Installations

Yesterday I had the pleasure of helping dial in a truly beautiful-sounding A/V system for two of our favorite clients. We recently upgraded their speaker system to include Focal Sopra No.3s along with Focal’s matching Sopra center speaker and a beautiful pair of Focal Dome surround speakers.

Both Dean and Pat have great taste and really love both movies and music. This system needed to seamlessly transition between several formats of cinematic surround sound and believable, live-concert-level stereo performance when listening to music.

In addition, we helped them create two other zones of music for their patio and backyard using Focal outdoor speakers and subwoofers. We incorporated the updated Marantz Cinema 40, which was designed perfectly for complicated tasks such as these.

They have a very large open space with high ceilings, which normally can be acoustically challenging, especially for bass, so we brought in a true champion: JL Audio’s Fathom 113.

And now the truly challenging part…
Making all of these systems and formats easy to use.

Eli and Michael came to the rescue, programming the Universal remote system. After perfectly placing and spiking the main speakers, dialing in the exact parameters for the listening positions, and placing Nordost Sort Kones underneath the Marantz Cinema 40, the system really came to life.

I looked over at Dean during final testing. With a big smile he said, “This is better than going to the movies or a live concert.”

Mission accomplished!

Thank you, Dean and Pat. We appreciate you letting us take care of you. Can’t wait for the next upgrade adventure. I am sure you won’t be surprised, but I actually have a few more ideas.

Yesterday Eli and I had the pleasure of helping one of our good clients install a beautiful pair of our Focal Maestro Utopia speakers along with his McIntosh Integrated amp.

The presentation of sound was beautiful.

We then decided to experiment with Nordost Sort Kones underneath his McIntosh. As usual the Sort Kones immediately transformed the music, rendering more details impossible to hear without them. So much fun.

Here, in a couple of weeks we are installing a beautiful home theater for this gentleman using all Focal Utopia speakers along with reference Marantz Components.

It is so good having customers with excellent taste.

Today I had the pleasure of finishing an upgrade for a long term friend and customer. We replaced a beautiful pair of Apogee on-wall speakers he purchased and had us install almost 20 years ago.

Paul has always been an aficionado of many forms of art which definitely includes music. He frequents the Seattle symphony and knows how it feels to enjoy the “live experience.”

Paul and I sat down two Saturdays ago at our showroom and listened to one of his favorite operas through one of my favorite speakers, the Focal Sopra NO. 3. He was immediately struck by the experience. Amazed by the believable presence of a full size orchestra seemingly in front of us, he decided he must have this experience at home and, as of about an hour ago, he does.

Thank you Paul for your support of our business, and your fine taste in true artistic excellence.

Yesterday, Eli and Michael installed this beautiful music system for one of our favorite clients in Bellevue. The system included the new Mola Mola Makua pre-amp DAC, Aesthetix Atlas Eclipse Stereo Amplifier, Focal Sopra 3 Speakers, Nordost Cabling, AC Distribution, AC Line Conditioning, QKore Grounding System along with Sort Kone Resonance Control Devices on every component.

We need to give these components a few days to break in and acclimate to the room as well as each other. Once this happens, I have the extremely difficult job of dialing the system in and listening to music. I know some of you are feeling sorry for me but please don’t start a go-fund-me account or anything. I’m sure I’ll get through this.

Today we finished a beautiful listening system for a new customer on Bainbridge Island. Rick came into our showroom for a completely unrelated TV problem that we were able to help him with. He had a few minutes to spare, so just for fun, we decided to spend a few minutes listening to some music through our new Naim Unity Nova and a pair of Focal Speakers.

I could tell he was taken back with a level of musical presence that he had never previously experienced with a home audio system. He immediately invited us out to check out his room to see what might be possible.

A couple days later Adam and I drove out early before work and met with him. His room is obviously beautiful and the acoustics are actually very good. We all three came up with a plan. I traded in his older KEF speakers and now he owns a level of musical presentation that complements his view.

Thank you Sir for allowing us to do our thing. So much fun working with you. We hope you and your family love it.

Our good friend and customer Brian remodeled his basement and added a home theater room for himself and his family. We worked side by side with him every step of the way. Brian did a great deal of research and visited our showroom several times to audition and compare options so to be sure he would end up with exactly what he wanted. This project actually took over a year to complete.

The anticipation of finally experiencing a movie in this room was hard to handle. Well this week, Adam and Chance worked 3 days to get all the gear installed and calibrated. I stopped by this morning and Brian gave me a demo. It was definitely worth the wait. We watched several scenes including a scene from “A Star Is Born”. It was so fun we both looked at each other and started laughing.

We have one more day of acoustic treatment panel installation and a bit more audio calibration to coincide with them and we are off to the movies. Below is a list of the main products we used to make this happen.

• JVC DLA NZ7 Rv laser projector
• Stewart Filmscreen 138 inch diagonal screen
• Marantz Cinema Receiver
• Kaleidescape Movie and Concert System
• 8 Focal in-wall and in-ceiling surround speakers
• Focal Aria 926 main speakers
• Focal Aria CC 900 Center Channel Speaker
• 2 JL Audio Fatham 112 series 2
• Vicoustic Acoustic panels

More satisfied customers with our Sopra N°1 speakers.

Thanks you two.
Enjoy your music!

Yesterday Adam and I installed this beautiful system for our new friends and customers in Gig Harbor. For this room we chose Focal’s Aria 948 speakers.

We paired it with our new Marantz Model 40 which has become one of our most popular components and for all the right reasons. It is actually a truly amazing sounding one box, class A/B amplifier, preamp and high resolution streaming device. It also includes a high quality phono input, subwoofer outputs and HDMI ARC input for smart TV’s as well.

We cabled the system with our favorite cable and interconnect company Nordost.

You can tell by the smiles it turned out awesomely.

This time in Twin Falls Idaho.

Matt flew to Boise and then drove to Twin Falls to install and calibrate this system for our new customer Norm. For the last couple months I have been working with Norm, putting together a system that would match exactly what he communicated he wanted. Norm has owned some pretty decent gear over the years but had heard all the buzz on Focal Sopra no3.

After many phone conversations, texts and emails he decided on starting with two pair of these bad boys along with Focal’s matching center channel speaker. As you can probably tell, Norm likes to feel his bass. He has tried several subwoofer systems over the years and ended up with 2 JBL twin 18 inch pro concert level sub cabinets. To isolate the center speaker from these massive woofers, Norm had purchased
4 very large dampeners that are normally used in the aerospace industry. So potential problem solved.

We moved onto upgrading his electronics and chose Anthem’s AVM 70 and MCA 525 gen2 amplifier so that we would have plenty of clean power and quality processing. Anthem’s beautiful room correction was able to harness this beast of a system and control the sound stage at all volume levels. All cabling including speaker cable, power cords, balanced interconnects and line conditioning were from our good friends at Nordost.

Norm actually hasn’t listened to his system yet! He’s debuting his system tonight and going over some of his favorite recordings. He promised to call me Saturday and let me know what he thinks. I have a feeling I’ll get a very excited call from him tonight.

This week we finished this amazing sound system at one of our good customer’s winter home located in Rancho Mirage California. Our customer knows by now what it is like to own a true high end audio system as we have done several for him over the years. This home is a beautiful original mid century modern design.

We wanted to keep the sound system low profile visually yet have a stunning full lifelike presentation that makes one believe they are at a concert. The acoustics of this space presented a bit of a challenge. Lots of tile and glass. However because of today’s modern technology we are able to accomplish all these goals. Adam installed our best Focal In-wall speakers along with JL Audio’s finest low-profile subwoofers next to the rear couch, located under side tables. We used our Nordost Heimdall 2 cabling to make sure no detail got lost in the translation between the speakers and amplifier. His preamp amplifier is from our Danish friends Lyngdorf. We employed their new TDAI 3400.

With it’s amazing “room perfect” digital acoustic room correction technology and built in high resolution streaming ability, our good friend and client can now come home from a hard day of golf and within seconds be enjoying a concert from whatever artist he chooses.

Needless to say… Life is good.

I spoke with my client over the phone after Adam had finished programming and auditioning his new system for him. He was so excited and happy he wouldn’t let me off the phone.

So life is good for us too.