We went to Sweden to visit our partner Cinema Solutions, an experienced integrator.
Jacob Sernefell, founder of Cinema Solutions, has 20 years of experience in the AV industry. His passion for home cinema design pushed him to start the company four years ago, and now provides top-notch AV experience to his clients.
We interviewed him in this 11.8.10 home theater, featuring a Procella speaker system and a Trinnov Altitude32 processor. For Jacob, investing in a Trinnov is a wise long-term investment, preventing customers from switching from processor to processor every couple of years.
Please introduce yourself
I've been working in this industry for 20 plus years, doing many cinemas but also smart homes, lighting, curtains etc…but my passion really lies in home cinemas. Four years back, I started my own company called Cinema Solutions to try to make the best home theaters for my customers. The aim is for them to have a luxury place to enjoy with the whole family, relax and just have a good time.
What was the client’s intent?
This particular client was having some demonstrations where he felt like he wanted to be in the middle of the action. He wanted an immersive experience. To accomplish that, we need, of course, ear level sound, low-frequency sound from subwoofers and some overheads, to get a nice sound bubble.
To make that work with all the spatialization going on and the sound moving in the room (for example, a thunder coming in and leaving in the back and stuff like that), requires a really high-quality processor. So that's why we went with the Procella speakers here. We have 11 ear channel speakers, eight subwoofers and 10 overhead speakers for Atmos, DTS:X and also some Auro integration.
With this setup, can you use different formats?
We can. We don't have everything in the exact places where it's supposed to be. For all the formats, we made a hybrid layout where it suits most use cases of our client. For instance, when we're watching a concert, we always use the Auro3D. It gives that little bit of extra.
You feel like you're really there and you're truly enjoying it. To make that work, in the entire world, there are very few companies who can pull that off in terms of processing. And that's one reason why we work with Trinnov. It’s so powerful in the processing, and it works with different formats. That's really unusual in the industry. So Trinnov is really giving us the opportunity to make that happen here.
What sets Trinnov apart from other brands?
With Trinnov you get a very nice calibration system and the optimization gives us the possibility to adjust time, phase and delays. This is because the speakers are in different places, and you don't sit in the same place all the time. We constantly try to think of it as a really impressive big toolbox.
With the Trinnov system, you have all the tools you need. That doesn't mean that you should use them heavily, but some of them should just be there, just in case. And some of them you need to tweak a little bit. We constantly try to make the best possible room before. So we have good acoustics, to have a good clean sheet for sound to be very nicely reproduced. And then we use the optimization to do that little bit of extra tweak for the client.
There's also built-in flexibility that allows us to do so much! We can choose how much it should do, how little it should do, where it should do it, if not to do it in some part of the frequency range… That's really, really outstanding.
How would you describe your experience working with Trinnov?
As an integrator, you come up with loads of different problems that you need to solve on the fly. And all of those concerns haven't reached a support team in another country yet. It could be just an upgrade for an HDMI card. It could be Apple TV, a new software upgrade or something that went wrong, and it went wrong in that system. And then it's very good to have a great support team, which also includes sales team, because the sales hear about this more frequently as they are around visiting many different cinemas.
I can't find it in any other company than Trinnov, so it's a blessing working that way. And then in Sweden, we're also fortunate enough to have a great distributor for Trinnov. They're helping out a lot, not just with the technical stuff, but also with logistics and planning, how to get stuff in time and all of that. We're very fortunate here to have that.
"Buy quality the first time and you will be much happier."
In your opinion, should other integrators consider using Trinnov?
It's a matter of what do you want out of your home theater. For me, it's all about the experience. I want to have a great experience when I'm sitting there, and you can't get a great experience if you're not using the right solution. Trinnov is making the best sound processing we have ever heard. So that's why we like using it.
Also, one interesting thing is that in smaller rooms, which we have quite a lot in Sweden. It becomes even more important how the processing is done because you can't get away with big spaces and the sound traveling some space. It needs to be very precise, and that is a perfect reason why you should invest in a Trinnov in the first place.
The other thing is that it's lasting so long. It was released eight years ago, there's still nothing on the market that surpasses it. If you want to go another way, go ahead. You might be happy, but you will need to change your receiver or your processor in a couple of years, and then in a couple of years again. And in a couple of years again. So I have clients who've been on this journey over these eight years who have switched processors four times, and it's not going to be cheaper. So buy quality the first time and you will be much happier.