Each year, the Custom Electronics Design & Installation Association (CEDIA) honors exemplary projects completed by home technology professionals. Winners of the Designer Awards competition are determined by a panel of expert judges that include home technology professionals, architects, and interior designers. This project received awards for Gold Technical Design and Best Overall Home Theater.

AUDIO OFTEN TAKES A BACK SEAT to video during the design of a home theater. Considering all the hype over 3D and high-res 4K video, it’s difficult not to focus most of your energy on integrating a super-huge screen and state-of-the-art projector. While this award-winning theater’s video setup is nothing to sneeze at, it’s the audio system that deserves the biggest shout-out, and is ultimately what made this project hard to beat. Recognized as one of the nation’s first home theaters to sport an Auro-3D system, this 24-by-47-foot, built-from-scratch space, packs in 30 loudspeakers, 14 subwoofers, and 55 amplifier channels. Meticulously engineered, calibrated, and installed by the home systems integrators from Dallas-based HomeTronics, the Auro-3D system envelops moviegoers in incredibly realistic, three-dimensional audio. This relatively new audio format specifies that several speakers be installed into the ceiling and that speakers on the side walls be stacked, a design that ensures that the entire room, from front to back, is immersed in high-quality 3D sound.

By Jeremy J. Glowacki

Greg Margolis attended the commercial AVfocused InfoComm trade show last month even though his company works mostly with home installs. Margolis is always on the lookout for the latest/greatest in tech, no matter the venue. He had made his way from Dallas to Las Vegas to check out a bleeding-edge LCD video technology that he’d first seen in prototype form back at the ISE show in Amsterdam last February. It’s this passion for pursuing the next big thing that seems to keep things fresh for Margolis, whose 10-person integration company, HomeTronics, is celebrating its 30th anniversary this month.

“The reason I went to InfoComm is that I keep looking for new technologies that might not necessarily be part of the CEDIA industry, but certainly have applications for it,” Margolis said.

HomeTronics, for example, boasted the first Auro3D home theater installation in the U.S. and also pioneered the residential use of a unique “artificial skylight” technology from CoeLux earlier in the year. Margolis’ latest passion is finding a way to move away from commoditized video products.