Early 2020 Rapallo was contacted by the client to carry out a full build of a room into a fully dedicated home theatre room.

Rapallo's brief was to take a large-ish bedroom as the space to work with and turn that into a hidden movie sanctuary for exclusive family movie nights. The client was after an advanced setup for the room with a 9.4.6 setup.

Firstly Rapallo undertook 3D design modelling first to provide a concept of the room from the brief and then that was translated into the build spec. Rapallo created a room spec for the position of all the speakers and seats, based on the client's ideal seating placement.

Rapallo's building and electrical partners then stripped the room of all the existing floor/wall and roof coverings and the build was started. They ran cable trays in the ceilings and walls to the AV cabinet from all the speaker positions and started the plumbing for a room-specific air conditioning system. All the walls were lined with acoustic batts and double-layer acoustic wall linings to try and stop the transmission of sound, as the room backed onto the master bedroom. Rapallo also added a new sound-proof door.

A second tier was set up for the first row of seats including recessed power for the home theatre seating and the room had a base layer of mat black added. The room was then carpeted with extra thick underlay to again stop the transmission of the sound the lounge under the room and the fit-out of the hardware started.

Lighting was managed by on-wall units that the client can control the scenes and the scene coloration. Rapallo's air-conditioning system was installed and commissioned along with a heat transfer system from the AV cabinet and room.

All the AV units were fitted into the hidden AV cabinet, and the cabling labeled and assigned to their components and tested. The speakers were fitted to the walls and the screen setup.

Rapallo's custom cabinetry was next on the list. They built a filly lined subunit at the front of the room that could hold 4 subwoofers that had a black grille that was rubber mounted. Three large panels were then built for the front half of the room, with recessed lighting in behind them, and one with a special mounting box for the front wide surround speakers. Another smaller box was made for the Sony VW780ES projector, to mount on the rear of the room.

Rapallo's team then sourced special wall-coverings from Belgium for the rear of the room to provide some interest and texture for the room. This wall covering was then added and it provided the covering to hide the AV cabinet door.

Once all the fit-out was completed, the AV gear was commissioned. This was a range of gear, including an ARCAM AV40 processor, HEGEL C55 and C54 power amplifiers, and two ARCAM P429 power amplifiers to drive all the speakers.

Once the calibration was done, Rapallo is now doing an acoustic sweep of the room (May 2021) and working to add Vicoustic Panels into the room to improve the room acoustics.

The final outcome was quite stunning and the dead-black room makes the movies really pop, with unparalleled sound.