Audio Visual Equipment

For more than a decade, Harman Pro Group has been booming the sounds of modern China. In the face of fierce global competition, the Northridge-based company has carved out a lucrative niche selling professional sound and lighting equipment to government ministries and commercial developers that are investing billions of dollars on trophy buildings to restore the Middle Kingdom's reputation as a center for art and culture.

Four years ago, producer-director Jon Avnet called Los Angeles audiovisual consultant Brad Wells to his Culver City production studio and pointed to his 20-foot-long office wall. " 'I want a picture for my home as big as the wall, with the theatrical impact of a movie theater,' " Wells recalls Avnet saying. "At that time, the best you could do in a home theater was an 8- or 10-foot-wide screen." Wells took up Avnet's request with Digital Projection Inc.

The owners of this modern Bel-Air residence didn't just want a home theater, they wanted "a cozy room." Architect Charles Gwathmey of Gwathmey Siegel in New York City, who designed the 15,000-square-foot home, obliged. Honey-colored maple walls create a warm, womb-like environment. Nubby chenille-upholstered sofas and leather chairs that tilt and swivel invite you to curl up, grab a throw and lose yourself at the movies.

When your guests enter, you want the lighting to be warm and inviting," says Lisa Passamonte Green, a principal lighting designer for Van Nuys-based Visual Terrain. "Then you want the lighting to dim as people get comfortable and focus their attention on the screen." Green, a former Disney Imagineer, recommends investing in a remote lighting control system that can be preset for different lighting levels for before, during and after the show.

The owner of the Italianate seaside villa--Lee Perlman, an admitted audiophile and chief executive of New Age Electronics--set no limit on his budget and simply requested "the finest picture, best sound, best environment and comfort," says Keith Willis of Santa Monica-based Innovative Theatres. Working with business partner Jon Heberling and Los Angeles interior designer Mark Enos, Willis helped create a yacht-like Art Deco home theater with Queen Mary opulence. They started from scratch.

Back in 1950, life was simple. DuMont dominated the television universe with its majestically sprawling, aptly named Royal Sovereign. It boasted a 30-inch screen, the largest black-and-white picture tube ever produced. It was the best TV on the market. Period. Now there is no "best," just a bewildering variety of choices: Will that be projection? Front or rear? Will that be flat screen? Liquid crystal display or plasma? Or would you prefer a good old cathode-ray tube?

A two-hour feature film can seem like eternity in an uncomfortable seat. In that sense, buying properly designed seating for a home theater is more important than getting the right chair for the dining room or office, where you can fidget at will. And home-theater seating doesn't stop at the chair. Think of it as merely the platform for a galaxy of bells and whistles.

Home-theater speakers are classed according to how they radiate sound. Conventional speakers, or direct radiators, send the sound out front. Dipole speakers and their variants (bipoles, quadripoles and omnipoles) radiate sound from at least two directions. For stereophiles, these dispersion characteristics are a matter of taste. In a home theater, they're more critical.