Every year CEDIA (Custom Electronic Design & Installation Association) judges professional custom installation jobs and gives awards in a number of categories. This year Len Wallis Audio won awards in three of them.

Best Integrated Home Installation over $500,000

The same house won this and the Best Media Room! The brief handed to Len Wallis Audio for this project was direct – the owners wanted the place to be full of technology, they wanted to make provision for the future by planning and documenting everything now. With five bedrooms, a formal dining and living space, family room, steam room, theatre room, large backyard and swimming pool, this dwelling was an opportunity for our company to stretch those tech wings.

The plan was to reach into every corner of this structure. Security, access control, lighting, pool control, air-conditioning control and audio visual control have been incorporated onto a single platform in the form of a Crestron control system using fibre-optics. The owners can use any of the seven fixed in-wall touch screens to control all facets of the house.

Best Media Room.

The theatre room was one zone that defined the beauty of this project. It’s an entertainer’s dream that includes 103in Panasonic Plasma built into a joinery unit along with the amps and Krell speakers. It’s the ultimate in entertainment and includes 24 audio and video sources to choose from including a Kaleidescape HD Blu-ray movie server and Sooloos HD Music system. With the big picture comes big sound! Krell resolution floor standing speakers along with centre channel and two Velodyne 12in subwoofers are driven from the Marantz Flagship processor and seven-channel power amplifier.

Best Integrated Home Installation: $250,000 to $500,000.

The essential element of this job was to have audio in 13 areas and video in 8 areas of the home. All areas had to be able to access multiple sources for program material. Two major theatres were included, one with an 85” Panasonic plasma screen which had to be concealed beneath the floor on a motorized lifter, to emerge and be raised to 700mm above floor level whenever a video source is selected. The lifter alone weighed 250kg! The other theatre had a 65” screen, while a more modest 50” went to the Master Bedroom.

Control systems were Crestron/CBUS, with speakers used being mainly flushmount types from Focal and Speakercraft, and subwoofers by Velodyne. The surround sound amplifiers were by Yamaha.

If you would like to learn a little more about the services we have to offer please view this interview with our custom division manager, Dee, at the recent CEDIA Expo. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCYl-RugHmI

If you have any interest in Home Automation you would know the name Creston. This brand is the market leader in this field. However you may not be aware that they also manufacture some of the world’s finest Home Theatre electronics under the name of Adagio.
Crestron have one huge advantage over most of its competitors when it comes to Home Theatre. Because they are first and foremost an automation company they have approached the Home Theatre offering in a round-about fashion, by adding a stunning and versatile A/V receiver to their existing multi-room package. If you are looking for two things in your entertainment system:
1) a very high quality theatre, and
2) a very high quality multi-room audio, it is difficult to dismiss the Crestron Adagio offering.
The other advantage of being a Home Automation manufacturer is that Crestron, by necessity, are accustomed to manufacturing product which is bulletproof. Their Home Theatre systems are beautifully engineered.
Like any product considered as being one of the best in its field Crestron is not inexpensive. However there is now another reason to consider Crestron Adagio, they have just reduced the price on their two packages by almost 40%.

The main features of the Adagio Home Theatre systems include:
· 7.1 surround sound processing. Rated at 100 watts per channel x 7. These are genuine watts, measured with all channels driven at the same time (I have just looked at a site where the Dynamic Power of a well known A/V receiver was rated at 400watts. In small print it is revealed that this is one channel driven only, and at 3 Ohms!! Don’t be fooled by specifications.)
· Audyssey MultEQ® XT surround sound equalization. This will adjust the system acoustics to be at an optimum for a number of seating positions in your room – most A/V receivers adjust acoustics only for the primary seating position (yours?)
· High-definition analog and HDMI/DVI digital video switching
· Professional video scaling and de-interlacing.
· Audio distribution for 4 to 6 rooms, expandable up to 24. Listeners in each room can enjoy their own choice of radio, CD’s, MP3’s or even a stereo downmix of the surround sound output. Each room has control over volume plus bass & treble. The multi-room amplifiers are rated at 45watts each. Control in these rooms can be by a 12 button wall mounted key-pad, a wall mounted LCD controller or a hand-help touch screen controller. These control options are at an additional cost.
· Accepts up to 3 dual tuner cards for AM/FM. This allows household members to listen to different radio stations in the home simultaneously.
· Plug-and-play connectivity with Apple® iPod® via CEN-IDOC
· Powerful Crestron control system.

The new prices on the Adagio systems are:
· AMS1 $7,999 (initially $12,700)
· AMS1-AIP (the same as the model above but with advanced image processing) $9,999 (initially $16,100)

There is no doubt that the Adagio system is one of the best sounding and most versatile Home Theatre receivers on the market. Crestron are also universally recognised as the manufacturers of the finest multi-room audio systems available. Put them together, at these prices and you have a bargain.

If you would like to learn more on this product you can access their brochure at http://www.crestron.com/downloads/pdf/product_brochures/adagio.pdf