by Theatron | Sep 24, 2015 | Home Theater, What's New
Imagine experiencing a movie at home that sounds so realistic, it feels as though the jet onscreen is flying through your home theater. The details are amazing – you can pinpoint a mosquito hovering near your ear! This is the type of ultra-realistic sound that Dolby Atmos technology provides at home, surpassing what traditional 5.1- and 7.1-channel surround sound available today. It’s the kind of effect that will make your friends’ jaws drop and envelop you in the ultimate theater experience at home.
A different approach
Dolby Atmos goes beyond the “channel” approach of these traditional surround sound systems by freeing the sound stage and allowing audio elements to be placed anywhere in the room, even above the audience. Dolby refers to this technology as “object-based” audio because any sound can be mixed as a single audio element—an object—that’s independently placed in three-dimensional space. Sounds are choreographed along with the onscreen action for an über-precise soundstage that makes you feel like you are truly there. The resulting home cinema experience becomes that much more rich, immersive and lifelike as the picture and sound are more closely woven together. With the ability to support up to 128 simultaneous objects, Dolby Atmos, lets you experience a soundtrack as you would in a real-world environment. While Dolby Atmos was first to the object-based audio arena, competing surround sound technology company DTS followed suit in April with the announcement of its version, DTS:X object-based surround.
The right equipment
To enjoy the technology in your home theater, in addition to a Blu-ray and/or streaming media player, you’ll need a Dolby Atmos A/V receiver (or preamp/processor), which will handle all of the necessary signal processing to reproduce the audible objects where they need to be in your home theater room. You will want overhead sound capabilities, which means standard overhead speakers or new Dolby Atmos enabled speakers, which are engineered to direct sound upward, where it reflects sound off the ceiling to produce lifelike sound effects. Whether you choose to add to your existing speaker system or opt for a completely new system is up to you, thanks to Dolby Atmos’ backward compatibility.
Call Theatron Home Theater and Smart Home today to hear for yourself how exciting, how moving, and how utterly cool this technology can be in your own living room or media room. You won’t believe your ears as your home theater is rocked by explosions, soaked in rain or trampled by dinosaurs.
Call Us Today:
Mclean VA: 703-883-0970
Purcellville VA: 540-882-9613
by Theatron | Jun 26, 2015 | Whole House Audio
Architectural speakers are the latest and greatest in audio equipment. Remember when stereo speakers were like pieces of furniture and weighed just as much? As the years have gone on, they’ve gotten smaller and smaller while the sound just gets better and better. But only if you purchase the right product. Otherwise, the hardware might be modern enough to fit in your pocket, but the sound might be more reminiscent of an old-time Victrola.
Many homes are wired or retrofit for the ability to hear music in every room, but you still need to find a place to put the speakers. They might be tiny in comparison to what they looked like in the 70s, but they can still put a kink in your décor, especially if you have gone the minimalist route. Wireless speakers are a great invention and make placement easier, but the sound quality can’t compare to hard-wired models, which can leave nests of cables tangled in the corners of every room. Enter: recessed architectural speakers.
Indoors or Out
Architectural speakers can be installed in the walls or ceiling of any room in your home and they will seamlessly blend with their surroundings so that the music appears to be coming from the air! Aluminum, rust-proof grilles make it safe to install these speakers in kitchens, bathrooms, saunas and other high-moisture areas. They come in white to match most ceilings, but if you want them installed in the walls instead, they’re paintable so you can have an exact match. The superior sound quality of top-of-the-line architectural speakers lends a live quality to the music you stream. They are perfect for basement home theaters, where the authentic cinema surround-sound can fool anyone into thinking they’re at the multiplex.
But why limit your enjoyment of music to the inside of your home? Architectural speakers can be installed outside as well, allowing you to play some classical music for a romantic dinner al fresco, some old-time rock-n-roll for a baby boomer backyard birthday party, or modern tunes for your teenagers’ pool party.
Great for Offices
These nearly invisible speakers are also perfect in an office setting. And today’s models are not like the tinny ones you remember from your dentist’s office — this is high performance, state-of-the-art sound. Individual controls allow you to play music for clients in some areas while allowing for different music for employees in other areas. Or music can be turned off altogether in rooms where workers need quiet for meetings or to focus on their work.
Theatron Home Theater and Smart Homes is the expert in outfitting homes and offices with architectural speakers in Northern Virgina & Washington DC — call them today to find out how you can get beautiful music from speakers that are heard and not seen.
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by Theatron | May 20, 2015 | Home Theater
Home Theater Design
The true home theater design experience can take you away to another place. You become so immersed in the film you feel like you are part of the movie. This is what happens when you create a real home theater room, dedicated to surround sound and great video!
The Film Experience
The goal is to create exactly what happens in a movie theater, with the image from a high quality projector reflecting to your eyes from a large film screen. In our blog on screen size, you will learn how to choose the right size screen for your room. Your screen size, its height off the floor, and how many rows of seats you have are factors to account for in your theater room design. The key is getting the sight lines right. You want all viewers to enjoy the entire picture without having to look over or around someone’s head, and you don’t want viewers to have to stretch their necks to see the screen. Theatron’s experts can help with this, laying out in CAD format almost all of our dedicated front projection home theatres. Line of sight is a tricky subject and can make or break a room where more than a couple of people will enjoy the film experience.
Room Design
In designing a dedicated home theater room, you should not have to worry about anything other than making things perfect for sight and sound. (That’s why you made it a dedicated room!) We can help you with screen layout, plus projector, speaker and component placement. Other important considerations are how it will look and how the room can be treated for acoustics. Many magazines and web sites can give you ideas for the architectural look of your theater. Theatron also has decorators and designers we work with on theater appointments. We cannot stress enough how big a difference the proper acoustics approach will make in the enjoyment of your theater.
Acoustics and Soundproofing
In designing a dedicated home theater, speaker placement is extremely important. By far, the most important track in a film is the dialogue track. This is produced through the center channel speaker. If you cannot understand dialogue, the impact of the movie is greatly reduced. In theater rooms with multiple rows of seats, hearing dialogue clearly can be a challenge.
In designing a dedicated home theater, speaker placement is extremely important. By far, the most important track in a film is the dialogue track. This is produced through the center channel speaker. If you cannot understand dialogue, the impact of the movie is greatly reduced. In theater rooms with multiple rows of seats, hearing dialogue clearly can be a challenge. Not only should your family and guests be able to see all of the screen, they need to hear all of the speakers. No speaker is more important than the center channel. It’s fairly easy to get sound right when there is only one row of home theater seating, but with two or more rows, the location of the center channel becomes critical. Our experts will help you with your design to optimize the center speaker position.
There is a good rule to follow for the best separation of the left and right speakers. We like to see them at about a 45 to 60 degree angle with the main seating position. Use a 45 degree position if the main use of the room is movies, spread the speakers further apart if you will also be enjoying concert videos or audio. Our staff can help you plot this out.
Subwoofer Placement
The subwoofer (the speaker providing deep bass effects) can usually be hidden under the screen. Again, we can help with design options. Remember that the worst spot for a subwoofer is in the middle of your room, the best, close to a corner. And the more subs the better – four is ideal!
Surround Speaker Placement
Finally, surround speakers can be positioned to your sides and on the rear wall. You should have one or more pairs of side speakers and one pair of rear speakers. Their placement will be related to how your seating arrangement works out. We can offer lots of advice here.
Ventilation
In most dedicated home theater rooms, equipment is housed outside the room to minimize noise. It is critical for the life expectancy of components that they have adequate ventilation. Your amplifier or receiver will put out some heat, but the cable box, satellite box, or video game radiate a great deal of heat. If you use an existing cabinet, passive ventilation by drilling holes is not sufficient to exhaust hot air. Synergy typically installs a ventilation fan in the cabinet to exhaust the hot air, and using a remote mounted thermostat controlled fan is even better. We can mount one of these in your crawl space so you never hear the fan noise.
Controlling All The Equipment
If no one can figure out how to turn the system on and make selections, its obvious the enjoyment factor will drop! A well thought out remote control can make all of the difference! Reliable options now exist so you can hide all your components and get signals to them perfectly. We offer you a wide range of options.
Theatron The Ultimate Home Theater
Imagine an area of your home decorated with a cinema theme, perhaps with a vintage popcorn machine and concession area setting off the area outside the screening room. Your invited guests gather here for wine and conversation before the movie begins. At the scheduled time for your film, your lighting control system automatically dims your lights as programmed, signaling when you and your guests should move to your theater to enjoy this week’s latest Blu-ray movie release. When everyone is seated, a single touch to your personalized touch screen controller dims the lights to viewing level, activates your projector and starts the movie.
During the film, images have almost three-dimensional vividness, and you are enveloped in the music and effects of the soundtrack, clearly understanding everything that is said. When the movie ends, your friends comment that the experience is so much better than a movie theater, they can’t imagine why you would ever leave home! Is this your ultimate home theater dream? Whatever yours happens to be, our design team can help your dream come true.
