The owner had a cinema in a separate building on his property, but it was only three years old and he wasn’t happy with how it performed. He asked The Digital Picture to start again and “make it perfect, no shortcuts”. They stripped the room back and rebuilt it with a 200-inch screen, a bright laser projector and an 11.8.7 speaker layout. Eight 28-inch subwoofers, tuned with Trinnov’s WaveForming, give deep, fast and controlled bass. Careful calibration means films look and sound as the filmmaker intended.
The room is also built for comfort. New walls, doors and an airlock let it play at 115 to 118dB without the neighbours hearing a thing, and the air conditioning stays quiet through the loudest scenes. The seating sits low, at the centre of the screen. Subwoofers and speakers are hidden in custom frames, and the wall lights are tinted so they never reflect the picture.
The team spent roughly eight weeks testing four different materials before landing on custom aluminium t-slot stands, filled with acoustic polyester filler and bolted to the floor, with eyebolt and webbing-strap tie-downs ensuring the subwoofers could never shift or fall.
The team designed a protruding rear wall, concealed behind the fabric wall system, to provide minimum ventilation and service clearance behind the projector without compromising subwoofer placement or the room's finished appearance.
The team rebuilt the walls with new stud framing, 70mm front and rear and 50mm side cavities, fresh acoustic insulation, an acoustic clip system and a dual-door airlock entry with perimeter and drop seals, achieving playback at 115-118dB inside with no audible transfer outside, all without a raised floor threshold.
The client upgraded the property to three-phase power, and the team split the racks across two 100A phases with fully fibre-interconnected racks to eliminate any electrical bridging, plus a dedicated power control box with contactor-isolated 15A points and Class-D breakers to deliver high current to the subwoofer amps without nuisance tripping.
