Best Home Cinema

Level III

Finalist

| Asia Pacific

Coastal Cinema

by Len Wallis Audio

Front speakers are tucked behind acoustically-transparent fabric walls and the 157” screen.

This ambitious home cinema is a marvel when it comes to remodeling an existing room for a new purpose: The space is part of a home built in the 1960s that was constructed entirely of concrete. The client had planned for a different orientation than the final result, but a large beam in the ceiling dictated that the 157” screen occupy the wall where it’s affixed now.

The sound system here is something of a wonder: It’s the largest Meridian home cinema in existence. Meridian is a brand of active, powered speaker that can provide reference-quality sound levels and accuracy. An important consideration for a theater such as this is a consistency of experience for every viewer. To achieve that perfect sound, the Trinnov processor has pre-sets, according to the Len Wallis team: “The ‘Couple’ setting weights the entire audio image to the front middle ‘love seat’ for when the room is being used by the parents. The ‘Family’ mode weights the image to the middle four seats, both rows one and two. Whilst the ‘Guest’ mode spreads the entire image over all eight seats. All of these settings are selectable through the Savant control application.”

The audio system delivers movies and music (with fantastic bass response) through a Dolby ATMOS 13.4.6 configuration — that’s 23 speaker channels. Since the space is a bit tight given the number of seats, the Len Wallis team had to be especially exacting when it came to the placement of sound absorbers and diffusers. The final result is a theater that sounds as elegant as it looks.