Its an exciting time here at Castle - its also very busy. When we decided it was time to install some really high end cinema equipment we had no idea how it would turn out. A bit of an initial hiccup when we noticed the ceiling was asbestos so any holes for running in cables were out of the question. After some thought the specialist contractors were called in and a weekend of total chaos followed while white and red suited men in respirators brought the whole of the ceiling down! Now completely clear and the air tested we are ready to start the ceiling replacement, which starts immediately together with a complete refit of the shop.

Oh, and then the buildings electrics were condemned as unsafe on our regular inspection so they all have to be replaced too! As I said a busy time, but we are all very excited about the new facilities which will allow us to demonstrate the best in home cinema and home automation.

The cinema will have the Sim2 C3x 1080p 3 chip projector with a full motorized anamorphic lens rig.....sweet! The screen is a 2.4:1 aspect ratio SMX promask woven screen which is gorgeous. The blanking is motorised so if the aspect ratio changes then the blanking moves from the sides to suit.

We already have the top of the range pioneer AV amp - the Susano - to do the audio duties and that is a real beaut! However, Alan Roser at Sim2 is bringing in the Anthem equipment which is fabulous and keeps trying to tempt me into putting that in too! It has a room optimisation system which I think is based on some of the work that Floyd Toole has been doing on small room acoustics - if it is then it will be pretty brilliant........ I may be tempted but dont tell Alan

Watch this space for updates!

COMING SOON !!!!!!!!

How embarrassing, its a year since I last posted on the blog, simply not good enough, I must try harder in future. My only excuse is that things have been very busy.

Work on the cinema room has commenced and we are very excited about the project. We have got a bit carried away and decided that the shop was looking a bit dated so a complete refurbishment is in progress. You may have seen the signs saying that work is under way and the shutters have been partially closed during the week and over the weekend.

Unfortunately its still going to be a few weeks until we are up and running but it will be worth the wait.

I would like to say its business as usual but it is more a case of business as unusual with our ground floor demonstration facilities out of action. We are still able to have meetings on the upper floors and do demonstrations in the upstairs dem rooms, so our customers should not suffer unduly!

The cinema will be open for viewings in October, so if you want to see the best of cinema book your seat now!

More good food in Nottingham

Nothing to do with audio or cinemas this time, just wanted to spread the word about a great now bar / restaurant that has opened in Nottingham. Called Vienna and located just off Old Market Square at the intersection of King and Queen streets.

Popped in a couple of evenings ago with a few friends after watching Chris Broad rip through the South african openers (still not seen the floodlights working!). General feeleing was that they should have been made to play a 20 20 straight afterwards as they had enough time! Bad luck award goes to my pal who due to work commitments sent his son along with his ticket until he could get there at six, by which time we were already on our way to a bar in town.

Anyway, the restaurant is in the building that used to be occupied by Hard Rock Cafe, and any of you that went there in its hard rock days will be stunned at how beautiful the original architecture is now it has been restored.

We all went for the scallop starter which was really good and then there was a split between those assembled between the lamb and beef main course. I can only speak for the beef, the fillet being extremely good, nicely cooked, and served with mash and a portion of braised oxtail which added a richness in its own right and in the sauce. Those eating the lamb seemed very satisfied as there was not a morsel left on any of the plates.

Service was excellent, the staff very friendly and happy to answer questons about how the food was prepared. A quick chat with the chef revealed that he has done his time with both Gordon Ramsey and Marco Pierre White, so no surprises that the food was good.

I am planning to go back very soon and try the lunch menu, which looks interesting and reasonably priced.

Anyway, a big well done to Dave Caddick (ex Living Room you may remember?)and all his staff for giving us another option for great food in Nottingham.

Jeff (I need to diet soon!)

Home Cinema - the reference standard.

We have just got back from the CEDIA expo at Excel in London. We (Angela and I) spent most of the week on an advanced cinema design course. It was a great course but very demanding -m brain melt at the end of each day (and I have already done the HAA and ISF stuff!). Met some great people for the first time and renewed acquaintances with people we had met before. In particular it was great to meet Floyd Toole, who has done some brilliant work on sound reproduction in small rooms. If any of you out there are interested then get a copy of his book off the Internet -Just type in "Sound Reproduction: The Acoustics and Psychoacoustics of Loudspeakers and Rooms" and his name and you will find it. It has to be the definitive work on how and what we hear when listening to music or movies in room the size we generally have at home.

Anyway, learnt loads and we now have a great opportunity to put it into practice as we have decided that the Midlands region needs a Reference Home Cinema where people can come and see and hear what the latest technologies can offer. So our summer project at the shop is going to be working with our suppliers to build, within our shop on Maid Marian Way, a cinema which meets the reference specifications.

I will try and blog as much of the build details as I can (time permitting) and the reasons for why we are doing certain things as we go so that those of you who are interested can comment / come and have a look, and use some of the stuff in your own projects.

Preliminary spec(which may be subject to change)is as follows.
- 3 chip DLP projector with sufficient light output to give us 16 ft lamberts across the screen.
- curved, acoustically transparent screen with constant projection height and side tabs for 2.4, 2.35, 1.78, and 1.33:1 aspect ratios.
- motorised anamorphic lens for aspect ratios 2.35:1 and above.
- scaler / deinterlacer to allow for multi format input sources
- blue ray DVD player
- DVD media server
- PS3
- X-Box
-Wii
and that is just the vision side - still to come the audio, the acoustic design and treatments and the decor! Loads to do.

We are all very excited about the project. Obviously both audio and video will be calibrated to HAA and ISF standards so it should sound as good as it looks. Whats more we will be able to show movies as the director intended them to be seen when they were edited in post production, as both the video and audio will be properly calibrated to the standards used in the studio.

There was a lot of stuff we learned recently about acoustics which I think will help us to get better sound from 2 channel stereo systems as well as cinema, but I have to put some thinking time into the implications on room resonant nodes of having 2 sub woofers in the room (effectively the situation if there are two full range front speakers). I will try and keep writing as we find out things that are useful.

The good news is that great sound is available from traditional stereo in a room (as all us audio nuts know). Unfortunately this has traditionally been in a single solitary prime listening position. What we are now trying to do is see how this prime listening position can be expanded to include more than one hot seat, while still maintaining the great stereo image of the prime position. It may not be possible but any improvement will be welcome!

Enough for now, got to go and design a cinema and a lighting plan for home so the electricians have something to work with on Thursday.

Jeff

Get your whites right!

Spent the last two days at Sim2 learning how to use their new calibration software to set up the projectors. Always good to continue education.

It was very interesting and brought back a lot of the stuff I learned on the Imaging Sciences Foundation (ISF) course. It is always useful to have these things reinforced and one of the things that returned quite forcefully is the idea that if a projector or screen is not properly calibrated then how can we know that what we see is what the director intended? One of the best examples is the original Matrix movie which was given a green tint in post production - trying to get natural skin tones just by eye on that would have caused some fun!

The human eye is easily deceived and only with proper calibration equipment can the display device be set up so that the white is the right white. Forget the Inuit having many names for snow, we need a plethora of names for the "colour" white that can be seen in TV shops. There is only one right white and that is known as D65. Or 6500 degrees kelvin. Or the colour of daylight. But even then not quite that simple. Daylight ranges from 5000k (direct sunlight at noon) to 7500k (overcast sky) so when seting up a display what is used is an X Y reference from the C.I.E. chromaticity diagram which gives the "colour of grey" as x = .313 y = .329. Set up a display to those values and you will see what the film director intended.

Displays tend to be set up with over saturated colours to allow them to stand out in shop environments - not the best viewing at home!

So, if the pitch looks too green, the snow looks grey, or the sky looks too blue then perhaps a spot of adjustment is called for! To do this properly takes expensive calibration equipment but you can have a good DIY stab at it by using one of the HDTV calibration discs available - happy tweaking.

jeff

A piano that really rocks.

Just had a visit from Sarah Davenport, who you may have met if you have ever considerd having one of their fantastic Davenport kitchens installed ( http://www.davcab.co.uk/ ).

I had not seen her for quite some time (I think it must have been when Sat Bains was doing a cooking demonstration at their showrooms - just brilliant food, treat yourself and go to his restaurant) and there was a bit of catching up to do.

Seems that Sarah and her mum have been heavily involved with a great new initiative to promote design and design collaboration, centred on Nottingham. If you are interested in design check out http://www.inspirationunleashed.co.uk/ to see what its all about.

Also worth a look is Sarah's chichi the rocking piano - a piano that really rocks - have a look and see what I mean!

http://www.pianoworld.com/ubb/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?/topic/1/20028.html

In a world where mediocrity driven by dumbed down consumerism is the norm it is great to see people doing things for the joy and beauty of doing them well.

Keep on rocking!


jeff

Clean Queen is best.

I am still shocked.

Tim has just been cleaning a few records for a customer in the demonstration room next to our design office. Trying a before and after test to see the difference, it was astonishing!

Anyway, one of the albums was Queen, A Kind of Magic and the title track was playing when our designer Angela says "I can't stand Queen". A few shocked moments later I spluttered "how can you not like Queen? Consistently brilliant writing and performance, classic status across the pond assured due to the Waynes World Bohemian Rhapsody and the poignant Those Were the Days of Our Lives from a dying Mercury……….genius” No reason was forthcoming.

Now she may be the only female CEDIA certified designer in Europe but that's not the point, admitting to not liking Queen is not acceptable; everyone likes Queen, there is nothing not to like.

All you Queen Fans out there will be pleased to know she has been suitably punished by being forced to watch Al Murray re-runs with him singing Queen numbers very badly. She will learn!

Anyway, if you have a collection of vinyl records that you want to get the best out of then you will be pleased to know that we are renting out our record cleaning machine for weekends / weekdays at very reasonable cost. All musical tastes welcome, you just need to love music.


jeff