Complete systems for definitive experiences from the most revered name in cinema sound design
DECEMBER 2024
Uncompressed 4K 60Hz 4:4:4 and 1Gb LAN
We are pleased to announce the launch of the first HDBaseT™3 matrix product to the market
Using HDBaseT™3 technology, these powerful HDBaseT™ matrix support uncompromised 4K 60Hz 4:4:4 resolutions over distances up to 100m over a CAT6A. The new HMX88-18G and HMX44-18G come into their own with advanced audio features specifically designed for maximising the integration of AV sources in the modern home. Enhanced audio routing is achieved through the integrated audio matrix. This enables the audio from displays (via HDMI ARC or Optical S/PDIF), and all other sources to be embedded and routed through the system at the users discretion. The inclusion of a 1Gb Ethernet channel allows for LAN serving to all HDBT outputs / zones as required, IR and RS-232 pass-through, advanced EDID management, and PoC provide the ultimate flexibility.
The combination of these technology features enable our installation partners the ability to create a truly immersive AV experience throughout the home.
NEW
HMX88-18G
8x8 HDBaseT™3 AV Matrix
• Uncompressed / unconverted 4K 60Hz 4:4:4 to 100m
Nick Fichte, Business Development Director, Home & Yacht, L-Acoustics
54 SIGNAGE OF THE TIMES
Chris Moore, B2B Sales Manager, Vestel Visual Solutions COMPANY FOCUS
57 CYP CYP Europe’s IP-9000 Series
66 JVC DLA-NZ700 AND DLA-NZ500 PROJECTORS A breakthrough in 4K home cinema
MAINTAINING A SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP
So big news over the last few weeks featured a win for Donald Trump in the American Presidential Race. We will all have our views on Donald Trump, but what we are concerned with here is discussing how this news might affect our industry as Trump has been speaking a lot about tariffs on imported goods in the hope of boosting the American economy. This is significant for the UK home cinema and luxury AV industry as one our main partners has always been the U.S, with many American brands enjoying a ‘second home’ in the UK and parts of Europe.
So why does any of this matter? proposed tariffs, if implemented, could impact the UK’s export market on a macro level, whether that will affect sectors like home cinema and consumer electronics, is not clear yet. Trump has indicated he might impose tariffs of 10-20% on imports to encourage domestic manufacturing. However, having said that, the UK is not a primary target, as the trade imbalance with the US is less pronounced than with other nations. However it is possible, UK exporters, especially in high-value tech sectors, might face higher costs and supply chain disruptions.
The UK gov so far has struck a mostly consolatory note, but it has stated it would oppose any new tariffs on UK exports.
SOME HISTORY
Tariffs are of course not a new thing, the last time the U.S. imposed tariffs was during President Trump’s 2018-2019 dispute with China, and both the U.S. and global economies faced several challenges. Key impacts included increased production
costs for some U.S. companies, especially relying on imported materials, leading to higher prices for some consumers. Some sectors, like agriculture and manufacturing, experienced export declines due to retaliatory tariffs. Overall, tariffs contributed to market uncertainty, disrupted supply chains, and did not deliver significant economic growth in the U.S.
Going back further it’s possible to argue that trade tariffs and isolationist policies significantly contributed to the Great Depression in the U.S, usually attributed to the years 1929-41. In 1930 the SmootHawley Tariff Act imposed steep tariffs on imported goods aimed at protecting U.S. industries by encouraging domestic purchasing. Sound familiar? However, it backfired by prompting retaliatory tariffs from other nations and significantly reduced global trade.
That’s not to say some targeted tariffs can’t be positive: for some areas they can protect immerging industries and protect jobs from interference from other areas where labour costs are lower.
So, what can we do in our little part of the U.S/UK trade pantheon? We have limited power to impact policy, but what we do have is each other, our knowledge and most importantly in times of uncertainty, our relationships. That close relationship has created many strong bonds over the years on a business and personal level and has been tested with challenges such as COVID. It has shown to be resilient and with co-operation and innovative thinking, EI is confident those qualities will be shown again and will help maintain strong cooperating on each side of the Atlantic.
Whatever the outcome of the next few weeks, from the whole EI team have a very peaceful and happy Christmas and New Year!
GETTING IN TOUCH
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Daniel J Sait, dan@allthingsmedialtd.com
MANAGING DIRECTOR
Ian Kitchener, ian@allthingsmedialtd.com
SALES DIRECTOR
Kelly Byne, kelly@allthingsmedialtd.com
GROUP AD MANAGER
Claire Talty-Huelin, claire@allthingsmedialtd.com
CEO
David Kitchener, david@allthingsmedialtd.com
STUDIO MANAGER
Mark Weller, mark@allthingsmedialtd.com
ACCOUNTS
susan@allthingsmedialtd.com
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The editors and publishers do not necessarily agree with the views expressed by contributors, nor do they accept responsibility for any errors in the transmission of the subject matter in this publication. Whilst we make every effort to ensure that everything is factually correct, we cannot be held responsible if factual errors occur.
In all matters, the editor’s decision is final. Editorial contributions to Essential Install magazine are welcomed, and the editor reserves the right to alter or abridge text prior to the publication. All articles are copyright and remain the property of Essential Install magazine.
ADDING VALUE EVERYWHERE
Almost two decades of success in commercial and residential AV gives us the versatility to support your projects in residential, marine, retail, hospitality and beyond, in spaces large or small, no matter how complex the challenges.
A proven track record of brand and technology introduction ensures that the solutions provided are uniquely featured and backed by industry leading system and technical support.
In these ways we help our partners to stand out, flourish and grow.
More than the sum of the brands we proudly represent, CUK supports our partners with complementary services including system specification and design, RP22 design support, acoustic modelling, commissioning support, and training.
BOSE CORPORATION ACQUIRES MCINTOSH GROUP
Bose Corporation has announced the acquisition of McIntosh Group, the parent company of high-performance and luxury audio brands that include McIntosh and Sonus faber. McIntosh Group manufactures highperformance amplifiers, speakers, turntables and other audio products, significantly expanding Bose’s portfolio.
This strategic move unites industry pioneers with more than 175 years of combined, deep technical expertise, a dedication to craftmanship and artistry, and an unwavering commitment to reaching passionate music fans around the world, say the partners.
The acquisition allows Bose to infuse its audio research and technology into the highperformance and luxury space while it continues to build on its premium solutions.
“Over the last six decades we’ve delivered the best premium audio experiences possible; now, with McIntosh Group in our portfolio,
we can unlock even more ways to bring music to life in the home, on-the-go and in the car,” said Lila Snyder, CEO of Bose Corporation. “We look forward to honouring the heritage of these brands, investing in their future and pushing the boundaries of audio innovation to bring customers experiences they’ve never heard before.”
“Bose’s dedication to research and singular focus on audio provides a tremendous opportunity to complement and enable our own pursuit of delivering inimitable, ultimate-quality audio experiences,” added Daniel Pidgeon, CEO of McIntosh Group. “Gaining access to their expertise as a pioneer in automotive audio will also help us accelerate our presence and enable us to deliver solutions that are commensurate with our reputation and performance standards.”
Bose will continue to develop products and experiences in popular categories like
headphones, speakers, soundbars and car audio while advancing critical technologies such as noise cancellation, hearing augmentation and immersive audio.
McIntosh and Sonus faber will maintain its focus on amplifiers, loudspeakers, turntables, and other high-end products.
Bose Corporation McIntosh Group bose.com/home mcintoshgroup.com
SONOS HOSTS INAUGURAL ‘DEALER APPRECIATION EVENT - EUROPE’ IN PARIS
Sonos invited 50 dealers from across Europe to participate in its first regional Dealer Appreciation Event.
The event took place at the Molitor Hotel & Spa in Paris, providing an opportunity for Sonos to listen to feedback, workshop ideas and gather valuable input from trusted partners in the channel.
The first Sonos Dealer Appreciation Event (DAE) Europe brought together partners and members of the EU Sonos Advisory Board from
across the continent, with representation from the UK, France, DACH, Nordics, Netherlands, Switzerland and Belgium. The event was hosted by Stephen Rhead, Sonos Professionals Installed Solutions Manager UK and Ireland.
Following a welcome dinner on the first night, the one-day summit included a morning of business presentations and high-level focus group discussions. Then in the afternoon there were a series of product demonstrations including the new Sonos Era 100 Pro (see
this month’s product pages) and Arc Ultra. The session also included receiving feedback on future concepts.
Sessions were presented by senior Sonos leaders from multiple departments, including Professional Product Management, Product Marketing, Professional Partnerships and Training.
Stephen said, “Our first Dealer Appreciation Event in Europe shows a strong commitment from Sonos to the professional channel in this region. We’ve had challenges this year, so gaining valuable input from our dealers on how we can do better is incredibly important for our business. We opened the floor with opportunities to ask questions, share ideas and shape our future strategy for the installation market.”
Attendee Alan Smith, from AT & C in the UK, commented, “I found the event itself and the presentations very insightful. It was wellstructured, giving a lot of great opportunity for us (the dealers) to voice our opinions, which I felt was key. It also provided a vision of the future with Sonos which, from a commercial perspective, was exciting. The release of the Era 100 Pro is a significant development for our Sonos business.”
Sonos sonos.com
Bose acquired McIntosh Group from Highlander Partners, L.P., a Dallas-based private investment firm
The event included a delicious meal at contemporary Parisian restaurant Le Petit Poucet
Discover the all new IP-9000 Series from CYP Europe: the futureproof solution designed for tomorrow’s installations. What are the key difference makers?
• Dante Ready™: Activate networking when you need it, saving costs upfront.
• 4K@60Hz 4:4:4 RGB: Stunning visuals with HDR10 and Dolby Vision ® support.
• USB Functionality: Seamlessly collaborate across devices and computers.
• Installer-Friendly Features: PoE, intuitive WebGUI, and a 5-year warranty.
To discover more, contact your CYP Europe stockist.
CEDIA, the Association for Smart Home Professionals, has launched a new tiered membership structure designed to provide members with tailored benefits and unmatched value. Effective Jan 1, 2025, integrator members will be able to join at the Starter, Professional, or Premium levels.
“For the first time in CEDIA’s history, we are offering integrators a choice of benefit options that align with their needs,” said CEDIA Global President and CEO, Daryl Friedman. “We’re particularly proud to offer a new Premium level – a great value for those who want to set themselves apart and invest in their team’s education.”
HTA CERTIFICATION NOW AVAILABLE IN UK
The Home Technology Association (HTA) –billed as setting the gold standard for home technology integrators — is proud to announce the expansion of its HTA Certification program to the United Kingdom. This move comes in response to demand from UK-based integrators seeking to distinguish themselves with the HTA’s mark of excellence, said the organisation.
UK integrators can now join an elite group of integration firms that provide first-rate technology experiences for homeowners and serve as technology design partners to architects, interior designers and building professionals.
The certification is designed to be a testament to a company’s technical proficiency, exceptional customer service, comprehensive aftercare and sterling industry reputation.
“Since the HTA launched in 2017, we learned quickly that top integrators throughout the globe are looking to differentiate themselves from the ‘AV guys’ that have hurt the reputation of the home technology integration industry,” said HTA CEO Josh Christian. “We look forward to bringing the HTA Certification standard to the United Kingdom, helping qualified integrators there earn the business
CEDIA’s membership tiers are designed to build progressively, offering increasing value at each level.
CEDIA Starter Member: Your Launchpad to the Industry.
The Starter membership is ideal for individuals and companies just beginning their journey as smart home professionals.
CEDIA Professional Member: The Benefits You’ve Known and More.
CEDIA Professional membership includes all of the current benefits available to integrators, plus complementary access to CIT training and the Introduction to the Industry course—a combined £900 value.
CEDIA Premium Membership: Your Competitive Edge.
The Premium membership tier offers elevated member benefits for businesses. Members receive free, unlimited access to CEDIA’s extensive online educational content and early access to events and product launches, giving members a competitive edge in the market.
To increase value to CEDIA membership, all member levels in 2025 will benefit from the following initiatives: CEDIA Member App, CEDIA Online Academy, CEDIA Foundation and the Consumer Campaign.
CEDIA cedia.org
they rightfully deserve, and helping raise the stature and importance of integrators to the UK’s design and build communities.”
The HTA has already updated the HTA Certified integrator locator and calibrated the technology budgeting tool for UK users. When visitors use the HTA Certified locator or budgeting tool, it will automatically sense the country where the user is (for the UK, U.S. and Canada).
With this expansion, UK integrators, homeowners, builders, architects and interior designers can now leverage the full suite of HTA resources. From educational articles, to the technology budgeting tool, technology checklists, a sales closer tool and the HTA Design Partner program, the association said it continues to lead the way in supporting its HTA Certified integrators. This makes it easier for integrators to forge relationships with the design and build trades and provide better technology experiences for homeowners and related trades alike.
HTA Certification htacertified.org/apply
HTA Certification is now available in the UK
For more information on new membership structure, including new benefits visit cedia.org/join
APPLE TARGETING SMART HOME PRODUCTS IN 2025?
According to a Bloomberg report, Apple is set for some significant ‘smart home’ products in 2025 including AirTag and smart displays.
If reports are to be believed, Apple is gearing up for several product launches next year. The tech giant appears to be making a push into the smart home market with smart displays and other smart home devices. It may also update its AirTag tracker, with the next-generation model expected to launch around mid-2025, according to reports from Bloomberg.
A new AirTag model has progressed to manufacturing tests, with a release apparently planned for mid-2025. While the design is expected to see minimal changes, the new AirTag is likely to feature improved range and a new wireless chip, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman.
Apple is also said to be looking at enhancing the privacy of the wireless tracker. The new model will make it harder to remove the speaker from the device, which will make it more
CELEBRATING A YEAR OF SUCCESS: THE TVD EXPERIENCE CENTRE
Marking a successful milestone for TVD Group, its Bolton-based Experience Centre is celebrating its first birthday. Over the past year since opening, the centre has welcomed hundreds of customers, partners and suppliers, allowing them to explore the latest advancements in commercial AV technology. The ‘goal-post’ LED at the main entrance has been customised for visitors nearly 100 times,
creating a personalised experience that leaves a lasting impression.
The Experience Centre’s first year has been instrumental in strengthening TVD’s position as the leading commercial AV and technology supplier in the north of England, said the company. It has attracted high-profile projects, including installations at the F1 Arcade in Birmingham, Bolton Wanderers Football Club,
discoverable in case someone is using it for stalking or other undesirable or illegal aims.
Bloomberg earlier reported that Apple is targeting the smart home market with new AIpowered devices, including a wall-mounted smart display and a robotic tabletop device.
The smart home display is expected to feature a six-inch square screen with a frontfacing camera for video conferencing. It will include a rechargeable battery, built-in speakers and come in black and silver options, according to reports. The device is said to run a hybrid system combining Apple’s watchOS and the StandBy mode interface on iOS, with apps for browsing, news and media playback.
Apple may also introduce a tabletop robotic device featuring an iPad-like screen mounted on a robotic arm. This device is expected to pull on Apple Intelligence to understand its environment, identify users and adapt responses. Apple is also said to be exploring other smart home devices, such as a new TV set and a smart home camera.
Apple apple.com
Bolton Stadium Hotel, William Hill betting shops, Hollywood Bowl at Merry Hill, the Sunborn Yacht Hotel, and numerous care home AV and TV refits across the UK.
Built with a £600,000 investment and a year-long renovation of TVD’s headquarters, the Experience Centre embodies nearly 30 years of expertise in AV technology. Featuring state-of-the-art products from key partners like Samsung, Philips, LG and over a dozen other major brands, it showcases an impressive lineup, including Samsung’s £150,000 110in ‘The Wall’ MicroLED display and LG’s 136in all-in-one smart LED screen.
Earlier this year the TVD Experience Centre partnered with Samsung to showcase a range of Samsung’s commercial AV products to TVD and Samsung commercial customers alike. The move saw Samsung flagship 110in The Wall LED display take centre stage in the Experience Centre’s boardroom.
With the Experience Centre, TVD has created a unique venue for hosting sectorspecific events, networking conferences, product launches and training sessions, further establishing itself as the go-to destination for cutting-edge AV technology in the region.
TVD Group tvdgroup.co.uk
Is Apple making another tilt as the ‘smart home’?
TVD Group offers walk-in access designed for businesses aiming to elevate their brand with cutting-edge technology
Some very sad news this month with the passing of Paul Burnip. The following was released by David Anderson, Managing Director, Avoke Ltd, following a request from his wife Karen, to share the news to the industry.
“It is with great sadness that I share with you today the upsetting news that our colleague and friend Paul Burnip passed away this weekend.
“Paul was a true professional, working in the AV Industry for nearly 30 years, starting out at Sanyo with his career taking him to Fujitsu, Acoustic Energy, The Chord Company and Eclipse. For the last few years, he had been working as a consultant focused on PR for Elipson.
“He was a friend as well as a colleague to so much of the industry and was always wonderful company. Paul will be best remembered for his professionalism, his kindness and humour as well as his extensive vinyl collection and passion for cycling.
“I am sure all of you who knew him will be deeply saddened by this news and join me in sending our heartfelt condolences and sympathy to his wife and daughter at this difficult time. He will be truly missed by us all, but leaves us with many fond memories.”
Nick Hart has been appointed as sales director for Lithe Audio and its sister brand Retrotouch Switches & Sockets. Effective immediately, Nick’s role will be to drive business, build relationships and grow market presence for the brands within the UK, as well as leading the brands’ expansion into global markets. Nick brings extensive experience and contacts in the electronics sector from his previous successful sales director roles with ProofVision and Hylec-APL electrical components.
“We’re delighted to welcome Nick to the Lithe Audio/Retrotouch team,” said Amit Ravat, MD of Lithe Audio & Retrotouch. “Nick comes with substantial sales experience and strong contacts and relationships within our key growth sectors”.
“Nick will support our accounts in all aspects of the sales journey, and will be in regular contact with our customers to introduce our exciting new product ranges and ensure they have the support they require for sales success.”
PMC Distribution has appointed Alister Smith to the role of Sales Manager, Home Audio, to oversee retailer support across the company’s PMC, Bryston and Michell
Audio brands. Alister steps into the role with immediate effect and will bring many years of experience in the Hi-Fi and custom installation sectors to the position.
Prior to his appointment by PMC Distribution UK, Alister worked for a well-known speaker brand, and before that with a major custom installation distributor as key account manager. Alister was also owner of a successful installation business. His custom installation experience also includes a period as the chair of the CEDIA membership committee and a place on the CEDIA Region 1 Board of Directors.
“I am delighted to have been appointed by PMC to this role, one I feel perfectly suits my experience and skills,” said Alister. “I have watched PMC grow exponentially over the years. I have been working in CI and Hi-Fi sales and have always been hugely impressed by the company’s drive, passion and innovation.”
Alister added, “Taking over the UK sales management responsibilities is a very exciting prospect, and I am confident that we can carry on the incredible work that has been done with the UK retailers and installers in establishing the PMC, and the other distribution brands, creating a solid and loyal base. My experience in Hi-Fi will help us grow this important channel even further, and my extensive CI background will enable us to capitalise on the enormous potential that the PMC Ci series presents to gain an even greater presence in the high-end home cinema sector.”
CEDIA has announced that Henry Clifford (USA) and Manojkumar Soni (India) will join the Global CEDIA Board of Directors for the 2025-2027 term. The slate was approved by 95% of those voting, with a 56% increase in participation, the largest for a CEDIA Board election.
“Henry and Manojkumar bring unparalleled strengths in both business and technical expertise, which will greatly enhance our board’s ability to represent and serve our members around the world,” said Alex Capecelatro, CEDIA Board Chairperson. “I’d like to thank the members of the Governance Committee, chaired by CEDIA Vice Chairperson Amanda Wildman, for their diligent work in overseeing the election process and identifying such exemplary candidates.”
Nick Hart
Alister Smith
ENTER THE IMMERSIVE WORLD OF INFRASONICS
SMSG50, 50-inch Active Infrasonic Subwoofer
Beyond the audible range and the limits of traditional subwoofers, infrasonic frequencies add a new dimension to the experience of home cinema immersion. For years Ascendo Immersive Audio has been perfecting their delivery, overcoming huge technical and performance challenges to create a range of infrasonic subwoofers that generates pressure waves as low as 5Hz, reproducing the hidden frequencies and harmonics in your film and music content you don’t hear but feel all around you. In this way, Ascendo defines the difference between merely listening and being there!
Infrasonic models include THE 24 SUB (24-inch driver), THE 32 SUB (32-inch driver), THE 50 SUB (50-inch driver) and the THE 80 SUB (80-inch driver).
Further information: 01423 358846, info@karma-av.co.uk, www.karma-av.co.uk
PERFECT SYNTHESIS
With the longest and most exclusive design heritage, JBL Synthesis can deliver the definitive movie sound experience says CUK MD Stuart Thomson.
Walk around any of our industry’s trade shows and you’ll be served with a healthy supply of high-end cinema brands, all claiming to reach the ‘ultimate’ in cinema sound immersion. But with so many variables in play, results can be a little hit and miss. Throw enough clean power and processing behind decent transducers in the channels and, in theory, you’ll achieve impressive sonics, but it takes mastery over fine design margins to find that elusive balance of wide bandwidth, SPL, dynamics and intelligibility at every seat in any space. For this to happen you need precision engineered tools synthesised by the experience of developing integrated cinema systems over decades. If you check the record, only one brand can offer this level of expertise. No coincidence that the oldest and most revered name in cinema sound is also best placed to supply the scalable technology, versatility and reliability required for private theatre design success. With its evolving horn/compression driver technology and rigorous systems approach, JBL is equipped to deliver not only the ultimate cinema sound experience, but also an authentic and definitive one.
FIRST NAME, LAST WORD
Having dominated the cinema market from the 1930s with the development of super-efficient horn-loaded designs such as the suitably named ‘Iconic’ and ‘Voice of the Theater’ systems, as well as the more compact 4675 bi-radial horn driver/woofer speaker (the first commercial THX licenced cinema system), JBL has singlehandedly defined the experience of ‘movie sound’ for audiences around the globe. Not just those in commercial spaces but in residential as well. This is because JBL’s industry-standard 4675 design became the inspiration for JBL Synthesis - the original high-end home cinema systems.
ULTIMATE AND ALSO DEFINITIVE
Building on everything JBL had learned over the decades, Synthesis proved to be a gamechanger in the nascent home cinema market of the 1990s. By combining, uniquely, the best aspects of professional and consumer technology, including compression driven horns, Synthesis systems moved expectations
With designs like the 4675 bi-radial horn driver/ woofer system, JBL has defined the experience of ‘movie sound’ in commercial cinemas around the globe
of the scale and quality of home cinema sound decisively upwards. Even though channel counts have multiplied, the principles of system design which JBL has championed for much longer and with greater authority than any rival, remain the same. By uniting horn-loaded compression drivers, high sound power woofers and high current capable amplifiers together in complete systems, today’s Synthesis line-up
of smaller, more efficient and space-conscious architectural solutions are calibrated electrically and acoustically to deliver the seat-to-seat precision required for truly immersive and authentic home cinema performance.
SYSTEMS NOT COMPONENTS
Unlike rival systems, which may comprise separate components from multiple manufacturers, Synthesis scales JBL Professional technologies engineered to work together in tightly integrated systems based on room volume. Synthesis surround processors are designed to operate seamlessly with Synthesis amplifiers, which are engineered to drive Synthesis loudspeakers. Given their provenance, the products are 100% engineering-led, using transducer technology straight from the commercial playbook: HighDefinition Imaging (HDI) horns developed for smooth and controlled sound dispersion mated to high quality compression drivers for accurate, detailed and dynamic sound, underpinned by aluminium cone bass/mid drivers through high-definition crossover networks. These are performance-led tools from engineers not marketeers, which offer today’s cinema designers a complete turnkey pathway to authentic, scalable movie sound performances, characterised by ultrawide bandwidth, controlled dispersion, stress-free SPLs and convincing audio realism.
COMPLETE AND DISCREET
The JBL Synthesis SCL Series of loudspeakers delivers a level of home cinema performance previously unavailable from in-wall and in-ceiling products. The industry’s first comprehensive range of compression driver-based architectural designs includes no fewer than five in-wall models from the SCL-2, 2.5-way triple 8in design to the 2-way dual 5.25in SCL-7, complemented by two in-ceiling models, the 2-way 7in SCL-5 and 2-way 5.25in SCL-8. They join the SSW-3 dual 10in and SSW-4 dual 8in passive in-wall subwoofers to broaden the options for ultra-discreet, high output system design in the widest range of project scenarios. Created for the largest theatres, built-in options include the 2-way dual 12in SCL-1 and passive subs: the SSW-1 dual 15in and dual 12in SSW-2.
PROCESSING AND AMPLIFICATION
The choice for Synthesis system processing and amplification is as versatile. Including Trinnov room EQ, the flagship SDP-75 processor is available in 16, 24, and 32-channel configurations, while the 16-channel SDP58 and SDP-38 feature DIRAC live EQ. Four bridgeable Synthesis amplifiers in 2, 4, 7 and 8-channel designs are custom engineered to power all possible configurations alongside the SDA-1700, which is dedicated to the SSW-4 in-wall subwoofer.
FULL RP-22 DATA BACKUP
Supporting the modular Synthesis design toolkit is a higher level of data commonplace in the commercial world but not so prevalent in CI. With the advent of CEDIA RP-22 recommendations, the desire to improve real world technical design outcomes is met by all JBL Synthesis products. Each is designed, tested and evaluated to offer the comprehensive performance data required.
MEETING THE PROMISE
As part of CUK’s heightened support and training, two Certified JBL Synthesis systems will be showcased at our new demonstration facility at Ascot. Our ‘JBL Synthesis Partners’ will be trained, supported, and have full access to the systems. CUK has specified Synthesis system solutions spanning £35k to over £275k, which we think will meet the needs of a significant portion of home cinema deployments in any space. Through a limited and controlled partner network we can ensure that partners are supported fully and that systems are delivered to the highest standard, so that their customers are completely immersed and satisfied with the authentic and definitive JBL Synthesis experience in their homes. With more new products in the pipeline, the timing couldn’t be better for integrators to be joining us on this journey.
For further information regarding JBL Synthesis and to arrange a meeting at Ascot, please contact: +44 (0) 141 440 5333, enquiries@cuk-group.com, cuk-group.com
Bridgeable Synthesis amps in 2, 4, 7 and 8 channel formats will power all possible system design configurations
Two Synthesis in-wall LF models including the twin 8-inch SSW-4 extend low frequency design versatility
Featuring JBL’s proprietary HDI Horn/compression driver tech, five in-wall and two in-ceiling models combine with Synthesis amps and processing to deliver definitive high-output audio immersion for projects of any size
Complete with Trinnov room EQ, the flagship SDP-75 Synthesis processor is available in 16, 24 and 32 channel versions
TOGETHER FOR CINEMA: ACHIEVEMENTS OF 2024 AND HOW YOU CAN HELP
As 2024 draws to a close, Together For Cinema has continued to transform lives by creating bespoke cinema rooms across the UK, bringing joy and comfort to people using the services of hospices and charitable organisations. This year saw an impressive range of collaborations with AV professionals, resulting in installations that not only provide entertainment but also therapeutic value for the children, families and staff they serve. Here’s a closer look at the incredible projects completed in 2024:
EAST ANGLIA CHILDREN’S HOSPICE (EACH), MILTON
The year began with Together For Cinema working alongside thinkingbricks to refurbish the home cinema for East Anglia Children’s Hospice (EACH) at their Milton site. The project ensured that the cinema room was in great condition and able to provide a relaxing, enjoyable environment for children with life-threatening conditions and their families. The updated facility enhances the hospice’s supportive care services, delivering the therapeutic benefits of shared cinema experience for the whole family.
MARIE CURIE HOSPICE, NEWCASTLE
Together For Cinema and Wakefields completed a cinema installation at the Marie Curie Hospice in Newcastle in June 2024. This challenging transformation resulted in a high-quality cinematic space equipped with the latest immersive audio-visual technology. The room provides a comforting setting for patients and their families to relax and spend time together, contributing to the hospice’s compassionate care approach. Martin Wakefield from Wakefields recruited Lesley Mcdine, of Fleur Interiors to
design the interiors and Dan Clint, a lighting consultant from CP Lighting to oversee the lighting. Fabulous, automated curtains and all the associated tracking were gifted by Silent Gliss. The combined skills of this team created an ambitious design that surpassed all expectations.
ROBIN HOUSE CHILDREN’S HOSPICE, BALLOCH, SCOTLAND
In July 2024, the completion of a cinema room at Robin House Children’s Hospice, happened thanks to the partnership between Together For Cinema and Loud & Clear. This project converted an open area into a fantastic immersive cinematic experience, complete with 85in TV, Totem Mini Flex speakers, and automated blinds. The room now offers children, families and staff a dedicated space for relaxation and enjoyment, enriching the supportive care provided by the hospice.
Marie Curie system
The EACH project
TEAM JAK, LIVINGSTON, SCOTLAND
July 2024, also saw Together For Cinema collaborating with Limitless Automation to install a state-of-the-art cinema room at Jak’s Den, operated by the Team Jak Foundation in Livingston, Scotland. This immersive space offers children and young people with cancer, as well as their families, a dedicated area for relaxation and entertainment. The installation features high-quality audio-visual equipment, including a projection system and surround sound, enhancing the supportive environment provided by the foundation.
ONCE UPON A SMILE, SIDLEY HOUSE, MANCHESTER
In September 2024, Intuitive Homes collaborated once again with Together For Cinema to revitalise the cinema room at Sidley House, a facility run by Once Upon A Smile. This upgrade transformed the room into a versatile space with modern audio-visual components, including Bowers & Wilkins speakers, an Anthem audio processor and a Sony projector. Designed for gaming, karaoke, presentations, and cinema screenings, the room provides a vital outlet for bereaved children and their families, helping to foster emotional healing.
THE DORSET CHILDREN’S FOUNDATION, BOSCOMBE, DORSET
Together For Cinema joined forces with Living Home Technology in October 2024 to develop a dedicated cinema room within the brand new facility, built by The Dorset Children’s Foundation. This amazing room not only features a 4K UHD laser ultra-short-throw projector, a 100-inch drop-down screen, and a 5.1 surround sound system, it also boasts a Starscape ceiling disc. The installation offers children with disabilities and their families a fully immersive entertainment experience. This addition has become a cornerstone of the foundation’s commitment to supporting the families they serve and has been gratefully received by all.
ELLENOR HOSPICE, GRAVESEND, KENT
In October 2024, Together For Cinema partnered with iCubed Home Cinema to create a multifunctional AV/media room at ellenor Hospice. This space was designed to be multiuse and will host cinema screenings, gaming, karaoke, training sessions and even fundraising events. The installation featured state-of-theart audio-visual equipment, including a large TV screen, with Starscape shooting-star panelling on either side of the screen. This facility provides a valuable space for patients, families and staff to relax, connect and enjoy shared moments together.
The Ronald McDonald House Charity, Birmingham, installed by The Big Picture, looks forward to its official opening due January 2025, having completed in October 2024. In addition Fresh Futures, Huddersfield, West Yorkshire with the installer, Audiovation completed in November 2024. Their official opening is due to take place on the December 9.
2024 has been another landmark year for Together For Cinema, demonstrating the power of collaboration and generosity in creating spaces that inspire joy, comfort and connection. With each installation, they have proven that cinema can be much more than entertainment—it can be a source of solace, hope, and togetherness for those who need it most.
JOIN TOGETHER FOR CINEMA AS A CHARITABLE PARTNER
If you are inspired by these projects and want to help make a difference, consider becoming a charitable partner with Together For Cinema. By supporting this initiative, you can contribute to life-changing projects that benefit children’s hospices and other vital organisations across the UK. Visit Together For Cinema’s Charitable Partners page to learn more about how you can help transform lives through the magic of cinema. Together, we can continue to create spaces that provide joy and comfort to those who need it most.
Together For Cinema togetherforcinema.co.uk
The Robin House cinema
Team Jak
Dorset Children’s Foundation
Once Upon A Smile
ellenor, Gravesend
CAN THE MARANTZ M1 OVERTAKE THE COMPETITION?
Is Marantz’s entry into the compact streamer-amplifier market in the fast lane to become a winner with installers and end users alike? Richard Stevenson gets in the driver’s seat to find out.
Wireless streaming amplifiers have become the go-to stereo Hi-Fi system in the last decade, and there is no shortage of price points, feature sets and even rack-mount options. Yet, for customers looking for an affordable, discreet, in-room audio solution that can also play TV sound via HDMI ARC, there are realistically two big players – the Sonos Amp and Bluesound Powernode. Small, accomplished and under a grand, they remain the go-to choices.
Neither is without caveats, though. From years of in-house experience with both systems, Bluesound would be the audiophile choice for its sonic merit, but network connectivity and system stability are far from bulletproof. The Amp is beautifully made, stays connected and has a class-leading app, but the sound is more utility than engaging and emotional.
Many brands have tried to combine the best of both. Several have succeeded. Yet none have done so and remained in three-figure price tag territory.
Enter the Marantz M1 HEOS streaming amplifier. HEOS’ accomplished streaming credentials with plenty of streaming services meets Marantz’s audiophile heritage and sonic
know-how, with eARC HDMI connectivity added in for good measure. Sprinkle in control system integration with Control4, AMX, URC and Crestron, crowbar in the beefiest amplifier in the genre by quite a margin (100Wpc), and complete with AirPlay2, Roon Ready status and a £899 retail price ticket. That is fighting specs! Out of the box, the design is deeper and chunkier than either of its main rivals, albeit going with the slightly clichéd matt-back box with rounded corners. The M1 design then goes off-piste with the entire top panel being a multi-layer wire mesh grille with waffle print indentations. No waffle-making was attempted in this review. The underside is more in keeping with Sonos, a shallow rounded plinth with vent slits and a single central threaded socket for wall mounting. As an ex-engineer, I will never understand the logic of a single mount point attachment, but it seems the norm.
The fascia panel has touch-sensitive volume up/down and play/pause buttons and a multi-colour LED status light. It faces mostly downwards at the base of the front panel, ensuring it’s not visible in 90% of installations. Yet, as a fit-and-forget unit with an
app-based remote, the light is only required on setup anyway.
The rear panel is verbatim for the compact streamer format with single speaker binding terminals with banana sockets, albeit far from the build robustness of Sonos’ custom terminals. Physical connections span a single sub-out RCA, RJ45 LAN, USB-A, eARC HDMI, optical and good-old analogue RCA audio. There is an IR input, Bluetooth button and a ‘connect’ button to simplify Wi-Fi setup. That is right beside an almost identically sized case screw, which I guarantee you will press several times by mistake while reaching around the back and wonder why nothing is happening. I speak from experience...
The system setup is done using the comprehensive HEOS app. It’s not as naturally intuitive as Sonos or as pretty as BluOS on a phone or tablet, and there is no desktop version for those stuck at their PC all day. Yet it is packed with features and created by engineers who were clearly determined not to leave anything out. The main settings menu has 18 sub-headings alone.
Connecting M1 to the LAN via the app is seamless, and set-up controls are comprehensive from tone controls and selectable output filters to turning off the touch controls and adjusting the brightness of the status light. A further advanced menu gives a web interface with network status, settings, statistics, and hardware and software version data. For the end-user, there is a handy setup assistant, HEOS tips, and instructions on how to teach a third-party remote M1 IR commands.
Hooked up to the similarly priced Q-Acoustics 5040 floorstanders, the M1’s performance is simply stunning for the price. It keeps a vice-like grip on the 5040’s bass drivers for super-punchy bass, while its clean and controlled HF is an ideal match for the Q-Acoustics’ crisp top end. The soundstage is super wide, the dynamic range is truly
impressive, and there is lush Marantz-like detail at the top end that makes this unit a serious audiophile contender.
HEADED IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION?
Impressive enough, yet M1 is a whole different league above its competitors in terms of power and control at higher volumes. It drives serious SPLs with the precision and agility of much pricier amplification, leaving its peers running out of puff. It does dance anthems and big orchestral works with the sort of passion that can have you throwing shapes to Faithless and headbanging to Beethoven. Adding a good sub to the system turns the musical enjoyment and scale up to 11 – more about that in the Velodyne MiniVee X review in this issue.
Hooked up to a large-screen TV via ARC, the M1 is no less impressive in AV duties. The power and punch lend real scale and impact to movies, and the dialogue enhancer feature is perfectly balanced to lift voices and pin them securely between stereo speakers placed on either side of the screen. The M1 supports Dolby Digital and Dolby Digital+ signals, downmixing multichannel to 2.1 with mixed LFE and main channel bass sent to the subwoofer depending on the selected high pass filter setting. With decent floorstanders like the 5040’s a subwoofer is optional, but there are a host of compact subs around the £999 mark that would make the perfect demo partner and tip customers into an add-on sale.
Over a month of rigorous testing, the M1 stayed up and connected 100% of the time, matching the Sonos Amp installed in the kitchen for uptime. I can’t say the same for my admittedly more complex (eight players) BluOS systems over the same period.
As a standalone streamer amplifier, the Marantz M1 mixes flexibility and features with truly outstanding performance, offers well-proven HEOS streaming and comes with Marantz’s enviable brand name. Dolby downmixing, eARC, robust networking, and the long list of control system integrations make it equally suitable for boosting TV sound and more complex integrated multiroom audio installations.
The M1 is ridiculously impressive for the price and an absolute winner in the crowded streamer amplifier market for installers and end users alike.
COMPACT SUB WITH THE X FACTOR?
Velodyne’s MiniVee sub has evolved significantly over two decades and the latest ‘X’ version remains small and perfectly formed. Our trade focused reviewer Richard Stevenson has a listen.
Introduced back in the mid-2000s, the original MiniVee was at the forefront of driving big bass from a small box. That original packed a 1kW class D amp powering a single 8in Kevlar driver in a sealed box, dug down to below 30Hz and packed a feisty punch, making it a popular choice for those decent LFE with the big-box carnage.
The model has been through various iterations since and joined by even smaller MicroVee, giving the design an enviable reputation for delivering the goods for nearly twenty years. Enter the 2024 MiniVee X, designed to put the sub-market into something of a Twitter. (Sorry, couldn’t resist…)
It’s still smaller than a foot cube and cuter than a Labrador puppy, and the build quality remains substantially robust. The design
now mates a proprietary Velodyne 8in driver opposite a similar material 8in passive radiator in a beefy sealed MDF cabinet with a rather lush black or white gloss finish. The amp is an 800W peak Class D unit with XLR, RCA and high-level input to cater for the widest range of installs.
Hot tech that would have been considered subwoofing witchcraft back on the original MiniViee is Velodyne’s latest EQ app, snappily entitled Velodyne Acoustics Auto EQ, and available in both major flavours of smart device OS. It’s a stripped-down affair to EQ the sub to the room automatically with a few manual tweaks, but it is a long way from the depth and complexity of systems found on models significantly higher up the Velodyne bass ladder.
Around the back, it’s far from stripped down in features with RCA and XLR stereo
loop-outputs, 12v trigger jacks in and out and on/auto/trigger power options. A 5V USB-A socket provides power to Velodyne’s optional Wi-Connect wireless signal receiver, and there is a 0/180 phase button for quick set-up. Both the volume knob and low pass control are infinitely rotating notched dials with a little blue LED display showing LPf and gain 1-30.
The MiniVee X is provided with a natty microphone and the heaviest most robust mic stand I have yet to see supplied as standard with any bit of AV kit. It makes for a great desk stand, assuming you have a desk in the right place, but there is no tripod mount thread on with the mic or stand, so don’t throw the gaffer tape away just yet.
Small subs are a delight to set up on both the ears and vertebrae, with the MiniVee X cracking out a fine balance straight out of the box, volume dialled without any EQ. Things went a little wayward using the app. While the sub connected with ease, the ‘prototype’ instruction manual supplied with our dem unit subwoofer was several generations behind the app firmware, leaving this reviewer scratching his head at the sonic and app displayed EQ results.
A few calls to distributor Redline and Velodyne later, and we had fathomed the problem lay in an errant manual. The systems require you to measure the sub at 50cm as a scan sweep, from which it measures the room from the seated position and creates a target curve designed to replicate the near-field measurement through EQ. That worked a whole lot better!
SOUNDING SWEET
A few tweaks and moves found the sweet spot in our new 6m x 4m dem room central on the front wall with very little in the way of EQ applied. There are five filters you can tweak manually but at this time no official pre-sets for movie, stereo, night etc. The joy with small sealed subs is they do tend to be very easy to integrate and I could happily love the little MiniVee X as it came
straight out of the box, sans EQ. A trickier room would be a different story, I’m sure – yet it’s so easy to move, adjust and tweak in the app, getting in dialled and bang-on won’t be an issue. And bang-on perfectly describes the MiniVee X, delivering incredible depth for its size and dynamic punch that would embarrass subs of substantially larger proportion. Dialled into other handy review samples, the fabulously
potent Marantz M1 streamer/amp and exceptional Q-Acoustics 5040 floorstanding speakers, the MiniVee X slotted in like Keith Moon to Roger and John, bring a potent, punchy edge to the trio. It goes bonkers loud for its compact size and has a fun-loving and raucous side that works as well with rock and dance as it does with action movies in cinema duties.
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The combination retails for just over £3,000, and I can safely say this is by a long chalk the best sounding and featured source/sub/speaker trio I have assembled at a price by a good margin. The Marantz’s flexibility and class-leading power with the 5040’s big, well-balanced sound make for an amazing duo, but the MiniVee X allows the trio to deliver way more than the sum of its parts. All three products are at the top of their game at their price, but together they drum up several levels of extra ‘2.1’ magic that is thoroughly addictive with the widest range of music. That is a properly ‘reference’ grade three grand system.
Back to the MiniVee X, and its performance per cubic centimetre of volume is outstanding making for a very appealing sub for a wide range of CI installations. From being easy to squirrel away in dedicated cinema rooms to slipping behind the sofa or adding substantial clout to music systems in secondary rooms without dominating the décor or space, its staggeringly versatile. Doubling up on MiniVee X’s would work with bigger rooms (say, upwards of 25sqm) and wouldn’t be much more tricky to conceal given their compact dimension.
Nearly two decades on and the MiniVee line continues to flourish with this powerful, compact and well-featured X version. As for the early manual, though... Musk try harder.
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CALIBRATION NATION!
The Invision/Pulse team asked some of the industry’s key experts to comment on the importance of taking advantage of the calibration capabilities provided by today’s products and systems. Providing the ultimate performance for customers and accessing the in-product and expert help available is a key differential in a competitive market.
Why does the industry sometimes not fully leverage the capabilities of today’s advanced systems?
David Meyerowitz, Technical Sales Manager, International Trinnov Audio, says, “I think this is always going to be the case as installers/ integrators have a very difficult job to understand many different systems and technologies. Expecting them to be able to have inside out knowledge of all these systems is unrealistic. Many are small businesses where having specialists is just not cost effective. That doesn’t mean they are any less capable.”
Joel Silver, President and founder of the Imaging Science Foundation, Inc., adds, “Yes, we find this to be a serious issue. When clients retain installation services, they are basically trusting a provider with their home. Even budget AV gear now provides extensive adjustments to make entertainment look and sound good in multiple room lighting and acoustic environments. Not deploying these features that clients paid for delivers mediocre performance - and violates the trust clients put in our industry’s installers.”
So why does this happen?
David says, “It’s likely that you have an automation programmer on staff as well as a network specialist, but they may not have a calibration specialist that knows all the systems they work with. So, the best example is where you employ a calibrator to help. The worst is when you press the auto calibrate button and expect it to be perfect. That’s not calibration.”
Joel also comments, “Too many installers remember that in the not-too-distant past even basic TV set up required expensive gear and three days of training. For very high-end system calibration that remains true – but the majority of top model TVs can now be set up nicely in under 10 minutes with a disc or a few hundreddollar pocket generator!”
Is there a ‘gold standard’ for every type of AV performance parameter, or is personal preference important within calibration?
David says, “For video yes, or at least grades of, but for audio there is not. In commercial cinema you have the X-Curve which is an EQ curve designed to provide consistency from mastering
studios through to playback in commercial cinemas. This does not exist in home audio, so it does come down to personal preference. But what’s not to be forgotten is that calibration is one thing, but the fundamental design of the system as a whole has to be engineered to allow the target performance to be achieved.”
Joel adds, “Our industry’s gold standards are the free CEDIA/CTA Immersive Audio and Immersive Video Recommended Practices. The audio document is an amazing milestone and has already been released; its number is CEDIA/ CTA RP23. Jason Dustal (ISF Specialist) and I chair the video committee, and it is still a work in progress. It will be named CEDIA/CTA RP23 when released. Both Recommended Practices cover four levels of performance - from entry level to state of the art – so every install we do now will have well defined technical guidelines that define a ‘Standard of Care’ for our clients.”
What are we aiming to achieve with calibration?
Joel says, “Calibration simply ensures that, at any budget, our clients get all the performance their equipment can deliver in their homes.
(L) David Meyerowitz, Technical Sales Manager, International Trinnov Audio. (R) Joel Silver, President and founder of the Imaging Science Foundation, Inc
An entry-level flat panel Level 1 calibration will only take 10 to 15 minutes, while a highend system may take two or three hours to calibrate multiple aspect ratios plus SDR and each HDR mode.”
David adds, “From an audio perspective, I’m aiming to achieve a balanced sound that offers deep, tight bass, vocal clarity, great immersivity, and air (very high frequency information that gives a lot of spatial queues). Another thing that is not standardised is the terminology we use to describe sound. But as I mentioned earlier, this result is largely dictated by the system design before you even get to calibration. Calibration allows you to fine-tune many aspects, but the acoustics, loudspeaker and amplification design also dictate to what degree you can refine it.”
Calibration systems contained within products can go a long way towards improving performance, but is there still room for installers to ‘express themselves’?
David comments, “Absolutely. There are many factors here, from Target Curve considerations to Bass Management decisions that can be very individual to taste. However, any calibration system is only as good as the data it gathers. Once measurements are taken and computation is done, double-checking that the algorithms have delivered the expected results is where the difference is made.
“This is particularly the case for systems using impulse response for time alignment. If a calibration system gets a weak or poor impulse response from a speaker or subwoofer, then the compensated delay will be incorrect.”
David continues, “By checking this afterwards, you can correct any error if needed. This isn’t the fault of the calibration system, as there are numerous factors that may result in poor measurement data, such as background noise, poor acoustics, etc. Performing verifications and further manual tuning, beyond the predicted results, is where extra performance can be gained.”
Richard Litofsky, Co-founder & CEO at madVR Labs, also contributes, “Audio calibration perhaps provides a little more flexibility in
terms of an integrator’s interpretation of the ‘standards’. However, with imaging, things are different. There is an expected standard: if you want that ‘school bus yellow’ to look right, the image produced must be accurate and avoid introducing distracting colours that don’t ‘look right’. You could oversaturate some colours, but then you’ll lose some of the realism today’s systems, particularly after calibration, can deliver. This is the best thing about calibration – there are standards to meet, and working with an expert and a platform like madVR will help deliver those standards and impress your customers!”
Joel adds, “On the video side, viewing angles and screen size ranges will be part of performance level recommendations in RP23 – and, of course, these are highly budgetdependent. The prices of direct-view TVs and projectors have dropped dramatically, so large screens in even modestly-sized rooms are now affordable – and are a great topic of discussion with clients, where an integrator’s insight is critical for success.
“With the power of current projectors, the screen brightness at home can exceed almost all commercial theatres. The somewhat controversial 300-nit specification for future commercial theatre HDR was shown at CEDIA Expo and can now be achieved at home for high-end clients – I am actually watching it at home right now – that’s my ‘spin’, and I find 300 nits 100% entertaining!”
What are the best examples of improvements via calibration?
David says, “The best examples I have are from my recent calibrations using Trinnov Audio’s WaveForming technology. Whether with four subs or more, the difference in detail and control in the bass is revolutionary. Anyone will tell you that bass is the hardest part to get right.”
Joel adds, “How about tripling the light output and radically improving system accuracy in 10 minutes of your time? The best TVs now have factory modes that are reasonably accurate and will meet Level 1 performance – but those modes are NEVER the default out-of-the-box settings. It drives me crazy when I see installs where the TVs are in default modes.”
What improvements have been made to make calibration more accessible?
Joel explains, “The ISF Online Level 1 course is now our most popular and easiest product – it has 11 modules covering all the basics every integrator should know. It’s self-taught, and we provide the correct answers for any errors on test questions, so the pass rate is, as intended, 100%.
“Meters and generators are much less expensive now – I even have a prototype on my desk for a pocket-sized entry-level generator that will be very affordable – soon everyone will be able to own one and get their clients to Level 1 video performance every time!”
How can the industry support installers to be more proactive?
David says, “Get the industry designing and engineering better systems from the outset. You can’t fix poor system design with calibration. You can make it better, but you can’t replace good design and engineering with calibration. Any calibration method can only make the best of what it has to work with. This is where CEDIA Recommended Practices come in.
“Calibration is a service and should be treated as such. Whether you treat it as a separate line item on the BOM or consider it as labour, you are applying your expertise to deliver the finished system to the customer. It takes time and skill beyond just purchasing the equipment and plugging it in.”
Joel concludes, “Level 1 video calibration only takes a few minutes, so it should be included with every install. Higher-end systems need more time, so this should always be a line item on every installation. We also find clients need long-term care, so regular check-ups and recurring maintenance fees should be a core part of your standard of care.”
To learn more about calibration within products or as an in-person service, get in touch!
Invision UK Pulse Cinemas invisionuk.com pulsecinemas.com
LOVING LIFE WITH LOU
EI
profiles Lou Mannarino, founder of speaker maker 1 SOUND as well as enjoying a 40-year career as a musician, installer and live audio engineer.
Tell us about 1 Sound, what is the concept?
“1 SOUND is a culmination of my life’s work as an audio designer, engineer, a conductor, and a musician. I have engineered for artists from Paul McCartney to Jay-Z and worked in places like Lincoln Center and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1 SOUND naturally started after I created my first loudspeaker, the Panorama MS34 featuring Mono + Stereo Technology, and friends in the industry felt like this was truly something special that needed to be accessible to our industry.
1 SOUND is motivated by meeting the needs of the industry and to us that means: creating needed tools that aren’t already existing, being built in the USA, having immediate and individualised support, and empowering audio professionals and enthusiasts. At 1 SOUND we aim to create tools that make our job (as audio engineers) better and supporting the audio industry first.
1 SOUND has enabled me to create the loudspeakers I have been dreaming about over my past 40 year-plus career in audio. Every loudspeaker we make is something unique that has not been available before, so it is easy to say every loudspeaker is a key product and something worth checking out. I would say our latest interesting tool would be our new Level L38, which is a flush mounted, discreet, point source with a progressive horn. We believe this loudspeaker will really change the installation market. It is a totally discreet box that can blend into a wall and be mounted 8 to 15 feet high (with dispersion 80 degrees directly below the speaker), providing full range, high-definition audio that supports high SPL targets. It is really an incredible speaker.
Do you remember what inspired you to create 1 SOUND, was it a gradual process or more of a eureka moment?
“It wasn’t gradual… It was more about solving what I perceived as a problem, or what was
going to be a developing problem. I felt that when people are outsourcing manufacturing to overseas, immediacy, design change, adapting, customisation, these are values that manufacturers have slowly drifted away from.
And I realised, in thinking about my life, those moments of me talking to a human about an idea or tools I was using and wanted to be better with, those were the most important things that I felt made my career successful. So it’s our brand message to be adapting ourselves, always to the needs of the individual in their pursuit of providing a product to their customer.
Mass production is not necessarily fitting for professional audio. There needs to be creative production. And I think that is part of the need that we’re trying to fulfill.
You began building speakers at a young age, tell us a little about that, what inspired you to do this?
“Well, the results when I was young building speakers were quite terrible. Because I didn’t have… not the ears, that’s the irony, I knew exactly what was terrible. It was, the facility, the ability, to have the necessary tools.
The tools today are very different from the tools when you’re younger. Today, for example, we have computer emulation software. We have 3D printers. We have so many more things at our disposal. When I was younger, the speaker makers of the time, which are speaker makers today, some of them, didn’t have these tools. And, so I have a fundamental respect for everyone who creates loudspeakers in innovation, something that’s new.
The inspiration came from being a mix engineer. I’m a live sound engineer. So every day when I would leave a show, and in New York City I was able to do the best shows in the world, I would come home thinking what I was missing. And then I would have an idea of a tool that needed to be created. A loudspeaker, microphone… sometimes it’s just, hardware. It’s just accessibility. Sometimes it’s the simplest of things that can make something successful.
And, that’s where my inspiration comes from. It still comes from that. It comes from, how can I do a better job? I have to identify the problem first.”
You have worked with Paul McCartney, Jay-Z, Bon Jovi, and The New York Philharmonic, Can you share any insights from working for these types of clients?
“That’s a tough one; it’s a long answer. So, I have to pick certain parts of it. One of the biggest challenges I’ve had was to design audio for a tent that’s sat 80,000 people on one level. Another big challenge might have been designing the Oculus at the World Trade Center, or the MET Museum… how to keep audio from polluting artwork or the demise of artwork through vibration and things like this.
So, artists are the byproduct of design and implementation. So I can’t say artists necessarily helped me in my ability to be a better audio engineer or provider. But some artists had an effect on me because of their sincere approach to the music, which would teach me things to listen for.
The most important thing I learned in working at prestigious venues or for well-known artists was if you are not willing to listen to the people you’re trying to work for, then success is not really going to happen. I always try to listen, understand, and create the best outcome for the job or project I am working at and for the people involved.”
You have designed systems for some high-profile clients; Can you give us a few highlights from projects of this kind?
“Well, the MET Museum is interesting because of its specific set of challenges. Like I mentioned how it was a matter of keeping vibration and keeping intensity off artwork that was susceptible to noise vibration. So that was an interesting design and inspired our cardioid subwoofer designs.
Also, the fact that it was more of a 6 to 7 second reverb time in the Temple of Dendur, which is where they have many of their events including the MET Gala.
Another interesting project recently was, to try to mitigate 30 dB of noise pollution for an outdoor pool club, called Strawberry Moon created by Pharrell Williams and Groot Hospitality. We needed to work with the city of Miami to prove that I could achieve this and then it was tested by the court. And, it was achieved! We are in the Miami court record for creating a design and a product that was successful in mitigating that amount of noise pollution.”
You have conducted concerts and created music for many prestigious events and initiatives; Can you give us a few highlights from this part of your career?
“I conducted a youth orchestra, an inner-city youth symphony. And I managed to rent where the New York Philharmonic performed and buy out a night to produce a youth orchestra concert, which was pretty unprecedented. I should really say it was a surprise to everyone that I managed to do that as a maestro; I tried to give the best experience to the students. And I would say that, for me, was the most significant part of my conducting and teaching career.
Another highlight of my career was conducting professional theatre, while being the audio designer with my production staff mixing audio. I do think that my ability as a sound designer has a direct relationship to my ability as a conductor. I think they really have gone hand in hand. And my work at the New York Philharmonic is testimony to that because I would be score reading while I was mixing. And to be able to do that is something unique for a sound guy.
You recently visited the UK for some events with 1 Sound. How did that go?
The purpose of the visit for me was to understand more about the market in the UK with our distributor, CUK Group. And I believe very strongly in CUK’s potential. I was very impressed by James Lawford (Live Sound Channel Manager at CUK Audio) and the team. They are so capable and fitting to represent our brand in the way we want and how we represent ourselves in the US. It was a very exciting and inspiring trip. We met some serious audio engineers and designers. We also encountered some interesting problems that the market in the UK have that we try to have open discussion about.
And CUK set up such a great environment. I don’t think sales for 1 SOUND was ever on my mind in all the presentations I did. It was always about how might we provide something better for the industry. And, it was very exciting to be there.
It was great to visit some installations with 1 SOUND incorporated and to see the dealers we have in the UK that CUK Group has cultivated. We are really about about the foundation we are building in the UK.
What music or artists are you enjoying right now?
I listen to a lot of things… I still love listening to chamber or orchestral music, some jazz. I love singer-songwriters, and I love listening to classical guitar music as well.
Listening to music is really important as an engineer and designer. Once you can negotiate the technology, it’s only the ability to listen that separates you from other things. And it’s a direct relationship to what I create as a producer of audio equipment.
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RAISING THE PROFILE OF HVAC CONTROL IN LUXURY RESIDENTIAL PROJECTS
Chris Thorne, Director at Imperium Building Systems, looks at integrating efficient, sustainable systems from the ground up.
As luxury residential properties evolve, the integration of intelligent home automation systems has become more sophisticated, with lighting control, automated window treatments and audio-visual systems often taking centre stage. However, HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning) control systems, often considered an afterthought by comparison, are rapidly ascending the priority list, as homeowners, designers and developers become increasingly aware of their importance and the need to blend them into stunning interior design schemes to achieve the perfect balance between function and form. Furthermore, with rising energy costs and an increased focus on reducing carbon footprints, luxury homeowners are demanding efficient, sustainable solutions that are attractive, intuitive to use and fully integrated into their home-automation systems.
THE SHIFTING PERCEPTION OF HVAC IN HIGH-END DEVELOPMENTS
Until recently, the design and installation of HVAC and BMS (Building Management Systems) was often sidelined in favour of more visibly impressive elements, such as feature lighting and window treatments. However, this perspective is rapidly changing. As HVAC control systems take their rightful place in the early planning and design phases of high-end residential properties, BMS specialists and home automation integrators must work closely from the outset with architects, designers, and developers to deliver a seamless blend of aesthetics and functionality. This early collaboration can be pivotal in achieving systems that are both unobtrusive and optimised, allowing for elegant control solutions that blend into beautiful interior design schemes but are easily manageable by the homeowner.
THE ROLE OF HVAC IN ACHIEVING THERMAL COMFORT AND ENERGY EFFICIENCY
HVAC systems play a vital role in creating an environment that feels luxurious, enhancing the comfort and wellbeing of the home’s occupants. Unlike lighting or AV systems, HVAC operates in the background, providing the essential warmth, cooling, and ventilation that can make or break the experience of a space. Effective temperature regulation contributes to the ‘feel’ of a luxury residence, providing a sense of tranquillity and wellbeing. This is particularly important in premium developments where rooms may feature large windows, high ceilings, or open-concept spaces that present unique challenges for temperature control.
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However, thermal comfort is just one side of the coin. Residential control systems also need to support sustainability initiatives, and so energy efficiency has become not only desirable but essential. Advanced HVAC technologies, such as variable refrigerant flow (VRF) systems, smart thermostats and heat or energy recovery units, allow for precise temperature control while minimising energy consumption. This focus on efficiency aligns with the growing trend of creating a sustainable supply chain that strives to minimise the environmental impact of developing luxury homes. An energy-efficient HVAC design, and the associated BMS control system, is a major asset in reducing operational costs and enhancing the property’s value in the long term, a feature increasingly appreciated by environmentally conscious buyers.
INTEGRATING HVAC WITH HOME AUTOMATION FOR SEAMLESS CONTROL
To achieve a cohesive smart home experience, integrating temperature control with broader home automation systems is critical. This integration allows HVAC to be controlled through the same interface that manages lighting, shading and entertainment systems, providing a unified platform for effortless control. This not only improves the user experience, but also satisfies interior design pressures by removing unnecessary wall clutter. Furthermore, when temperature control systems are integrated, users gain the ability to monitor, adjust, and even program heating and cooling settings on the move or remotely, via their smartphones or tablets.
Incorporating HVAC control within the wider automation ecosystem allows for a synchronised
environment where, for example, the lighting and shading control systems work in harmony with the BMS to optimise both comfort and energy savings. For instance, a smart system might lower shades during peak sunlight hours to reduce the load on the cooling system or adjust the heating when a room or the building is unoccupied. This level of coordination between systems not only enhances convenience but can also significantly reduce energy waste.
However, creating this level of integration doesn’t simply begin when installers are onsite programming the various components that make up the home-automation system. Engaging with specialist BMS and smarthome integrators as early as possible, such as the team at Imperium Building Systems, ensure that critical details which are often missed or overlooked can be designed in from the beginning, helping to reduce risk and minimise costs during the construction and implementation phases.
CHALLENGES IN DESIGNING HVAC FOR LUXURY SPACES
Designing HVAC systems for luxury residential spaces comes with unique challenges. High-end residences often feature openplan designs with expansive spaces, large windows and high ceilings, all of which make temperature control more complex. Additionally, the aesthetic requirements of luxury projects often mean that certain components or devices, such as thermostats or room controls, need to be minimised or hidden to maintain the architectural integrity of the space. However, this doesn’t always lend itself to the most user-friendly outcome, and
so to overcome this problem we are seeing a new wave of premium temperature control devices, such as those from Polar Bear Design, that blend superior usability with the finest aesthetics, and can be physically integrated with the most popular keypads from brands such as Lutron and Crestron.
Another consideration is the role of climate zones within the home. In larger residences, it is increasingly common to divide almost every room into separate zones, each with its own unique settings. Zoning provides personalised comfort while enhancing energy efficiency by allowing the system to target specific areas of the home without unnecessary heating or cooling in unoccupied spaces. To achieve this advanced BMS control systems include sensors to monitor occupancy, temperature, and humidity, automatically adjusting control parameters accordingly. Such technology not only improves energy efficiency but also supports the luxurious experience of a home that intuitively adjusts to its occupants’ needs.
THE IMPORTANCE OF EARLY HVAC PLANNING
The true benefit of a fully integrated smarthome system is only fully realised when it is integrated into the project from the earliest design stages. Early collaboration between BMS and smart-home specialists, architects, interior designers, consultants and developers mean that control system components can be designed to fit within the architectural vision of the home.
For developers and architects, this forwardthinking approach can prevent costly retrofits and design compromises down the line. By prioritising BMS and HVAC control systems in the initial design phases, luxury projects can achieve a seamless look and feel, with temperature control systems that are both efficient and aesthetically pleasing.
CONCLUSION
Incorporating BMS and HVAC control solutions into early stages of luxury residential design is no longer optional; it is essential. As home technology solutions advance, they provide luxury homeowners with a more comfortable, sustainable, and customisable living environment. Developers, architects, and interior designers who embrace these advancements early in the design process will not only meet the rising expectations of their clients but will also contribute to a future where luxury and sustainability are one and the same.
Imperium has developed a CPD (Continued Professional Development) presentation, available on request, that discusses simple and practical solutions to help designers and developers navigate this complex and exciting topic.
ELEVATING MY CAREER THROUGH CEDIA: A JOURNEY TO AWARD-WINNING SUCCESS
Benjamin Pratt, Director at White Onyx Automation, explains how CEDIA has been key in his career development.
A few years ago, I never would have imagined receiving the Best Newcomer Award at the 2024 CEDIA Smart Home Awards. Coming from an electrical background, the world of smart home technology seemed like a challenging and exclusive industry to enter. However, with determination, self-learning, and support from a great community, I’ve managed to carve out my place, and this recognition feels like confirmation that I’m headed in the right direction.
I first discovered the custom install industry on a job I was working on as an electrician. I was fascinated, but when I tried to explore the field, I quickly realised there wasn’t an obvious way in. Opportunities to learn were scarce, and the industry seemed closed off. So, I took matters into my own hands. I started reaching out to brands, enrolling in training sessions, and teaching myself everything I could. Along the way, I documented my journey on social media, sharing my progress and challenges. What began as a personal diary of sorts snowballed into something much bigger. People started noticing my work, reaching out with project opportunities, and introducing me to others in the industry.
By January 2022, it was time to fully commit. I rebranded my business to White Onyx Automation, to focus on luxury performance AV installations.
I’d heard of CEDIA before but didn’t fully understand its potential until I spoke with their team. They explained what CEDIA is all about: a community of professionals dedicated to improving themselves and advancing the industry. Their insights resonated with me, and shortly after, I decided to join.
I’ll admit, I wasn’t sure what to expect at first. But being a member has had a significant impact on my journey. CEDIA offers a source of reliable, vetted information - something invaluable when you’re trying to navigate the vast and often confusing world of smart home
technology. In an age where you can Google anything but can’t always trust what you find, having access to CEDIA’s whitepapers, training and resources has been a game-changer for me.
Over the past couple of years, I’ve thrown myself into learning as much as I can. I’ve taken courses on cinema design and RP22, and completed the CPD outreach course, which has allowed me to deliver presentations and share my knowledge with others. It’s been incredibly rewarding to not only gain skills but also give back to the industry that’s welcomed me.
Receiving the Best Newcomer Award was an amazing moment for me. It’s a personal milestone, a pat on the back that reminds me I’m heading in the right direction. The recognition has been fulfilling in so many ways; it’s boosted my morale and motivation.
Ultimately, it’s more than just a personal win. Awards like these are essential for the industry. They set standards and encourage us all to push ourselves. Just to enter, you need to meet certain criteria, which forces you to elevate
your work. Now that I’ve won this award, I feel a renewed responsibility to keep raising the bar for myself, my clients, and the industry.
To anyone considering joining or even just exploring the smart home industry, my advice is to just dive straight in. It’s a fast-paced, challenging field, but with the right mindset and resources like those from CEDIA, you can achieve more than you imagine. You get out what you put in, and for anyone looking to better themselves, the opportunities are endless.
Winning this award is just the beginning for me. It’s a motivator to keep learning and delivering exceptional work. The smart home industry is growing rapidly, and I’m excited to be part of its future.
Ready to take your career to the next level? Join CEDIA today and gain access to valuable courses, expert resources, and a community dedicated to your success. Explore the CEDIA Smart Home Awards and start your journey towards industry recognition. cedia.org/awards.
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HOW DO YOU ACCEPT PAYMENT?
Jason Knott, EI’s resident number cruncher, ex CE-Pro Editor and data solutions architect evangelist at D-Tools, takes a look at payment options.
Integrators must weigh the pros and cons of accepting payments from customers via wire transfers and credit cards for deposits, progress payments and service agreements.
In the not-too-distant past, it was rare to find an integration company that accepted credit cards as a form of payment. Today, you’d be hard-pressed to find an integrator that doesn’t.
Indeed, the payment processing world has certainly changed, and integrators, like many industries made up primarily of small businesses, are evolving also. Long gone are the days of only accepting remittance via checkbooks and cash. In the current business environment, most integrators recognise it’s critical to take payments by credit cards or wire transfers such as CHAPS (Clearing House Automated Payments System) and Bacs.
Method of Payment to Integrators
Lastly, the frequency of consumers looking to pay using cryptocurrency is certainly likely to increase in the future.
“It doesn’t matter how you want to be paid… it matters how your customer wants to pay you,” emphasises Adam Holden, Head of Payments at D-Tools. “Integrators should not be dictating to the clients how to pay them. You want your money from any avenue you possibly can or you risk losing business with specific clients.”
Here are four interesting datapoints against which integrators can benchmark their own payment processing experiences.
1. Average Payment Frequency & Amounts
According to the data gleaned from D-Tools Payments, which is a new embedded payment solution in D-Tools Cloud, clients pay via bankto-bank wire transfer at twice the frequency to credit cards, with 67% of payments processed via wire transfers compared to 33% via credit card. Moreover, the average wire transfer payment run through D-Tools Payments to date is more than double the average credit card payment. Specifically, the average wire transfer is £5,184 while the average credit card payment received by an integration company is £1,922.
2. Approval Times Vary
Bacs is the UK equivalent of ACH (Automated Clearing House) in the U.S. There are a handful of banks in the UK that are members of the group, which process payments at no cost but there can be a three-day wait for the money to hit your account. CHAPS is the equivalent to a bankto-bank wire transfer in the U.S. This network
processes same-day Pound Sterling payments within three hours if the transaction takes place during normal business hours. The payments are immediate, but there is a fee, which is why this form of payment is generally recommended for payments more than £10,000. Credit cards, on the other hand, have instantaneous approval (literally in milliseconds).
3. Fees and Charges Differ
While Bacs transfers are free, CHAPS transfers have fees attached to them, commonly £25 per transaction. Credit card merchant processing fees can range from 2.75% up to 4% depending on several factors, such as volume, type of card and information collected and sent to the card brands. Those higher credit card fees are likely a strong consideration why integrators might prefer their clients pay them via wire transfer; however, there are likely many customers who will refuse to do business with an integrator that does not accept credit cards. Consumers have strong incentives to use credit cards… namely, convenience and the ability to earn perks such as airline miles and cashback.
4. Measuring Deposits vs. Progress Payments vs. Service Charges
The data from D-Tools Payments reveals that integrators are comfortable processing digital payments for deposits, progress payments and service charges. To date, deposits represent 51% of payments, progress payments are 27%, and service agreement fees are 22%.
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HOW ARE AUTOMATION PLATFORMS EVOLVING TO MEET MODERN CLIENT DEMANDS?
Stuart Tickle, Managing Director, AWE Europe, takes a look at the smart home landscape.
Home automation platforms have evolved at a rapid rate over the past few years. Our changing needs and the potential for automation to further enhance our lives beyond convenience, have seen changes in what’s expected and demanded by clients. They’re looking for solutions that are easy to understand and use but also very versatile and scalable, contributing in a positive way to their lifestyle by bringing entertainment, working from home, energy efficiency, health and wellbeing and other technologies under their control.
INTEROPERABILITY AND INFRASTRUCTURE
The biggest evolution in recent times is improved interoperability between systems, devices, applications and services. The now normal hybrid working model has resulted in a realisation of the significant improvements that have to be made to a home’s networking infrastructure to deliver robust reliability of everything from work meetings to home automation. And, we’re seeing wired infrastructure featuring highly during new-builds and whole home renovations.
All of this gives us a solid foundation for the home automation platform to operate on and be capable of supporting the integration of not just smart home but also commercial A/V technologies. The previously clear boundaries
between each market are less defined, and this shows no sign of slowing down as enterprise and collaboration solutions are developed to support remote workers in the home.
For installers, it’s important to be aware of the intersection of work/home and keep up to date on training in this area.
VOICE CONTROL VS HANDHELD INTERFACES
People like the convenience of voice control at first, but once the novelty goes, those that can often go back to physical control devices. For many functions, it is just better. A key area of growth for us at AWE has been dedicated control solutions that bring connected devices together.
We work with URC, an affordable yet powerful and scalable control solution. Users can integrate anything from a single room with TV, Sonos or HEOS, Hue and Nest, to a whole home with control of a wide array of technologies, from heating and audio to lighting and blinds. All controlled via their smartphone for in-pocket convenience, or a dedicated touch screen panel, handheld remote, or via voice control. Customers can even set tailored scenarios to create the perfect environment for a ‘Party’, ‘Intimate Dinner’ or ‘Movie Night’ at the touch of a button, and also automate key functionality.
ENERGY EFFICIENCY
Another hot topic, now more than ever, is energy efficiency. Advanced automation systems can improve the energy efficiency of a home and reduce bills and carbon emissions by only using energy when a room is occupied and switching to sleep mode or ‘all off’ when a room or area of the home is not in use. Having electronics all centrally controlled is a big help in achieving this conveniently.
GETTING A FOOT IN THE DOOR
Current economic factors – including the ongoing cost of living crisis - mean that money is tight and many clients in the mid-range are spending less. This is where entry-level control solutions that provide an opportunity to easily ‘scale-up’ can be a great option.
When installing a media room for example, adding an element of control can be an easy upsell opportunity to enhance the user experience as well as the client investment. For example, entry-level solutions that are scalable, such as the Expressway Software and processor from URC, provide a great option with intuitive, reliable, and affordable control from just £500. Clients can then add additional rooms to the system further down the line.
EVOLUTION, NOT REVOLUTION
As technology advances, so too do the demands and expectations of consumers. Snap One charts the next wave of evolution.
It’s clear to us that clients want a seamless, intuitive and comprehensive control experience, across multiple devices, where ease of use, unified operation of different connected subsystems and interaction are all effortless.
System reliability is also critical. Users want assurance that their system will perform consistently and can be remotely managed in a secure way to ensure software updates are made and technology is maintained to perform at its optimum at all times.
Personalisation is another key factor. Clients are looking for automation that can adapt to their routines, tastes and preferences and add value by making their experience feel personalised and efficient. They want quick, easy access to rich, adaptable content, and bespoke, modern aesthetics for a highly personalised and empowering experience.
The ideal smart home automation platform provides all of these elements, creating a smooth, reliable, and secure experience. It allows users to customise and manage their smart home systems with ease and integrates seamlessly into the client’s lifestyle to become a natural part of everyday life.
All of these goals can be achieved in a significant leap forward for home automation platforms with the upcoming release of Control4 X4.
Expected to become available in early 2025, Control4 X4 transforms the system from a traditional operating system into a comprehensive platform designed for smart living experiences. It promises to give homeowners the ability to control, personalise, and manage their homes more easily than ever before and redefine how they interact with their homes.
Giving clients more control is a huge stepchange for this new platform. We recognise that making small changes to a control system after it has been installed can make a huge difference in customer satisfaction, as their lifestyle and needs change and evolve over time. In Control4 X4, homeowners can create and edit custom scenes, adjust settings as their needs evolve, and access at-a-glance dashboards that allow for instant changes.
Before handing off the system, our partners can leverage the Routines feature in Control4 X4 to quickly set up basic automations for their customers. This saves time and delivers a great out-of-the-box experience. Once the customer starts using the system, they can easily tweak the specific parameters of the Routines to fit their evolving needs directly from the app. Users can also set favourites and shortcuts to provide quick access to frequently used controls and scenes, making daily interactions seamless.
With these tools, end users can better manage their systems and set preferences.
As a direct reflection of consumer demand for seamless control, Control4 X4 also includes enhanced Apple HomeKit functionality, offering deeper integration with the Apple ecosystem and enabling unified management of the Control4 system across Apple products such as CarPlay, iPhone Control Centre, and Mac Desktop. Users can also launch scenes via Siri and adjust the settings of individual lighting dimmers and other devices.
In its look and feel, Control4 X4 will deliver a great experience. It features a modern and minimalist design that helps users organise their smart devices and navigate their increasingly complex systems. The adoption of new personalisation tools, along with a completely new navigation design language, ensures that even as new devices and systems are added to a home, they too can be easily populated onto the user interface.
Control4 X4 is an evolutionary milestone for Control4, offering significant benefits to both end-users and Control4 partners. It’s an intuitive interface that provides customers with the richer, more empowering, and enjoyable smart home experience they want.
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FUTUREPROOFING LATER LIVING WITH INTELLIGENT HOME SYSTEMS
Kevin Lenton, UK Product Marketing Director for ABB Smart Buildings, reveals how smart building installations can significantly boost independence and improve the quality of life for elderly residents.
The UK faces a significant demographic shift, with the United Nations projecting that by 2043, 24 percent of the population will be 65 or older. This ageing demographic means we need more housing that caters to their specific needs.
A separate English Housing Survey from 2021 found that 1.1 million older adults currently live in subpar conditions marked by energy inefficiency, dampness and health risks. With plans to build 1.5 million homes over the next five years, it’s crucial that these homes meet the needs of older residents.
Partnering with ABB, Cartwright Pickard and The Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design have released a study titled ‘Age-Inclusive Design Principles: Shaping a sense of belonging in later life’, which shows the importance of smart home solutions, particularly those facilitated by KNX technology, to enhance the living standards of older adults.
THE SMART INTEGRATION
One of the 18 principles proposed is the integration of smart building technology. For example, actuators can automate door operations to significantly boost a resident’s independence. Wall-mounted controllers enable easy management of electrical systems,
lighting, and appliances, while additional features can be integrated, such as door control systems, touchscreen interfaces, or adjustable kitchen worktops.
ABB’s KNX system features sensors, smart switches, sockets, and actuators for motorised curtains and window openers, which are all connected through structured wiring that combines power with a digital communication bus line. This set-up allows for the seamless addition of new assisted living tools, thanks to adaptable digital standards like OpenAPI and Matter.
Voice control systems further simplify tasks for older adults. ABB’s i-bus KNX system, which is compatible with notable smart speakers from the likes of Google and Amazon, enables voice control through a simple software update. This flexibility ensures that as residents’ needs become greater, their homes can adapt accordingly to suite their needs.
THE FUTURE FOR RESIDENCES
Energy efficiency is a major concern for older adults, especially with rising utility bills. One effective solution involves passive infrared (PIR) sensors, which detect room occupancy and automatically turn off heating and lighting when
the room is unoccupied, thereby saving energy. These sensors can also alert a concierge or care team if an apartment appears empty when a resident is supposed to be home, adding a layer of security.
An integrated approach further improves energy efficiency by preventing simultaneous operation of heating and cooling systems and shutting off these systems when a window is open. This technology can lower building service costs as well as energy savings. For instance, automated emergency lighting systems can perform self-tests and send maintenance alerts, ensuring compliance with safety regulations and reducing the need for labour-intensive inspections.
Addressing these concerns can drastically enhance the quality of life for older residents. Companies should adopt all principles comprehensively, ensuring that living space designs seamlessly integrate technology and its functionalities. Future developments are likely to feature more advanced smart technologies like home robotics, increased green space integration, and a stronger emphasis on sustainability. This approach will help the older generation live healthier, happier, and longer lives, making it an essential strategy for ongoing community planning and development.
DON’T CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM FOR HARMONY
Phillip Pini, Director, Residential Sales UK, Crestron, urges installers to find balance and create the right solutions for each customer.
There’s a moment in the American TV comedy
Curb Your Enthusiasm in which star Larry David (who’s also the co-creator of Seinfeld) gets into an argument with his smartphone. The everabrasive David can’t get his virtual assistant to understand him, and the scene devolves into a one-sided shouting match in which the assistant calmly misinterprets everything David says as he becomes increasingly profane. For the average viewer, the scene is very funny. For an integrator? The stuff of nightmares.
But it’s a terrific illustration of something that every integrator needs to remember. Any automation system has its limitations, and understanding and working within those limitations can help integrator and client arrive at a smart home solution that’s incredibly satisfying.
Depending on the client’s wishes, the end solution will likely be a blend of control options — voice alone (as evidenced by the illustration above) is still limited, and any solution will need to also include touch screen controls, automated events driven by either time or sensors, and so on.
What’s more, a smart home system will likely have more than one user on a daily basis, and each of those users will have their own level of comfort with technology — not to mention personal preferences. As systems become bigger and more complex and as technology marches forward, ensuring that those demands are adequately met becomes more challenging for the integrator.
The core feature of any smart home platform, then, has to be adaptability.
And the key to an adaptable platform — one that can also welcome third-party devices and systems with full, seamless operability — is software that can be updated constantly, with reliable results.
For our part, the creation of a platform that’s updated and tweaked throughout its life in ways large and small has allowed Crestron solutions to keep pace with both the wider technological landscape and growing consumer demands. The Crestron Home OS recently saw the addition — and subsequent expansion — of conditional logic. These conditional sequences introduce the ability to create ‘if-then, else’ statements to the automation process, giving integrators the ability to create complex and nuanced automation scenarios with a defined set of conditions that must be met before an action is triggered
As we explained on the Crestron blog regarding the update to the software:
“For example, a sunset sequence could be created so that if the light sensor in the living room falls below 30%, the living room’s lights rise to 80%,” explains Michael Short, Crestron’s senior director of marketing operations and residential. That transition can be made gradually so that the shift into a warm and inviting ambiance is hardly noticeable.
“A multi-trigger sequence could also be introduced so that when, say, a movie streaming source is selected, the system ‘knows’ to dim the lights, close the blinds, and adjust the speaker volume for the best viewing experience,” says Michael. “Because it’s all been made easier in the latest Crestron Home OS update, integrators can quickly and efficiently customise those functions to the client’s preferences.”
That conditional logic is just one of the recent updates. And those consumer-facing features are only half the story.
The other aspect of any platform that sees regular updates has to provide more than just ‘additional magic’ for the smart home client. Features that allow for greater backend control when it’s needed, features that allow a integrator to configure aspects of the project such as lighting and shading before even setting foot on the property, remote access, and other enhancements that continually reduce the need for truck rolls — all of these should be part of the big picture.
Ultimately, change is a given when it comes to the ever-evolving smart home — so adaptability is an absolute must.
UNIFICATION FIGHT
Alan Chow, Managing Director at software and driver wizards Chowmain, takes a look at the challenges and solutions in integrating diverse smart systems into a unified experience.
Integrating diverse smart systems into a unified experience is a complex challenge, especially for custom integrators working across multiple control platforms. As a driver developer, I’ve encountered first-hand the challenges of aligning different systems like Control4, Crestron Home, and Nice Home Management, each of which has its own philosophy and architecture for controlling devices. These differences can lead to a range of issues, from how lighting is controlled to the stability of cloud-based integrations, making the role of a well-designed driver crucial for a seamless user experience.
Control4, Crestron Home, and Nice Home Management each have a defined concept of what a ‘lighting device’ should look like. They typically expect lighting to be structured around individual loads, meaning each fixture is controlled as a separate entity. This structure allows for precise control over lighting scenes, dimming levels, and zoning, providing users with a high degree of customisation and control over their environment. The expectation is that when a user adjusts a light, they can do so at a granular level.
However, not all lighting systems adhere to this model. For instance, Dynalite uses a presetbased control system. Rather than managing each load individually, Dynalite is designed to activate presets, which are predefined scenes that adjust multiple lights simultaneously to specific settings. This approach can be more efficient in some cases, but it poses a challenge when integrating with platforms that expect individual control. A Crestron Home system, for example, expects control over each load and that simply doesn’t exist in preset-based architecture. This requires developers to create custom solutions that translate presets into a format that aligns with the expected control structures of these platforms.
The solution to this challenge often involves custom driver development. A well-designed driver can map Dynalite presets to individual loads that systems like Control4 and Crestron Home expect, allowing the preset functionality to be accessed without losing the flexibility these platforms offer. This often means writing software that acts as a translator between systems, effectively ‘speaking the language’ of both platforms to create a seamless experience for end-users.
Smart home project images courtesy of Control4
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DESIGN & CONSULTING
With our experience of smart home integrations and BMS, we can bridge the gap between the AV and HVAC worlds, designing systems that take full account of how the client wants to use them. We offer a range of services from consulting to complete system design.
MONITORING & DIAGNOSTICS
All our solutions include advanced cloud-based monitoring for analysing system performance and fault reporting. Turn a reactive response into a proactive call to inform clients that their problem has been resolved, even before they knew they had one.
Multi-platform smart home integration tailors the experience to the client - whether that is elegant in-room controls, or virtually invisible sensors with App-based controls. All backed up with sophisticated installer tools.
Beyond lighting systems, cloud-based integrations introduce another layer of complexity. Many modern devices and services rely on cloud connectivity for functionality, and while this offers a range of benefits, it also comes with potential issues that can disrupt the user experience. Internet-based disruptions can affect the availability of these integrations, making devices unresponsive if the connection is lost. Even in well-connected environments, users can face disruptions when API service providers experience outages or implement rate limits on API calls.
Rate limits, in particular, can be a significant issue for integrators. When building drivers that interact with cloud services, it’s important to manage how often the system queries those services to avoid hitting limits. For instance, a driver that pulls data from a cloud-based weather service or a voice assistant needs to be carefully managed to ensure that it remains responsive without exceeding API thresholds. Failure to do so can lead to throttled performance, causing delays or failures in device control that users notice and find frustrating.
The challenge with cloud-based dependencies is not only about maintaining
a stable connection but also anticipating and planning for service changes. API providers might change their rules, alter endpoints, or even discontinue services. When this happens, drivers need to be updated swiftly to maintain compatibility. This requires close communication with API providers and proactive driver development to ensure users don’t experience service interruptions.
To address these challenges, a layered approach is often necessary. For integrating systems like Dynalite into platforms such as Control4 or Crestron Home, custom drivers that emulate individual load control while leveraging preset functionality can provide a more intuitive user experience. This approach allows users to access the best of both worlds: scenebased control with presets, and the detailed adjustments expected by load-based systems. Emulation can smooth over differences in control philosophies, allowing users to work within a unified interface without being aware of the underlying complexities.
For cloud-based integrations, we recommend avoiding cloud when possible. Local control options are always superior and ensures that users are not left completely in the
dark—literally and figuratively. If cloud is a must then rate limiting strategies, such as caching data locally for periodic updates rather than constant polling as well as having websocket based or event-stream based persistent connections help to stay within API constraints while maintaining a responsive system.
Ultimately, integrating diverse systems into a unified experience requires a deep understanding of both the strengths and limitations of each platform. As driver developers, our role is to bridge the gaps between different technologies, ensuring that users can enjoy a cohesive experience regardless of the underlying differences in architecture or control philosophy. It’s a balancing act of aligning disparate systems while preparing for the unpredictable nature of cloud services, but the payoff is a smart home experience that meets the high expectations of today’s users. Through custom driver development, thoughtful integration strategies, and careful management of cloud dependencies, integrators can achieve the goal of creating a truly seamless smart home experience.
UNLOCKING IMMERSIVE AUDIO’S POTENTIAL WITH DSP AND PRECISE AUDIO CALIBRATION
As demand for lifelike, spatial sound grows, the CEDIA/CTA RP22 guide provides essential guidance for integrating and optimising audio systems in home theatres and Hi-Fi setups. Lars-Johan Brännmark, Chief Scientist at Dirac, explores the latest developments.
An estimated 75% of home theatre and multipurpose entertainment installations last year included immersive audio – a notable figure that emphasises the swift emergence of immersive sound systems as a key player in the audio industry.
Particularly during the pandemic, demand surged for advancing home entertainment setups with cutting-edge, cinematic surround sound technology to transform entertainment spaces into all-encompassing environments,
prompting an industry need to establish new standards and guidelines.
Enter CEDIA/CTA-RP22: Immersive Audio Design Recommended Practice, published last September by CEDIA and the Consumer Technology Association. This comprehensive guide lays out criteria for optimising performance in immersive home audio systems, while also providing valuable insights for enhancing Hi-Fi setups.
Residential integrators must navigate the challenge of pinpointing the most important factors in designing and assessing a system’s performance. This task is complex, as creating any entertainment space involves balancing acoustic, spatial and aesthetic considerations, often requiring trade-offs regardless of whether the system is immersive or otherwise.
With that being said, the RP22 guide proves to be an essential resource in tackling the various factors involved in crafting an ideal audio experience, and primarily suggests utilising digital signal processing to enhance system performance.
INTEGRATING PERFORMANCE-DRIVEN AUDIO CALIBRATIONS
RP22’s performance objectives are grouped into three main categories: spatial resolution, dynamic range, and timbre. Within these categories are parameters that contribute to the overall quality of an immersive audio system, including frequency response below a room’s transition frequency, seat-to-seat consistency (particularly bass response), in-room bass extension, total SPL capability of the LFE (lowfrequency effects) channel, and several others.
RP22 acknowledges that optimal results are achieved when all speakers in a room have consistent phase characteristics. However, achieving this consistency is often impractical in real-world scenarios. To address the challenge, it recognises the benefits of DSP-based precision audio calibration solutions with ‘rephasing’ or ‘retiming’ capabilities.
The standard also emphasises bass frequency response and seat-to-seat bass variation as two areas that require special attention. These areas are particularly challenging due to standing waves and resonances, which can create variations in bass response of 20 dB or more and impact the immersive experience. Managing the interplay between bass speakers and a room is essential for improving overall performance.
In the end, DSP offers a highly effective and cost-efficient means of audio calibration, enhancing both spatial resolution and timbre performance within the context of RP22 guidelines. In fact, DSP solutions such as Dirac Live, have emerged as a cornerstone for achieving substantial improvements.
KEY STEPS FOR ACHIEVING IMMERSIVE AUDIO
Optimisation involves two general steps. First is to invest in hardware with strong dynamic range (power handling, distortion, dynamic range, linearity), bass extension and dispersion. Second is to leverage DSP software to address spatial resolution and timbre.
RP22 emphasises the importance of consistent speaker characteristics for optimal spatial performance and timbre. But while specifying identical speakers can theoretically improve results, real-life constraints normally prevent using the same model for front, centre, and surrounds, let alone ceiling speakers. Moreover, variations in early reflections and speaker placement inevitably degrade performance.
Considering these facts, DSP-based equalisation, particularly high-resolution time and frequency optimisation with phase correction, provides an effective solution for achieving consistent target response curves across different speakers, thereby enhancing spatial resolution and timbre. Indeed, an integrator could achieve good spatial resolution and timbre without DSP, but it would require excessive and unnecessary spending on speakers, acoustic treatments and installation labour. Moreover, the physical space required for such treatments is usually prohibitive.
ENHANCING BASS FOR IMMERSIVE SOUNDSCAPES
When it comes to optimisation, improving bass performance is important. RP22 emphasises the need for good bass, which is consistent with research showing that 30% of a listener’s experience is attributed to bass performance.
Optimising bass response at just one seat in a room is difficult and time-consuming without measurement-based optimisation. But RP22 highlights that bass performance varies significantly between different listening positions. Near a back wall, for example, there’s typically an exaggerated, boomy bass response, while at other positions there may not be enough bass.
Integrators can reduce bass variations using multiple bass-capable speakers, including multiple subwoofers, which can improve bass response in the preferred listening position by exciting room modes differently. RP22 even suggests various subwoofer arrangements to yield more consistent bass, but notes that optimal placement can only be determined through experimentation. This is time-consuming, if even possible.
Instead, digital precision audio calibration schemes aimed at evening out bass response and seat-to-seat variations provide the best remedy regardless of subwoofer placement. To control bass in several seats with multiple subwoofers, an advanced, measurement-based co-optimisation of the subwoofers is often the only practical way.
Here’s how key bass-related performance parameters can be improved audio calibration technologies:
ENHANCED IN-ROOM BASS EXTENSION
Traditionally, bass extension is defined by speaker characteristics. We would not generally advise using single-channel optimisation or EQ to extend the low end. However, if the homeowner doesn’t plan to listen at the loudest levels, room correction software can yield a certain bass extension without increasing the risk of distortion. Speaker placement near walls can usually improve bass extension, though at the expense of boomier, less tight bass. But by combining room correction with near-wall speaker placements, integrators can achieve both low-frequency extension and tight bass.
ACOUSTIC RESPONSE BELOW IN-ROOM TRANSITION FREQUENCY
Room correction software optimises each speaker’s frequency response toward a userdefined target curve. For multi-subwoofer systems, however, single-channel optimisation does not guarantee the summed bass response reaches the target. In such cases, bass control software helps achieve the intended target. From there, a solution like Dirac Live Active Room Treatment can improve results further through optimisation of the wave propagation in the room.
UNIFORM SOUND ACROSS SEATING BELOW IN-ROOM TRANSITION FREQUENCY
Single-speaker optimisation via room correction systems can’t improve seat-to-seat variations. Rather, they improve average response (or the response at a selected position) while seatto-seat variations remain. Solutions like Dirac Live Bass Control and Dirac Live Active Room Treatment explicitly reduce the seat-to-seat variance by optimising the combined output of several speakers.
OVERALL SPL OUTPUT OF LFE CHANNEL
Both Dirac Live Bass Control and Dirac Live Active Room Treatment offer effective means of combining multiple speakers (subwoofers and/ or full ranges) to ensure that the SPL over the entire LFE frequency region is maximised and that all speakers sum constructively across the LFE frequency range.
FURTHER OPTIMISATION
We’ve really only scratched the surface regarding what DSP solutions with accurate audio calibration can really bring to the table in addressing additional RP22 performance variables, like reducing standing wave null points, improving inter-speaker polarity, and balancing between early reflections and direct sound. For the best results and a seamless experience free of complex treatments, integrators should turn to RP22 and audio calibration to create highquality audio environments that enhance overall immersion and listener satisfaction.
SOUND MEETS SCIENCE: THE ESSENTIALS OF ROOM ACOUSTIC TREATMENT
For installers aiming to create immersive, acoustically optimised spaces, room treatment is no longer just about function, it’s also about form. Mário Inácio, Senior Acoustic Consultant at Vicoustic explains why.
Advances in technology and design now allow for seamless integration of sound optimisation and aesthetic appeal, meeting the needs of both performance and visual harmony. From the science of sound to eco-friendly materials and design-centric solutions, this guide covers the essentials of modern room acoustic treatment and its application across diverse spaces.
THE SCIENCE BEHIND ROOM ACOUSTIC TREATMENT
At its core, room acoustic treatment is about managing how sound interacts with its environment. Sound waves behave in three primary ways within a space: they reflect off surfaces, are absorbed by materials, or diffuse as they travel. When these behaviours are uncontrolled, they lead to common issues such as flutter echoes, standing waves and excessive reverberation. These problems deteriorate
sound clarity, making it difficult to achieve an immersive audio experience.
Effective room acoustic treatment involves a strategic balance of absorption, diffusion and reflection. Absorptive materials, such as acoustic panels, help reduce energy from sound waves, minimising reflections. Diffusers scatter sound waves, ensuring that energy is spread evenly throughout the room. Reflective surfaces, used sparingly, add liveliness to the soundscape without causing major distortions. By managing these elements, installers can optimise sound quality in spaces ranging from professional audio studios and home theatres to dining rooms and home offices.
INNOVATIONS IN ACOUSTIC MATERIALS AND PRODUCTS
Recent innovations in acoustic materials have made sound treatment more sustainable and versatile than ever. Among the most
significant developments is the adoption of PET (Polyethylene Terephthalate) panels, which are made from recyclable plastic bottles and non-toxic components. PET panels provide a lightweight, durable and high-performance alternative to traditional acoustic treatments, all while offering eco-friendly benefits.
An example is Vicoustic’s Cinema VMT line, which uses PET panels to deliver exceptional broadband performance. These panels can be customised with artwork, transforming them into functional pieces of decor. Similarly, Vicoustic’s Mega Bass Trap VMT uses PET to tackle lowfrequency issues, effectively managing bass buildup in corners. Such products are in high demand for their ability to combine sustainability with a great acoustic performance.
DIVERSE SPACES
Every space presents unique acoustic challenges, and the key to effective treatment is adapting solutions to fit the specific needs of the room.
For home cinemas, the goal is to replicate the immersive audio experience of a professional theatre. Absorption panels on walls and ceilings will reduce reflections and reverberation, creating a cleaner sound. Bass traps are essential for controlling low-frequency energy, especially in corners, while diffusers placed on rear walls or ceilings scatter sound waves. This combination of absorption and diffusion creates a balanced, enveloping audio experience.
Music listening rooms demand accuracy and clarity. Acoustic panels are specially used to control first reflections, since these dictate the stereo image, while diffusers can increase the sense of spaciousness by spreading the energy of these reflections evenly in the room. The low frequency response can be enhanced by including the use of bass trap solutions in the corners. Soft furnishings like rugs or curtains can complement these treatments, helping to control unwanted reflections. The result is an environment where music is heard exactly as intended, with every note and nuance preserved.
In dining rooms and living spaces, excessive noise can disrupt conversations and make the environment uncomfortable. Discreetly placed acoustic panels reduce ambient noise without overwhelming the decor, while soft furnishings help absorb sound from hard surfaces like floors and walls. These solutions improve the room’s acoustic balance, creating a more inviting atmosphere.
Home offices require a quieter, more focused environment. Acoustic panels reduce echo and improve speech clarity, which is especially important for video calls and virtual meetings. Ceiling treatments help manage reflections in rooms with high ceilings or hard floors, ensuring a professional sound quality that minimises distractions.
While acoustic panels address many sound challenges, the expertise of an acoustic consultant can ensure optimal results. Consultants can recommend the best combination of absorptive and diffusive elements, tailored to the room’s use and design. Their insights ensure that treatments not only solve immediate issues but also enhance the overall functionality and aesthetic of the space.
AESTHETICALLY PLEASING
The evolution of room treatment has shifted the focus from purely functional designs to solutions that prioritise aesthetics. Today’s acoustic treatments seamlessly integrate with modern interiors, often serving as key elements of decor.
Customisable panels have led the charge in this transformation. Products like Vicoustic’s Flat Panel VMT allow for printed designs, from artistic patterns to photographic imagery. This customisation enables installers to meet client´s aesthetic preferences without compromising performance.
Decorative acoustic tiles and panels enhance the visual appeal of a room while
effectively managing sound. Innovations like LED-integrated acoustic panels combine lighting and sound control into a single, spacesaving solution that adds both ambiance and functionality to a room.
Thin, high-performance panels have also become more popular, as they are easier to integrate discreetly into walls and ceilings. Their unobtrusive design makes them suitable for residential and commercial spaces alike. These advancements reflect the growing trend of blending acoustic functionality with visual appeal, allowing treatments to harmonise with the overall design of a space.
By prioritising aesthetics alongside performance, installers can now deliver solutions that not only optimise sound but also enhance the look and feel of a room. This dual approach ensures client satisfaction and elevates the role of acoustic treatments from technical necessities to essential design features.
From understanding the science behind sound to leveraging the latest sustainable materials and design trends, modern room acoustic treatments offer a wealth of opportunities for installers. Whether optimising sound in a home theatre, enhancing ambiance in a dining room, or creating a focused home office, today’s solutions combine cuttingedge performance with aesthetic appeal. By embracing these innovations, installers can create spaces that sound as impressive as they look, setting a new standard for excellence in acoustic design.
BEYOND TRADITIONAL ACOUSTICS: THE FUTURE OF ADAPTABLE SPACES
Nick
Fichte,
Business Development Director, Home & Yacht, L-Acoustics, looks beyond conventional approaches to audio control.
When scrolling through pictures of luxury homes on Instagram, I’m often struck by what appears to be a significant oversight: the acoustics of these trendy open-plan living spaces we all admire. I often find myself wondering why this happens, before remembering that architects and interior designers excel at making spaces look and feel beautiful. But what about making them sound beautiful? Who takes responsibility for that crucial element?
For AV professionals like myself, the pursuit of perfect acoustics is the north star, though it is typically reserved for specialist rooms like dedicated cinema spaces or home studios. Traditionally, achieving optimal acoustics has meant implementing extensive acoustic treatment to optimise a space for specific audio experiences, whether that’s critical music listening or immersive movie viewing. Yet rarely do we consider the specific audio experience of ‘living’. How do we begin elevating the importance of acoustics during the early stages of planning and design? You may desire a home with expanses of glass windows to showcase spectacular views, sleek, hard-surface floors to enhance a modern aesthetic and elegant, stonetopped furniture - but have you considered how such a room will sound? Add 60 people in
that space for a lively gathering, and suddenly any sound system will struggle to perform as everyone raises their voice to overcome the room’s noisy reflections.
The foundation of exceptional sound reproduction begins with the space itself. A low noise floor and proper acoustic treatment are essential elements for achieving high-fidelity audio playback. Traditional acoustic treatments – absorbers, diffusers and bass traps – help
control reflections, manage standing waves and create an environment where sound playback can perform at its best.
I’ve found that the fundamental challenge has always been striking the right balance between acoustic excellence with livability. A space optimised for critical listening or home cinema might be perfect for that purpose, but what happens when you’re hosting a dinner party? Or when the room needs to serve as a
HYRISS is a new concept from L-Acoustics that allows spaces to adapt their sound profiles for different activities and results
casual family space? What if you want to use it for yoga or meditation? Traditional acoustic treatments, while essential, lock us into a single acoustic profile – essentially asking us to choose between acoustic perfection and versatility.
This is where the audio industry is experiencing a fascinating shift. We’re moving beyond the era of fixed solutions and into a world where spaces can adapt and transform. Modern room correction technology has already made significant strides in helping us address acoustic challenges digitally. But even these solutions typically offer just one optimised state – a single ‘best version’ of your room’s acoustics.
What I find truly exciting is we’re now pushing past simple correction into the realm of acoustic virtualisation. Think of it as having multiple rooms in one single living space. Through solutions like the new L-Acoustics HYRISS, we can fundamentally transform how a space sounds and feels. It’s not just about correcting acoustic problems– it’s about creating entirely new acoustic environments on demand.
A living room’s sound signature can transform depending on its use. When you want to listen to music or watch a movie, the space should have a low noise floor and be ‘dry’, but this is not ideal for an acoustic instrument performance. With a simple button, you can change the room to sound like a concert hall, jazz club or underground archway – all without altering any physical elements within the space.
It’s crucial to understand that this goes far beyond conventional AVR profiles that have been industry standard for years. At the heart of HYRISS lies Ambiance—L-Acoustics’
proprietary acoustic transformation technology.
The system deploys a sophisticated array of precision microphones working in concert with our L-ISA Processor to execute real-time acoustic transformations. This technology dynamically modifies the room’s acoustic signature, reshaping how sound behaves within the space. The result is a living, flexible acoustic environment that can instantly adopt the sonic characteristics to your desired use.
As we look ahead, the ability to virtually control and modify a room’s acoustics represents more than just a technological advancement – it’s a fundamental shift in how we think about and interact with our spaces. While maintaining good acoustic foundations remains crucial, we now have the ability to layer
adaptive acoustics on top of this foundation, creating spaces that can adapt to any need, delivering optimal acoustic environments for any activity or experience.
I believe we’re just beginning to explore the possibilities of adaptive acoustics. As our understanding of how sound shapes experiences evolves, we’re discovering new applications—from enhancing wellness practices to creating more immersive gaming experiences. This technology enables us to think about spaces not in terms of their limitations, but in terms of their possibilities.
This isn’t just about better sound—it’s about creating better, more versatile living spaces that enhance every aspect of how we live, work, and relax.
HYRISS technology is at the heart of L-Acoustic’s re-imagined demonstration space in North London
SIGNAGE OF THE TIMES
AV installers can get a slice of the light commercial market through UK businesses growing appetite for digital signage, says Chris Moore, B2B Sales Manager at Vestel Visual Solutions.
Digital signage is opening some exciting new doors for smaller AV and residential custom installation companies, making it the perfect time to explore the world of light commercial work. With small businesses and local retailers eager to catch the eye of passers-by and enhance the customer experience, there’s a ripe opportunity for AV installers to step in and deliver smart, dynamic display and AV solutions. The great news is that getting started with digital signage isn’t a huge leap – it’s a natural extension of the skills you’ve already mastered in the residential space.
For many small businesses, the idea of swapping out static signs for eye-catching digital displays sounds appealing. It’s like upgrading from a black-and-white photo to a full-colour video, and it is a lot more engaging. With digital signage, content can be refreshed and updated as needed to promote today’s special, hyping up an event, or let everyone know about a flash sale. This flexibility is a game-changer for smaller businesses, who often need to adapt quickly to keep customers interested.
Much of what’s involved in display signage installation is already in your toolbox: mounting screens, setting up control systems and getting the visuals looking stunning. The trick is to start small and focus on local businesses where you can make a big impact without diving into massive or overly complex installations. Think independent retailers, cosy cafés, small gyms, and charming high-street boutiques that want to attract more foot traffic.
The pitch angle is that digital signage offers small businesses a chance to spice things up and get creative. Imagine a chic fashion boutique on the high street using digital screens to show off its latest collection and a gym foyer showcasing videos of new classes. It’s compelling messaging. Moreover, it’s easy to switch things up, so they can showcase a new promotion, event, or product whenever the opportunity arises. The dynamic nature of digital displays allows businesses to keep their messaging fresh and relevant without breaking a sweat.
Keep the sell-in and project simple and scalable. Don’t overwhelm the client with a huge setup; start with a basic single-screen installation that can grow over time. The goal is to show clients the immediate benefits without making it seem like they’re committing to a massive investment right away. Once they see how effective digital signage can be, they may return for more.
For indoor settings like retail shops or restaurants, screens with a brightness level of 500 to 700 nits, like our popular PR series models, will do the trick. But if you’re installing near a storefront window or anywhere with lots of natural light, you’ll want something a bit brighter, around 1,500 to 2,000 nits, to ensure its visible and vibrant. Also, think about whether the screen needs any anti-glare (haze) features to deal with reflections from sunlight or spotlights. Ensure you specify portraitcompatible screens for portrait use to avoid LCD colour bleed and ensure the input options marry up with how the client will use the screen; HDMI, USB, IP or OPS/PC device?
When it comes to content management, our display screens have simple-to-use content management systems built-in, but there are plenty of fully featured and business-specific CMS providers out there that can tailor solutions. However, make sure the systems you recommend are easy to use. The last thing a small business owner needs is a complicated setup that takes hours to update.
Helping your clients understand the importance of good content is key. Digital signage is most effective when the content hits three critical objectives: engaging, welltimed, and relevant. Offer a few pointers on creating eye-catching visuals, using video clips, or scheduling promotions for peak times. If you can show them how to make their digital signage really work for them, you’re setting yourself up for repeat business and word-ofmouth recommendations.
For smaller AV companies, light commercial digital signage is a sweet spot that offers plenty of potential. It’s not about taking on giant, multiscreen projects—it’s about delivering practical solutions that make a noticeable difference for small businesses. Start with the local shops, restaurants, gyms, and community centres in your area, and offer them a way to take their customer engagement to the next level.
With the installation skills you already have and a focus on the unique needs of small businesses, you can position yourself as the goto expert for local companies looking to make their mark.
New opportunities exist in the digital signage market
Truly versatile choice of complete highperformance architectural systems.
Turnkey solution involving patented technologies and the most advanced electronics and loudspeakers.
All JBL Synthesis products offer the performance data required for CEDIA RP-22 recommended practice.
Two Certified JBL Synthesis systems will be showcased at our new Ascot demonstration facility.
With a lineage that can be traced back to the earliest days of cinema sound, JBL Synthesis has become a global leader in immersive home theatre audio, offering some of the most advanced multichannel systems available in the world.
Today it provides a truly versatile choice of complete high-performance systems comprising matching architectural speakers and electronics for discreet, dynamic, object-based immersive sound in a wide range of projects including the largest dedicated private cinema and media rooms.
To explore capabilities for your future projects and talk to us about help with system design and specification, please contact:
DANTE READY AND THE FUTURE OF AV OVER IP
The world of audio visual is changing fast, with installations becoming bigger, more complex, and more versatile. To keep up, the technology we use needs to evolve too. Enter CYP Europe’s IP-9000 Series, a cutting-edge solution for AVoIP. Packed with features like Dante Ready, USB-KVM functionality, and unrivalled flexibility, the IP-9000 isn’t just built to meet today’s challenges—it’s ready for whatever the future holds. CYP explains the details.
WHY DANTE READY CHANGES THE GAME
AV networking has become the backbone of modern installations, but let’s face it—getting it right can be tricky. That’s where the IP-9000 Series and its Dante Ready feature shine.
Unlike traditional systems with pre-activated networking features (and the hefty upfront costs to match), Dante Ready offers something smarter. It’s hardware that’s fully compatible with Dante and AES67 networks, but with an optional activation model. In other words, you decide when and where to use it—no need to pay for features you don’t need just yet.
For example, imagine setting up a corporate AV system where Dante functionality isn’t required immediately but might be essential in the future. With the IP-9000, you can scale your capabilities without swapping out hardware. It’s flexible, cost-efficient and designed to grow with you.
CRISP, CLEAR, AND COMPLETELY IMMERSIVE
When it comes to visuals, nothing less than perfection will do—and that’s exactly what the IP-9000 delivers. With 4K@60Hz 4:4:4 RGB resolution, HDR10 and Dolby Vision support, it’s designed to bring every detail to life.
Whether it’s a stunning video wall in a luxury store or a seamless multi-room setup in a highend home, the IP-9000 ensures you get the best picture quality, every time. It’s all about creating unforgettable experiences that leave a lasting impression.
COLLABORATION MADE EFFORTLESS
In today’s world, interactivity is at the heart of many AV setups, from control rooms to modern workspaces. The IP-9000’s USBKVM functionality makes collaborating across devices effortless.
Need to connect a keyboard, mouse, or webcam? No problem. Want to switch seamlessly between multiple computers and USB devices? The IP-9000 has you covered. It’s all about keeping things smooth, simple and frustration-free, making it ideal for busy, fastmoving environments.
BUILT FOR COMPLEXITY, SIMPLIFIED FOR YOU
No two AV projects are the same, which is why flexibility is a must. The IP-9000 is built to handle it all, with features that make even the most complex installations straightforward:
• Scalable Multicast Functionality lets you distribute AV signals across large networks without worrying about bandwidth. Perfect for video walls and expansive systems.
• Dual LAN Ports (on the IP-CS9000 Master Controller) keep AV and control networks separate for enhanced security and reliability.
• PoE-Powered Devices simplify installations, cutting down on the need for extra power sources and reducing cable clutter.
MADE FOR INSTALLERS, BACKED BY CYP
We know installers are the heroes of AV, so we’ve made sure the IP-9000 is a tool they can rely on. With features like bi-directional IR and RS-232 pass-through, troubleshooting and control are a breeze. Plus, the intuitive WebGUI makes setup fast and hassle-free with simple drag-and-drop routing.
And here’s the best part: every IP-9000 comes with CYP Europe’s industry-leading 5-year warranty and advance replacement policy. That’s peace of mind for you and your clients.
LEADING THE WAY FORWARD
The IP-9000 Series isn’t just another product— it’s a bold step forward for AV over IP. With its Dante Ready capability, cutting-edge features, and futureproof design, it’s built to help you take on today’s challenges while preparing for tomorrow’s opportunities.
As we gear up for its official release at ISE 2025, early stock will be available in Q1 2025 to distributors. Curious to learn more? Get in touch with your CYP representative today.
CYP cypeurope.com
Elevate Your Experience
Introducing Advanced Full-Motion 4D® + Shift™ technology. Easily fine-tune your TV’s height after installation to get the perfect position.
VLF828-B2
Advanced Full-Motion 4D® + Shift™ TV Mount
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-15 ° / 5 ° TILTING
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MODEL
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SANUS sets the standard for mount technology
Innovative design and outstanding safety features make them perfect for all AV needs. Fast and simple to install, they offer a clean and stylish finish - while boasting unparalleled performance.
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Get the perfect sound from your ERA 100 and 300 speakers or Sonos Arc soundbars with SANUS’ compatible mounts and stands. Our adjustable height stands, tilt/swivel wall mounts and our complementary sleek, subtle design provide the perfect positioning.
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PREASSEMBLED COMPONENT RACKS: strong and sturdy construction in heavy gauge welded steel. Available in 15U, 27U, 36U and 44U. STACKABLE SKELETON RACKS: can be floor or wall-mounted for maximum versatility. Available in combinable 10U, 15U and 20U sizes.
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From universal soundbar mounts and cable management solutions, to TV Media in-wall box, AV component shelves and projector mounts, SANUS has thought of everything to finish any AV install to perfection.
THE NEED FOR ROBUST NETWORKING INFRASTRUCTURE IN A HYBRID WORLD
Andrew Blomley, Product and Solution Manager at TP-Link, examines the challenges and opportunities as the world of work and the home office continues to evolve.
As the UK continues to move closer to an increasingly evolved workforce, the recently introduced Employment Rights Bill marks a significant step in flexible working becoming the norm from day one of starting a new job. When workers are based across locations, it can be daunting to understand connectivity requirements and where investments need to be made.
Businesses need reliable, fast and secure networking equipment to support both office based and home based working. Tools such as heat map simulations can help with the deployment of networking products, charting areas where connectivity can be optimised across locations.
FLEXIBLE WORKING AND CONNECTIVITY
The move towards hybrid and remote working became increasingly adopted during the pandemic which made remote working a
necessary measure for many workers. In recent months, more and more businesses have requested that workers return to the office, even just for a few days a week.
Delivering remote working solutions for large companies with dedicated support teams is one thing, but how can this be achieved for small and medium enterprises (SMEs)?
Not everyone offers an easy-to-use comprehensive solution for multisite network deployment. The leading vendors can provide enterprise-class networking for home workers, ensuring that network traffic can be segregated from the rest of the family’s traffic. This is crucial for maintaining both security and performance in a home office environment.
The best platforms include an SD-WAN solution to build a secure multisite network, offering remote support and threat analysis. This ensures that SMEs can enjoy the same level of network reliability and security as larger enterprises, without the need for extensive IT resources.
This shift means that businesses that do not already offer flexible working must invest in infrastructure that supports such setups. For many, this starts with working with a vendor who understands their requirements and can provide robust connectivity solutions. This enables seamless communication, collaboration, and productivity, whether employees are working in the office or from home.
THE IMPORTANCE OF ROBUST CONNECTIVITY
Having advanced, reliable and highperformance connectivity has become vital for today’s modern workplace, especially for organisations who are already supporting flexible working. Good connectivity is no longer a luxury, but a necessity for boosting productivity. But how to deliver this, without the tools this is simply guess work
Omada delivers a comprehensive set of network tools to optimise and diagnose the network problem, from selecting the least congested channel, to tracking the network performance Omada has your back.
Application visibility shows how the network is performing. Whether it’s joining video calls, or accessing cloud-based applications, employees rely heavily on stable and fast connections to maintain productivity and engagement.
Poor connectivity can not only have a severe impact on productivity, but employees who are often faced with connectivity issues may become disengaged, which ultimately leads to lower job satisfaction and in turn, leads to increased turnover. Organisations that are investing in robust networking solutions such as Wi-Fi 7, with the tools to fix the problems boost productivity but improve retention and job satisfaction by successfully meeting the requirements for a flexible workforce.
FUTURE-PROOFING BUSINESS OPERATIONS THROUGH CONNECTIVITY
To meet the demands for flexible working, it has never been more important for organisations to invest in a robust networking infrastructure. This involves far more than providing high-speed internet access, but also means supporting the growing number of remote workers through creating reliable and scalable networks that can be remotely managed to ensure employees can focus on their work.
To meet the demands of flexible working, businesses need to invest in a robust connectivity infrastructure, and should work with vendors to best understand their needs. This involves more than just providing high-speed internet; it also includes creating a scalable, reliable network that can support a growing number of remote employees and handle increased digital collaboration. A comprehensive and robust network solution should include high-speed broadband, Enterprise Class Wi-Fi that can cover multiple sites, and a network that can be flexible and secure- no matter where they are located.
Another consideration for organisations is ensuring their network has enhanced device analytics and security. Device analytics can ensure remote workers have the necessary technology to work efficiently, while comprehensive end-to-end security measures can protect sensitive data and minimise the risk of a cyber-attack, which is increasingly important with a distributed workforce.
Ultimately, it’s the employer’s responsibility to provide these robust connectivity solutions to support flexible workers, but employees must share this responsibility and take the necessary
steps to ensure their home setup can support this new way of working. For hybrid working to be successful, employees need fast, reliable and stable internet access, which is capable of covering their entire workspace, ensuring they can stay connected no matter where in their home they are working.
Employees can ensure their home setup is prepared for hybrid working through optimising their home network. This can be done through choosing a high-speed broadband package that suits their individual needs, positioning their router strategically to ensure coverage through their home, and using Wi-Fi extending if necessary to improve coverage. Through Wi-Fi 7, the way in which we live, work and connect is being transformed.
INVESTING IN CONNECTIVITY FOR A FLEXIBLE WORK FUTURE
The introduction of the Employment Right Bill reinforces the need for businesses to ensure they’re prepared to adapt to hybrid working models, and investing strategically into networking solutions is key. Through prioritising high-performance, reliable connectivity, businesses can create a productive workforce that ensures their operations are fully future-proofed.
More than ever, robust connectivity is a strategic investment for stability and growth and by optimising their IT infrastructure for remote and hybrid working, businesses can set themselves up for success in an increasingly flexible working world. Those who invest in the right connectivity solutions today will be better prepared to meet the demands of tomorrow’s workforce.
TIVO SURVEY SUGGESTS VIEWING CHOICE PARALYSIS
Are
too many potential customers becoming dissatisfied with a confusing viewing landscape?
TiVo’s UK video trends report finds 84% of viewers scroll aimlessly as streaming services multiply. Almost half of U.K. consumers take advantage of free AVOD/ FAST services, becoming a primary means for video entertainment
TiVo, a wholly owned subsidiary of entertainment technology company of Xperi Inc. (NYSE: XPER), has found that users are overwhelmed by the rising amount of video providers, adding to increased viewer irritation when deciding what to watch. According to the latest 2024 TiVo Video Trends Report: U.K. only 16% of viewers know what they want to watch when they start browsing, resulting in ‘habit browsing’ for the majority of viewers.
With more streaming providers making their way to the U.K. entertainment market and fueling an upwards tick in consumption, the report also found that the average number of services used by U.K. viewers has increased from 6.0 in Q2 2023 to 6.5 in Q2 2024. Furthermore, 61% of viewers say they switch between more than one app in a typical viewing session, increasing from 55% in Q2 2023, meaning less time enjoying entertainment they love, and more time spent browsing for the next show or movie.
DEEP DIVE
Delving deeper, the report finds a lack of personalised recommendations is also driving ‘habit browsing.’ Nearly one-fifth of viewers (19%) say they struggle to find something to watch when they don’t have anything specific in mind and 18% admit to starting, stopping and selecting something else many times during a viewing session. The variety of options and content quality is also having a significant influence on consumer loyalty, as content providers battle for subscribers, with 34% of current streaming service users saying they want to cancel their subscription video on demand (SVOD) (e.g., Netflix, Prime Video) within the next six months.
“As streaming options multiply, viewers are facing continued frustration when it comes to finding something to watch, showing ongoing discontent with the difficulty of finding material that suits their personal preferences,” says Gabriel Cosgrave, general manager of EMEA at Xperi. “TV manufacturers need to prioritise key smart TV features such as aggregated and unbiased content offerings, and user experience features like hyper-personalisation and natural voice search so that consumers find content they love quickly.”
Additional TiVo Video Trend Report statistics:
• U.K. viewing time increases: TV viewing shows no signs of slowing. In fact, daily viewing time rose to 3.8 hours per day, increasing to 4.0 hours for respondents with children in their home and 4.2 hours for viewers in Scotland.
• AVOD/FAST adoption is growing steadily: 43% of respondents use free AVOD/FAST services (e.g., FreeVee, Pluto TV), pointing to an increased desire for free content and a high ad tolerance across multiple devices (56% view on TV, 18% on a computer, 15% on a smartphone).
• Churn and growth: 27% of U.K. consumers have started using a new service in the last six months, but 21% have cancelled a service during the same period, highlighting the competitive pressures facing service providers.
• The rise of watching social content on TV: Over one-third of respondents watch social video content on a TV at least several times a week, an increase of almost 9% since spring 2023 – showing the continued appeal of social video content on a larger screen.
Pure Simmetry
Exceptional HDR design for every model, from luxury to affordable, involving advanced image processing perfected over seventeen years
Class-leading brightness up to 6000lm
Crystal glass lenses and optical components made for high contrast, detail-rich images
Advanced ventilation delivers quiet operation from smaller, more beautiful crystal glass cabinets
High-quality build for enduring image quality
A brilliant balance of high brightness, contrast, colour and practicality will deliver peerless HDR performance to projects large and small.
SIM2’s acknowledged leadership in perfecting High Dynamic Range (HDR) as the ‘real revolution in video imaging and home cinema performance’ can now be utilised in almost every custom application, not just the luxury, award-winning integrations for which it is justly famous. Today, SIM2 offers you the opportunity to enhance the great majority of your projects with a single high-quality brand.
To explore capabilities for your future projects and talk to us about help with system design and specification, please contact:
MAKE A GREAT LAST IMPRESSION
Everyone
talks about making great first impressions on prospective clients, but, EI regular, CI veteran and owner of marketing expert company, The BIG Corp, Pete Baker writes about the importance of last impressions.
Adding a new customer can be hard work, especially with tough competition in the market. I think back on many good clients I had the great pleasure to work with over the years and what it may have taken to earn their business: meetings in person, evenings and weekends polishing up a quote, researching products for their project, numerous conversations, negotiations, etc. Not to mention how we first were connected: maybe a referral from a builder, architect, designer or other building industry professional.
HOW MUCH TIME AND ENERGY DID IT TAKE TO EARN THEIR TRUST FOR THE INITIAL REFERRAL?
Unfortunately, all too often, we can get so wrapped up in the project that by the time we are done with the project, we may also be done communicating with the client – unless they contact us for support or service.
This should never be the case! It’s just good business to maintain contact with your customers. Look at some of the examples set by much larger companies: Amazon, Apple, BMW and so many others that I receive weekly emails from asking if I am satisfied with a product or service and suggesting other products or services that may be of interest to me. Granted, it can of course be overdone and become annoying, but they still have a habit of making me feel like a valued customer and keeping their brand top of mind for me.
More importantly, are your customers satisfied with the work that you have done? If they aren’t happy, how do you know? What are you doing about it? If they are happy, how can you spread this message to other future, potential clients? Are you encouraging them to tell their friends and family?
A few weeks ago, I had a friend contact me and ask if I could swing by his house and give him some advice on his AV system. I have known this person since I was roughly two years
old and consider him a great friend. Since I no longer have an installation company, he hired a local company years ago to install an extensive distributed audio system when he and his wife remodelled their home. They had 20 speakers installed in the home, for 10 rooms of audio, all being powered by a single two-channel amplifier. The ‘pre-amp’ was a stereo receiver, and they had two speaker selectors to feed the audio to the speakers.
Sadly, the entire system had been unusable for several years. When they would turn on the system, it would run for roughly two minutes, then shut down. The system was way underpowered and not engineered well. They had tried repeatedly to contact the installation company, but to no avail. They never received any calls back. It should be important to note that the same company had also installed a significant automation and distributed audio system for their business, which was later redone by another contractor.
I do understand that the above is an extreme example, but still valid to make the point that this customer was lost forever due to poor communication and a complete lack of follow-up. In summary, they had a very poor ‘last’ impression of this company. So, what can be done to keep a customer for life and leave a good ‘last’ impression?
LEAVE A POSITIVE IMPRESSION!
For many consumers, the building or remodelling experience can be exhausting and expensive. Many of my past clients have made comments along the following: “The project took way longer and cost more money than we ever imagined.”
Since the AV contractors are typically the last ones to finish a build, they can sense a feeling from the homeowner that they just want all contractors out of their home and arre done receiving invoices.
When I had my installation company, to show our appreciation for the business we received from the client, we would always present them with a gift at the end of the project. We created a custom ceramic popcorn bowl with our logo and phone number on the bottom of the bowl and ‘thank you’ inside the bowl.
The bowl would be filled with microwave popcorn packs, candy, a few movies and some custom movie tickets. The movie ticket would include a discount coupon for them and a removable second discount coupon with our contact details to provide to any friends or family as an enticement to work with us.
FOLLOW UP!
I also made a point on the first Wednesday of every month to follow up with each customer that we completed work for in the past month.
This was not just limited to large projects. If we installed a network jack or mounted a TV, that customer also received a phone call, not an email, from me.
The feedback I received from the customers was incredibly interesting:
1. They were always grateful for the call.
2. Some of the customers I thought would be very happy, happened to have questions or concerns about how to operate some of the elements of their new system.
3. Sometimes the call would result in new revenue, adding a TV, programmable remote control and finishing a room of audio that was just roughed in.
In addition to contacting the end user customer, I would also contact the source of the referral, builder, architect, etc. and provide them with an update on the client and their system.
For example: “I just had a conversation with Mr. Jones, and he and his wife had a few questions about their system, but overall, they love it! They are really enjoying the outdoor audio and using it every day.”
The building industry professionals I worked with in the past greatly valued these updates from me and very often, while I was communicating with them, they would provide me with another, new potential client referral to contact.
JVC DLA-NZ700 AND DLA-NZ500 PROJECTORS: A BREAKTHROUGH IN 4K HOME CINEMA
In the ever-evolving world of home cinema, JVC once again has looked to raise the standard with the release of its DLA-NZ700 and DLA-NZ500 projectors.
These models bring features that redefine home entertainment for film enthusiasts and anyone aiming to replicate a true cinematic experience at home, says the maker. Developed for exceptional native 4K performance, these projectors also come equipped with numerous installer-friendly options for versatile setup in any home cinema.
A key highlight of these projectors is their compact size, showcasing JVC’s strong engineering heritage. Billed as the world’s smallest native 4K projectors, they still deliver premium quality with a state-of-the-art BLUEscent Laser light source and a 0.69in native 4K D-ILA device. This combination enhances contrast and brightness while ensuring extended durability, a crucial factor for premium AV investments.
The D-ILA device enables impressive contrast ratios, with the DLA-NZ700 achieving up to 80,000:1 native contrast and the DLANZ500 offering 40,000:1. JVC says these
levels deliver deep, immersive blacks and a wide colour range, essential for faithfully recreating high-definition scenes. Additionally, JVC’s refined BLU-Escent Laser technology delivers brightness up to 2,300 lumens in the NZ700 and 2,000 lumens in the NZ500, making them suitable for a variety of viewing conditions, from dedicated darkened home theatres to rooms with ambient light.
One of the standout features is the secondgeneration Frame Adapt HDR, a real-time tonemapping system that optimises brightness and colour accuracy frame by frame. This ensures HDR content appears as close as possible to the director’s intent, making these projectors a good choice for cinephiles. JVC’s Vivid mode further enhances Standard Dynamic Range (SDR) content, delivering bright, vibrant colours and improved clarity that breathe new life into older SDR films and animations.
Both models also include FILMMAKER MODE, which turns off specific processing to maintain accurate colour temperature and image fidelity, aligning the visual experience with cinematic standards. This new picture mode is in place to preserve the director’s creative intent and provide a truly cinematic experience.
For installation flexibility, both models feature a fully motorised 80mm 4K lens with precision focus, zoom and shift adjustments. This versatility, combined with a lens memory function, allows installers to configure and
save multiple settings, simplifying transitions between different screen sizes or aspect ratios. Both models also feature Full IP Control via the LAN port.
LASER LIGHT SOURCE
JVC’s shift to a laser light source extends the projectors’ lifespan to approximately 20,000 hours, significantly reducing maintenance needs and costs. The lamp-free design also provides consistent brightness and enhanced performance with quick on/off capability, making these projectors suitable for home environments while supporting reliable, energyefficient viewing for years.
In summary, the JVC DLA-NZ700 and DLA-NZ500 projectors mark a substantial advancement in home cinema technology. With innovations in native 4K clarity, HDR processing, and an eco-friendly, compact design, these models have been created to captivate home cinema enthusiasts seeking a premium viewing experience.
For those passionate about cinema-quality viewing at home, JVC says its new projectors bring theatre-grade visuals directly into the living room, setting a new benchmark for immersive, high-quality home entertainment.
JVC uk.jvc.com
PURE JOY!
Zak Vracevic, owner and director of M.E.G.A. AV Installations, gives EI the tour of this new award-winning install which picked up the Best Media Room Level II and Global Media Room gongs at the recent CEDIA Awards 2024 ceremony.
The ‘Joy Division Room’ was a third project for the same client, second in the same block of apartments. Zak explains, “When the client bought a large two floor penthouse with the aim of having more space for entertainment and music, we decided to ‘go all the way’ and make the project special. The main room on the 8th floor was 40% glass windows and doors, but it had very good height which allowed us to install everything above the windows and in the ceiling.
“Even then, it still proved to be a challenge due to the amount of stuff happening on the ceiling. There were sprinklers, sensors, a drop-
down lift with a projector, a number of speakers, two large grills for air-conditioning, 22 led strips for the central ceiling feature and sides, as well as 25 downlights!”
Zak continues, “The front of the room was the biggest challenge as that was where the screen and the main LCR speakers were supposed to be, but all we had there was a massive glass wall. We decided to design a large MDF bulkhead and suspend it from the ceiling using unistrut rods, which allow precise height adjustments.”
The bulkhead was divided into three sections and treated with acoustic materials
before installing a number of Bowers & Wilkins speakers and sub woofers - three CWM7.3S2 LCR speakers, an ISW8 subwoofer with a back box, plus two additional CTSW12 – 12in subs each side of the box for the client’s Hi-Fi rig.
Zak explains, “At the back of the box, we had 130in Screen Excellence Media Time drop down screen and two pairs of Lutron shades (sheer and black out). Altogether, the bulkhead (which was soon renamed ‘The soundbar’) was approaching 400kg and required full structural study and report.”
ICONIC ALBUM ART
The ceiling idea was initiated by Volume3 architect Ademir, who was inspired by Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures album artworkflip the album cover upside-down and there it is!
Zak reveals, “Upon being presented with this idea, we worked together on choosing materials and deciding how to make the ceiling work best for the room acoustics and all the services built into it. In between the veneered MDF ceiling ribs, we used semi-rigid compressed felt with acoustic properties, helping to dampen any room reverb and excess high frequencies resulting from the amount of glass present in the room.
“We were left with 175mm between the ribs to house the surround and back surround speakers, as well as the speakers for the library at the back of the room. By pure luck, the Bowers & Wilkins CWM7.4S2.5 speaker was exactly 175mm wide and was thus chosen for this task.”
It was not all plain sailing as the team had to make (cut) the B&W metal back boxes smaller and use black spray for the white trim around the speakers as they were to be installed without grills and needed to be all black.
The ceiling was intended to act as a large diffuser to break and scatter soundwaves and direct parts of it to absorbing surfaces between the ribs.
Zak explains, “For low end control, we first addressed all the room corners behind the ceiling, positioning a number of high-density foam blocks there. These blocks have the same density as the Rockwool ones but are easier to handle and cut, especially in a residential environment. The space above the ‘soundbar’ was also filled with the same blocks, while the space between the back of the soundbar and glass was filled with a different material, spaced apart to allow for some air gaps which also help in controlling low end. The back library wall was another old trick, acting as a diffuser and absorber with all the books and records.”
For projection duties, the project went with the Sony VPL-XW7000 native 4K laser projector mounted inside Future Automation projector lift. Everything was colour co-ordinated down to the white projector and white lift mechanism to work with the pale ceiling ribs.
Zak was pleased with the Sony’s performance, “Sony’s calibrated presets were impressive out of the box and all we had to do was apply a detailed panel shift alignment process. The presets were then ported to the Control4 remote and screens for the client to choose depending on what they wanted to watch. Video sources include 4K Apple TV, Sky Stream box and a Blu-ray player.”
Iconic album cover becomes audio diffuser? no problem!
The room’s audio was taken care of by Maratnz AV-10 and AMP-10 combo. The final configuration was 7.2 with both the surround and back surround speakers positioned on the ceiling with one sub in front and one 15in sub at the back of the room. As there were no major room peaks or dips, Audyssey room correction from Marantz AV10 was sufficient for minor tweaks. The sub woofers were powered by Bowers & Wilkins CDA-2HD network power amps, which allow setup and DSP (not used here) via network / laptop.
The client’s high end Hi-Fi rig can play vinyl and in addition can access music from the networked ZEN Mini music server via a highend Weiss DA convertor. Audio can also be played through the cinema sound system using Marantz’s feature to utilise sub woofers for
music too. Zak says the jury is still out on what sounds better side by side!
The system control is taken care of by the Control4 Core5 processor and Halo Touch remote control.
LIGHTING IT UP!
Lighting was a big and important part of this project. Zak comments, “We decided to go with the Lutron Homeworks and Palladiom keypads with the majority of the light using DALI protocol. A full light study and 3D simulation was produced before the lighting design was completed. As the apartment was facing sunlight from the moment the sun goes up all the way until sundown, we needed to fully understand the effect of the light and how it would affect the visuals during the sunny days.
“After testing few options, we made custom side channels for the blackout blinds so when they go down even on the brightest day, no light would be coming through and affecting the picture. The blinds were assigned in pairs to each of the three glass walls, and also grouped into ‘all down / all up’.”
The client can now choose between an alldark room during sunny days or have only the back wall blackout blinds (behind the screen) down on a cloudy afternoon or evening, having a perfect image on the screen and still being able to enjoy the magnificent city views. During the day, the sheer blinds proved to be indispensable for managing sunlight. The rest of the apartment is fitted with various B&W speakers (all with back boxes), Triad One music streamers and Control4 touch screens in every room.
Steady progress towards a fantastic end result
The kitchen and master suite are each fitted with four B&W ceiling speakers with a square plaster kit for a minimalist architectural look. The kitchen is also equipped with its own Triad One music streamer and a 55in smart TV mounted in the bespoke TV wall using a Future Automation articulated bracket.
Zak reports, “After the handover, the cinema room was used almost immediately and the client was very satisfied with its performance, especially the sound. The high end Hi-Fi is also performing and sounding much better than in the old apartment, earning comments for ‘fuller sound and more dynamics’. The client was also
Essential Kit List
• Sony VPL-XW7000 Native 4K Laser Projector
• Future Automation PD3.5 Projector Lift
• Screen Excellence Media Time 130in projection Screen
• Marantz AV-10 AV processor
• Marantz AMP-10 multichannel power amplifier
• Bowers & Wilkins CWM7.3S2 LCR speakers x 3
• Bowers & Wilkins CWM7.4S2 speakers x 6
• Bowers & Wilkins ISW8 In-wall Subwoofer
• Bowers & Wilkins CTSW15 in-wall 15in Subwoofer
impressed with the ceiling speakers in the rest of the space, saying that now he can hear more detail than with the previous speakers.
Zak says, “We are still doing minor tweaks and adjustments as the clients are settling in, mainly with the light settings and scenes. The best part is that because the whole system is online, we can remotely change light settings, remove or add new scenes and do just about anything on the system without setting a foot inside. Technology to the people!”
M.E.G.A. AV Installations instagram.com/m.e.g.a.av/ megaavinstallations.com
• Bowers & Wilkins CDA-2HD DSP Power Amplifier x 3
• Apple TV 4K
• Sky Stream
• Sony Bluray Player
• Innuos Zen Mini 1TB Music server
• Cisco 48 Port Network switch
• Cisco 24 Port PoE Network Switch
• Control4 Core 5 Processor
• Control4 Halo Touch Remote
• Control4 8in Touch Screen
• Lutron Homeworks Lighting & Motorised Shading
• Van-Damme speaker cable
Light management was crucial in this challenging space
PRODUCT HIGHLIGHT
WEQUOTE INTRODUCES WORKHUB AND SNAGG ENGINEERS APP
Take control of your projects with WorkHub, the latest addition to the WeQuote platform. The company has also introduced the SNAGG Engineers App.
The WorkHub allows installers to transform a quote into actionable tasks and schedule the work to engineers with real-time feedback on project progress. From scheduling quoted work to tracking service callouts and billable work, the WeQuote WorkHub transforms complex workflows into manageable, streamlined processes for AV integrators across the globe, says the company.
WeQuote adds that managing field engineers has never been more efficient, as the new SNAGG Engineers App provides staff with the job details they need. Accessible via both Android and iPhone, the SNAGG app allows engineers to view detailed project information, mark tasks as complete, and log their work and travel hours directly from the field. Keeping managers informed in real-time, the SNAGG App enables you to track profitability and stay on top of multiple projects, as well as keeping a record of completion photos and dependencies.
A NEW ERA FOR SONOS PRO
Sonos has announced that Era 100 Pro, its first solution optimised for professional installation in light-commercial and residential spaces, is available for pre-order and will start shipping January 28, 2025.
Exclusively sold in pairs to select Sonos partners specialising in professional installation, Era 100 Pro will be available alongside Era 100 Pro Surface Mount (sold separately in pairs), which delivers flexible mounting for a variety of layouts and applications. Zones, a new software feature that makes configuring and controlling multiple speakers easier and more customisable for larger spaces, will be available via a Sonos app update on iOS and Android at the same time.
Key features include Power over Ethernet simplifying installation process. Era 100 Pro is also optimised for PoE+ but can also be used with standard PoE.
The Surface Mount boasts 30° pan and tilt ranges and 360° rotation, enabling installation in any orientation. Its indexed ball joint allows installers to achieve repeatable angles with precision, enabling fast deployment when mounting multiple speakers, while also ensuring the speakers won’t sag over time. Able to affix to virtually any surface, the mount can also accommodate hidden or exposed cabling and
The company is offering a free 14-day trial and an onboarding service designed to get you up and running quickly. The team is on hand to guide team members every step of the way, ensuring each company is ready to unlock the full potential of WeQuote’s features. Visit app.wequote. cloud/signup/EILIVE to sign up.
Shaun Kamal, Director of install company Lumanox Ltd, describes WeQuote as, “A fantastic platform that is fully customisable, with a brilliant support team. From recently being introduced to WeQuote, the platform has become an integral part of my business.
“From direct catalogue access and customisable proposals to QuickBooks integration for invoicing, this platform has been built with the smart home industry in mind.”
Try the Free Trial or book a demo to experience the WeQuote platform by getting in touch with the team.
WeQuote wequote.cloud
has a locking base plate for theft deterrence.
Era 100 Pro also has a built-in threaded insert and optional eyebolt that provides a secondary safety attachment point should building codes require it, helping the speaker withstand seismic events and avoid accidental damage.
Leveraging the same acoustic architecture as Era 100, Era 100 Pro provides high quality sound and impressive low frequency performance, unique within the PoE speaker category, says Sonos. With two 0.63in / 16 mm silk angled high-frequency drivers and a 3.5 x 4.4 in / 90.8 x 111.9 mm carbon filled-polypropylene low-frequency driver, the speaker has been created to deliver rich sound across a wide 240° horizontal dispersion, giving broad coverage from a compact profile.
Sonos
sonos.com
A product first for Sonos
Start the Free Trial today or book a demo to experience the WeQuote for AV quoting and project management. Visit app.wequote.cloud/signup/EILIVE
AGILE, POWERFUL, COMPACT: THE VELODYNE MINIVEE-X
Redline Distribution has introduced the MiniVee X by subwoofer specialists Velodyne Acoustics, billed as a true 21st century bass reproduction solution.
The Velodyne Acoustics MiniVee-X, an advancement on the success of the original MiniVee 8 and 10, delivers on every level, says Redline. This new Bluetooth APP-controlled,
compact subwoofer (H/W/D 43 cm x 41 cm x 41 cm) delivers ultra-high output, with low distortion. Whilst being mindful of the popularity of the original MiniVee 8 and 10, the development team wanted to take advantage of all the very latest research, so approached the MiniVee-X in many ways as if it were a new product.
AXION LIGHTING AIMS FOR A PERFECT 10
Axion Lighting has announced the launch of its latest touch screen, a larger 10in version of the popular 5.5in and 8in Android variants. Designed to provide seamless integration across a variety of control systems (including DIY), this new model augments Axion’s existing line of versatile, control system-agnostic touch screens. With a sleek, high-resolution display, ability to run any tablet app in the Google Play Store such as the Control4, Crestron, NICE, RTI and URC viewers, the 10in touch screen offers a flexible installation option for integrators and system designers across industries looking for a cost-effective user interface that isn’t locked to a specific implementation of technology. All of this comes in a package that mounts to a standard US single gang back box,
A standout feature of Axion’s 10in touch screen is its compatibility with the Axion Kiosk App Launcher, an application that transforms the screen into a secure, multifunctional interface. When paired with the Kiosk App Launcher, any of the Axion touch screens can easily be locked down to a single app, remove status bars, navigations controls and enable restricted access while providing critical functions such as
customisable screensavers and remote device management. This pairing ensures that the device can be tailored to specific project needs and maintained with ease, whether it’s deployed in a commercial or residential application.
"Our new 10in touch screen not only builds on the foundation of Axion's control-agnostic approach to all our products, but also delivers a level of functionality and versatility that today’s
Enhancing versatility and control, Axion Lighting adds a 10in Android PoE panel
Redline says MiniVee-X enjoys the benefits of a closed cabinet, helping it achieve excellent precision, whilst the acoustically optimised MDF housing has additional bracings to eliminate resonances. The product also boasts two redesigned 8in drivers (one active with 22mm X-max and one passive). This driver arrangement and cabinet bracing are in place to deliver clean and pleasingly fast bass reproduction. The cabinet is finished in a piano black, custom colour finishes are available on request through Redline. Pro level room tuning is available through a proprietary app (Android and Apple) that allows dealers to adjust the MiniVee X to suit surround and two channel sets ups. High level connectors, RCA/XLR inputs/outputs complete a newly developed DSP-controlled, effective and cool running Class D amplifier delivering up to 800W. The MiniVee-X is equipped with a stereo high-level input for direct connection to the loudspeaker output of any amplifier. MiniVee-X also has a 3.5 mm minijack input and a slightly delayed 12 V trigger output. The MiniVee-X is priced at £1395.00 inc VAT.
integrators and end-users demand," says Chris Allen, Chief Product Officer. "When paired with our Axion Kiosk App Launcher software, it creates a powerful, customisable interface that is easy to deploy and economical."
Axion Lighting axionlighting.com
To operate the optional Velodyne Wi Connect System II there is a 5 V / 1 A USB power output
NICE TIME FOR FRESH FUNCTIONALITY
Nice has announced the OS 8.9 over-theair (OTA) update is now available through Management Cloud. Designed to unify connected devices and deliver a visually elegant, fully customisable user experience, Nice says OS 8.9 sets a new benchmark for smart home systems, offering enhanced security, seamless integration with thirdparty devices, and greater convenience for homeowners and integrators alike.
Nice OS 8.9 offers a comprehensive update, allowing tailoring of a smart home experience with customisable themes, settings, and geofencing features. Users can manage their home’s media, climate, lighting and security with an intuitive system that supports wholehome control with elegant new themes and user experience for all interfaces, including the HR40 remote control. For a fully personalised touch, new location capabilities automatically
RGB COMMUNICATIONS ADDS DEVIALET ASTRA
RGB Communications, distributor of audiovisual solutions in the UK, has announced the expansion of its partnership with Devialet to launch the Devialet Astra.
The Devialet Astra is engineered to transform the listening experience with its state-of-the-art ADH (Analogue Digital Hybrid) technology. Delivering a powerful output of 2 x 300W, and capable of reaching 2 x 600W in Dual mode, the Astra has been created to set a new standard for audio clarity and precision, making it a standout addition to RGB’s offerings.
Devialet also offers an exclusive tradein program for existing customers who own an integrated Expert amplifier, known as the ‘Elevate Program’. This programme allows customers to acquire the new Devialet Astra at a favourable price in exchange for their Expert unit, providing an accessible upgrade path to experience Devialet’s latest advancements in audio technology.
Audio enthusiasts and professionals now have an exclusive opportunity to experience the Devialet Astra amplifier in their own environment, thanks to RGB. The distributor says those interested in testing Astra’s clarity and precision first-hand can connect with their account manager or the RGB sales team to
arrange a personalised demonstration. The aim is to discover how Astra’s performance seamlessly integrates with an existing setup, allowing for direct comparison with a current amplifier system.
RGB says that what sets the Devialet Astra apart is its all-in-one design, integrating a preamp, amplifier, DAC, streamer, and phono stage into a single sleek unit. With advanced connectivity options such as USB-C, Ethernet, and dual-band Wi-Fi, users can
sync the nearest touch panel with the user’s location, adapting the smart home environment in real time.
The platform now integrates with a wider range of third-party devices, including Apple TV, Roku, Tesla Powerwall, and Philips Hue. New features like Action Events allow users to streamline responses to automated notifications, simplifying tasks such as closing a garage door left open or placing the home in Away all without needing to navigate through an app.
For integrators, OS 8.9 offers streamlined installation with the Mobile Device Manager, making onboarding faster and more efficient. Integrators can now enjoy improved system security through Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) authentication and advanced facial recognition.
“With OS 8.9, we’re giving both homeowners and integrators the tools they need to create a truly connected home,” says Paul Williams, Global Managing Director for Nice Home Management business unit. “This release offers more power, more flexibility, and an easier interface, setting the foundation for the future of home automation.”
Nice niceforyou.com
create personalised audio setups that fit their individual needs.
This enhanced partnership between RGB Communications and Devialet not only broadens RGB’s reach in the high-end audio market but also reinforces its mission to provide customers with innovative solutions that deliver superior sound quality.
RGB Communications rgbcomms.co.uk
Devialet Astra offers an enticing mix of performance and versatility
SURGEX LAUNCHES DEFENDER SERIES+ IN EMEA
SurgeX has launched its Defender Series+ line of power protection products to the EMEA and APAC markets. The Defender Series+ line has been created to deliver comprehensive, costeffective mains protection and conditioning for everyday applications, and now features the cloud-connected power quality analytics, fleet management, and risk prevention capabilities found within the SurgeX CONNECT platform.
“The Defender Series of products has been a staple of our line-up, with our MultiStage surge suppression technology delivering uninterrupted operation in thousands of installations around the world,” says Justin Peyton, Director of Sales EMEA and APAC, AMETEK SurgeX. “Its affordable price point means that efficient power protection is within reach for more projects. Now with SurgeX CONNECT compatibility, the new Defender Series+ line gives integrators an advanced feature set, allowing them to monitor and manage a fleet of installations remotely, improve their service offering, and save time and money by reducing expensive service call outs.”
The Defender Series+ line of products is available now via SurgeX’s network of distributors throughout EMEA
Installed in AV and IT equipment racks, the IP-controlled Defender Series+ features remote turn on/off, power cycling, and sequencing, as well as advanced scheduling AutoPing and threshold triggered events.
When a fault is detected, predefined actions are triggered automatically, streamlining workflow and minimising downtime. Designed to protect high value technology and tackle the increasingly complex, processing-heavy AV systems of today, the Defender Series+ is also compatible with popular third-party control systems for integration in residential and commercial applications. Its advanced power filtration technology delivers pristine power to equipment to help maintain peak performance for every project, says the maker.
A POWERFUL SUPER SUB FROM MCINTOSH
McIntosh has announced the launch of the PS1K Powered Subwoofer. Engineered for audiophiles and home theatre enthusiasts alike, the maker says the PS1K enhances any system by delivering deeper, more accurate low frequencies that will transform the listening experience.
At the heart of the PS1K are two 13in drivers featuring McIntosh’s proprietary Low Distortion/High Performance (LD/HP) Magnetic Circuit Design, created to reduce distortion and improve power handling. With advanced Finite Element Analysis (FEA) ensuring extreme linearity, the PS1K’s woofers incorporate multi-layer carbon fibre cones for superior rigidity and sound clarity, resisting flex even at high outputs.
The PS1K’s dual 13in woofers are driven by two 500W Class D amplifiers, combining for a powerful 1,000W of output. Whether playing music or movies, McIntosh says the PS1K’s bass is tight and clear, effortlessly filling large spaces. A sealed box design and nearly 1.5in (3.8cm) thick enclosure baffle eliminate port noise and vibration, ensuring a precise, clean bass response.
The PS1K is designed to complement McIntosh speakers yet remains versatile enough
to grace any high-end audio system. It offers flexible inputs and outputs to integrate with any stereo or home theatre setup. With balanced and unbalanced subwoofer connections, adjustable filters, and parametric EQ, it can be fine-tuned to suit individual listening environments and preferences.
McIntosh’s signature Power Guard and Sentry Monitor technologies are built into the PS1K to protect against overloading and short circuits, ensuring reliable, long-term performance. Additionally, the PS1K’s eco-friendly signal sensing and Power
The Defender Series+ joins SurgeX’s Protect + Connect product line. All Protect + Connect products are compatible with SurgeX CONNECT, the cloud-based solution that allows for monitoring and managing an entire fleet of compatible SurgeX devices in a single, centralised dashboard.
SurgeX ametekesp.com/surgex
Control technology enhance convenience and power management.
With a sleek high-gloss black finish, carbon trim, and an aluminium base, the PS1K not only performs at the highest level but also looks stunning says the maker. Glide feet for hard floors and spikes for carpets ensure stable placement in any room. The PS1K is available now to authorised McIntosh dealers.
McIntosh mcintoshlabs.com
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