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Home Theater Geeks 540: Home Theaterology
01:04:56
The Art of Home-Theater Design
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- [00:00]
Scott Wilkinson
In this episode of Home Theater Geeks, I chat with Richard Charshan, the president of acousticsmart, about the amazing home theaters that he has designed. So stay tuned.
- [00:14]
Podcast Sponsor Announcer
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- [01:38]
Richard Charshan
26 podcasts you love from people you trust.
- [01:46]
Podcast Sponsor Announcer
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Advertisement Voice
Foreign.
- [01:58]
Scott Wilkinson
Hey there, Scott Wilkinson here, the home theater geek. In this episode I am pleased to welcome as my guest Richard Charshan, the president of Acoustic Smart, a home theater designer and builder. From soup to nuts. I'm told we're going to get into that on this show and he has designed some amazing home theaters which we're going to take a look at. Hey Richard, welcome to the show.
- [02:26]
Richard Charshan
I'm happy to be here. I've heard a lot about your show and I've listened in myself and I'm a big fan. So it's great to be a part of this experience.
- [02:34]
Scott Wilkinson
Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate that and I appreciate you being here because you've done some amazing work and we're going to get into some examples of that. You sent me so many pictures of so many theaters, we can't cover them all, I'm sorry to say.
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Richard Charshan
That's okay.
- [02:51]
Scott Wilkinson
But I did pick a few that that are particularly interesting. But before we do, I wanted to get your thoughts on your basic approach to home theater design. What are your basic tenants of that process?
- [03:14]
Richard Charshan
So we treat Every room, as if it's an instrument, you know. You know, we try to avoid a poorly designed environment. So the room is everything to us. So when we have a room, we're looking at, you know, are the walls straight? Are there jags in the walls? Is it a rectangular room? Is it a square room? What's going to give our clients the best bang for the buck and also make it sound acoustically viable? The whole idea is, you know, we're not a company that's all about selling product. Like, even though we make se and all these really cool things where the most important thing for us is to just get lost in the experience. When that movie comes on, you have an immersive experience, meaning that the room will basically just disappear. Even though we do incredible looking rooms, once you once that. Once those lights dim and you're ready to watch the movie, all you're concentrating on is what's on the screen and you're totally immersed. So we look for acoustics, we look for sight lines, we look to. We always ask the client questions, are you an audiophile or you're not an audiophile? Some people do it just for the kids. You know, how many people are you trying to accommodate? What do you want the room to look like? What are the aesthetics? Do you want to match the rest of your house? What do you want it to be? I always call it the Willy Wonka effect. You want to open up that door and almost be like you're walking into the chocolate factory. And you want to be so different from every other room in the house. So it's a surprise. So it's really based on whatever the client wants. I mean, we've had clients ask us for some pretty crazy things, and we have clients that just want a very simple screening room. And the cool thing about theaters is that, honestly, even though we do some amazing things, you know, you can really do a theater for any price point. It's just a matter of. Of how smart you are and, and your knowledge of it and how you build it. So I always tell that to clients. You know, all right, we're going to budget the room with all of your want lists, like everything. But in the end, we're not going to get it right the first time. So we'll value engineer it and we'll figure out what are the important things to get to your price point. And that's how we start every theater.
- [05:35]
Scott Wilkinson
Hmm. Well, that leads me to my next question, which is how do you get the most bang for the buck out of a Limited budget. How do you, you know, so say a client comes at you with a, with quite a limited budget. How do you get the most out of it? What do you focus on there?
- [05:56]
Richard Charshan
Okay, so let's say we have a client as an example. They love our star ceilings. They have a very tight budget, but they don't want to do the whole room and they want to do some seats. So we have seats for different price points. So we'll do less expensive seats and we'll just do the walls. So there's, there's two ways of doing it. All right. One thing I've done is for people, and if you can believe this, it makes a big difference. So let's say if they want to start ceiling, we'll just do the front wall as a baffle wall and do really good acoustics on the front wall. Do a 2 inch thick system on the front wall and then on the ceiling, we'll do acoustics in the star ceiling. So you're getting, you know, nice absorption in the ceiling. And then you have your front wall just doing that alone. And even if you paint the walls a dark color, you know, honestly, the room sounds really good. We've done that for people. It's not my favorite, but it's a solution. The other thing I would do is just do maybe acoustic treatment on the front wall and then do floating panels at a minimum. So you have the first point reflections within the room. And you know, the back can be, you know, whatever you want it to be. I like to put some diffuser panels. Some people don't like the way they look. So we can actually take a diffuser panel and make it look like artwork, you know, through something we call SmartArt. So if you give me an image of something, anything, even if the client purchases it, it could be some sort of digital art or could be a picture of the family. It could be a movie poster. We can scan it, print it onto breathable fabric, and then cover that over diffuser and it'll look like hanging wall art in the back, you know, so there's, there's things that we can do like that. We've also done smart art rooms where we have a bunch of movie posters or what we did for somebody that was really cool. He owned all the rights to Andy Warhol's the digital artwork for his, for his rock album covers, like the Billy Squire album, Stones album. There was a Thelonious Monk record or something like, like there were a bunch of them that he did. Miles Davis, I believe. And we just Printed them onto acoustic treatment and made it look like art hanging on the walls. And we just painted the walls a nice contrasting color. And then we did the front wall with some treatment. Didn't go crazy. And that's a pretty reasonable way, you know, to do it and just do a platform. You have to. Have to really get the. To me, the way that you make a room sound great is by making a room. You know, you have to isolate it so that you don't get any noise, you don't have any distractions within the room. That's the ultimate. Because the quieter the room, the better the dynamics of the room. And then with the theater itself, as long as you control the first point, reflections do the front wall. That just doing that makes a huge, huge difference. You know, you can tweak that by putting different types of diffusers. Like every acoustician, Tony Grimani has his own secret ways of doing things. And we're good friends with him. We do a lot of work with him, and he does things different than other acousticians do. So, you know, you learn the different traits of what some people like to do. That that's interesting. And you see how the room responds to it. I mean, we have some dealers that, you know, we have. We have AV dealers that they actually wait until the room is done and then they start messing with the acoustics and they start moving things around while they're tuning the room, because get so involved and they look at the room as if it's their lab until they get it perfectly. So that sweet spot is exactly dialed in. So they want to. They might want to move and absorb a little bit more to the right and more to the left. Put it. Put a diffuser maybe a little bit, you know, to the left or right of where that surround sound speaker is. And they'll sit there and then we'll have to come back and refabric everything afterwards. Yeah, there are. There are guys like that.
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Scott Wilkinson
Sure.
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Richard Charshan
It's pretty amazing.
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Scott Wilkinson
They're known as home theater geeks, I think.
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Richard Charshan
Yeah, yeah, myself.
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Scott Wilkinson
So indeed, speaking of acoustics, we have a graphic that's in your book that we're going to talk about a little later.
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Richard Charshan
Yeah, sure.
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Scott Wilkinson
But there's one graphic I want to show because it. It sort of illustrates what you were just talking about, which is number one. There it is.
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Richard Charshan
Yeah. So sound desk. You know, it'll basically be bouncing around the room. And I just got through with another interior designer and, you know, and the architects and interior designers still don't get it, but you Know, they want to poster the room. They want to put Dacron on the walls. And you don't. You don't want to kill the room. You don't want to over deaden it, but you also don't want to paint the walls because then what happens is the walls start fighting with one another and the sound is bouncing and it's crossing over, and then you get distortion. And then what happens is very similar to when you're in a living room and somebody's off in the kitchen and they're cooking. You know, you can't hear what they're saying, so you make the volume louder. And then an action scene comes. Then all of a sudden, oh, my God, it's so loud. And then you make it lower again. When you treat the room, it gets rid of all that. So you can. I have clients when we're done with our rooms, this is how important the acoustic treatment is. So I can't really stress it enough. That's what we call our company, Acoustic Smart. I have clients that are 80% deaf in one ear. They come into my showroom, they don't have to read lips anymore. One of them was actually crying because it was the first time his wife ever was able to watch something and not have to read lips and can hear exactly what was going on the screen.
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Scott Wilkinson
Wow.
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Richard Charshan
Because as you get older, first of all, men and women have totally different hearing. Women's hearing are much more sensitive than men's hearing, generally speaking. Yeah, totally different. So women never want to hear it cranked up, if you've noticed. You know, they want to just be comfortable. Men like to hear it, you know, they want to feel it. That's the way, you know. But as you get older, you're losing more and more hearing. So the way that you tune that room is so important because then you can really listen to even baseball games. You can hear everything. It makes you feel like you're in the audience. A train's going from left to right. You can hear the train going from left to right. If there's a helicopter, like in the opening scene of Apocalypse now, you hear the complete 360 degree of the helicopter coming in and around and then coming onto the landing.
- [12:39]
Scott Wilkinson
Right.
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Richard Charshan
That's what you want, you know.
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Scott Wilkinson
And so in this. In this picture, you're showing how with one speaker, the sound bounces around. With three speakers, the sound bunches. Bounces around a bunch. And then finally, you treat the sidewalls near the first reflection points.
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Richard Charshan
Correct.
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Scott Wilkinson
And that tames all that reflection, sending the sound really where it needs to go, which is your listening spot.
- [13:06]
Richard Charshan
Correct. And that's why, like, a lot of times you'll see people, they'll get a. A video wall or a tv and they'll put like, a, you know, a speaker one. The one speaker underneath the tv and wondering why they're having such a hard time. And the floor is, you know, is wood and windows and. And, you know, and. And, you know, it's too much sound coming out all over the place and no control, you know. Right, so.
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Scott Wilkinson
Right. So, you know, your emphasis is on acoustics, and rightly so, in my opinion.
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Richard Charshan
Absolutely. You know, like, it's a game changer. Scott, When I. When I first started, if you can imagine, I was one of the first guys in the United States to do theaters with the acoustic treatment.
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Scott Wilkinson
Oh, really?
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Richard Charshan
Yeah, I would. I started over 30 years ago when nobody was doing theaters, and there was something called the Ferrujo Line doubler.
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Scott Wilkinson
I remember that well.
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Richard Charshan
And the three gun projectors. But sure. What would happen was I started out because I. I knew an AV dealer in the AV industry, and he did amazing work, but the rooms didn't sound good. And I would say to him, like, haven't you ever heard of Acoustic Treatment? Like, this room is so cool. But you're really missing half of the experience, because working in recording studios and being a musician, I realized what it could be. And what happened was, you know, it was very hard to sell because nobody really understood what the stuff was and how much would make, you know, a difference within the room. So we finally, you know, had an opportunity because there was a magazine at the time called Audio Video Interiors, and
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Scott Wilkinson
I worked at that magazine, in fact.
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Richard Charshan
Okay, so this client saw an article about somebody putting acoustic treatment. He says, I want this, but he's like, well, I think I know somebody who's local who can do this. And I met with the guy, we did the job and was like, Martin Logan statements or something at the time. And back then was only laserdisc. They didn't have any DVDs back then. And. And all I can remember is us watching this James Taylor concert. And I knew it would make a difference, but I didn't know it'd make that big of a. You know, I wasn't expecting that big of a difference. Me and the client, our drawers dropped, and we were just like, I can just sit here all day, and this is just the greatest thing ever. And it was hard to explain that experience to anybody else. But the bottom line is, when I Got my final invoice, and he paid me. He wrote me a letter, and he said, nice people did the job, and I want to thank you so much. You made such a difference in my room. Here's $1,000 bonus.
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Advertisement Voice
Whoa.
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Richard Charshan
So I showed it to my father, and we were in the commercial, you know, custom building business. So we did, like, stuff commercially, and nobody really cared about the final product. So I've never been thanked for anything in my life because everybody just wanted you to get it done and to get over with. So I was shocked that someone actually liked what we did. And it was hard to sell acoustic treatment back then because again, it's just like hocus pocus thing that nobody understands about. And we found out about Cedia, and we started calling up all the EV dealers, and the AV dealers were like, no, my room sounds great. And I don't know who you are with this acoustic stuff, but how do you sell something that they can't experience?
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Scott Wilkinson
Well, that was what I was going to say. I was going to mention the only way really to get people on board is to have them experience it.
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Richard Charshan
You have to. You have to. Once you're in a room like this, it's like, to me, it's like going into a sauna. It's like meditative. It's like. It's. It's relaxing, and I'm. I'm drawn to it. After a long day, man, I go into my room sometimes. I'll just fall asleep and put on some tunes because I deserve it. I'm just tired.
- [16:58]
Scott Wilkinson
Damn straight.
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Richard Charshan
I need to. I need to decompress. It's my way of releasing. It's my. It's my Superman cave. My fortress Solitude.
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Scott Wilkinson
Fortress of solitude. There you go. Well, I was going to ask you about whether or not you approach things differently or do you even install into existing rooms as opposed to building a room from scratch? If you build a room from scratch, you can do the acoustics, you can do the treatments, you can do the insulation. You can do everything exactly as it needs to be. But what if you're called upon to go into an existing room, a bedroom or a basement or something like that?
- [17:36]
Richard Charshan
I do it all day long. It's one of the hardest things to do. But we do it a lot, and we're actually really, really good at it. As an example, my theater, my own, you know, in my own home, which became my showroom, my first showroom. Now we have many, many around the country. It's in my garage. I had no choice. I lived by the beach. I was looking for houses that had a basement. And thank God I didn't do that because the hurricane Sandy, my theater would have been underwater.
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Scott Wilkinson
Oh, we will mention that you're back east in the New York area.
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Richard Charshan
Yeah, I'm back in New York. So we did in my garage. And so now we have no garage. And we put as much as we could into the shed. But we had. So talk about a retrofit. We actually had a three month article and audio video interiors on the construction of it like maybe 18 years ago or something. But anyway, so when you have a garage, the first thing you have is you have a sloped floor. So you have to straighten out the floor. The actual electrical box for the entire house was in the garage. So. So if we would have put a screen on the wall, the screen would have been on top of the electrical box. So we had to move the entire electrical box. Oh, yeah, yeah. And not just that, but the cleanout valve, the drain for the entire house, for the plumbing is in my theater. Yeah, man, you couldn't really, you know, it can't be any more difficult. And then we had to have a secret, you know, opening in the platform to get at that. And we've had to use it, unfortunately, to get in there and do the cleanup. It wasn't really a big deal. And then the other thing that was really crazy was that we have, we had a pole supporting the entire second floor that was right in the center of my sightline that was supporting my second floor. So we had to get rid of that pole and put a flush header in so we wouldn't have a pole in the center of the theater. Talking about scary.
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Scott Wilkinson
Oh, man.
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Richard Charshan
So we had to have that engineered. And so far the roof hasn't fallen on yet.
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Scott Wilkinson
Knock on wood. May it remain. So there you go.
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Richard Charshan
But we were. Yeah, it was, it was, it was frightening and it was, it was exciting. And so now on the outside of my house, it looks like a garage, but then you come in, it looks like a 1930s RKO theater that worked for Theo Calamarakis, you know, who I've
- [20:15]
Scott Wilkinson
had on the show as well.
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Richard Charshan
Yeah, he's a dear friend of mine and he, he pretty much almost. He also got us our start in the business. I was his fix it guy in the very beginning and helping him out with his, you know, with all his, his things. Then I started working on his bigger projects. But yeah, so, yeah, we've done that. We've. We've done, you know, that that room that we Talked about with the. With the guy driving his car into the garage. That's a retrofit.
- [20:44]
Scott Wilkinson
Oh, we're gonna see that at the end of this show. That. Yeah, that's. That's an amazing accomplishment that you guys did so well. Good. I'm glad to know that that. That is certainly possible for people who can't or don't have the resources to actually build a room from scratch.
- [21:01]
Richard Charshan
Yeah, I mean, we. We actually come in and take from the studs that will demo the room. Like, we had a room in Nashville that we did, and it was. We actually have it in our book so you can see the before and after. It was for a famous country singer. And the. The room he had was terrible. And he sold it to this really nice client we're doing our second room for. And he had a very small screen, maybe like 110 inches, and he had all these seats. And I was saying myself, like, why would anybody come in here see this small screen? And. And. And then it was in the. We felt like it was in the wrong direction, so we flipped the entire room 180 degrees, gave him a screen that was like, you know, 100, you know, 70 inches on the dash, and he was, like, blown away. And then we relayed everything out, had an area for the. For the concession. We demoed the whole place, and now we're working on a second theater for a second house. Because he realized that we were thinking outside the box. You know, we weren't just doing, you know. You know, anybody walking in would just say, well, you're walking this way, so the screen should go right there. But that's. That's. That's not really necessarily the best way for it. We have to think optimally, what's going to be the best for the room. How are you going to walk into the room? You know, I always hate walking into a room and walking into the seats. I like walking in. And the screen is on your right. You know, if you have that kind of setup and then you walk up. And then you walk up to the seats. I don't like walking like a commercial cinema. Yeah, well, when you. Yeah, and when you walk into some. Some people think that when you walk into a commercial cinema, and I get this a lot. Oh, I want to come in from the back of the room. Like, we're in Radio City Music hall, and we're gonna go through the center. You know, the center of the theater.
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Scott Wilkinson
There's an aisle down the middle.
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Richard Charshan
Yeah, like, there's an aisle down the middle. And anybody who's, you know, who knows anything about theaters is that that's your best seat in the house. So why would you ever want to do that?
- [23:05]
Scott Wilkinson
Right.
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Richard Charshan
And then if you ever walk into the back of the room, what happens is right away, because you're walking through the back of the room, what happens to your seating? Now you have to push that seating up a couple of feet because you need room to walk around the seating and to get down. So now you're pushing everybody closer to the front screen wall. You know, what I try to do is I try to bring everybody away from the screen wall as much as possible so we can get the biggest screen. And not to shove as many seats as possible, but to make every seat row optimal so that this way everybody has an immersive experience.
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Scott Wilkinson
Well, on the other hand, you. I assume you don't put seats right up against the back wall because you
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Richard Charshan
need a little space, Correct? Exactly.
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Scott Wilkinson
Yeah.
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Richard Charshan
Because you don't get the immersiveness.
- [23:53]
Scott Wilkinson
Exactly.
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Richard Charshan
Unless if you have to.
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Scott Wilkinson
Well, sometimes maybe you have to. And I've seen certainly theaters like that. Yeah. You. You mentioned that there was a theater in your book, and I wanted to mention that you have published an honest to goodness coffee table book.
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Richard Charshan
Yeah.
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Scott Wilkinson
Called Home Theatreology. And it's. It's really beautiful. I thank you for sending me a copy. It's. It's really something. I. I appreciate it and I congratulate you on a great achievement.
- [24:26]
Richard Charshan
Thanks. It's four years of my life went into it, and actually Thea was working on a book and with the same personality with this book. And unfortunately, he passed away. This. This book took four years to make. And, you know, Theo basically, you know, is in the book also. He's got a page there. And the idea is for me to carry the torch, because when he put out his books and I still have him, and I love his books, it really inspired me. Even though I didn't have clients that were doing theaters that were a million dollars and up, you know, I loved looking through it, every minute of it. And I really, you know, he was like. He was like my sensei, you know, And I really, I really loved everything he did and wouldn't be here without him. So to me, this is my homage to keeping home theater alive. And the reason why we did the book really was to cut the disconnect between the interior designers and the architects from the homeowners and to educate them and also to educate the homeowners who are going to do a theater. Because what happens is I feel like every time we have a meeting with an architect and interior designer, we have to, like, start from scratch and tell everybody about all the basics, you know, that go into these rooms.
- [25:46]
Scott Wilkinson
Right.
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Richard Charshan
And it's just, you know, it's just a time sucker.
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Scott Wilkinson
You know, I was going to ask you about working with interior designers because. And architects, I guess, too, because they don't really know what's involved and what's required to make a good immersive home theater experience. Right.
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Richard Charshan
Yeah.
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Advertisement Voice
So that's.
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Richard Charshan
That's where the book came in. So the. The idea was that at least if they read the book or if the interior designer or architect is guiding them the wrong direction, they'll look at the book and say, hey, you know, that's not really. I don't want to make this into a living room. I really want to make this into a theater environment. I'm looking for a dedicated space. Space, because interior designers want to make every theater into a living room, which is. It's not a living room. It's. It's an immersive space for watching movies. It's, you know, you have living rooms all over the house, and you have TVs all over the house. This is a place to sort of get lost and escape and to be in the middle of what you're watching, to be a part of it, not to be a spectator, you know, and it's hard to drill that to them. And they. They actually talk clients out of doing theaters. Why do you want to be in the dark? What do you want to sit in a dark room for? Don't you want to be in the living room cuddling up? So this has always been an argument, and I just got tired of it. So I was talking to Theo and this other guy one day, and I'm like, we should just do a book like what Theo did, because it inspired other people to do more theaters. And I really think it helped the whole industry. So that was kind of why we did this, to sort of help. And I. It's. It's. I think it's helping a lot because we. With the money that we made from the book, it doesn't go to me, it goes to giving books to architects, interior designers around the country.
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Scott Wilkinson
Oh, excellent.
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Richard Charshan
Excellent. We've given out, like, 400, 500 books.
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Scott Wilkinson
That's great.
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Richard Charshan
So, you know. You know, and I'm seeing. You know, I'm seeing it helping. And also, when we have a client who's interested, honestly, I just give him a book. I'm like, just Please just read this so that you kind of know what you're getting into. And you know, you have, you know, you have an idea of what the process should be. I mean, what put the writing on the wall for me was I had a client, really nice client, and he really was really excited about the room. And the interior designer, I don't want to bash into his eyes on the show, but you know, they wanted like three rows of seats and they talked them into like doing a TV, like 100 inch TV in a room with three rows of seats. Like, I was like, really? Like, why are we, why would you even go in here? Don't you have TVs all over that? All over the house? And I was like, I wish I had this book now because I'd show. I'm like, this is why you need to do all these things. And I, and I partnered with friends of mine in the industry, like John, you know, John is in there, John Bishop and Tony Grimani and all these guys because they're all like me. They're all, you know, they're never satisfied. They're very passionate and they love home theater. And you know, I feel that education is power. So the more people know and they're aware of, you know, the better our world will be for people who, who love home theater and appreciate what we did.
- [28:59]
Scott Wilkinson
Yep, yep. Well, I want to, I want to show people a few examples of some of the theaters that you've done and some of which I guess maybe are in the book, but. But you've done so many.
- [29:13]
Richard Charshan
Yeah, there were a couple that we couldn't get in time. I mean, we were lucky that we were able to get Barry Sonnenfeld and we got him to actually be the speaker at Cedia.
- [29:23]
Scott Wilkinson
I remember that that year. That was you?
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Richard Charshan
Eh, it was us. And I think we had less than 48 hours to get that into the book because he was away on vacation.
- [29:34]
Scott Wilkinson
He, he wrote one of the forwards.
- [29:36]
Richard Charshan
Exactly.
- [29:37]
Scott Wilkinson
Yeah. And he's a passionate home theater guy himself, so totally appropriate.
- [29:44]
Richard Charshan
And so is Max Weinberg, so.
- [29:46]
Scott Wilkinson
Yeah, exactly.
- [29:47]
Richard Charshan
And he's, you know, he's lost a lot of his hearing from playing drums for Bruce Springsteen. So right now with acoustics many times, not just in his theater, which he ended up selling and was his favorite room in the house to his, to another house that he purchased. And you know, he's always been a great, you know, friend. Friend of ours. And I have to say that he's, he's been great, great.
- [30:13]
Scott Wilkinson
Well, let's take a look at some of these theaters, the first one is actually the simplest and. But it actually appeals greatly to me because what I like sitting in for watching a movie is a black box. Right. And here it is. It's a black box.
- [30:31]
Richard Charshan
So that's one of our showrooms in L. A, believe it or not. So if you're. Oh, if you want to get an appointment. That's why all the seats are different. Those are eight different styles that I
- [30:39]
Scott Wilkinson
was wondering about that. Okay, so that makes a lot of sense.
- [30:43]
Richard Charshan
So it's eight different styles for you to go into. And one of our audio integrators owns the showroom and we're very proud of it. But it's. Yeah, it's very simple, but it's got a great JBL synthesis system, digital projection for the, for the video. And. And it looks, it sounds as good as it looks, put it that way.
- [31:08]
Scott Wilkinson
I'm sure it is. I think we have one more picture of it from the other direction. There we go.
- [31:13]
Richard Charshan
It's a 2 inch thick acoustic system. So it's tuned really nice. Tony Grimani did the, did the acoustical analysis for me on this room.
- [31:22]
Scott Wilkinson
Beautiful, beautiful. I would love to spend time in there. And if next time I'm in la, I'll try to make an appointment to go there.
- [31:30]
Richard Charshan
Oh, yeah, let me know, man. I'll. I'll definitely hook you up. It's great.
- [31:33]
Scott Wilkinson
Cool, man. Thanks. All right, looking at the next one, this is a beautiful design too. I love the edge lighting around the ceiling panels and the wall panels.
- [31:46]
Richard Charshan
That's all acoustic treatment. Yeah. So the big, the big thing now is LED lighting. Everybody's, you know, really hip on that. And then the other thing is the wood sliding, which the interior design wanted to put all over the place. But we had to be careful because you can't have that over speakers. Right, right.
- [32:03]
Scott Wilkinson
Obviously.
- [32:05]
Richard Charshan
But they actually wanted it in those areas. So we had to be very, very smart in the placement of everything. And you also don't want anything because it's so close to the screen. That's reflective because with wood you can see the reflection, the image on the wood. So we had to get something very, very flat to work the interior design and give them what they want, but also not take away from the image and those floating ceiling clouds. Just acoustic treatment that we lit a little, you know, that we illuminated with LED lighting.
- [32:37]
Scott Wilkinson
It's beautiful.
- [32:38]
Richard Charshan
Gigantic room and the equipment in that room. I wanted the EV deal. The job is in Las Vegas. I really wanted him to, to enter it for Forcedia, but we just, we couldn't make the deadline. But the room, sonically and everything, it's just, it's wow. And then in the back, you. You have a granite. You know, you have that granite that's in the back of the room, which also helps for reflections.
- [33:06]
Scott Wilkinson
Well, it would be very reflective, I would think.
- [33:08]
Richard Charshan
Yeah. And it actually works so well because it just, it just gives you even that more, more the immersion that we're looking for in there. And the room, sonically and the performance wise, I think it's a Barco and Yord or something like that for the projector. Cause it's a gigantic room. I don't know if you can tell from the size from the image, but this is a monster of a project. It took almost a year to build this room. This was a heavy duty project. But it's gorgeous.
- [33:44]
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- [34:13]
Scott Wilkinson
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- [34:28]
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- [34:56]
Scott Wilkinson
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- [34:56]
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- [34:58]
Scott Wilkinson
Now the next one I want to feature, I'm calling the Wave. It's just, just my name for it because look at that ceiling. It's beautiful. Yeah.
- [35:09]
Richard Charshan
Yeah. So that was just that. Believe it or not, that's a rendering.
- [35:14]
Scott Wilkinson
Oh, that's not even a photograph. Sorry.
- [35:17]
Richard Charshan
The room changed from that quite a bit and we. We weren't even able to photograph that room. I mean, I have photos of it, but yeah, the com. The room is. You know, we've done a couple of Rooms like this, where they're elliptical and having that ceiling with the wood. So many acoustical problems. We had a.
- [35:41]
Scott Wilkinson
That was.
- [35:43]
Richard Charshan
That was hard. But at the end, the room actually sounded a lot better. We got rid of a lot of that wood on the front.
- [35:50]
Scott Wilkinson
Oh, that's good.
- [35:51]
Richard Charshan
I wanted a bigger screen. The screen was too small for me.
- [35:54]
Scott Wilkinson
Yep, Yep.
- [35:55]
Richard Charshan
And we ended up using a woven screen. All the speakers are back in the screen, and the cabinet underneath was a lot smaller. So that. That helped. And then the other.
- [36:05]
Scott Wilkinson
The other picture, which I guess is a rendering too.
- [36:08]
Richard Charshan
Yeah.
- [36:10]
Scott Wilkinson
I just. I just love the waviness of it. But you're right. The fact that it's all wood is a problem.
- [36:17]
Richard Charshan
Yeah. We ended up using the ceiling as a diffuser.
- [36:20]
Scott Wilkinson
Huh.
- [36:22]
Richard Charshan
And that's kind of how it worked within the room. And then we combated everything with a lot of absorption wherever we could. We used 2 inch absorption to absorb the high and low frequencies more evenly. And those are custom. It's not a bed, but like a custom lounger.
- [36:43]
Scott Wilkinson
Yeah.
- [36:44]
Richard Charshan
That we made with custom cup holders that the architect drew. And we custom built that in our. So with our factory. Like, we can. I can build anything. Like, we're a true custom shop. If you show me a picture of something on a napkin, I can make it come alive and render it and build it from scratch. That's kind of what they did here.
- [37:08]
Scott Wilkinson
Yeah.
- [37:09]
Richard Charshan
It came out super cool.
- [37:10]
Scott Wilkinson
Very nice. Very nice. The next one. I don't know if this is a rendering either, but it's a. Certainly an unusual looking room.
- [37:18]
Richard Charshan
That is real. So that's another. So this is a job that we did for a famous interior designer. It was in the Hamptons, and the room was completely elliptical. The client wanted to be like a genie in a bottle feel. So this is the first time we ever did something like this. So acoustically, we had to do special tracks which we had to create ourselves. Because if you do a normal acoustic track system, you can create a lot of wrinkles. And the client didn't want any wrinkles. The interior designer didn't want any wrinkles. So we had to figure out a way to do all these curves and not have any of those wrinkles at that we're talking about. And we did. We figured that out, and it came out really great. The other thing that's really interesting is if you look at the stairs when you walk in, you can't. It's impossible to bring furniture down there. Going down. It's completely elliptical.
- [38:15]
Scott Wilkinson
Yeah.
- [38:16]
Richard Charshan
Banging into every wall. So they Wanted this custom couch in the front and in the back. And it's a low couch, which I was against. I think it's very. It looks very cool to me. It's very uncomfortable.
- [38:28]
Scott Wilkinson
Yeah.
- [38:29]
Richard Charshan
We had to build these couches in the field because there was no way to bring them downstairs.
- [38:34]
Scott Wilkinson
You had to build them in the room.
- [38:36]
Richard Charshan
You had to build them in the room. There was no way. There was no way to bring these babies downstairs. So we had to actually make them on. On the job site. So that's about as. That's one of the crazier ones. Yeah, but it's a very simple room but. But very elegant, but also very complicated when you understand all the details.
- [38:56]
Scott Wilkinson
All this curved walls would make it very complicated.
- [39:00]
Richard Charshan
And look at how clean the lines are on the acoustic system on the. On the curved walls. Yeah, you know, that's, you know, it's. It looks. Oh, this just looks so simple. It's so hard to do. You have, you have. It's just crazy.
- [39:15]
Scott Wilkinson
Yeah. Yeah. The next one I thought was pretty remarkable as well.
- [39:22]
Richard Charshan
Yeah. So this is interesting too. We also made these custom seats. So the client found something online, but they were like prefab, so we made gigantic custom versions of them that were a lot nicer and more higher end. And then do you see on the left, it looks like artwork?
- [39:42]
Advertisement Voice
Yeah.
- [39:43]
Richard Charshan
So that's actual acoustic treatment that we laser engraved with. All those different shapes are cut into our cut out of acoustic treatment to look like artwork. And then it's layered three dimensionally so you have different layers. And then you have lighting in there so that it looks like you're looking at a piece of art on the walls and you have that throughout the room. And this, this came from the interior designer having a vision here. You can see the layers more and how detailed that was all laser engraved. And each one of those different panels, they were all wrapped individually and then put in this. In this. In this LED framed piece to look like a piece of art. You know, it's very unusual, for sure.
- [40:35]
Scott Wilkinson
You know, now these are all wonderful theaters, but you've also done quite a few that are themed on movies. Right. And so let's take a look a couple of those.
- [40:54]
Richard Charshan
Okay. This is a James Bond themed room. And the cool thing about this room, if you notice, it's James Bond, but it's. It's not over the top. And so there's images, but it's not like all in your face. And there's some really interesting things about this room. First of all, the room is only 11ft wide. Okay. If you look at the room, there's three rows. There's, there's, there's two, there's two rows of seats. Yeah, you'll, you'll. Yeah, you'll see it's tight. It's two, three seat sofas. But go back to the other image because I want to tell you some cool things about this. This room. Make it really fun and unusual. Do you see this image on the front screen wall of James Bond's? The very famous scene?
- [41:40]
Scott Wilkinson
Yeah.
- [41:41]
Richard Charshan
So this was during 2009 when the world was coming to an end and everybody thought that they were going out of business, including me. And we needed this job. And the client loved Pierce Brosnan. That's who he wanted on there. So he want us to take an image and we printed it onto a motorized shade. The idea is so that when every movie starts, you know, you walk into the room, it's completely finished room. And then the shade goes up. And then we have it programmed to a kaleidoscape onto a script. So when that shade goes up, you literally see the continuation. And James Bonds walking onto the screen. He shoots the gun and the blood comes down. And then you see, you know, the opening of every James Bond movie.
- [42:26]
Scott Wilkinson
Wow.
- [42:27]
Richard Charshan
Looked at the image and he looked at his hand. And we took it right off of the Blu ray. Back then, you know, we didn't have 4k. And his hand looked like a claw. And he says, Pierce Brosnan's hand doesn't look like that. And we had to show him, like we froze it. This is what his hand looks like. And he was like, I'm not going to do the project until you can fix his hand. But I'm like, that is his hand in the actual opening of every movie. That's what it looks like. So we wouldn't lose the job. I, I had. We took a picture of my architect's hand and we had him spread his fingers out and we superimposed it onto Pierce Brosnan in that picture. So seeing in that picture is my architect's hand on Pierce Brosnan. And that kept him staying with us. And he closed the job. I can't make this stuff up. This is.
- [43:23]
Scott Wilkinson
Oh, man.
- [43:25]
Richard Charshan
So we, we go through some crazy stuff with clients and they're clearly demanding. Clearly in the back of that room, there's another shade. All right.
- [43:36]
Scott Wilkinson
Yep.
- [43:36]
Richard Charshan
See it? And then when that goes up, you have the hidden martini bar. Of course, it's hidden to an audio request which they had in those days. And every time I went up you'd hear the James Bond theme, of course. And all of these images on the side, they're all printed on acoustically breathable fabric. So this is all. This is all acoustic treatment. And then you can see where Daniel Craig is. That is the opening to his office. Now, he was. He was pretty hammered one night, the client, and he was looking for his. His room. To get into his room, he had to do some work. He couldn't find the door, the job, and lining everything up. He couldn't find where that was. So that was a pretty funny story. But he loves the room. And he and the clients. Dear friend of ours, it's two brothers who are very well known in the sports industry. And we did work for both of them. Yeah, they're really nice people. Yeah. Forever. But. Yeah, so that's that one.
- [44:41]
Scott Wilkinson
But it's that one. The next one. Sorry, go ahead.
- [44:44]
Richard Charshan
It's a challenging room because it was so tight. And then we put a bar counter in the back to create more seating. And then to the other side, there's a bathroom which also has James Bond motif on it. But, you know, you can't. You really can't see it from here. It's. It was a very hard room to photograph.
- [45:01]
Scott Wilkinson
Yeah.
- [45:02]
Richard Charshan
So. So small.
- [45:05]
Scott Wilkinson
The next one, I'm. I'm a James Bond fan, I guess. Sure. But Tron I love. And here is a Tron themed theater, which is great.
- [45:15]
Richard Charshan
So we haven't built this one yet. This is for.
- [45:17]
Scott Wilkinson
Oh, this is another rendering.
- [45:19]
Richard Charshan
Yeah, but our renderings look pretty good. They look almost identical. Or sometimes actually the real theaters look better than the rendering stone because. And get the textures. But yeah, he was a huge fan of Tron. And you can see how he did the acoustic panels to the left and right for the first reflections. And again, not a huge room. So he did one row of seats, made it to a gigantic theater bed with motorized headrest and a bar counter. And then the back is. It looks like stone, but it's actually not real stone. That's printed, unbreathable fabric to look like stone. Like you're walking like. Like the inside of a cave. And then you have all the LED lights that are RGB that change colors.
- [46:01]
Scott Wilkinson
Right.
- [46:02]
Richard Charshan
So it's super, super cool.
- [46:04]
Scott Wilkinson
Yeah.
- [46:04]
Richard Charshan
I mean, we're looking forward to building that hopefully next year.
- [46:06]
Scott Wilkinson
Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. The other one other picture of it.
- [46:09]
Richard Charshan
Yeah, that really shows. And then it's got the special door. You know, you go up to the door where you press your thumb and it opens up automatically
- [46:19]
Scott Wilkinson
very Cool. Well, I look forward. I'm sure you look forward to that. I look forward to seeing the real pictures, too.
- [46:24]
Richard Charshan
Yeah, we've. We've never done a Tron theater, so that should be really. I mean, people think of us as a theme theater company, but that's maybe like, 5% of the work that we do. Most of them are kidding. It's pretty. Pretty normal and just, you know, very well as.
- [46:42]
Scott Wilkinson
As were the ones before, these particular themes. Yeah. The next one I wanted to show was the Lord of the Rings theme, which was really something.
- [46:51]
Richard Charshan
So this is a retrofit. Okay.
- [46:53]
Scott Wilkinson
Ah, there we go. Good.
- [46:55]
Richard Charshan
This perfect example. I should show you the before and the after. You want to see something? The before was like a downstairs hangout, you know, look like it was never changed since the late 70s, you know, and we completely transformed the whole thing. What's cool about this room is you see those windows on the walls? All right, those aren't windows. Those are those TVs hidden in there.
- [47:23]
Scott Wilkinson
Ah.
- [47:24]
Richard Charshan
So. And that's hooked up to a kaleidoscape script also. So when the lights dim, it's hooked up to a script where dragons come and they attack the castle. You know, that was the idea. It only lasts for, like, 30 seconds. It's very quick, but it was just something that the client wanted. And then you see all that stone on the walls.
- [47:42]
Scott Wilkinson
Yeah, that's.
- [47:43]
Richard Charshan
That's actually printed on breathable fabric, and that's all acoustic treatment because the floor had to be stamped concrete to make you feel like you're in a real castle.
- [47:52]
Scott Wilkinson
Sure.
- [47:53]
Richard Charshan
And then the. In the back of all the headrest of all the chairs that has. That's. That's his family and the family insignia, you know.
- [48:04]
Scott Wilkinson
Oh, no kidding. Wow.
- [48:06]
Richard Charshan
Yeah, he's. He's really into this. He had a Game of Thrones theater before this, and they had a terrible experience with the construction of it, and they got dirt all over the house. And the guy who did it, he took forever to build the room. And the guy's wife didn't want to do another theater because they didn't have great experience. But he finally went forward with us, and they said the experience was night and day. And I looked at the other theater. They didn't even put real acoustic treatment in there. They had run and all this. So he never had a theater. He had a theater that looked cool, but it wasn't really done right, so didn't perform well. He never knew what could be done. And even before the room was calibrated, he was Freaking out about how great the room sounded. And it's a challenging room when you look at it with the. With the stone floors and everything else. But the room sounds great. Incredible.
- [49:00]
Scott Wilkinson
And we have another couple pictures of this one.
- [49:04]
Richard Charshan
Yeah.
- [49:04]
Scott Wilkinson
Looking at it from the. From the bar at the back to the screen wall. And one thing I liked about this room was in the third picture, there's a whole collectible area.
- [49:16]
Richard Charshan
Yeah, he had a huge. So we had a video that went on forever. I think we probably still have it on our website, acousticsmart.com but he had so many of the collectibles, he was running out of room. So we had to make the whole back area for his collectibles. And we have a video showing all the collectibles. I'm sure some of it's worth a fortune. And then he ended up getting, like, the. The actual swords from the movie. And we had these really cool claws that we found that were holding the swords in place in the back. There's a. There's a knight that was made from a guy that does all the night costumes for all the movies, all the, you know, all the Game of Thrones movies. So it's got a little bit of Game of Throne mixed in with the Lord of the Rings because he loves it so much.
- [50:07]
Scott Wilkinson
But where is this one located?
- [50:09]
Richard Charshan
That's in Nashville. And a really super, super nice guy. Him and his wife are the sweetest people. And he. This is his place. Man, talk about. Somebody loves the movie theaters that we built. This is a guy who. It's his favorite room in the house. I mean, honestly, I. When this was done, after it was calibrated, he didn't. He didn't really understand how big of a difference the calibration would make. When he heard the final mix, even I was blown away. The speakers were pro audio. We had a Storm audio processor in there. And the projector, I think, was. I think it was a wolf at the time. I think he's upgraded since, but. But anyway, yeah, just. I was hearing things on my. Like, on my shoulder. Like, he didn't have Dolby Atmos. He never experienced any of this stuff. And it was just. It was a wonderful, wonderful experience. Close your eyes.
- [51:17]
Scott Wilkinson
Exhale. Feel your body relax. And let go of whatever you're carrying today.
- [51:24]
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- [51:32]
Richard Charshan
And breathe.
- [51:33]
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- [51:41]
Scott Wilkinson
Visit 1-800-contacts.com today to save on your first order. 1-800-contacts. Let's take it what one. A look at the next one, which I think is one of your wildest. Yeah.
- [51:53]
Richard Charshan
So this is also. Again, this is the first time we ever did this. We did this with gramophone in Maryland. And the, the. The door is just the work that went into that. That's all custom molded. It's just. That looks incredible.
- [52:14]
Scott Wilkinson
Yeah, yeah.
- [52:15]
Richard Charshan
Just you see the detail of it.
- [52:17]
Scott Wilkinson
Yeah.
- [52:18]
Richard Charshan
And that also. That's not real. That stone looks so real. Again, it's all fabric. You have to go right up against it to realize that that's fabric and that it's not real stone. We, we worked on that for probably about a month and a half until we got the perfect dimension.
- [52:36]
Scott Wilkinson
Yeah.
- [52:37]
Richard Charshan
And we did everything in there and we, we worked with a. A movie set director to help us out with, you know, he wanted some very specific things, you know, from Greek culture. So he. He. Greek culture?
- [52:54]
Scott Wilkinson
Yeah, Egyptian.
- [52:55]
Richard Charshan
Egyptian culture. So he created these really cool sconces for us that actually looked like real glowing sconces, like there's fire in them, but it's. It's not. And then you have all the. The different Egyptian artifacts which he built in house for us, you know?
- [53:15]
Scott Wilkinson
You know, I love the projector box
- [53:17]
Richard Charshan
too, so that's a monster. So if you've ever designed the movie theater, one of the most important things. A lot of things. What's something that a lot of baby dealers don't know how to do? Well, is to vent the projector properly so that the projector doesn't overheat. We did a job in Texas and the guy spent a fortune for his theater, and the person who designed his theater didn't vent the projector properly, and the theater caught fired.
- [53:49]
Scott Wilkinson
Oh, my God. Yeah.
- [53:51]
Richard Charshan
This is a real story. And the guy couldn't use this theater for two years. And we met him at CD and he came by our booth, you know, with his beautiful wife, and he said, you're not going to believe this. I had this happen and whatever. And, you know, it's like, I really want to do this right, but I can't use the theater because I'm allergic to smoke and I can't go in there right now. We cleared everything out. It still smells like smoke. Smoke. So I'm looking for somebody, you know, who's capable. And he flew us on his honest jet. I remember and we went like about a week later and couldn't have been a nicer person. And we designed a theater. It's a very big space. Not only were we less, a lot less than the guys that he used who were local flying in, we were about $80,000 less than what this guy charged. But we were able to get the temperature of the projector right on the remote control with the AV dealer. So he can sleep at night and always know what the temperature is now.
- [54:52]
Scott Wilkinson
Yeah.
- [54:53]
Richard Charshan
Never have this happen to him again.
- [54:55]
Scott Wilkinson
Wow. And.
- [54:58]
Richard Charshan
And again, it's just. It was. That was the first time that theater that we ever did a screen that was almost 200 inches because it was like being in a commercial settlement, somebody's
- [55:08]
Scott Wilkinson
house in a big room. You can do that. Yeah.
- [55:13]
Richard Charshan
This was close to 15 or 18 years ago when we did. When we did that particular room. Yeah, that's a nice size screen. But this one's not in Nashville. This is the one in Maryland. But the one I was talking about with the theater Corps fire, that was outside of Dallas.
- [55:30]
Scott Wilkinson
Oh, I see. You were talking about projector boxes in general and venting. And that was not in this Egyptian theater that this.
- [55:37]
Richard Charshan
No, the Egyptian theater. Everything went like clockwork because we know what we're doing and everything.
- [55:42]
Scott Wilkinson
Got it. One last theater to look at. And. And this one is so cool. I did. I did want to show people the video from this one.
- [55:52]
Richard Charshan
Oh, so that's the planning stages. So this was.
- [55:55]
Scott Wilkinson
Yeah, this is a montage of. Of several pictures within the planning stage of this particular theater. Which lets you drive your car into the theater.
- [56:05]
Podcast Sponsor Announcer
Yeah.
- [56:05]
Richard Charshan
So this is interesting. So we were working with this guy Again, this is 2009, when the world came to an end and our phones weren't ringing. We were probably working with this guy for close to six months, and he was torturing us like he couldn't make up his mind. And then at our last meeting, after we went through everything, he tells us he got a new car. And I don't know if I really want to do the theater because I need a place to park my car. And it's really a man cave. It's not really a theater because I want to entertain in there and blah, blah, blah. So as I'm walking out of his house, you know, I got in my breath. I'm like, why don't you just drive the car into the theater? You know, as a joke, you know, Because I'm like, this is it. We just lost the project. And the guy stopped me in my tracks. He says. He's like, oh, my God, tell me more. We can drive the car to the theater. And me and my head architect Mark Soren, we looked at each other like, this is going to be crazy. I can't believe he just. He's asked me about this. And the idea was to drive in like you're in the bat cave, you know, to come in.
- [57:07]
Scott Wilkinson
Right.
- [57:08]
Richard Charshan
We had a knock into the foundation of the wall. We had a knock. So this is a retrofit. We had a knock into the concrete. This is all done by my own crews. We did all. We built the wine cellar. We built everything you see in this room. This, you know, there was a secret door to go into the theater. There's a motorized shield that comes down. So if you don't want to see the. The car, you don't have to. We got. Not only did we create a rendering, we created a virtual tour rendering. We got to make a model of his car, the color of his car. We created an avatar of him driving into his own theater because we really wanted to do this job. It was, you know, it was. It was that time in our lives where we got to impress this guy because this is. This is the chance of a lifetime to do something really unique. And. And, you know, it's 2009. The world was dead. We needed to stay alive. Right.
- [57:59]
Scott Wilkinson
Yeah. You're the business. And what a business it was. Let's take a look at the video. It's. It's really something.
- [58:05]
Richard Charshan
So that's the finished product. And this is him driving it. Actually, this is one of my good friends, Robert Kaufman, from Audio Command Systems out of New York.
- [58:17]
Scott Wilkinson
So this isn't the. The client driving car.
- [58:21]
Richard Charshan
The client was with a bat ready to kill me. And he didn't want anybody damaging his car. Very carefully.
- [58:31]
Scott Wilkinson
One of my favorite cars, by the way, the Porsche Targa. Yeah.
- [58:36]
Richard Charshan
So we speed that up to make it look cool.
- [58:38]
Scott Wilkinson
Yeah, sure.
- [58:39]
Richard Charshan
And then this is him walking in the secret door. And these had to go up against the wall because we don't, you know, we didn't have enough room there. But these are clearance. These are chairs that we make in house. Special mechanisms that we want an award for where they don't take up any room. So the idea is they're acoustically great because they have a low back when you listen to two channel. And then the headrest pops up. When you want to watch a movie. This. This is showing the LED lighting changing colors.
- [59:08]
Scott Wilkinson
Right. And the wine cellar.
- [59:10]
Richard Charshan
And the wine cellar that we built. And then Showing that you can watch a movie from the car if you really wanted to. That city, that cityscape is acoustic treatment and that's the special door. You press your hand and he wanted a Star Trek door. To the right of that there's actually a very, very tiny bathroom that is just enough to do your business and to leave.
- [59:32]
Scott Wilkinson
Right.
- [59:33]
Richard Charshan
We had to make a lot of use out of a very, very, very small and tight. And tight space there. It was, it was pretty wild.
- [59:43]
Scott Wilkinson
Well, that's very wild. Absolutely. So, last question.
- [59:48]
Richard Charshan
Yes.
- [59:49]
Scott Wilkinson
Obviously, these theaters don't come cheap. I mean, what, what are we talking about? Ballpark, if in the range of these theaters.
- [60:01]
Richard Charshan
Not crazy for what we do. I mean, our average, the theaters between, you know, I mean, be before tariffs and everything in the world changed a little bit. I mean, we used to be 150 to 250. Now we're probably between 200 and 300 on average. You know, for our normal rooms, we have some rooms that are 180, 185. And then we have rooms that are over half a million.
- [60:29]
Scott Wilkinson
Sure. But I was thinking some of these could easily reach into a million or more.
- [60:34]
Richard Charshan
No, we don't. You know, we're very reasonable, believe it or not. I mean, with the audio, maybe. Yeah, absolutely. But.
- [60:40]
Scott Wilkinson
Oh, you're not talking about the equipment.
- [60:42]
Richard Charshan
No, I'm just talking about the interior.
- [60:44]
Scott Wilkinson
Right. Okay.
- [60:45]
Richard Charshan
There's a whole other level.
- [60:46]
Scott Wilkinson
Sure. Yeah. If you want to go JBL synthesis or Wisdom Audio or something really, really high end. Sure. You're going to push that price way up. A Trinov or a Storm audio processor. Yeah. Barco projector.
- [61:01]
Richard Charshan
Yeah. I love, I love all that stuff. I love the barcos. I love, you know, jbl. The wisdom stuff is great. I mean, you know, we're, we're getting to work with a lot of new companies too, that are coming out, you know, so it's always interesting to, to, to see what's out there and how it's going to change the sonics of the room. You know, we've even done rooms with Denon receivers that actually sound really good.
- [61:28]
Scott Wilkinson
Oh, no kidding. Yeah. Yeah.
- [61:29]
Advertisement Voice
All right.
- [61:30]
Richard Charshan
It's all on how you tune. You know, the secret source is, is how you tune the room. And if you do the acoustics right within the room, you're 80% there. I mean, obviously if you have a Storm audio processor or something like that, you can really get into the guts of it and, and, and, and dial in all the bass and everything. And higher Tony Grimati to come out and do the acoustical analysis, which we do quite often, and he calibrates the rooms for us. That takes you to another stratosphere. We had a client just recently who, you know, look, if you want the best guys, you know, they're expensive and the good calibrators are expensive, but is it better to spend money on somebody really knows what they're doing or just to buy another piece of equipment that won't give you that kind of a result? Result. So it's, you know, these, these guys have years of experience. So I like to surround myself with people who make me look good and who have as much passion as I do about the work I do. And these guys just take our, our smart in the acoustics mark to a whole other level. And I love that. And we have this client just recently who didn't want to do it. He says, oh, I had somebody come in and they had, they did the calibration and I, and I knew it was very mediocre and he spent a lot of money and I felt bad for the guy. And we don't make any money on the calibrations. I just want them to have the best. So I said, look, you know, I said, honestly, just check, check it out. If it doesn't work out, I'll, I'll split it with you. But I'm going to be shocked if you're not impressed. And I think it was a 12 hour calibration of the audio and even helped video. He was so blown away at the difference in the audio and what it sounded like. He called me up the very next morning. He says, I can't believe you talked me into this. I'm so happy that you did, you know. Thank you so much. I didn't realize it because, you know, you know, when you believe in something, you know, you know, you have to go with, go with your gut, you know. And you have somebody that spends that kind of money on a room, they should really have the room the way it should be. It shouldn't be a mediocre experience. You want them to walk in there every single time and have goosebumps. Because then if they're having goosebumps, then they'll tell their friends to come in. And that spreads the love of home theater to other people. And then they want to do a theater.
- [63:56]
Scott Wilkinson
Yep. Yep. Well, Richard, thank you so much for being here. Tell people where they can find you online.
- [64:04]
Richard Charshan
So you can find me everywhere these days. But acoustics acmart.com is my main, is my main website. And you'll see lots of cool stuff in there. You can go to Instagram. Our Instagram shows our work. Our acoustics on Instagram is updated literally three times a week. So you'll, you'll see a lot more new projects there. Our home theology book can be purchased right from our website. We can ship the book out international. I just sent two books out to Switzerland for somebody. But the freight is a lot more. You just have to contact me if you are out of the country. The program that we have won't ship out of the country unless you contact us. So I got to do that manually. We have shipped them to Australia. We've shipped them to every place in the world. And it's a great book to have and it's a lot of fun. And then we also have hometheatrology.net where you can learn a little bit more and see some of the other podcasts that we've done. But and also if you have a question or if you just want to talk, you know, there's no egos in our company. We're always here to help homeowners, AV dealers especially. And, you know, we just want people to do home theater optimally around the country and to really do the best room that they can so they enjoy every moment out of it and it becomes a very special experience for them.
- [65:34]
Scott Wilkinson
Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for being here and sharing your vast knowledge and great experience with building these amazing home theaters.
- [65:45]
Richard Charshan
Thank you. Well, it's a pleasure and it's an honor to be here and thank you.
- [65:48]
Scott Wilkinson
Thank you. That's Richard Charshan, president of acousticsmart and you can learn a lot more, as he said at his website, acousticsmart.com now, if you have a question for me, you can send it along to HTGWIT TV and I'll answer as many as I can right here on the show. And if you have a home theater you're proud of, even if it's not at the level of acoustic smart designed and built home theaters, I want to hear it. I want to see it. Send me some pics. Maybe we'll get you on the show. Until next time, geek out.