Essential Install | News
The Artcoustic home cinema
room in Birmingham
Artcoustic Installation Of The Month
This month’s Artcoustic home cinema install of the month is this Birmingham, UK home,
which boasts not one, but two Artcoustic rooms. Installed by Home Cinema & Beyond, both
entertainment rooms have been designed to deliver in terms of performance, but also provide
some fun to the family.
The cinema room boasts a 7.2.4 set up comprised of three Spitfi re 24-12 reference model
speakers, four C-1SLs two-way precision monitors for sides and rears and two multi-drive
Performance PS4 subwoofers. The Spitfi re 24-12 loudspeakers were installed behind an
acoustically transparent screen that delivers both 16:9 and 2.35 images.
“The client ended up choosing the top (slightly over specifi ed) proposal, resulting in
something truly amazing,” said Paul Cummin, Artcoustic MD. “By showing clear linearity between
different proposals, the client is more able to make an informed and considered choice, rather
than one purely based on price.”
Meanwhile, the second entertainment room – used for gaming – features Bespoke Spitfi re 16-8
speakers, which were made to perfectly fi t the spaces between the screens. The games room is
next to the home theatre and has two 65in screens, two Xbox Ones, two PlayStation 4s and a state
of the art PC and VR headset.
“The games room brief was less demanding in terms of performance, but the client loved the
aesthetics of the Artcoustic speakers and these were produced in a bespoke size such that they
perfectly matched the height of the chosen 65in TVs,” said Paul. “The spitfi re 16-8s are indeed
over-specifi ed for the requirements, but it really makes the client smile!”
More information: Artcoustic Loudspeakers +44 (0)1245 400904www.artcoustic.com,
Home Cinema & Beyond +44 (0)845 0945780 www.homecinemaandbeyond.co.uk
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Google Home Undercuts Amazon Echo In UK Launch
Google Home’s pricing has been announced for the UK, undercutting the Amazon Echo by £20
at £129.99. Despite the cheaper price, Amazon has an ace up its sleeve with the Echo Dot, the
puck-sized device housing the Alexa voice assistant and costs just £49.99.
Amazon had a signifi cant head start, with the company recently celebrating 10,000 Alexa skills,
although EI noted that many of those skills were unavailable to Echo owners in the UK. Despite
that, the Amazon Echo still boasts signifi cantly more skills than its Google Home counterpart –
with Google having yet to open up its platform to a wealth of third party developers.
However, Google Assistant still supports a whole host of different services directly out of
the box. That includes standard music streaming services such as Spotify and TuneIn Radio, as
well as services not currently supported by the Amazon Echo – including Google’s own Play
Music and BBC Radio.
In terms of smart home control, there’s nothing that the Google Home can do that the
Amazon Echo can’t. In fact, Amazon probably trumps Google here – with Google Home
only supporting IFTTT, Nest, Philips Hue, Samsung SmartThings and Belkin
Wemo at launch.
Both the Google Home and Amazon Echo sport speakers for
directly playing music found by the assistant, although the
Echo is a noticeably bigger device – measuring 235mm
by 83.5