HCA Tech Talk - News, Reviews and Opinions
A consumer-facing podcast hosted by industry veterans, Stuart Burgess from Immersive Cinema Rooms and Simon Gregory from Cinema Rooms.
Each episode, we bring you News, Reviews, and Interviews from inside the industry covering Home Cinema, Home Theatre, and all things tech.
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HCA Tech Talk - News, Reviews and Opinions
Inside Monitor Audio's Stunning New Experience Centre
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A great home cinema is not a shopping list. It’s a chain of decisions, from the room and the wiring plan to calibration and long-term support, and one weak link can ruin the magic. From Rayleigh, Essex, we walk through Monitor Audio’s brand-new Experience Centre and ask a simple question: how do you make high-performance sound repeatable for real homes, not just show demos?
We’re joined by Michael Johnson to unpack why this 6,000-square-foot facility exists, how the lounge, two-channel music suite, and Trinnov waveforming cinema are built to reflect real listening spaces, and why the Elevate Sound Performance Academy is the next step for integrators and retail partners. We also dig into practical help that moves projects forward, including training, whether online or in person, plus free design services that turn rough room plans into diagrams, layouts, and visuals clients can actually understand.
Then, technical director Michael Hedges takes us inside modern loudspeaker engineering: a transparent design philosophy, data-driven tuning, rapid DSP changes in the listening room, and simulation tools that get prototypes frighteningly close before the fine polishing begins. Finally, installer James Brown shares the behind-the-scenes build story, from acoustic isolation and “rooms within rooms” construction to the compromises every cinema room faces when noise, structure, and standards collide.
If you care about home theater design, architectural speakers, smart home integration, and the craft behind great hi-fi sound, hit play. Subscribe, share this with a friend planning a media room, and leave a review with your go-to demo scene or reference track.
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Home Cinema Alliance Message
SPEAKER_00Thinking of building your dream home cinema? Don't know where to start? Start with the HCA. At the Home Cinema Alliance, we connect homeowners with the very best in the business. Our members are trusted designers, installers, and technology experts who know how to turn any room into a breathtaking cinematic experience. Whether you're building from scratch or converting a spare room, our members are here to help you every step of the way. Visit our website to find your local member at homesinamaralliance.co.uk.
SPEAKER_03We're here in uh Rayleigh, Essex with uh Michael Johnson from Monitor Audio. Michael, you've uh had a great day today, an open day for all the all the press. You've got some fantastic new facilities here. Can you tell us a little bit more about why you've got these new facilities?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, thanks, Simon. So um, yeah, you're in the Experience Centre, which is the the home of our Elevate Sound Performance Academy, and I'll touch on that a bit later. But um, yeah, it's uh just over 6,000 square feet, it's purpose-built. So this is um big moment for the brand. Um obviously Monos Audio's been around for just over 50 years. Um but we've never 1976. 1976, we moved to this site, yeah. So 72, we we we started as a brand, and uh we're now a group, so we've got Roxanne Electronics and Block Hi-Fi furniture as part of our group, and um we we've never really opened our doors. Of course, we've had guests and visitors, but we've never really had a proper um uh environment that is so consumer-facing as as this or partner-facing, I should say.
SPEAKER_03I mean, I I started in 1998, just just just round the corner, and those facilities were never available to us. So what what why now?
SPEAKER_05I think it's just really important that um as a as a company um we need to evolve. And um, you know, we we feel that we do a great job of designing our products and engineering our products and and bringing them to market, but um things are getting more complicated, aren't they? And um we we see a huge increase in the demand for um smart homes and architectural speakers um and sound being integrated into people's spaces. And um, well, there's really only way, one way really that you can be successful there, and that's by sort of working with integration partners or retail partners and educating them on your products and how they can be applied to different applications. So um the the ethos behind this space essentially is to ensure that we are um enabling them with the knowledge, experience, and confidence to spec and install our products. So it's actually more about training. It's it's more about getting beneath the skin of the brand, getting hands-on with the products and enabling them to appreciate our um different elements of our portfolio so that they can apply that to their business and the project they're working on.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so you've got a number of rooms here as well that uh end users and integrators can come to, but you've also got training, as you mentioned briefly as well. Can you just shore that for us?
Three Rooms That Tell The Story
SPEAKER_05So, um, yeah, we've we've got three purpose-built uh listening rooms. So we're we're sat in the lounge and it's very comfy, it is too very uh very homely. Thank you. Well, it's exactly that, it's meant to be. Um so the environments are very real-world in terms of their scale and size. And in the lounge, it's about in-room and integrated AV solutions. We have a music suite, which is performance two-channel, um, and then we have the cinema, which is almost a 30-channel uh Trinov waveforming um cinema, um, basically, which is extremely immersive and very high spec. Um, so each environment um is in enabling us to um show, present, and demonstrate um different elements of what our partners could be um installing. Um beyond that, we have an immersion gallery, which uh enables us to tell the story of our brands that are in the group and pick up on some of the key technologies and and products that we've produced over the years, and then we have the training space. And all of this is to enable our partners to come in, whether they're existing or new, and experience our products in the right way to get hands-on and to uh essentially get beneath the skin of the brand to understand why we do what we do and how, and and uh to believe, to believe in the products so that they have uh total confidence in in specifying them. And um, the training center and the Elevate Sound Performance Academy really is our next phase. So the Experience Center is a practical physical environment uh to enable our training uh design services and customer and technical support to really motor on and improve our outreach to support um customers.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and that's what it's all about. I mean, each room is unique and different, as you say, and but you have got that that heritage of of monitor audio, and you you've got that that background of of of where you started and where you are now, and it's a fantastic little story that that you've got, and obviously the training would help customers to to understand that, but primarily for for integrators to understand that.
SPEAKER_05Yes, absolutely, or or retail partners. I mean, we one of the things that sets us uh apart from a lot of the let's let's say the architectural speaker brands out there is that we have a heritage of box speakers, of passive loudspeakers, traditional hi-fi equipment, and across our brands, we we have turntables as much as we have.
SPEAKER_03I've been to the museum, very nice. It's going back down memory lane for me. I was like, I'd sold that and I was it.
Training Focus And Partner Confidence
SPEAKER_05Yeah, so we we we've got a a a very wide portfolio of uh of product. And um one of the benefits of it being here on our HQ site is that we have our creative studio, our RD and engineering, um, software, electronics, marketing. It's all in our creative studio, and we can offer experiences and tours around that space as well. Um, but we also have production here. So all of our Roxanne Caspian uh products are hand built in the UK, they're they're British made, as is our statement loudspeaker hyphen. So um we're really proud um to be able to offer that. We're proud that we are the the UK's largest independently owned audio brand. And um, you know, when people come through our door here, we're hoping that it's not just about training, it's about actually being exposed to some of these other areas and meeting the team, speaking to the team, and really, you know, feeling confident about potentially working with Monster Audio Group.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and that's that's for me personally, that's what's come across quite quite a lot today. You are one big family. I mean, we got here quite early to do some filming and uh some shots, but the amount the amount of staff that you you you have here are I expected to 15 to 20 staff, which I think was probably 20 odd years ago, but now you've got up to 80 staff. We've met engineers, we we've met some people who've been here for 14, 20, 30 odd years, so yeah, which is really nice to see, I have to say.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, we're we're we're I mean it's a lovely environment when you've got staff here that have been here for 20 plus 30 years, things like that, and and come in every day with the same passion, the same energy, um, because we can always do things better, Simon. You know, there's you you know, we don't always get it right, but what this environment enables us to do is to build um a network with our partners so that it's a it's a safe space, they can come in, they can ask questions, they can learn. Um, you know, and we want to be there to support them. We we are a very open organization. Um, you know, we there are um there is a hierarchy, I guess. We have a chairman, we have a CEO, but you know, if you want to speak to those people, you can. And and we make it uh easy.
SPEAKER_03A lot behind locked doors and you've got to go throw through loads of red tape just to try and get no hoops to jump through.
SPEAKER_05It's really straightforward. And um, you know, in fact, we value that. You know, we we we value that two-way street with um the partners that we work with, and you know, we want to be able to help them build their businesses too, because it's not just about existing um relationships, it could be about new ones and they could be able to do that. Absolutely, yeah. And we we love nothing more than seeing you know a new customer come on board and have success and see that success grow. And um, you know, if we can support that um by offering them a robust product that works, that doesn't fail, uh, with um support in areas like design.
SPEAKER_03Um Yeah, because you're offering that now designing a room, which obviously is quite quite important, you're doing the the sketch up drawings as well that uh that you you guys are now talking about. So you you're offering a complete solution, aren't you, to help sell your products?
SPEAKER_05It's so important for us to be able to offer a full solution. And uh and you know, um we've been the team have been on training, they've been educated, and um, you know, we've got some passionate people within our technical and customer support that love system design. So, you know, they're championing the design services element, which is a free of charge service. You know, we it shouldn't cost anything to um anyone that's working with us, you know. So that's super important. The the training, you know, we we will have content that covers all of our products um from sort of intermediate, sort of beginner to to advanced. And, you know, we offer a full suite of quite technical products, particularly our amplification, things like that. So, you know, it's it's great that we can cater for everyone depending on their journey and and their business model. And um, you know, we can um, you know, we can build with them and build that partnership.
British Brand Pride And Production
SPEAKER_03And building a relationship and say understanding what what your products do. You say sometimes you have been a bit under the radar. I think I I described you today as a bit of a submarine. So you're under the radar, and then now you're you're slowly emerging, and uh you are well on monitor audio, and people know monitor audio. You've got the you've got the fantastic name, and now you've got these fantastic facilities. And one thing I did want to just come across is obviously you are British, UK British Hi-Fi. How important is that to you guys?
SPEAKER_05Well, we're so proud of that, Simon. I mean, it's you know, and just only recently we've bought production back here in-house. So, you know So where was it previously? Um so we there's a a large majority of our stuff, like a lot of others, is is is manufactured in China. We have uh a particular um number of uh vendors that support that, but one in particular which basically does just us. Yep. We have actually 15 members of staff there that are on the monitor audio group payroll. So they work with our engineering and our QC teams, and they're you know, they're great guys, and it it enables us to actually still retain um the the the sort of quality of product that people recognise um not just in monitor audio but um in in Roxanne and Block and other things that we do. Um architectural speaker series um creator is is growing. It's it's it's always been a large part of our business. And we're always adding more and more to that portfolio to ensure that we are providing solutions for applications that are important to integrators. Um the burgeoning home, you know, smart home and media walls um, you know, that people are investing in and wanting in their homes, you know, an exterior now the world's warming up, yeah. You know, people want um sound and AV outside and they want it fully integrated. And of course, you know, we have solutions for that. So you know, we want to be able to showcase all of that here. Um we um believe that we've got the the platform now and all of the things that enable us to provide them a really considered solution to to support um them considering us as a as a partner. So by British, basically. By British. I mean, why not, right? I mean we we are proud. No tariffs. No tariffs, no no low shipping costs. You you've got you ticks all the boxes. Well, we try. And um look, we you know, we're not the biggest company out there, but what we try and do is do things really well. Yeah, and that's what's come across today, I have to say. Oh, thank you. Yeah. Well, we you know, we're focused on delivering a fantastic customer experience, whether that's an end customer or a retailer or an integrator. And um, you know, we we have a fantastic team of people here that are passionate about what they do, knowledgeable about what they do, and are genuinely concerned uh when things aren't right. So everyone works hard and we want to offer a great product and a and a great service. And I think right now, today, is the flag in the sad uh sand moment where we can go, now we've got a fantastic space to appraise all of that, to present all of that. And um yeah, the next phase of this is to um get all of our content and training um certified so that we can offer CPD uh accreditation. Yeah, absolutely, and um sort of yeah, allow um that training, that content to support the growth of our partners and um and we can build with them.
Courses And Design Support Work
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so which is the main thing. So, home cinema alliance members, what's the best way for them to bring end users to the facility and how do they go about doing the training?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, so um we roll out Elevate Sound Performance Academy um later on this month. We're in March. So um towards the back end of the month, we announce all of this stuff and all of the content starts to roll out. We'll have pages on our website, so monitoraudio.com. There'll be um good uh information on uh and and useful information on how to get involved and book on a course. The courses are in person here or online. We're doing both.
SPEAKER_03So you're not local to Rayleigh Ethics? Absolutely.
SPEAKER_05You can do it online. Um you can just follow the through the processes of registration, it's dead simple. And there are um email, so Dan Um Dan Rogers, who is our global training manager, you can reach out to him and and book on a course, and he'd be more than happy to facilitate that and get involved. And of course, you know, it doesn't have to be here or online. Dan can come out and visit people and and be involved if that's a way that makes life a little bit easier for people. So yeah, a little certificate at the end as well. Which you get a nice little certificate, and we are thinking about some creative things as well to really incentivize for people sort of taking the courses and getting involved. So um, you know, it's just the start. Yeah, I'm sure it won't be it's a learning process, it's a learning process, yeah. It's for sure.
SPEAKER_03It's gonna be on on for both both sides and how you guys work and how you want to work with sort of integrators and things like that. So, in terms of designing a a room, if a home cinema alliance member has it as a client that they want to bring here or wants to send the plans to you, how does that design process carry on from yeah, it's really simple.
SPEAKER_05So um reach out to us with the inquiry. Um, liaise with with the team, they'd be more than happy to support. So they just need plans of the room or whatever they want to do. Sometimes someone it can be a phone call with like it's this size and that size. Um we'll start to sort of get it together for them uh and just talk them through the process of how we're gonna do it and what that means to them and how they could then potentially show their their customer. And if they want to bring their customers here to experience the physical products and actually have some confidence about the brands and products, that's also fine. And um, so you know, we'll we're a facilitator, you know. We don't want to be putting hurdles up in front of people, we want things to be easy and simple. Um, so yeah, Dan, who heads up that team, will be more than happy to liaise. And we've got you know strong members of the team that handle the design services, and they will talk you through that process of uh of what the expectation would be, whether it's wiring diagrams, 2D, 3D, renders, whatever it might be, to enable that person to show their customer what they could have, the dream. Because they've got confidence in that then. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_03But Dan's your man.
SPEAKER_05Dan's the man, Dan is the man. He sounds like he's gonna be very busy, Dan. He's gonna be very busy. This is his subtle job. So uh, you know, Dan's gonna sort of be this the spearhead of all of this moving forwards, and like you say, you know, it's it's it's it's a journey, and you know, but we've we've spent a lot of time. This is nine months in in the works um to today, and then the Elevate Sound Performance Academy is like onwards now, the next the next level of monitor audio. But absolutely right.
Technical Director’s Origin Story
SPEAKER_03It's been a fantastic day. Thank you for your hospitality. The rooms are sounding and looking fantastic, and uh yeah, uh I hope for you hopefully it'll go really well for you. Thank you, Simon. Really appreciate it. Thanks for your time. Thank you. Cheers. We're here with Michael Hedges, technical director at uh monitor audio.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, thank you for having me.
SPEAKER_03How's the day gone for you? You had a busy day.
SPEAKER_02It's been a busy day, my social batteries nearly depleted, but uh it's been really good fun. Uh, really great to show people all the hard work you've been working on, those products that take, you know, two, three years to develop, and then you get them in front of people, and you know the reward is watching people smile while they're listening to your systems and and really a sort of maybe touching music in a way they haven't done before. Because the nice thing about today is we have people who are in the audio industry, but we've had people who aren't. So maybe this is the first time them they've heard a high-end cinema or a lounge to a specification that we've got here. Uh so it's just it's great.
SPEAKER_03It's great. So you've had a great turnout today. I have to have to say I've been here since half nine this morning. It's now like four or five o'clock, but uh, you've had a great day. The good thing about I think what I saw this morning was all the staff you have. So you've got all these engineers and designers that you've got in the background, you've got 80 staff to uh at monitor audio. What what's your background and how how how do you get into to to this company? Cool.
SPEAKER_02So I mean I started with loudspeakers probably when well, from when I was a very small kid, my dad was into hi-fi, went to local corner shop, or like a corner, they happened to be on a corner, yeah. The local hi-fi shop. Uh, and we borrowed equipment and um he used to stay up late with his friends on a Saturday night listening to audio and I, you know, be upstairs.
SPEAKER_03While you're trying to get sleep.
SPEAKER_02While I'm trying to be upstairs listening to the bass from Sade or something, you know. Um great fun. But um as I grew older, my dad got in a bit of DIY, so we built some speakers together. Uh and that's really where I sort of got a passion for for sort of audio, but also the engineering behind it. Um I went to university, did a degree in acoustics, um, uh did some um conference papers and things in simulation tools and and really came then in 2007 to work for Dean Hartley, uh previous technical director here, um and uh sort of mentored by him up through the years and uh took over him when he retired in 2018. Wow.
SPEAKER_03So it's been a So you went to university and did did the the the training and now now you're here and uh Yeah doesn't sound like a job, sounds a bit more fun, a bit RD fun.
SPEAKER_02There's a lot of fun. There's a there's a you know it's really nice to have something you're passionate about as your job. You can sort of those two worlds collide. Um but it sometimes it has the adverse effect, you know. Sometimes you you you don't want to hear any more speakers. But but you know, when on these days when you've got those products you've worked hard for on and you're showing them to people, there's nothing better.
SPEAKER_03There's nothing better, nothing better at all, but it's the RD, it's the precision of or engineering of the products that you make. Yeah, 100%.
Speakers Get Tuned Today
SPEAKER_02Engineering is the application of science to solve a problem, and we're we're solving that audio reproduction problem. But it's it's you know, I come from the acoustic side, so I'm focusing on the maybe performance sound quality side, but we've also got the product design side. You know, how do we make that a product that's easy to install, uh, that gets itself out of the box and maybe puts itself on the wall, you know? Uh that would be the dream, wouldn't it?
SPEAKER_03It would be the dream. We have a job, bro.
SPEAKER_02The more we can do to enable that, the easier the products are to install, the easier they are, uh the more reliable they are, the better that is for everyone in the business.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, 100%. So, what does a typical day look like for you then, Michael?
SPEAKER_02Oh, meetings. Unfortunately, I'm at that position now where I sign off on engineering.
SPEAKER_03So you've gone from the fun stuff to the boring paperwork meetings.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, uh and you know, a good day might be I get invited into a listening room to listen to a prototype loudspeaker and give my opinion on it. Um we go through an incredibly data-driven and listening approach. So we've got the transparent design philosophy, which is about how we deliver loudspeakers, uh, both physically and acoustically. Um that's about getting as close to the artist intent as possible, uh, having uh sympathy for the room that we're going into, uh so we're neither too bold or too subtle. Um and that drives what we're trying to do in the listening room. Uh and so we we in the morning might um sit down and and listen to a pair of speakers, and while we're there, we can simulate a lot of those speakers on the fly on a laptop. Next to us and we can make changes and when we can upload those changes to DSP and re-listen to them in the listening room. Listen to those changes almost live and then we go out, change the analog crossover, the electronic crossover, re-measure them in the in the chamber to make sure that we're doing exactly what we wanted to do and bring them back into the listening room the next morning. And so I might get, you know, for for a week or two weeks or three weeks or however long it takes, get invited into the listening room every morning to see the hard work that the engineering, great engineering team we've got here.
SPEAKER_03How close is it for when you do the DSP to actually getting them in the room?
SPEAKER_02Is it small tweaks or you're depending on that's 90%? That's pretty close. Depends on what you try and do. The key thing is not wasting your time. So when you're sitting in a listening session, um yeah, if you go back 15, 20 years, we might have had a soldering iron and been modifying a speaker on the side. Um we haven't done that for a long, long, long time. But you end up going down a road that's not productive, so you might waste a day. Yeah. We don't have the luxury of time. No, time is money. Time is money. We're developing products, they they they've got to be sold. Uh so while they're in development, they're not making money. Um but we want to do the best job we possibly can and we take it really seriously. So we invest in technologies and things that enable us to do more in the same amount of time. We want to be able to do more tuning and more listening, but in the same two, three, four weeks we've got within the project schedule for that particular aspect. Um and so yeah, um, how close is it? Well, it depends what it is. So if you shift a crossover frequency up or down in frequency, it might not match that that well. If you're just e uh uh applying a slightly different balance of the sound, it would match very well. Um and but what it's doing is telling you, am I going in the right direction? When I asked you to lift the treble because I felt it sounded a bit dull, was it the treble or actually was there too much bass?
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And actually we need to take the bass down. Or when you get into the details of very small changes, it it gets even more complicated. We are now at the point where we will virtually simulate a loudspeaker and we can put that in our chamber as a prototype, having never listened to it, having never done anything other than pull those parts together and it's measuring within sort of five to ten percent of our simulation. And we'll put that in the listening room and have a listen to it. Uh with with the new silver bookshelf, which we'll be uh launching later in the year. Nice little sneak peek. Um, you know, we were sitting there and I'm thinking, my goodness, seven or eight years ago we'd have launched that. Yeah. From that's that's the level we're at. Um and now we're gonna spend three weeks refining it more.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, great, it gives you that time to do that and almost get it perfect, exactly, doesn't it? Really? Yeah. What I do like about your new facidity here, which is not new, but the actual the opening day that you've had is the museum that you've got here and how the speakers have changed, but almost are are the same. But you're saying it's those small tweaks and the design of how that how they look. Yeah. Um, and also you had uh, I think sort of the the the um the cutouts of of the speakers that you've done and out of not polystyrene, but like a sort of foam uh mesh of how this you want the want the speaker to look and to scale as well from what I could work out.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely, it's really important because when we do a concept and we might have all these simulations in the background, but it's really hard for someone, say in the sales team or a a distributor or even an integrator to understand what that is. Like we're we get quite good at looking at a screen and looking at the CAD and going, Yeah, I can f feel what that is. Yeah, yeah. To visu someone this is it. Um we've often looked at it and gone, yeah, it's too big. Yeah, yeah. It could be bigger.
Briefs, Prototypes, And Market Feedback
SPEAKER_03You need a big room for that to go into. So he's trying to again trying to work out what it's gonna look like and how it's gonna sound and what it's we we get our product briefs.
SPEAKER_02Um we try and pull as much market data into that as possible, as many opinions. We've got the map group where we go and speak to integrators and distributors and try and pull research in to make those products. But when we do a product, we want to make sure it's right. It's worth spending lots of time right at the beginning of the project, making sure you have a brief for that project. That brief speaks to the market. That brief is is good, it's gonna be something that's going to uh uh work, but it you know, it's gonna deliver as a return, it's gonna deliver integrate as a return, and it's gonna put a smile on the face of the customer. And if we're not doing those steps, we failed somewhere. You failed in your in your job. Exactly. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03I mean what what I mean I've been doing this for sort of 27, 28 years, which and and I I like Hi-Fi, I've uh grew up doing hi-fi and bind and that kind of stuff. But but for me, where where do you think it can go, speakers? How how much could can it change to get to get that uh essence of sound better and then vinyls now coming back? So are we almost going back to to what we used to do with speakers or are we still improvising and improving on what what you're trying to achieve?
From Box Speakers To Whole Rooms
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean we've got different customers we talk to. So we are traditionally, we've been a box loudspeaker company, you know, we make uh the silver series, bronze, gold, platinum. They're they're speakers, they're pieces of furniture, they go in a room. But there's only so much you can do with a speaker that goes in a room. Um and we can engineer uh those to the nth degree, and there's still things we can do with those. Like the simulation tools that we're using are getting better and better, and we're we're developing those tools in-house quite a lot of the time to give us better predictions. Those better predictions give us uh make decisions, better decisions that lead to better product. Um and there's there's still scope for that to improve. But then you look at the other side of of things where you look at the cinema integrators and you look at the performance that you're able to pull out of a system when you look at it as a whole room. So now I'm not selling a pair of speakers, I'm selling a whole system, whole room. Um and and that's amazing. I think that's uh that's an area where we're gonna see maybe more adoption and more understanding. It does connect with the customer in a slightly different way. Um and um there's certainly an area of growth there. But uh when you consider the whole system and an integrator takes that whole system, they're not uh maybe um just changing just the CD player, just the amplifier, just the speakers and and they're delivering a full, complete, bespoke experience. Yeah, effectively and that that is an amazing thing to do. Now it doesn't take away the fact that you know my hobby is is hi-fi as well, and I love tinkering with loudspeakers, and I can go to a shop and put a pair of platinums out and and play around with different source material and all sorts like you know, that's great fun. Um and there's there's uh that that's really really cool, but it there's this uh this other side of audio as well with the integration uh and the the creation of an experience that's not quite the same. I I think it's there's a bit yeah, it's a bit more pick and mix with with with uh box loudspeaker and things. And uh and that is fun. Yeah, no, it's fun. But it's a different type of fun having an experience created for you.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, no, 100%. And each room that you've got here does does do that for you. So you've got the lounge and the music room, the cinema room, with 16 subs in there and things with waveforming. So it it it has it has changed and it is making that an experience for for the end user, isn't it?
SPEAKER_02Absolutely, yeah. And and things you can do in that that cinema are amazing. But I mean that doesn't take away from the room we're in now, which is the lounge. It's got tier two, sort of straight through the middle, create a system. The price in here is not astronomical, yet the performance is amazing. Yeah, like this room really probably one of my favourite rooms. I mean the the cinema room is impressive. Yes, uh, but it should be.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it should be. This is your more day-to-day kind of room. A lot of people have got a room like this that they can adapt and and and put your speakers in there, a cinema room like that, whether you've got a double garage or a large dedicated room, um, then uh then yeah, that is possible. And yeah, sound sounds phenomenal, and that's what you want. But uh from your from your side of things, though, it's it's probably it's lovely to see people's faces and how, as you said earlier, how how they experience it, because in your head, you're like, Well, I think it sounds pretty good, but other people might go, well, that doesn't sound particularly good. But when people do go, I really like that, and you're saying about the different people you've got here as well. Obviously, we're we're we're media press day, but you've got some people who've never even heard a cinema room before, a dedicated one, or even hi-fi speakers. They they they used to listening to whatever streaming service on their on their phone or on their their their their their headphones or whatever, but sitting down and listening to music is an experience for them. But you had a a vast array of people here today, that's right.
SPEAKER_02I think that's the fun thing about a day like this. Um, yeah, we'll use this facility for many different events, and some of them will be like our distributors. Well, they come with expectations, yeah. And they've also got their own demo facilities and they've already heard these things. So we're we're trying to show them uh other aspects of that. Um but when you get people who have they're on that periphery, that they're those people that are audio enthusiasts, they they love audio, they would buy, they would spend good money on audio system, but they've never had the opportunity to hear what it can do. Those are the people that we want to talk to and bring them in and and show them what an amazing thing it is to have a really good audio system at home. Yeah, and what can be achieved. What can be achieved, yeah.
How The Facility Got Built
SPEAKER_03Michael, you've been a fantastic host. Thank you for having us today. It's been really good and uh thanks for all your efforts. And uh yeah, everything looks and sounds amazing. Cheers. Thank you. Pleasure. Cheers for time. We're here with James Brown from the Cinema Company. And James, we're here at Monitor Audio's uh open day for the press. James, you've done a fantastic job on these facilities. Uh how did you get involved with monitor audio and open up these new facilities?
SPEAKER_04It's been an interesting journey. I th uh I first met with Monitor Audio, so we we didn't have many dealings with them before. Um in 2025 at ISE, I wandered onto their stand and had a chat with the CEO, and uh it was a really interesting chat. And uh after ISC, the guys came to our showroom um to to try and uh get us to be a seller, basically a reseller for Monitor Audio. And um they said, Oh, we like your showroom. Do you think you could do something for us? And I was like, Absolutely, you're only around the corner, so we're more than happy.
SPEAKER_03Both both Essex boards, yeah, both Essex guys.
SPEAKER_04So and then we uh we came here, had a little survey of the place, um, made some recommendations and um started to sort of put together a proposal and some design ideas for them, and uh and then here we are today. Yeah, we've managed to manage to get it done.
SPEAKER_03We're both of a retail background, and obviously we're we're both based in Essex and uh and and monitor audio is an Essex-based company, but having this kind of facility obviously is very important for them, and what you've managed to do here, I think it just highlights what can be achieved with with monitor audio. So we're in the lounge room at the moment. It's one of my favourite rooms, yeah. It's a beautiful room, isn't it? It's a really nice, contemporary room, relaxing, chilled out, but also homely, I think, is well, I'd say part of the brief.
SPEAKER_04So when we initially started with it, um we got some brief instructions as to what they were after, but not too much detail. They were talking about, I think one of the one of the um prerequisites was they said they want a Porsche feel, they want it to be a bit posh and a little bit sort of, I guess, Essex in a kind of way. You see that in the Chigwell homes and places like that. Um, and uh I put together the renders, I wasn't sure when I submitted them. I thought, oh, they might be a bit garish, might be a little bit too Essex. So did you wind it back or did you go full on? I went full in. You went in. Yeah, I went in, I went in as hard as I could with all the design work. And uh I presented my renders and I couldn't believe it, but they signed it off straight away. I didn't have to do any amendments to my renders. No way, we was really lucky and um obviously got there. I guess they gave me a uh a basic brief and somehow I managed to get that onto paper and so listen to that brief, kind of went, I'm go I'm going all in.
SPEAKER_03Going for this. We can tweak it if they need to, um but they they liked it. And so they went with it.
Acoustic Isolation And Cinema Constraints
SPEAKER_04So each room, you did that with each room, or yeah. So we um I mean when we first had the lounge, you've got the lounge. So we uh so in this room, um for example, um the I mean the structure of the whole building wasn't there. So this room was essentially made out of cardboard when we first came in. Um there was the training room, which wasn't really anything, it was just an open room. Um they had started work on the kitchen breakout area sort of previous to us getting involved in the project, so we kind of took over that um element of it that had already started. Um, but yeah, we worked our way through the building. Um, we ended up doing um so we worked with a company called Mamma's. So it's just a shell to begin with. Essentially, yeah, there was a describe it. It was literally a plaster board wall here, right? And then the rest of it was open, and then all of the cinema and the uh the music suite and the museum area didn't exist, it wasn't there. So we got a building company in that we've worked with before, sort of quite a few projects. Uh got them into do all the basic block work, and then to um to our design and to the architect's design to do the acoustic isolation, so sort of decoupling all the walls, and then our carpentry um sort of joinery division did all of the internal carcassing, so we effectively created rooms within rooms. Um, this let this this room, not so much. This was more just a brand new block-built room. Um, we obviously had the existing outside wall, but that actually needed a second wall built in front of it as well because there was so much road noise, and when it rained, you could hear it clear in this room. So, yeah, it was quite a lot of work.
SPEAKER_03That's what wouldn't have been in your design, would it?
SPEAKER_04So you would never know until no, not until you get started, and um, and yeah, it's been it's been a hell of a journey.
SPEAKER_03But each room does sound different as well. So you've got the music room, which again has been acutely treated to to quite a high standard.
SPEAKER_04Yes, we work quite closely with um monitors engineers to understand their prerequisites for their hyphen speakers. So the room was designed with the hyphen in mind. So from the outset, we kind of knew sort of the SPL levels they wanted to achieve and kind of they go down to 129 dB max, aren't they? They're pretty damn and they dropped to about 16 hertz.
SPEAKER_0316 hertz and 129 dB peak performance. So you had that to work on, I think.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah, definitely. And we had to sort of take into consideration. We didn't want the room to be dampened, we wanted it to be a little bit lively so that the speakers can breathe. Um, but yeah, essentially worked with the engineers to get that right. Um, and uh sort of at the beginning of the journey, actually, I should mention this about some of the people that were involved in the build.
SPEAKER_03So yeah, you've got quite a lot of people involved in the building.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, when we started, obviously, Monitor Audio had some obviously relationships in the past with different people, but um control four had never crossed their path. So I arranged a meeting with control four to come down and meet the guys here and talk about the the control system that we'd put forward for them. Um, so that was a new relationship born for them. Um obviously uh they had a relationship with Roddy from Cinema Build Systems, and we we wanted him involved on the project as well. So he was the guy that essentially supplied all the track acoustic treatment.
SPEAKER_03Is that in every room or just some of the rooms?
SPEAKER_04In well, in every room actually, so the the lounge, the music suite, and the cinema, it's all of his tracking system for sure, and some of his acoustic foam treatments and diffuser panels. Um, and then we've used some fabrics from Camera Fabrics where you know they didn't quite have the colour match that we were after, so we had to find the right fabrics to suit Monitor Audio's colour palette.
SPEAKER_03Camera's got thousands of them, so much, yeah, so many to choose from.
SPEAKER_04Um, and then uh we brought in Q Motion, thought that would be a good partnership as they work quite well with Control 4, and they could sort of build the blinds that were the size of these massive windows in the training facility. Um, partnered with uh obviously Monitor Audio, I've got a really good relationship with uh 1AV. So um HD Anywhere Matrix went in, and um we pulled in some other things, so some other recommendations. I said Anthem would be a good match for some of their speakers for their listening room. So Anthem, um they didn't donate, obviously we had to buy an Anthem. Yes, of course, yeah. It was it was the right thing for the room.
SPEAKER_03Um and that's in the music room and in here as well, or in yeah, it's just in the lounge.
SPEAKER_04Uh in the music room, obviously, it's all monitor audio and rock sang, Caspian, um, and then it's cinema, or it's obviously all their synergy series, and then Trinov, yeah, with all of their monitor audio.
SPEAKER_03So you arranged that as well, did you?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, no, so they already had the Trinov, which is great. So that was a massive expense already sorted out because they're not the cheapest things. No, uh obviously put them in touch with Colliderscape, um, and uh I'm just trying to think of some of the other partners that were involved here. Um Astro lighting, they were a big part here. So a lot of the fittings in this place, um, sort of my part of my lighting design was to incorporate a lot of the astro fittings just because they've got so many choices, yeah. Basically, and you can really kind of muck around with how you want to.
SPEAKER_03Something's quite unique as well, so especially in the cinema, it's quite some nice designs in there.
SPEAKER_04Cool little niche lighting, and yeah, yeah, it was fun. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, that's that's that's a shout out to all the people that were kind of involved.
SPEAKER_03Um, so what was the most difficult room, in your opinion, from uh either design or builds?
SPEAKER_04You know, this room was really, really quite a challenge. Um, when we uh first came into the building, this room had um well, it had no structure to it at all. So we had to fully build all the block walls.
SPEAKER_03Um we've got offices above us as well, which obviously were the isolation between the rooms had to be, you know, really on point.
SPEAKER_04And um, yeah, this one was quite a challenge because of the uh external noise, um, rain noise, things like that. We actually had a leak during the build as well, where the roof had failed in elements. There was water running down the inside of the walls to strip it all back and redo it. Yeah, it was a nightmare, but we did get it done, like had to get the roof fixed and a few other bits and pieces. But yeah, there was a few other pain points, but but it's all went went fairly smoothly.
SPEAKER_03And the cinema got it done. The cinema room obviously is quite technical as well. You've got 16 subs in there, which obviously you're creating quite a lot of low frequency. They had that pretty loud just a minute ago, hardly any vibration. Pony can't hear it above. Yeah, was that a room within a room? Was it based on a critical system?
SPEAKER_04No, you are right. So um essentially it was a double skin block wall with a hundred mil cavity, um, and then we did uh uh uh acoustic isolation system, basically, so uh decoupled walls all the way round. Then we built a structure inside, so floating ceiling, floating walls, floating floor.
SPEAKER_03Yes, I heard the floor has been risen as well.
SPEAKER_04So everything was kind of completely isolated from the outside because of the because of the um warehouse next door. Um when that um forklift beeper goes off, I mean it's like a hundred and something dB when it goes and it's trying to reverse and stuff. So people don't get run over, James. Yeah, yeah, there is that. There's a safety element of it, it's not just annoying noise. They said we cannot have that being heard in the cinema room. Like it's just uh and and I think we managed to decrease that by at least 95%. You can still just hear it if you put your ear up to the aircon unit. You can just hear it. It's annoying.
SPEAKER_03So you've got aircon in there as well. Yeah, we did a full air concession. That wasn't on earlier. I was getting quite hot. Yeah, no, that wasn't it.
SPEAKER_04No, it probably wasn't on, no. Um, and then obviously we did um to keep the sort of noise floor down in that room, we we built a separate um control room slash projection room um at the rear. So Roddy obviously specified his new um porthole glasses. Yeah, I saw that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so projectors in a completely different room.
SPEAKER_04Yes, yeah, we've built that in its own sort of um acoustically isolated box with its own call-in.
SPEAKER_03And you've got the cinema build systems uh screen. Yeah, their portholes are fantastic.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it's a new product out for them. Um, but um, but yeah, it matches all of their trims and finishes. So we we've used a lot of the trims and finishes inside the the cinema area.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's nice that you had that room because not every demo facility you go to have have got the projector outside for CDR RP22 specifications.
SPEAKER_04I mean, that was a massive thing. Like we had to make sure we adhered to that standard. Um so would you say that's a level three room? Yeah, it easily achieves level three. We were we were close to four, um, but there was some some failures.
SPEAKER_03Well, the ambient noise, I I would say that's not far from a four, to be fair.
SPEAKER_04It probably uh I think we one of the speakers might be a bit too close for you, but yeah, distance between speakers I think was was um was a point that we we couldn't quite achieve. We'd have to build the walls out further to put in sort of front left and white right uh wides, but yeah, we couldn't we couldn't we couldn't do that.
SPEAKER_03So yeah, because that because the door, yeah, door shame that I was trying to work out where the front wides would go. I'm like, oh that door is in the way.
SPEAKER_04Just bridging that gap would have been fantastic, but we couldn't do it. Um I think the other thing as well was um part of the construction of the warehouse where we were putting the walls up, there's these um structural pillars all the way through the warehouse, so we could only build the room to that size, so it was a real payment.
SPEAKER_03And then that's what you get in in real world scenarios, isn't it? So you're you're not you there there isn't a perfect room to design a cinema. We could build it from scratch, yeah. Damn it. You're like, yes, it's gonna be easy. Oh no, that's not happening.
SPEAKER_04So we have to compromise on the size, we had to compromise. Um, so um, and actually, when you go in the cinema room, you'll see the pillars that we we did. Um, part of that is to hide the pillar that's the structural pillar that's I thought it was decorative, it doesn't look it look pretty impressive. You'll see ones flush and ones out, that's because of the structural pillar.
Timeline, Lessons, And Final Thoughts
SPEAKER_03So, unless you unless you know, you would never know. So it it doesn't matter. But uh, so you and the team have been working on this for a good five, six months. Five months, yeah.
SPEAKER_04So we started um obviously design. I first met them obviously in February at IC, and then we started talking about design work, and we got to a point where all the designs were signed off in August, and then we got the builder started in September, and then we were on site from October, effectively. So we've been here since ever since I feel like part of the furniture.
SPEAKER_03You might you're part of the family as well, because I was saying to Michael's, it is it is a family kind of oriented business, which is really, really nice, and I think that's come across today, obviously. You and and the monitor audio guys, but to see the rooms come to fruition, you must be pretty proud.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I'm um relieved. I'm relieved, yeah. I need a dream. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, I'm really pleased. Um, today went really well. Um, we had some really great comments, and um, yeah, I think everyone enjoyed the day. It was quite a chill day, it wasn't too formal.
SPEAKER_03It's a long day. It was a long day, it's been longer for you guys doing all these interviews. No, no, I didn't expect to be so long, but uh they fed us and watered us, and uh we got some uh uh some alcohol out of it as well, so which is you get some nice monitor audio wine on the way out.
SPEAKER_04I just saw that. I'm looking forward to that. I drink that too. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03More plugs, yeah, exactly. Yeah, so it's been a massive team effort from everybody in Essex, basically.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, so contingent, basically, and um no, it's been been awesome. And I've really enjoyed the journey. It's it's different for us, like we don't normally get involved in commercial projects, so you know there was a few things that I had to learn. Like what's your biggest learning curve, would you say? Well, I've never designed an emergency lighting system in my Life. I had to make sure we ticked all the boxes with that because no one was going to put their hand up to design it. So I was like, well, I guess we better take that on then. And painting black walls and uh Yeah, I mean um museum cr uh curation. I mean I've did you do all the stickers as well on the I I can't take credit for that. That was all down to Monitor Audio's market tape and MJ. I think you just interviewed MJ, but yeah, they um they did a great job addressing the rooms. We just we got given the brief to make it as dark and as kind of moody as possible, which I think we achieved. And then they splattered it with all the all the point of sale and stuff, and it looks really, really nice now. It looks thought about and curated and yeah.
SPEAKER_03It's a fantastic facility they've got here. It's uh I think it's a long time coming, I have to say. So we've been doing this for a long time, and they've never had anything like this for anybody. So it'd be great for everybody to see it and all your hard work that you guys have put in. I think uh yeah, it looks it looks and sounds amazing. So well well done, James.
SPEAKER_04Thank you, mate. I really appreciate it.
SPEAKER_03No problem. Take care.
SPEAKER_04Thanks.