Your Home Theatre

WSR's Holosonic™ Home Theatre System
Part I - The "Dream": Building A Dedicated Home Theatre From Scratch

By Gary Reber

Widescreen Review's New State-Of-The-Art Reference Theatre At New Facility

The following introduces a series of articles on the design, development and execution of a new state-of-the-art Reference Home Theatre Laboratory at WSR's new office facility.

After nine years of continuous growth, WSR Publishing, Inc. has moved into its new headquarters after outgrowing its old offices. As owners and founders of Widescreen Review® magazine (1992) and other WSR Publishing, Inc. ventures, including WidescreenReview.com, SurroundMusic.net and WebDVD Publications, Marlene and I have purchased a new 5,000 square foot building in Temecula (north of San Diego, southeast of Los Angeles) to house our fast-growing enterprises. Build-out of the facility, which utilizes over 7,000 square feet of offices and "home theatre" review rooms on two floors, commenced on January 2, 2001, and was completed for move-in on March 24.

A key element of the new building is a state-of-the-art reference theatre that will serve as Widescreen Review's and Surround Music's review laboratory.

Usually, dedicated home theatres&endash;&endash;as designed and promoted by Theo Kalomirakis' Theaters, Theatre Design Associates, Inc., Acoustic Innovations, First Impressions, etc. and reported on in such picture-book dominant publications as Audio Video Interiors and Home Theater Interiors&endash;&endash;are interior design driven rather than optimized for video and audio performance. Elaborate staging and seating areas complemented by colorful fabric-covered walls decorated with stylish sconces and acoustically treated so as to usually impart a "dead"-room sound are the rule. Audio is regulated to non-full range "hidden" dissimilar speaker designs all around, often built into the walls. At best, video displays (usually front-projection types), are calibrated, but always must fight with the light pollution caused by ambient light and the room interior colors, which to a lesser or greater degree reflect back on to the screen to contaminate the picture causing a washed-out quality and less-than-ideal contrast ratio.

Then, too, the audio implementation is typically of the Home THX®-type, an approach which attempts to "simulate" the inherent limitations of "dubbing" stages and thus, movie theatres. (See the side bar on "The Home THX Approach.") The end result is overly electronic-processed audio which leaves untapped the full potential of the multichannel 5.1 and 6.1 audio formats for delivering outstanding soundstage and holosonic™ soundfield imaging.

The approach at WSR is completely different from that of THX, and the typical approaches practiced by the majority of theatre designers. We have sought to build a home theatre in which picture and sound performance is paramount. Our implementation embraces principles of purist high-end audio applied with dedicated diligence to home theatre to create a believable sense of enveloping holosonic space.

While not colorfully ornate in interior appearance, our built-from-the-ground-up dedicated theatre's interior is striking and optimally functional with no visual distractions. We have eliminated ambient light completely with our virtually all-black treated room accentuated with highlights in a video-complementary gray.

We also decided to erect a component, mirror-less, rear-projection system as our principal viewing system, once again to eliminate light pollution and maximize picture contrast, shadow delineation, clarity and visual impact.

A core philosophy at WSR is identical full-range-capable speaker systems for each of the five or six main channels and their equidistant positioning relative to the primary "sweet-spot" or "the chair."

You can find this complete article in Issue 48 of Widescreen Review Magazine. Click here to view issue 48 in the back issue section.