The odds were stacked high against Wavetrain Cinemas for this home theatre installation, ‘Metropolis’.

There was no air conditioning in the room, a noisy exhaust fan was ducted right outside, and the ceiling height was just 2400mm high with several concrete beams that made it feel even smaller. To add to that, the sole inspiration photo these clients had was from Wavetrain’s previous Art Nouveau cinema integration with 3.2m ceilings.

Before any work could begin, Wavetrain had to be honest with the clients about what would be realistic given the room’s proportions.

With new inspiration in mind stemming from Superman Returns and a reduced budget, Wavetrain got to work on a plan. As a complete, turnkey cinema company, Wavetrain produced all the architectural drawings for the project, plus interior design, mechanical engineering, and acoustic engineering.

Once the design portion was down, the clients expressed their ideas for the theatre’s overall performance. They wanted the experience in their home to match that of a commercial theatre, but Wavetrain assured them that it could be even better.

The team began with addressing the issues in the room and adding speakers and subwoofers to eliminate those problems. One of those issues was sound isolation. The client wanted to ensure that the cinema would not impact the lifestyle of the rest of the home. Wavetrain decided to create a cavity and double layer construction with greenglue and resilient mount the front speakers and subwoofers.

CEDIA’s judges commended Wavetrain Cinemas’ ability to work with both monetary and physical limitations saying, “There were lots of constraints in the room taken into consideration by the integrator, even with the tight budget.”

Equipment List

Acurus

Apple

BenQ

D-Box

Elementi

Furman

iPort

Kaleidescape

Lumagen

Lutron

Pakedge

Panamorph

Panasonic

RTI

Sanus

Severtson

Theory Audio

Triad