If you're serious about Home Cinema you'll want to take a look at the following video.  Adam Rayner from Home Cinema Choice said "it was one of the most fabulous Home Theatre systems I've ever had the privilege to check out... the odd thing was the price; I'm was past impressed, I'm jealous".  For those that have visited the installation, I'm sure you'll agree with Adam's sentiments and for those that haven't, we promise you can take his words for it!

Adam Rayner from Home Cinema Choice wrote: 

Most people have a compost heap or fairies at the bottom of their garden. This family has a state-of-the-art log-cabin movie house...

As a former professional audio bod, I know that acoustics are as important as breathing to a recording or mixing engineer in any discipline, especially film. If the material they create sounds poor in anything but their room, they have failed. This goes some way to explain the lavish acoustic treatments in this impressive home cinema - it's owned by a chap who is real movie biz aristocracy. I'm only allowed to describe him as, 'A well-known movie sound-mixing engineer.'

The man in question found a simple way to choose his surround system; he made his way to a hi-fi show early in the day (so as to avoid the crowds) and right there in the demo room, at 8:45am, announced that he wanted the very setup he could hear. It was a Procella speaker array, designed from the ground up to be potent enough to act as a demo for DTS's own marketing.

The Procella 815-HEs are potent speakers with a huge 15inch bass driver married to an 8in driver for midband, and a professional audio-quality 1inch compression drivers. They deliver vast dynamics, awesome extension and astonishing power and headroom, and it's easy to see why the owner of this install was so taken by them.

Demo time:
The crisp hi-def images come courtesy of the thick end of £20,000 worth of Runco projection (a VX-2000D), hooked up to a Panasonic Blu-ray player.

I was treated to a real projectionists' grade selection of bits of material, starting with stereo and Tracy Chapman singing her heart out. The open sweet 'active' sound of those compression drivers (which have huge dynamic ability when compared to dome tweeters of any make) was like being in a recording studio in front of main, not nearfield, monitors. It was better than mere hi-fi. With a bit of traditional jazz on Super Audio CD - Mel Torme and his big band When Love Walked In With You - I could easily hear the greater resolution and tinkliness of the hi-res format over vanilla CD.

Then it was the Eagles' Life in the Fast Lane on DVD. Wrinkly rockers they may be, but their recordings are state-of-the-art. This system provided massive, effortless impact and throb from a bunch of geriatrics. Amazing.

A favourite 5.1 movie demo is the Crosstown Express sequence from Fox's madcap Robots animation. I've heard it many, many times (and even issued five-star reviews for speakers on what they make of it) but this was really revelatory. There were tings, throbs and swells that I hadn't ever noticed before - and not just a few bits, lots.

Finally, my audition ended with the excellent Pixar short Lifted and some of the Ratatouille BD disc. The short has never sounded so amazing nor looked so cool. I realised the aliens are bags of goo you can see into, and the audioscape from the 7.5 system was simply incredible. The sequence in Ratatouille where the woman shoots at our rodent hero with her shotgun almost lifted me out of the D-Box-ready seat, but with taut control.

Attention to acoustics:
Part of this performance excellence is down to the room's acoustics. It just goes to show that you can have a baggy drape or two, or even a few panels here and there to stop the nastiest reflections, but the only thing better than taming a room with an Audyssey MultEQ box is to build a perfect control-room-grade cinema in the first place.

The Screen Research screen is mounted on an acoustically absorptive stud wall; bass traps are hidden in the corners; ceiling absorbers help avoid reflections muddying the first wavefront; and on all opposing walls are a collection of woody, dense curved panels to diffuse sound and avoid standing waves and direct reflections. This cinema sounds better than a screening room at Pinewood. And you can ask the owner. It's a fact and he knows about it first-hand!

Key facts about this install:

The system uses seven Procella P8 loudspeakers, and five Procella P15 subwoofers, to deliver a super-high end audio experience...

Because the room is purpose built, the installers were able to build acoustic treatments into the design. These panels help diffuse standing waves and direct reflections...

No point wasting space and money on chairs if you're never going to fill them - this home cinema owner is happy with just four high-quality D-Box-ready armchairs...

There are 1,050 fibre-optic lights twinkling away in the ceiling. Pure set-dressing, but we're not complaining!

A Prophon DX48 professional audio controller helps to control the additional bass units for the L/C/R channels...

Sherbourn's 7/2100A power-amp was the world's first seven-channel amp to feature seven mono blocks and seven toroidal transformers, and can deliver 2.1KW. Better watch those electricity bills...

A ceiling-mounted Runco VX2000D projector, with 2.35:1 Cinewide option, helps produce bigscreen images up to scratch with the class-leading audio...

Motorised red drapes hide the THX-approved 118inch 2.35:1 Screen Research X-Mask screen - a perfect match for the Cinewide Runco projector...

Cost: £undisclosed

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For high-resolution images relating to this or any other story from Pulse Marketing, please contact Mike at info@pulsemarketing.com or call (+44) 01279 718 884