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TECH TALK:
THE LESKANIC THEATER
By: Mike McGann The Leskanic theater is a very large room. Whether the future theater/game room started as a racquetball court remains a matter of debate. What is not debatable, however, is when Ted Hollander of Absolute Sound in Winter Park, FL, entered the room , it echoed like a racquetball court. "The ceilings are about 30 feet high and the room is at least 40 feet long," Hollander details. "To improve the acoustics, we ended up installing a commercial drop ceiling with sheetrock in it to lower the height of the ceiling to somewhere between 12 and 13 feet." The expanse of the space also dictated that it be used for more than just home theater. "It was too much space," Hollander explains. "And (the homeowners) did not need a 10-row theater." So Absolute Sound proposed augmenting the theater with a billiard table and a bar area-a surprising suggestion for an audiovisual installation company. Hollander encountered another tricky twist when he discovered that they wanted to use some existing audio equipment in the new theater, including a Pioneer Elite surround-sound receiver, which was certainly not designed to fill a space as large as the Leskanics'. Such a selection demands highly sensitive speakers-that in other words produce a lot of volume from a small amount of power. Hollander selected Definitive Technology BP2002TL tower speakers for the front and for center, a CLR2002 speaker. These speakers reduce the burden on the receiver because they are unusually sensitive and have internal amplifiers to power their woofers. While the photography suggests in-wall speaker mounting, Hollander, with the assistance of interior designer Angela Brooks, "hid" the towers in front of the suede-wrapped acoustical panels. Hollander finished off the system by adding surround speakers, including a pair in the ceiling and bipolar surround speakers on the wall (bipolar speakers resemble two back-to-back speakers and create a more diffuse enveloping sound than conventional speakers). Finally, the Absolute Sound crew added acoustic treatment materials to fix acoustic problems not resolved by the drop ceiling. While it took a lot of work and creativity to achieve great sound in such a gargantuan room-and keep the installation within budget-Hollander says he and his team are quite pleased with the final results. |