The story of this project begins with a promise, one the homeowner made to himself thirty years ago: that being that one day he would build a home theater that answered every question as to what a private cinema could be. The result was a purpose-built, fully subterranean luxury home theater housed beneath a 15,000-square-foot Dallas estate, engineered from the ground up to deliver a cinematic experience that exceeds the experience found in many commercial theaters.
Project integration was led by Steve Elliston of Elliston Systems & Design, who coordinated the work of Paradise Theater on cinema design, Custom Homes of Texas on construction, and C & B Woodworking on the millwork program that defines the room’s finished aesthetic. Specialty vendors, meanwhile, contributed components across the acoustic, power, and AV signal chain.
Subterranean home theater design more than just aesthetics
The decision to locate the home theater below grade was both aesthetic and acoustic, both adding to the luxury feel and performance to the jewel of this Dallas estate. The subterranean position removes the room from the ambient noise environment of the home above while providing a natural foundation for vibration isolation. This further freed up the architectural program, as fewer compromises needed to be made with surrounding rooms.
The final cinema steps it up an extra notch, however, using a triple-layer isolation methodology that is rarely attempted in residential construction and almost never executed at this scale.
Room within a room within a room acoustic isolation
A concrete enclosure establishes the outer boundary of the theater footprint.
Within that, Elliston and Paradise constructed a floating room with a suspended ceiling: a second complete structure physically decoupled from the shell, eliminating the direct transmission paths through which impact and low-frequency energy travel between rooms.
Within that, a finished inner acoustic fabric wall system defines the listening and viewing environment the audience occupies.
The progression shrinks the space from an original 15,333 cubic feet down to a final interior volume of 5,331 cubic feet with every cubic foot of that reduction representing an investment in acoustic isolation performance.
It’s a calculation that highlights the extremes private home cinemas are now being pushed to not just replicate but outcompete the performance of a commercial theater in terms of sound fidelity.
46,400 watts power high-fidelity sound for Dallas private cinema
This luxury home theater runs 28 drivers across a full Dolby Atmos-capable layout:
- Three JBL Synthesis SCL-1 units across the front LCR positions
- Ten SCL-6 surrounds
- Eight additional SCL-6 units in the Atmos overhead plane
- Five SSW-1 subwoofers integrated into the room’s bass management architecture
- And two Ascendo SMSG24 infrasonic subwoofers.
Total amplification across the system amounts to 46,400 watts across multiple dedicated amplifier channels.
4K laser projection drives theater visuals
A Sony VPL-VW5000ES 4K laser projector (a commercial-grade unit) provides the primary image source, having been chosen for its brightness, color volume, and long-term stability in a dedicated viewing environment.
Image processing runs through a MadVR Envy Extreme video processor, which applies per-frame tone mapping and upscaling algorithms that extract maximum fidelity from the source signal before it reaches the projector. Content is delivered via a Kaleidescape media system.
Extensive power management safeguard luxury Dallas home theater systems
At those levels, a theater is only as good as the power feeding it, though, and to ensure the show goes off without a hitch, Elliston Systems installed a hefty power protection system in place to back everything up.
Torus Power’s isolation transformers and voltage regulation systems were specified as the power foundation for the entire installation, providing a dedicated 200-amp service delivering clean, stable, surge-protected power to every component in the signal chain.
“It feels like you’re in the movie, not just watching it,” described the homeowner. “The sound is incredible, the picture is beyond anything I’ve ever seen, and the room itself is just beautiful. It’s exactly what I always wanted.”
Equipment list:
- Audio & Video
- JBL Synthesis SCL-1, SCL-6 and SSW-1 speakers and subwoofers
- Ascendo SMSG24 infrasonic subwoofers
- Sony VPL-VW5000ES 4K Laser Projector
- JBL Synthesis SDP-75 32-Channel Processor
- MadVR Envy Extreme Video Processor
- Kaleidescape Compact Terra Prime Movie Server and Strato S Player
- Oppo UDP-203 Blu-Ray Disc Player
- Apple TV 4K
- Autonomic MMS-3E Mirage Media Server Amplifiers
- Power
- Torus Power AVR 90 Bal, AVR Elite 15 and AVR-2 Elite 90 Bal
- Control
- Crestron CP4-R Processor with TSR-310 Remote
- Lutron Homeworks lighting control
This project is part of our coverage for the 2025 CE Pro Home of the Year Awards. Presented annually at CEDIA Expo alongside the BEST Product Awards, the Home of the Year Awards represent the best of the best smart home innovations within the CEDIA channel. Submissions for the awards are open now! So, if you have a project you would like to submit to the Home of the Year Awards, don’t miss your opportunity.
