Scott Newnam, President and Leon Shaw, Founder and Chairman (Photo by Steve Wilson)
There’s a very nice profile of Audio Advice in this week’s Triangle Business Journal (June 4, 2010 issue). If you have the chance, take time to check the article out. The complete article is behind the TBJ subscriber wall.
Brad O’Toole from Transparent Audio, our favorite cable and power conditioning company, was in our store this week to show us some new products. This always results in a slew of cables laying all over the floor of our sound room as we have fun listening to the differences. I find it really interesting to compare various interconnects, speaker cables, and now even power cords!
I did a little comparing at home a couple of weeks ago and discovered something quite surprising. I took my son’s PlayStation3 and connected it to my Classe SSP800 surround sound processor and used it just as a CD player. I used the PS3 instead of my higher end Pioneer Elite Blu-ray player to try and replicate just a pretty standard Blu-ray source. The connection was made with an HDMI cable.
I then tried a basic $20 cable a company had dropped off for me to look at, a $60 Audioquest cable, and then Transparent’s two HDMI cables. Here is the interesting part- the differences in audio were just staggering. Better defined bass, better separation, less harshness, it goes on and on. I decided to then try it with a Blu-ray disc. Same exact thing! Every time I moved up a level in cables, the audio difference was amazing.
Even with my new LED projector, though, the difference in video was not very obvious. Lesson learned: put the best HDMI cable you can afford between your Blu-ray player and surround sound processor or receiver and get a decent one for the video feed from the processor to your display device! You will find once you get over about 15’ in length, you’ll need a better quality HDMI cable to avoid noise and drop outs. With a decent one, I could not detect a video difference. But wow - for the short connection from your bluray to receiver or processor the audio difference will floor you. Brad tells me I should try a better power cord on the PS3. That’s my project for this weekend, can’t wait to see and hear what that change will make and report back to you.
So, if you are thinking, now might be a great time to upgrade some cables, Brad and Transparent have quite a summer deal. They are calling it their cable amnesty program. It’s a program that allows you to trade in any brand of old cables and get a credit towards new Transparent cables.
It’s a heck of a deal. It works like this. You have to buy a Transparent that sells for at least twice what your original cable sold for. It has to be the same type of cable, so you can not trade a component video towards an HDMI cable. But the numbers work out really great. Let’s say you have an old audio cable you paid $100 for and you are considering a new Transparent that sells for $200. You would get a 70% credit of the $100 towards the Transparent, so you can buy the $200 for $130.
It works out even better if your cables are older and have gone up in price since you purchased them because the trade in value is based upon the CURRENT selling price of your cables. With copper having gone through such large price increases over the last few years, you may actually get more in trade in value than you originally paid for your cables!!!
The only catch is, the deal is over July 31st. Its good on audio cables, power cables, and HDMI cables. Please contact your friends at Audio Advice to learn more details or to come in for a demo..
Leon
TRANSPARENT CABLE AMNESTY
For a limited time only, Transparent and Audio Advice offer you the chance to trade in your old cables of any brand, toward new natural sounding Transparent Cables. Retain 70% of the value of your old cables!
Transform thin, fatiguing sound into bold, captivating, musical sound through the Transparent Cable Amnesty program until July 31, 2010.
The Transparent Amnesty Program gives you the chance to retain 70% of the original value of your cables – far more than the value of your cables if you were to sell them! In addition, once you become a Transparent owner, you will be able to take advantage of Transparent’s generous upgrade program any time – no more waiting for Transparent to offer you amnesty.
Contact your Audio Advice consultant for more details by visiting either the Raleigh or the Charlotte store, by calling Raleigh at (919) 881-2005 or Charlotte at (704) 821-4510, or by clicking the Contact Us tab above and sending us a request with your contact information.
An inside look at our Reference Theater design process by Audio Advice chairman Leon Shaw:
In Sept. of 2009, after we signed the lease for our new store in Charlotte, I started mapping out how to remodel the space. The one room I wanted to be perfect was our Reference Theater room. Every time I drive to our Charlotte store, one of the first things I do is sit down in our Reference Theater, start up a new Blu-ray movie in the changer, and grin ear to ear. The combination of the B&W speakers, Classe processor, and Rotel amps is magical. The sound and picture are just flat jaw dropping! I don’t think a single person has come out of a demo without having a similar reaction. When there are dynamic effects, they sound incredibly realistic. You can hear every nuance of emotion in the voices of the actors and actresses. The level at which this theater came out has me all excited to redo our big theater here in Raleigh. Keep reading, and I think you will find it useful and have fun learning about the ways we went about deciding what gear to use, how we designed the acoustics, and our installation and room calibration process.
Presenting the latest video technology for home theater was a big goal. We want you to see how the wide screen viewing experience you have in a commercial theater can now be created in the home. Most blockbuster movies are shot in much a wider ratio than the usual HDTV image. (HDTV has a 1:78 ratio, where most popular films have a ratio of 2:35.) To create the 2:35 image for both home and commercial cinema, an anamorphic lens is needed. It slides in front of the projector’s primary lens. The projector electronically stretches the picture from top to bottom, and the lens stretches it left to right, creating the 2:35 presentation. The anamorphic lens causes the picture to have a slight barreling effect, which is eliminated with a curved film screen (another requirement for our room).
Charlotte Reference theater curved film screen
There were audio goals we wanted to reach as well. In commercial theaters, the center channel speaker is always behind the screen. This helps create the effect of the dialog track matching the picture. We wanted to make sure to accomplish this in our reference theater. We also wanted the front three speakers to be identical, to perfectly match sounds panning across the front sound stage.
Matched B&W speakers and subs behind front theater wall
Another audio item on our checklist was great dynamic range. This is the measurement of the difference in sound between the softest part of the movie and the loudest part. The best theaters have tremendous dynamic range. If you start with a room having a very low noise level, then by default you have greater dynamic range. Take a room with a low noise level, design it for great low frequency impact and add very efficient speakers, and you will get the best possible outcome.
We knew our theater would have seating for 7-8 people, so we wanted every seat to provide a great viewing and listening experience, with the goal of hiding every speaker and piece of equipment. The only thing we want the viewer to see is the movie screen!
Reference Theater seating arrangement
Meeting all of these goals was a challenge for me, but also lots of fun. The planning started from the outside in. Only one dimension (the width) needed to be fixed, so I played with the ceiling height and room length, creating dimensions that worked well acoustically. Since the room was going to be a rectangle (in which you can actually predict acoustics to a high degree of accuracy), and we had free reign on two of the three dimensions, we were able to plan a space with the right dimensions
The next step was about half luck. The room directly behind the back theater wall was a space we planned to use for rack building. Instead, we decided to take advantage of the space and make our Reference Theater just like a real movie theater, where the projector and equipment (which all make noise) are in a separate space. We designed this smaller area to hold the projector and theater gear, and used projection booth glass to totally isolate the two spaces.
The building HVAC system makes quite a bit of noise, so we applied acoustic dampening treatment to the ceiling above the theater. Seating was mapped out for the best acoustic spots in the room. Then the correct ratio of seating distance to screen was calculated to get the ideal screen size for the room.
Close up look at acoustic treatment panels
Gerry Lemay of Quest Acoustics and I spent many hours working on the next step in design: getting the acoustic treatment to match speaker and seating placement. We determined to get the acoustic treatments exactly right to make the Reference Theater an example of how good things can sound with proper planning for acoustic treatment. In my opinion this can ultimately make a much bigger difference in the performance of a room than the components. The end result has just been spectacular.
B&W Custom Theater CT7.3 LCRS Speaker
Next, the real fun began, picking out the gear! The simplest thing would have been to pick the top of the line from our best vendors, write a big check and be off to the races. However, outfitting an all-new store meant we needed to watch our dollars just like anyone else. Fortunately, B&W had recently introduced a new line of Custom Theater speakers having an incredible value. We chose B&W CT7.3 speakers for left, center, and right. These are priced at a very reasonable $1500 each. CT Series SW15 subwoofers from the same series were picked as well. To get really dynamic bass, we elected to use four of these: two in the front and two in the back. All of these CT Series speakers are less than 12” deep, making them easy to hide behind a screen wall. For surround and rear speakers, we used top of the line B&W in-wall speakers.
For the picture, we chose an acoustically transparent Stewart curved film screen with masking for HDTV content. This let us put the center channel behind the screen and we flanked the sides of the screen with left and right speakers. Digital Projection has had a close connection with the film industry for many years, so we chose to use their Titan projector with their anamorphic lens.
Classe SSP-800 Processor
We also chose the top of the line Classé SSP-800 processor. This is an amazing surround sound processor, the best sounding one we have ever had by far, yet at $9000 it costs less than many of its competitors. To balance our splurge in processor spending we picked Rotel amplifiers to drive all of the speakers. (The Rotel amps are just a great value- I have them in my own home theater along with the Classé processor.) The Kaleidescape movie management system and a Sony BluRay changer are our source components.
The last step was choosing the look of the room. Everything finally came together from a design standpoint. We wanted it to be tasteful, but our focus was performance and not an extravagant décor. We decided to use cherry molding trim and a simple fabric wall covering, even making columns from wrapped fabric material to keep things simple. United Leather makes a great value line of theater seats, and was our seating choice.
Building the Reference Theater
Then it was time to build it all! We wanted to have great speaker cables connecting the gear, so before the sheetrock was up we ran Transparent speaker cables all over the room. Then sheetrock went up and was ready for the acoustic treatments. After our great Charlotte team installed the equipment, the acoustic treatments went in. All that was left was calibration and control, with a basic Universal remote being used to control the theater room.
There is nothing like it our Reference Theater any store in Charlotte or, for that matter, probably within 300 miles. The viewing and listening experience you will receive from this theater is simply stunning. If you live in the Charlotte area and are into home theater at all, you owe it to yourself to experience our Reference Theater. Heck, if you live within 200 miles, it’s worth the drive!
Watch for more news as we begin our Raleigh theater renovation this summer. We hope you’ll come experience just how good home cinema can be, and learn how you can do all or part of it in your own home. We’d love to help design your home theater!
Another view of the Reference Theater screen
If you’ve had an Audio Advice Crestron system installed over the last couple of years, then you’re aware of Signature Series™, the Audio Advice designed Crestron system. Under the direction of Audio Advice president Scott Newnam, the Signature Series was developed to offer an easier to use, more reliable, and more powerful home automation and control system than was available anywhere at the time. Signature Series™ was an enormous success among discriminating homeowners who were looking for the very best available home automation technology. Since Signature Series™ was introduced, Audio Advice programmers and system designers have been at work incorporating the latest advances in home technology while keeping an eye to the future. The result: the new Signature Series 2™.
Signature Series ™ represents thousands of hours by Audio Advice and Crestron engineering to make it your ideal home control solution. You indulge in luxury with one touch. Using one button, your lights dim, shades close, the plasma TV turns on and you relax as your favorite movie begins. Listen to music while you read in the den, the kids play video games in the media room, and your spouse listens to the radio outdoors. Control music from any room – choose a component, select CDs, change tracks or adjust volume.
Watch what’s going on around the house on security cameras from your Signature Series™ touch panel. Monitor your front door, watch the kids by the swimming pool, or check on the baby napping in the nursery. These are just a few of many enhancements the Signature Series™ experience can bring to your home and way of living.
Signature Series 2™ builds on advancements and learning from over 2 years of use by Audio Advice clients and user focus groups, greatly increasing ease of use and power user functionality Signature Series 2™ adds support for iPhone, advanced security systems, user programmable capability, lifestyle customizable presets for lighting, audio and others. Advanced green living features shade control, HVAC control and more. Signature Series 2™ now includes Mac and PC support for highly advanced networking and synchronization of all music across as many as five home computers.
Contact your Audio Advice system consultant here and arrange a personal home demonstration of the ways Signature Series 2™ will make your time at home easier and more rewarding.
At Audio Advice, we love a challenge: it gives us the chance to come up with something new!
Keegan has a client who wanted to have a television in his kitchen that was out of sight, except when being watched. He wanted it to be larger than the small under counter models that are available, and because of the kitchen viewing angles it was necessary for the television to be in front of a window. Each condition would have been easy enough to meet by itself. Put the three of them together, and you have a real head scratcher!
In working with the cabinet designer, Keegan and our installation team came up with another ultra creative Audio Advice solution: an attractive cabinet provides a hiding place for the cabinet when the TV is not in use. Pictured below is the completed installation. If the television is not being watched, no one will ever know it is there!
Cabinet when TV is not in use
The hiding place revealed!
TV ready for viewing
Fri., Feb. 26, 6 pm to 9 pm and Sat., Feb. 27, 12 Noon to 6 pm
Music and Home Entertainment Presentation Information
Location: The new Audio Advice showplace
Address: 11409 Carolina Place Parkway, Pineville, NC (former Tweeter building near Carolina Place Mall)
Please RSVP if you plan to attend Friday evening by e-mail to: event@audioadvice.com (or by phone to (704) 821-4510
Friday presentations begin at 6 PM with the last at 8:30 PM. Saturday presentations are in a less structured open house format. Wine and food from Born to Cook will be available Friday evening for you to enjoy between sessions.
Presentations will be every half-hour (unless noted) as shown below. (All presenters may not be present both days, presenters are subject to change.)
Outside Room James Loudspeaker Keith Parke
Station A Peachtree Audio and Era Speakers Jim Spainhour and David Solomon
Station B How Audiophile Recordings Are Made Rick Dior/Acoustic Barn (Friday evening only. Hourly at 6, 7, and 8 PM)
Station C Digital Projection Keith Parke Stewart Filmscreen Steve Merritt Bowers and Wilkins B&W Jim Scatena and Doug Henderson
Station D Magnepan Wendall Diller Sumiko Bill Peugh
Station E Sim2 Chris Hobbs Integra Daryl Jenkins Universal Remote Bobbie Bradley
Station F Control4 Scott Salzman Salamander Steve Merritt
Station G Bowers and Wilkins B&W Jim Scatena and Doug Henderson JL Audio Randy Wagner
Station H Audio Research Dave Gordon Wilson Audio Jerron Marchant Martin Logan Russell Woolfolk Transparent Cable Brad O’Toole
Station I Niles Dave Robinette
Station J Crestron Joe Laurin Lutron Jeff Zemanek, Maria DeVirgilis, Rodgers Hill, Kevin Grissler, Jason Feus
Room K Kaleidescape Rick Lozano Screen Innovations TBD
Two days of presentations of the best hi-fi audio, home theater, and home control components and technology. Fri. Feb. 26, 6 pm to 9 pm and Sat. Feb. 27, 12 noon to 6 pm. (See details for each day below.)
The new Charlotte Audio Advice showplace
Location: The new Audio Advice showplace
Address: 11409 Carolina Place Parkway, Pineville, NC (the former Tweeter building, near Carolina Place Mall)
Friday, Feb. 26th from 6 pm to 9 pm
A special evening celebrating the pleasures of great music reproduction
The enjoyment of music will be Friday evening’s focus, with representatives from some of the finest high performance audio components and loudspeakers in the world on hand. We will offer presentations of their latest and best offerings every half hour. Born to Cook will provide wine and food for you to enjoy during this special evening.
Please RSVP for Friday evening by e-mail to event@audioadvice.com (or by phone to (704) 821-4510)
Saturday, Feb. 27th, 12 noon to 6 pm
An open house featuring the latest home entertainment technology
The world of home technology is on view Saturday in an open house setting with even more representatives on hand, showing you today’s newest and very best entertainment and automation possibilities for the whole family to enjoy!
Meet audio/video and home technology professionals from :
Audio Research
Bowers and Wilkins B&W
Classé
Control4
Crestron
Digital Projection
Era/Decco
Integra
James Loudspeaker
JL Audio
Kaleidescape
Lutron
Magnepan
Martin Logan
Niles
Panamax
Salamander
Sim2
SpeakerCraft
Stewart Filmscreen
Transparent Cable
Universal Remote
Wilson Audio
(Attendees subject to change)
Register to Win Grand Opening Prize Drawing! (do not need to be present to win)
We look forward to seeing you on Feb. 26th and 27th!
Charlotte's new Audio Advice
Those of you familiar with the greater Charlotte area probably know this location well, it’s the old Tweeter building in front of Carolina Place Mall.
Planning started in the fall of last year, when Innovative Systems of Charlotte let us know they were closing up shop and wanted to know if we were interested in hiring some of their people. We had just purchased the Raleigh branch of Innovative in the summer so it was a natural fit. We hired 5 people and began to look for a location to set up shop in Charlotte.
Scott and I burned up highway I-85 over the next several months checking out space all over greater Charlotte. We were looking for a spot where we could replicate our Raleigh store. After much searching and thousands of miles back and forth, we found a spot in Sept of this year.
Entering our Charlotte showroom
To say a lot of midnight oil has been burned coming up with design ideas would be the understatement of the century! We went through several renditions and finally settled on what we thought would be the best one for showing off the future of home entertainment. I must say, I’ve had a blast designing the interior space! I also should thank all the smart people who have worked to get things up and running, and our friend, Michelle Palmer Murphy, who helped me pick out the colors and finishes. I thought it would be impossible to top the 32 paint colors we have in our Raleigh store, and it was, but we came very close with 28!
So, what will we feature? We will have two great home theaters, one showcasing the latest in 2:35 Cinema with components from Classe, B&W, Rotel, Digital Projection, and Stewart filmscreen. It will certainly be the best theater on display within hundreds of miles (including our best one here!). Right down from this is a theater featuring Sim2, B&W, Integra, and Stewart. We don’t think you’ll find a better value theater anywhere! Both theater rooms have full acoustic treatment (which by the way is really important).
One of the listening rooms
In good ole home audio, we’ve got two rooms to show off the best audio gear anywhere around. We’ll have Classe, Rotel, McIntosh, Audio Research, VPI, Sumiko, B&W, Magenpan, Vandersteen, Wilson, Martin Logan, and Transparent. We’ll also be featuring the latest and hottest category in music, the USB DAC.
Outside the Signature Home (inside the store!)
And, my favorite part, is our Signature Home. This is an actual house inside our new store where we will be showcasing what we call our Signature home automation system. We’ve got a family room, kitchen/breakfast area, and a game room. The family room and kitchen will allow you to easily see the difference in having good lighting design and lighting control, which is quite astounding when you experience it. In our game room, we’ll feature a big projection screen with two smaller screens for the ultimate in picture in picture. All of the Panther and Nascar fans of the surrounding area should really appreciate this as it’s super cool!
Signature Home breakfast nook looking into living area
Our outdoor speaker area will amaze you with its variety of choices in landscape speakers actually displayed in a landscaped environment.
Jim Williamson will be general manager of our new Charlotte store. He has many years of experience in this business. We’ve put together a team of really great people from the Charlotte area. A lot of you from Charlotte may recognize some of them. In installation, programming and service we have Ryan Meacham, Dusty Kovar, Craig Needleman, Greg Soli, and Jason Germain. In sales we will have Todd Smith, John Price, Dustin Clemens, Jim Robinson, and Robert Schindler. Our sales team alone has over 100 years of combined experience in the a/v industry.
We invite everyone out to see our new location. It will be a work in progress for the next few months as many of the big displays that will showcase technology are still being made. But we guarantee you will have a fun time and get a really good idea of all the great new services we are bringing to the Charlotte market.
We hope to see you there soon. Our hours will be 10am -8pm Tuesday – Saturday, closed on Sunday and Monday.
Outstanding New Products from Great Companies
1) B&W
The Custom Theater CT series is the hot thing at Audio Advice, but we can’t overlook the new CM9 floor standing speaker. This very slim tower delivers amazing performance at $3000 a pair. We’ve received more positive customer comments on this speaker than almost anything in the last ten years. It’s an outstanding design, and is set up with Rotel components in our Raleigh B&W Group room and our Charlotte store for you to listen to.
Visit us to hear the new floorstanding CM-9 from B&W
2) Ayre
The QB-9 USB DAC is the darling of the review press right now. If you use your computer to store your audio files, the QB-9 is a great way to extract them for maximum performance. It seems like every person who borrows this digital to analog converter overnight winds up keeping it. At $2500 it’s a fantastic value in USB DACs!
Digital music comes alive with the Ayre QB-9 DAC
What happens when you take an already great product and make it better and less expensive? The new Wilson Audio Sasha W/P speaker shows you. Right after Brandon set these up, I gave them a listen and my jaw hit the floor. Wilson has done it again with the Sasha. The Sasha incorporates many concepts from the MAXX 3, yet is slightly less expensive than the Watt/Puppy 8 it replaces. Come in with your favorite CDs or digital music and we’ll give your ears a listening thrill!
Wilson's amazing new Sasha W/P loudspeakers
The new Rotel RSP-1570 Processor and RMB-1575 Power Amplifier
Over the summer, we set up Raleigh showroom Theater Two to demonstrate a killer level of performance. The room highlights the latest products from some of our favorite vendors. The speaker system features the new B&W Custom Theater CT 7 series. The front three channels are top of the line model CT 7.3 LCRS, at $1500 each. Two CT12 subwoofers complete the front speaker array. For side speakers, we have the B&W DS6 dipole surround speakers. From Rotel’s new 15 Series, the system processor is the RSP-1570, priced at $2199, with power from their RMB-1575 five-channel power amplifier. (I played with the RSP-1570 at home, and it’s awesome for the money!) The source component is Pioneer Elite’s latest reference Blu-ray player, the incredible BDP-09, with the best Blu-ray picture we have seen. A new SIM2 Domino D80i projector, coupled with a Schneider anamorphic lens provides the picture on a Stewart Firehawk filmscreen with 2:35 aspect ratio. Everything is controlled with the MX-980, our favorite remote control from Universal. The saying “the whole is greater than the sum of the parts” is true for this theater. It completely rocks! The B&W CT speakers are ultra-efficient, so you hear all the dynamic contrasts of the latest movie soundtracks. If you’re considering an upgrade to any part of your own theater, there is probably something here for you. If you are considering a high performance theater investment, we can think of no better combination that what we have in Theater Two. You have to visit us and experience it!
