Archive - Nuts About Hi-Fi Blog


Double Feature

What do you do when you have a Media Room downstairs, but you like to entertain on the main floor of your house? Logically, you remodel your Living Room to turn it into a secondary Media Room. The major problem with living rooms and projection systems is ambient light. That’s where Screen Innovations comes in with their vast screen materials and mounting options. Black Diamond material is the perfect solution for rooms with a lot of light and still having a vibrant image. And the Zero Edge Pro with RGB lighting gives a clean elegant finish.

Because this room will have high traffic, we wanted the speakers and equipment to be out of the way. The Middle Atlantic Essex audio rack housing all of the electronics and networking for the house is hidden in the hallway closet. For speakers, there are three Focal 300LCR6’s for the fronts, four Focal 300IW6 for the surrounds, four Focal 300ICW8 for Atoms, and four JL Audio Dominion 10’s for subwoofers. The front stereo speakers and stereo subwoofers are powered from Marantz’s PM8006 stereo integrated. The rest of the surround sound is powered by Marantz’s SR8012 flagship Audio Video Receiver. Araknis Networking is making sure everything and everyone is connected. Total Control 2.0 from Universal Remote Control Inc. is making everything easy to control from anywhere in the house.

The second part of this system design was what to do for a projector. We already had a good projector downstairs and needed a new one upstairs. So we moved the existing JVC RS57 projector upstairs and installed a new JVC RS3000 8K projector downstairs. The picture improvement on the new projector is amazing. And with 8K e-shift, all of your media is crystal clear.

JVC Laser Projector

Laser PEW PEW!

Recently, one of our great customers decided it was time to upgrade his projector in the Media Room. After considering all the options he decided to go with the JVC DLA-RS4500 Native 4K Laser Light D-ILA Projector. With 20,000 hours of illumination at high power, replacing bulbs are a thing of the past. The output of 3,000 Lumens helps make the images pop off the Screen Innovation Slate Motorized Screen, even with ambient room lighting. And as always, JVC has the best native contrast ratios, giving the best possible black levels. And because this projector uses a laser, its dynamic contrast ratio is infinity : 1! The overall image quality delivered is purely spectacular.

State-of-the-Art Intelligent Motorized Shades

We have recently partnered with a new and innovative company: POWERSHADES.

This company offers both indoor and outdoor shade solutions unique to the industry. The shade control systems are very flexible offering several options including voice commands. You can even add small solar panels behind the shades that will trickle charge the lithium batteries that power the operation.

The quality is exceptional and their pricing compared to their competitors is very reasonable.

Recently our staff went through their training. So we are now ready to help you dim your media rooms and potentially improve your room’s acoustics at the same time.

focal sopra 3 group

I heard the Sopra 3’s and I was blown away!

5 stars

“Over the years I’ve listened to a number of high-end speakers. Although I heard a few that I thought were just as good, I never found speakers that were dramatically better. Then, on a visit to Nuts About Hi Fi, I heard the Sopra 3’s and I was blown away! They are significantly better than my beloved KEFs! They have an amazing presence, clarity and naturalness, combined with a precise soundstage that allows you to hear the interactions between the dozens of different instruments in a symphony orchestra in impressive detail! They also do a wonderful job with jazz, folk, rock, world music and the other genres that I’ve sampled. After auditioning the Sopras, I had to have them even though they were over the budget I had set. I’m quite happy that I did because the SOPRAs have taken me a major step closer to the elusive goal of faithfully reproducing the experience of a live performances at home. Although I doubt that recorded music will ever totally capture the experience of attending concerts in person, with these speakers, high quality electronics, 4K video and DTS-HD audio I am finding that it’s possible to come pretty damn close!”

D. S.