A Project by Audio Images
An Uncommon Room
The room was labeled “common.” The mission was anything but.
Coastal California
Tucked onto an upstairs landing between the master suite and the kids’ rooms — with a panoramic view of the Pacific filling one entire wall — this space was labeled “common” on the plans. Audio Images was asked to make it anything but: a fully immersive 7.4.2 media room where every speaker, subwoofer, and diffuser is hidden, and nothing competes with the ocean view. The result took Best Media Room, Americas Level II at the 2019 CEDIA Awards.
Audio Images
Our role on the project.
The room’s aesthetic — warm teak beams, glass walls open to the sea, the calm of a high-end yacht — could not be disturbed. That constraint set the entire brief: no visible speakers, no visible cabling, no visible acoustic treatment.
Audio Images served as the technology integrator and project orchestrator, engineering an immersive sound system and 4K display around an architecture full of glass and hard surfaces — the hardest video and acoustic environment an immersive media room can start in.
Everything you’d normally see is concealed behind stretched fabric that wraps the ceiling and the front and back walls. What’s left is the movie, the sound, and the view. An experience. That discipline is what we call Solutioneering.
Two problems sat on opposite sides of the room. On one side, a wall of glass facing the ocean — beautiful, but acoustically brutal. On the other, all the daylight that glass invites in — beautiful, but the enemy of any projected image. The room needed to solve both without giving up either.
Working with acoustic consultant Anthony Grimani’s PMI team, we designed a fully concealed 7.4.2 sound system with left, center, and right channels tucked into the front wall and angled for perfect dialog clarity. Side channels live in the ceiling, carefully isolated so the sound never travels upstairs. Two rear channels flank the seating. Subwoofers were custom-built for this specific room, hidden in the same wall assembly.
For the picture, we skipped a projector entirely. A 98-inch 4K display handles the ambient light head-on, bright enough to compete with a sunny afternoon and sharp enough that the kids’ games and the family’s films both land the way they were meant to. And in the other 2 rooms, screens automatically raise and hide as needed, keeping the aesthetic clean, but A/V experiences always within reach.
All of it — speakers, subs, absorbers, diffusers, wiring — went behind stretched fabric that covers the ceiling and both key walls. The CEDIA judges called out the custom subwoofer work and the attention to detail in the equipment rack, which lives in its own concealed cabinet down the hall.
Inside the Room
Specifications Worth Knowing
Sound
A fully immersive 7.4.2 layout — three front channels, two sides, two rears, four custom-built subwoofers, and two overheads — voiced for crystal-clear dialog and true spatial imaging.
Display
A 98-inch 4K flat-panel display, bright enough to hold its own against the ocean daylight pouring through the glass wall.
Subwoofers
Four subwoofers custom-built for this specific room — sized, tuned, and hidden inside the wall assembly so the bass is felt, never seen.
Concealment
Stretched, acoustically transparent fabric wraps the ceiling and the front and back walls, hiding every speaker, absorber, and diffuser without breaking the yacht-like aesthetic.
Acoustics
An engineered treatment package with absorbers and diffusers laid out behind the fabric to tame a glass-heavy, open architecture — even response and clean dialog from every seat.
Isolation
Ceiling speakers and ductwork are carefully isolated so sound stays inside the room and doesn't carry upstairs to the master or the kids' rooms next door.
Recognition
What the Industry Said
2019 CEDIA Awards
Best Media Room — Americas Level II
Recognizing the finest residential media rooms in the Americas.
Part of Audio Images’ record for more CEDIA home theater and media room awards than any other integrator in history. See the full record on our Awards page.
The Experience
Inside an Uncommon Room
Credits
Project credits.
Technology Integration & Systems Design
Audio Images
Mark Ontiveros, President / CEO
Acoustic Engineering
Performance Media Industries (PMI)
Anthony Grimani, CEDIA Lifetime Achievement Award recipient
Video Calibration
AVICAL
David Abrams
Architect
Greg Klein
Interior Designer
Martyn Lawrence
ASID
General Contractor
Corbin Reeves Construction
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