Same again, please!

The owner of this basement cinema loved his old setup so much he wanted it replicated - but better. Daniel Sait reports

-  Daniel Sait

THE BRIEF FOR this custom movie room was simple, says Steve Barrett of installer SMC. 'Having loved his Steinway Lyngdorf cinema that we installed in his last property, our client wanted to replicate it in his new one. This time, however, he upgraded to include Dolby Atmos channels, and a projector that enables 120Hz sources.'

The result is a state-of-the-art picture palace ready for immersive audio, 4K HDR playback, and gaming sessions on its Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 consoles, with further 'upgrades' also made based on experience of the previous system. These included constructing a ‘hush-box’ for the JVC DLA-NZ8 projector, acoustically isolating the cinema from the of the rest house, and specifying a fi xed projection screen rather than the owner's earlier drop-down model.

A basement conversion, the build involved stripping the room back to its concrete shell and then remodelling, with the design incorporating a raised rear seating platform, plus separate section at the rear to house the PJ and equipment rack. In the latter are processor (with RoomPerfect EQ) and power amplifiers to make the 7.2.4 Steinway Lyngdorf array play to its best.