that is aesthetically subtle and yet cinematically vibrant and engulfing in all respects is everything we had hoped for. The client stated that this was an immersive audio and video experience that truly brings any movie alive.
