Audio Video News

Developers of The Cinema Designer (TCD), a cloud-based tool for home cinema professionals, has announced an update that’s said to greatly simplify the design of highly sophisticated home theaters.

The tool has been updated to incorporate Trinnov Audio’s recommended-speaker whitepaper, which enables installation professionals to design a technically accurate 32-channel Dolby Atmos or DTS:X home cinema in a matter of minutes.

The update is intended to eliminate the guesswork when it comes to the accurate placement of the many speakers the required by state-of-the-art theater systems and make it easier to produce a standards-based set of drawings with information about the level of performance that should be expected from a specific combination of speakers and amplifiers. The updated tool also allows designers to quickly hone in on the optimal range of equipment for the project at hand, producing a 30+ page proposal with audio and video calibration reports and a 3D CAD drawing.

“Designing high-channel-count theaters for optimal results is something few people have much experience doing,” said Jon Herron, Trinnov Audio’s high end audio director of sales, Americas. “The Cinema Designer incorporates the experience we have gained by being involved with virtually all of the high spatial resolution residential systems completed to date.

“Even within the high-end theater community, most systems have been stuck at around 11 channels, plus subwoofers,” Herron continued. “Many designers are not entirely comfortable with the naming conventions, much less the use of all the ‘new’ speaker locations available to them, nor which ones are the most important when deciding to increase the channel count beyond 11.1”—a situation complicated by the fact that Dolby, Auro, and DTS use different nomenclature for the extra speakers.

“TCD incorporates industry standards and Trinnov’s own experience in designing these high channel count theaters into its design algorithms,” Herron said. “It's quite remarkable.

“Most effective design teams have the ability to generate this sort of documentation,” Herron explained. “But the cycle of revisions, change orders, etc. takes weeks — even months. The time it takes someone to create TCD designs… is between five and 10 minutes…”

Trinnov feels so strongly about the importance of TCD that the tool is now included as part of the standard training it delivers to its distributors and dealers.

For more information, visit thecinemadesigner.com.