Home Cinema Calibration Experts | London | Cheshire | Dubai
Professional Home Theater Calibration – Demand the Best from your Home Cinema System!
As Home Cinema Specialists we are experts at designing and installing Home Cinema systems. For each and every system we install we preform a full calibration service – after all the best equipment in the room needs setting up properly. By taking in to account speaker positioning and room harmonics – in conjunction with seating positions and client requirements – we can ensure that your home cinema installation performs at it’s absolute best. We work with a huge range of equipment, from professional custom installation audio video receivers such as Anthem, Audio Control or Trinnov through to consumer grade equipment such as Denon, Pioneer or Sony. They all have one thing in common – they need calibrating to perform!
Calibration for Standard AVRs
Most home cinema receivers ship with a little microphone and an auto calibration system. These systems can deliver OKish results and clients can easily toggle between the calibrated settings and the out of the box settings to check progress – after all the listeners opinion is by far the best judge of the sound! It is definitely worth manually checking over the applied settings – do distances from the speaker to the listener look correct? Are crosssover settings broadly the same for each of the same speaker type? Is the speaker size set correctly? It is definitely worth checking these settings as otherwise too much reliance can be placed on the small, cheap, microphone and algorithm.
Our approach is a little different – our microphone and calibration software give us the full audio spectrum allowing us to precisely see where in the range the audio needs improving. Each manufacturer of AVR offers different settings and different amounts of customisation but we generally improve audio by a combination of AVR settings, moving speakers (like subwoofers) where practical, and advising on room acoustics. A well placed bean bag can have a huge impact on audio! Dolby Atmos cinema systems with overhead add another layer of complexity to the calibration process but the principal is the same as the main channels and by taking care with crossover settings and distances the Atmos channels can be calibrated in exactly the same way as the other channels.
Trinnov Calibration and Commissioning
Trinnov, rightly, make headlines for the sheer number of audio channels and their advanced decoding but the thing which impresses us the most is their class leading calibration system. By using a Trinnov 3D microphone we can get extremely precise audio information about the environment and the audio reproduction – including the heights of the speakers. We can then perform a full calibration – with way more calibration available than a standard AVR – and save it down against a particular source or preset. The result is perfect audio for each source, if a client likes more bass for films than music this is easily achieved. We can even switch speakers on and off for different sources – a good example of this is garden audio with music playing through each of the ear level speakers in a mono format. For films through the outdoor TV the speakers become part of the surround system with audio being directed in the same way as our high end cinema rooms. A full EQ allows us to “dial out” elements from the environment which are colouring the music – resulting in the perfect client experience!
Two Channel and Hifi Calibation
Our team are experts at making the most of your two channel / Hi-Fi system. There is so much more to tuning a hi-fi audio system than simply installing the speakers and a nice rack for the amplifiers. For lovers of high end audio factors such as speaker positioning (proximity to walls), speaker toe in (angle to the listener) and seating position can all affect the performance of your audio system. We are also experts in ensuring the room acoustics allow a system to perform – sometimes a strategically placed rug or bean bag can transform the sound stage from a two channel system! We also have the ability to fine tune the audio from a system by changing interconnects and speaker cables – subtly changing the characteristics of a system.
Below is an image of us on site at our Derby home cinema installation. This dedicated cinema room performs brilliantly – a Sony 4K projector delivers a stunning image whilst a very high end Artcoustic speaker package delivers stunning audio. This is an image of us mid-calibration. You can make out the Artcoustic surround sound channels and Sony projector. The Artcoustic front channels are all installed behind the acoustically transparent projector screen.
