I’m a little overdue (ok, a lot) in announcing this, but we’re officially partnering with NAD Electronics as our primary supplier of A/V Receivers. I’m really excited about this as I believe NAD rounds out our lineup of premium components, particularly complementing Bay Audio speakers and JL Audio subwoofers. You can read a little bit more about NAD at www.nadelectronics.com.

As a side note, we ARE continuing to work on the Reference Theater, we’ve just been slowed a bit because of some construction issues. And yes, we’ll be using an NAD T175 Pre-processor and T975 7-channel amplifier in the theater. Very exciting!

We’re making progress! The photos below show the framing of the theater and lobby. The goal of the theater is to isolate sound by preventing it from entering or leaving the theater. To that end, we’re using two construction techniques you might see in the photos.

The first is the idea of a “room within a room” where no part of the theater is connected to the framing of the house. Think of it like building a house in side a giant building. The theater stands alone so that we don’t transmit any noise from the theater framing to the framing of the rest of the house. That’s why you see the photo of the wall just ending just slightly short of the metal beam and the new joists being installed so they don’t touch the rest of the house.

The second is that we’re building double stud walls around much of the theater to further isolate the sound. That means we have two full walls offset by about an inch around the perimeter between the theater and the furnace and lobby areas.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the theater is going to be in a basement. The two big issues we face with the flooring in a basement is cold (especially here in NH) and more importantly water. Almost every foundation will take on some amount of water at some point, no matter how well it is built and drained. Yes, I know, we can fix leaks, but what if the problem comes about after we build our theater? To that end, we chose a subfloor product called DriCore. It’s a series of 2×2 osb tiles with a plastic backing that raises it slightly off the floor. What this does is allow for some airflow under the floor in case moisture does build up as well as providing some space to deal with minor leaks. It also provides an insulating layer so that our floor is more comfortable in the winter.

You’ll see the process we went through to install the floor below.

A lot of planning and thought went into what we wanted to do with our Reference Theater. Ultimately, it’s a showcase for what we do as a company, and because of that we needed to make it big enough to give people a sense of what’s possible. We also wanted to show what could be done with a space that many people have and don’t make full use of, their basement. The photos below are the “before” shots. You’ll see it was a fairly wide open space, but is not without it’s challenges.

There are ducts that force us to lower the finished ceiling height. There are columns that need to be built around. The floor is somewhat uneven. The foundation, while relatively new, does have spots where water enters. And of course, all the utilities and mechanical equipment that keep the house running are also down there.

We’ll work around all these obstacles with a variety of techniques that we’ll describe as we go through the build. Keep checking back for progress.

One of the challenges of being a custom install company with no storefront is the issue of a showroom. In the past we’ve used reference customers to show the quality of work we do, and that’s been okay for the most part. At this point though, we’ve decided it’s time to put together a sort of “Reference Theater” where we highlight the types of solutions we deliver. To that end, we’ve taken on building a theater at our primary location. We took into account the same things our customers are faced with in many cases, such as sound isolation, delivering the “cinema at home” experience, and maximizing usable space.

In the end, we’ll have a 6-8 seat theater with concealed speakers, done in a sort of “Rialto” style with stained woodwork and leather seating. We’ll be showcasing all the top partners we rely on including NAD, Bay Audio, Control4, Continental Seating, PlanetWaves (as well as several others) to bring together what we consider the ultimate cinema experience. I’ll post a few “in process” pictures over the course of the project to give some ideas on what goes into a dedicated theater.

Stay tuned!