Now this is a house of horrors … and that’s exactly what the homeowner wanted to highlight in this CE Pro Home of the Year Award winning installation. Turning this high-end monster house into a monster party house was an exhilarating challenge for the team at Midwest-based Echo Systems, but the integrator reports it was worth the effort for the owner – and integrator, too, as Gold winner in the Best Strange & Specialty Project.
“Challenged to execute a professional rave-level experience in this one-of-a-kind Omaha home pushed our team to perform at its very best,” says Doug Dushan of CE Pro 100 and HTA certified Echo Systems, which recently acquired Dallas Sight & Sound adding to bases in Omaha, Neb., and Kansas City.
“The homeowner is an avid collector of high-quality Halloween monsters, and they have simply taken over his home. It could prove disquieting working late with monsters looming, but in the end, we all became good friends.”
The audio system provides extremely low distortion, high-output sound (118dB) in every corner of the customer’s mancave and bar area. The bass is thunderous, yet all perfectly distributed, Dushan says.
“This was a particular challenge to hide the large subwoofers or different types and get the right placement and performance,” he adds. “The cherry on top was the JL Audio Gotham front and center in the room between the fog machines.”
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Ketra Fixtures Feed Echo Systems’ Monster Rave Experience
A mix of loudspeakers and audio amplifiers includes Wisdom Audio and Sonance powering their respective in-wall arrays and in-ceiling models. Savant and Just Add Power handle the control and AV distribution. The client provided video displays and sources such as Blu-ray players.
The lighting in the mancave was executed using colorful Ketra fixtures to achieve the most vivid red, to the client’s delight.
Dushan says it wasn’t easy pitching this powerful AV project on trade partners. “When the client gave us carte blanche to do what it took to accomplish our vision for him, we had to get the other contractors onboard. They had a hard time tearing apart a beautiful home that had just recently been completed,” he recalls.
“The front wall of the mancave was finished stacked stone, so retrofitting the on-wall Wisdom speakers required quite a bit of demo.”
He adds that the monsters did cause a bit of a challenge on this ghoulish job, but just working with a customer who’s looking for a shoot-for-the-moon type of solution makes up for it.
“That [challenge] was offset by the absolute green light from the client to do whatever it took to design and implement a professional rave-level audio experience in this unique 365-day Halloween home was our asset,” Dushan says.
Reliable network coverage comes via Luxul and WhyReboot; a Middle Atlantic rack houses the AV and other gear.
Click here to view more spooky slideshow images of this Home of the Year Award winning project.
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