HTE has now become Officina Acustica. We’ve not been bought or taken over. We’re still the same people, in the same place, making the same amazing interiors for our global customers. As we have evolved over the past 17 years, we are now at the point where the old Home Theatre Environment no longer represented who we have become. We’re so much more than just home theatres now and our new name of Officina Acustica represents both what we do, as well as our very Italian heritage.

AVS Forum has generously awarded HTE SONO its Best Acoustical Treatment System award for 2021. Editor of AVS Forum, Jacob Atkinson, visited the room in Houston, Texas, built by Insane AV that we featured last year in a case study ( https://www.hte.design/knowledge/case-study-insane-av-houston ) and was really impressed with the look, feel and sound of the room.

Flat panel TVs are getting larger and now offer a compelling alternative to two-piece projection in entertainment spaces. Sometimes an HTE Acoustic Interior Design complete room fitout isn’t needed in a more casual family living room environment but a clean installation, and great acoustics still are. For these applications, an HTE Media Wall is a great solution.

Last week I read some write-ups on private cinemas that had been built by integration companies. In all of these, when asked about acoustics they all used the same phrase - Stretched Fabric. This is very strange because the purpose of stretched fabric in a private cinema is generally to have as little effect on acoustics as possible! Stretched fabric is there to conceal what is underneath it, and to allow sound at all frequencies to pass unimpeded so that the hidden loudspeakers, absorption and diffusion can work optimally. To simply say that the acoustics has been done by ‘Stretched Fabric’ generally implies to me that little to no acoustic engineering has been done.

Everything in a space is an ‘acoustic treatment’ because everything in a space has an effect on acoustics regardless of if this effect is intentional or not, or beneficial or not. There is much discussion on The Internet about ‘acoustic panels’. I have no idea what these are. These could be frames covered with acoustically transparent fabric that hide a loudspeaker. These could be panels hung on the wall made from 50mm thick fibreglass covered with fabric designed to deliver some absorption. The description of ‘acoustic panel’ tells you nothing.

Jeremy Glowacki from Residential tech Today interviews Peter about his career, HTE and work leading CEDIA’s engineering standards efforts.

Probably the most difficult thing to achieve in private cinema design is a consistent experience of fast, deep detailed bass across all seating positions. Whilst much of the conversation on The Internet around getting good bass centres around which brand of subwoofer is the best, the end result is dominated by the room, its acoustics, how and where the sub(s) are mounted and where you sit your listeners.

Summing up the science of acoustics in a short article is impossible. There are, however, some common misconceptions around acoustics that perpetuate without any engineering or scientific rationale to back them up.

Here’s my top six -

HTE is known for its beautiful interior design and integrated acoustics. One of our guiding missions is that entertainment room design should be complete and holistic, ensuring that every interior design and technical element comes together to deliver the overall immersive and human centric experience. We often help our dealers with the engineering of the technical package (We supply the room, our dealers supply, install and calibrate the technical package) and though we’re known best as the acoustic experts, we also work really hard to optimise the video performance of the rooms we build with our integration partners. This best practice article discusses how to achieve good in-room system projected image contrast ratio.

Acoustic Interior Design™ is the fusion of HTE’s unique interior fit-out system, with stunning Italian design. You think design, we handle the acoustics. This new design encapsulates HTE’s complete and holistic approach to room design, construction and performance. We don’t believe in ‘hang-on-the-wall’ acoustic treatments or stretched fabric systems; our room build systems are pre-fabricated and modular for flawless finishing and amazing predictable performance because the acoustics are built in to our construction method, not separate like others.This design eschews the formality of traditional cinema seating and instead uses two custom sofas with built in recliner mechanisms - The best of both worlds combining social seating, with the individual comfort of a recliner.

Choosing the right speakers for your system goes way beyond brand and marketing hype. It should be driven by engineering data. This is a short article discussing the most important criteria when choosing a speaker.

It has been a challenging past year-and-a-bit for all of us. Whereas normally we would be visiting dealers, their customers, and helping out with ongoing builds, this has been impossible of late. This project highlights just how easy and simple the entire HTE design, specification and build process is. The conversation started out with us saying that we would travel to The US to help get the build of this demonstration cinema started, when this was then impossible our dealer, Kamron Troy from Insane AV in Houston, Texas, handled the entire build himself.

This is the story in his own unedited words -

As a member of CEDIA’s Technology Advisory Council, Peter often offers his thoughts and perspectives on CEDIA’s weekly Friday podcast. This month, join him and the fabulous Christiaan Beukes and Rich Green discussing some COVID-19 driven industry trends. We go really wide with this one and challenge some accepted norms 😊

We are very proud to have collaborated with our good friends at Samsung Electronics, Private Cinema Design Group and Trinnov Audio on a white paper targeted towards Interior Designers, Architects and Property Professionals that discusses the requirements for building an immersive entertainment space. As families are spending more time at home, considering these spaces and their use modes must happen at the concept planning stage of the project to ensure that none of the spatial or use mode requirements conflict. This white paper outlines the considerations and gives practical guidance.

HTE (Home Theatre Environment), the manufacturer of Acoustic Interior Design™ room fit out systems available to residential and commercial integration companies will now be operating a direct sales model in The UK.

We focussed in on some of the specifications necessary for ludspeakers that enable systems designers to predict their in-room performance.

We contributed an article for The Home Technology Association about how HTE goes way beyond just simple acoustic treatment.