‘Nothing can replace good room design’: how one award-winning home theater designer approaches custom installs | Tech Radar

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‘Nothing can replace good room design’: how one award-winning home theater designer approaches custom installs

I spoke exclusively with Australia's David Moseley to all things high-end home cinema.

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For many of us, being able to watch movies and TV shows in the best possible quality at home is something we aim to achieve. Realistically, that will mean pairing one of the best TVs with one of the best soundbars. For the fortunate few, however, the possibility of having a dedicated home theater space, complete with rows of chairs, soundproofing and a cinema-like projection system is one that’s very real indeed (the rest of us are still able to drool over enviable custom install theaters, of course).

And nobody does custom home theater installations quite like David Moseley and his company, Wavetrain Cinemas. Based in Australia, Wavetrain Cinemas has the distinct recognition of being awarded Best Global Home Cinema on two separate occasions by CEDIA, the international trade association representing the professional home automation/smart home technology industry.

While it’s easy to just look at images of Wavetrain installations and think “I’d love to have something similar one day”, the more interesting question is how each space is actually designed to perform at such a high level. I was recently able to put some questions to David, and according to him, the answer starts with a framework rather than a product list.

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Wavetrain is guided by CEDIA’s RP22 recommended practice for immersive audio design, which sets out key parameters including sound pressure level (SPL) capability, speaker coverage, seating geometry and overall system design. Within this structure, David has formed his own priorities that he believes make for the best home cinema install: seat-to-seat consistency, low distortion at reference levels and controlled decay times.

That first point is especially important. For Moseley, consistency means every listener should experience the same tonal balance, imaging and impact regardless of where they sit. I know for me, whenever I visit my local cinema, I do try to make sure I’m able to grab the centermost seat, as I feel it will give me the most immersive experience, particularly where sound is concerned, as all the speakers will be firing into the room’s central position. For each seat in a smaller cinema to receive the same level of performance is no easy task.

For Wavetrain, it is that goal which drives choices around speaker selection, placement and room geometry. The second priority is effortless dynamics — the ability to reach reference-level SPL without distortion or strain. The third is time-domain performance, particularly decay times, so that the room preserves detail, clarity and spatial cues instead of delivering a sound that’s entirely muddied.

His installations are never rushed either, as you might expect, and instead he and his team will spend a lot of time upfront with clients — often three or four hours — to explain the technology options, the expectations and the consequences of different choices before a single decision is locked in.

It’s not the size that counts, it’s how you use it

For David, the majority of a cinema installation’s design process relates to the room itself and how its acoustic properties will affect the resulting performance. Indeed, the company’s primary metric is “reverberation time across the full audible range.”

If you’re reading that line and not really understanding what David means, he explains it quite clearly when he says, “You can hear this in everyday life, your voice changes as you move from one room to another.”

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“A cinema is no different. Every sound is shaped by the space it exists in.”

And finding the perfect sound for any room isn’t dictated solely by numbers, “This is where acoustics moves beyond pure science and becomes an art form”, says David.

"There are simply too many variables for it to be automated effectively. Measurement data must be interpreted by someone who understands both the physics and how we perceive sound.”

Good acoustics may be invisible, but they are what make the difference between a system that merely measures well and one that truly feels right to listen to. As he puts it, "nothing can replace good room design."

If you’re in the process of completing your own custom install, or you have plans for the future, and if you’re working with a limited budget, that philosophy has practical implications too. Moseley argues that the highest-impact improvements are often the simplest ones, “move seating away from walls to improve bass consistency”, he says.

Other simple adjustments can include adding basic acoustic treatment to improve dialogue clarity, while also eliminating rattles and unwanted noises, and sitting closer to the screen and speakers so the system doesn’t have to work as hard, which can also have positive effects. He also notes that there is always a performance “sweet spot”, beyond which gains become disproportionately expensive. In other words, the smartest upgrade is not always the most expensive one.

For the rest of us with more conventional living room setups, there are still things you can do to maximize performance. While a TV and soundbar combo won’t match the isolation of a dedicated home cinema, the underlying principles don’t change. As David explains, “CEDIA RP22 is a recommended practice for immersive audio, not just dedicated cinemas, so the same standards apply to any multi-channel system in any space.”

There are extra challenges of course, in layout, materials and sound isolation, but David says with the “right approach to acoustic treatment, system design, and integration, a living space can still deliver exceptional performance.”

“In many cases, acoustics can be seamlessly integrated into the design through elements like curtains, rugs, joinery and furniture, rather than being visually obvious.”

That is also where Elementi, Wavetrain’s speaker brand, comes into the picture. Moseley positions it as a bridge between premium hi-fi and commercial cinema systems, but with a more refined approach. He says that “most high-end hi-fi speakers are designed for nearfield listening, typically within one to two and a half meters, and many will struggle to maintain performance beyond three meters.”

Conversely, he adds that commercial cinema speakers are designed to meet specific SPL requirements set by organizations such as Dolby. Elementi speakers have been designed to “bridge this gap”.

That means they’re built to be able to sustain high output continuously, while keeping distortion to an absolute minimum, and doing so through a fully active design with dedicated amplification for each component.

Going down an active route has multiple benefits, and David says that one of the biggest is that it “reduces impedance-related losses and eliminates many of the issues associated with long speaker cable runs, which in home cinemas can often exceed 10–30 meters.”

With regard to speakers, I asked David which had greater impact, the speaker itself or how it’s integrated into the room. He said, “both matter, but integration has the greater impact.”

“A speaker must be fundamentally suited to its intended application, but even the best speaker will underperform if it’s poorly positioned or placed in an inadequately designed room.”

If you’ve ever listened to a traditional 2.0 hi-fi speaker setup and moved yourself around the room, you would have noticed that the overall sound can change. This is due to the way soundwaves are delivered into the room, and how they’re picked up by your ears. It’s a similar story for home cinema setups, “Speaker placement directly affects the soundstage”, says David.

“Small errors can have significant consequences. And while some of this may sound obvious, in practice we still see it done incorrectly far too often.”

He adds that when he’s inspecting a client’s current space, “we regularly come across ceiling speakers aimed straight at the floor rather than the listener, front wide speakers firing across the room instead of into the seating area, or surround speakers positioned in ways that completely confuse spatial perception.”

And don’t think that subwoofers can get away with being placed anywhere in the room, as David argues that “low-frequency performance is also heavily influenced by placement.”

“The goal of a well-engineered system is to allow the listener to experience the full capability of the speakers they’ve invested in. That comes down to three things, in order: room design, speaker positioning and finally calibration.”

Moseley is equally focused on the quality of the source material feeding the system. He places strong emphasis on low-jitter digital playback, arguing that jitter introduced in the digital domain ultimately becomes noise after conversion. In his view, those small imperfections add up, especially in systems built to the highest standard. That is one reason Kaleidescape has become so common in Wavetrain projects — it offers exceptional build quality, low jitter and a large 4K library with lower compression than UHD discs in many cases.

I’ve personally had some experience with Kaleidescape, having reviewed the Strato E 4K player last year. While I was aware of the potential visual and audible benefits it would bring compared not only to streaming services, but 4K Blu-ray discs too, I wasn’t sure just how much of a difference there would be.

Sound was perhaps the biggest differentiator, and I felt I was able to unlock even more potential, even from my humble Sonos home theater setup. I can only imagine the level of performance achievable in a dedicated space such as a Wavetrain cinema.

“For us, performance begins with a clean, stable signal”, says David.

“Kaleidescape’s exceptional build quality is a key reason it measures as the lowest-jitter source currently available. Combined with the largest 4K media library — often with lower compression than UHD discs — it becomes an ideal media source. It’s no surprise that nearly every cinema we’ve delivered over the past five years has included Kaleidescape.”

If a custom home theater installation is something that you'd be interested in, then be sure to read David's in-depth guide to designing the ultimate home cinema.

Max is a senior staff writer for Tech Radar who covers home entertainment and audio first, NBN second and virtually anything else that falls under the consumer electronics umbrella third. He's also a bit of an ecommerce fiend, particularly when it comes to finding the latest coupon codes for a variety of publications. He has written for Tech Radar's sister publication What Hi-Fi? as well as Pocket-lint, and he's also the editor of Australian Hi-Fi and Audio Esoterica magazines. Max also dabbled in the men's lifestyle publication space, but is now firmly rooted in his first passion of technology.

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Key Takeaways

• News, deals, reviews, guides and more on the newest computing gadgets

• Start exploring exclusive deals, expert advice and more

• Unlock and manage exclusive Techradar member rewards

• ‘Nothing can replace good room design’: how one award-winning home theater designer approaches custom installs

• I spoke exclusively with Australia's David Moseley to all things high-end home cinema