Homeowner's Backyard Amphitheater Brings Creativity to the Community

Larger and larger outdoor entertainment systems have been on the rise in recent years, and California is naturally one of the most robust markets for serious installations. One homeowner in Southern California has raised the bar for summer cookouts by thinking pretty far outside the box and turning his outdoor living space into a nearly-commercial level amphitheater with a custom-built 220-inch motorized projection screen (18 feet!), 20 speakers, fully automated landscape lighting and a performance stage with 10 inputs that connect to a mixing board inside. If that weren’t enough, there’s also a 15-foot-tall LED-lit sculpture of a question mark intended to indulge meditation in the front yard. Talk about unique!

“I wanted to create a space where the community could come together, where we could hold events and where my son could really get creative with his friends,” the homeowner said. “The last event we held was a children’s charity benefit where we hosted about 200 people. We had bands play on the stage, and we can broadcast through every speaker both inside and outside the house. It’s been really great, and it allows us to have fun without stressing because it’s so easy to use. Everything is basically plug-and-play, and any adjustments are easy to make with the ELAN g! mobile app on my iPhone or iPad. My son has been using it since he was 6 years old.”

The story starts two years ago when the owner had an ELAN g! system installed inside the home to run multi-room audio and five surveillance cameras. Since then he and his integrator AM House have expanded the system to include automated lighting indoors and in the landscape, where there are six zones split between different levels as the property descends down the hillside, plus the entire amphitheater setup, the spa controls and a total of 20 professional-grade Niles outdoor speakers in multiple zones.

“This is one of the coolest backyards I’ve ever seen, let alone designed and installed,” said Justin Brees, owner of electronics integration firm AM House. “Between the custom-made Vutec projection screen, the super-bright 3600 lumen Optima 1080p projector and the Niles speakers and ELAN control, it’s more like a commercial entertainment space than a backyard. Having a stage to hold performances and play them throughout the entire property was a really cool idea and we were able to make it all very simple to operate with the ELAN system.”

While the homeowner has to be mindful of windy conditions when going to watch a movie on the awe-inspiring 18-foot projection screen, the opportunities for enjoying this incredible outdoor space are nearly limitless. From viewing summer movies and fall football games to arranging concerts and throwing parties, it’s a very impressive yet inviting space for the whole community, or for him and his son to enjoy a quiet night.

“All this is possible because of the stellar job that Jose Bermeo, the main builder on this job, did bringing my vision to life,” the owner added. “I knew what I wanted, and I hoped it was possible, but both Jose and Justin really knocked it out of the park with the execution. To me this is part home improvement, part community building and part gift to my son. And for two years it’s been a work-in-progress because I keep finding new things I want the system to do or new subsystems to integrate, so I’m sure this isn’t the last of it. It might be a unique space as far as technology goes, but for me and my son it’s really a way to fully enjoy the beautiful area we live in with our friends and the community.”

The family controls the whole system through the ELAN g! mobile app on iPhones and iPads, which allows them to set all the lighting levels for the six landscape zones, the volume for the eight indoor zones and five outdoor zones, and to control up the spa and projection system. It’s about as simple as it could be, and that was a core requirement for the project. After all, a party space this cool makes you want to have fun, not tinker with settings and knobs all night.

“I imagine this backyard is the envy of the neighborhood,” Brees added, “and rightfully so! As he said, this is an ongoing project, so I’m sure we'll be adding more cool features over time and that’s why it’s such a good thing we used the ELAN system – it’s easy to expand and easy to use. That’s one of the reasons I stick with ELAN for my business, because it allows my clients to start with a small system and grow it over time.”

The brain of the system is an ELAN controller, and audio is run through an ELAN 16-channel amplifier. There are Niles in-ceiling speakers throughout the home and Niles OS outdoor speakers on the patio and in the landscaping.  The room with the mixing board features four studio monitors. The Jandy spa controls connect seamlessly with the ELAN system, allowing for full mobile control of the temperature, on/off and other settings.

ELAN g! and Niles Speakers Provide the Foundation for an Easy-To-Use Full Home Automation System

Building a home always starts with laying a strong foundation. The same can be said for any home control system, and that’s exactly what the ELAN g! System and more than 50 Niles speakers have done for one Pennsylvania homeowner.

“This client came to me asking for a simple way to control everything in their home from the TVs to the pool, but they didn’t know how to accomplish that,” said Keith Foltz, owner of Harrisburg, Penn.-based Momentum Sound and Media. “I told them that I could take care of everything, and that it would all tie together seamlessly through the ELAN g! system. All of the other components are intentionally behind the scenes, so the most important thing for them is an enjoyable user experience and reliability, which ELAN delivers in spades.”

Like most homeowners today, this family didn’t want to see wires hanging from TVs or clunky black boxes in every room. Foltz was able to eliminate all of that clutter by combining all the ELAN equipment plus every cable box, audio receiver and subsystem control unit into two equipment racks located in the basement utility room. Then he designed a whole-home audio system using Niles legendary in-ceiling speakers so every room has crystal clear audio and no visible speakers. These considerations keep the house free of mess and also make it easier to troubleshoot any issues that may arise.

“Putting all the electronics in one stack is the only way I would organize a system this large,” Foltz said. “That way if anything needs to be changed, replaced or fixed, I don’t have to trace wires or open walls. It also makes the system cheaper, because all equipment like this should be connected to high quality surge protectors, so I can install just a few of them for the whole rack instead of putting one in every room.”

Even the backyard has its own music zones with two wall-mounted speakers, two planter speakers, two rock speakers and a hidden in-ground subwoofer, all from Niles. So what is it like to control nine TVs, 52 speakers in 21 zones, five zones of HVAC, the home’s lights, security, garage doors, irrigation and pool from one device?

“The ease of operation and convenience of the iPhone/iPad app is best part of the system,” the homeowners said. “Control of the entire house is literally at our fingertips at home as well as when we’re away. With four children, it is amazing convenience to be able to turn off lights, TVs, and music from our phones rather than running through the house each time we leave.”

With a centrally-located 7-inch ELAN touchscreen, five 2-inch wall-mounted touchscreens throughout the house and eight ELAN HR2 handheld remotes for the TVs, the family is always just a few buttons taps away from putting their favorite music or TV on in whichever rooms they choose. It’s just as easy to check that the security system is armed, the garage doors are closed and the lights are off, making it easy to come and go without walking around to make sure everything is set appropriately. And whether they are home or halfway around the world, the family can check in on the home’s surveillance cameras from their iPhones, iPads or any computer. In the near future Foltz will install and integrate electronic locks on several of the home’s exterior doors and ELAN control for the driveway gate.

The crown jewel of the home’s entertainment offerings is the luxury home theater. Combining a backlit 122-inch Screen Innovation Black Diamond screen, a JVC 4K projector, three Sunfire CRM3 ribbon speakers in the front, six Niles HD8 speakers for surround and a Sunfire in-wall SubRosa subwoofer with nine Salamander Designs theater seats, the theater takes viewers away from the home and places them right in the movie.

“I love that the ELAN system is compatible with so many products from other top-name brands like ELK Security, Aprilaire, Pentair, Lutron, Access surveillance cameras and more,” Foltz said. “It gives me a lot of flexibility when designing a control system, both in terms of functionality and price.”

To download hi-res images of this installation, click here.

How Can You Get Your Installation on Two Cable TV Shows? Install the Largest ELAN g! System Ever!

How do you get your home or technology installation featured on national television? Make it enormous, make it impressive and create an original house that blows people away. Having recently appeared on both Discovery Channel’s “Clash of the Ozarks” and Sportsman Channel’s “Amazing America with Sarah Palin,” this Arkansas residence has many unique and luxurious features, including the largest ELAN g! system ever installed, according to installer Ryan Heringer of Sound Concepts. 

“Working on a project of this magnitude can attract a lot of attention,” Heringer said, “and now that pop culture has caught up with control technology to the point where everyone knows what it is, there are real media opportunities with a project like this. The home itself is truly astounding. The windows, the floors, the walkways, the immense space inside; it’s all pretty incredible to walk through. A 43,000 square foot house tends to create an impression, and when the whole house can be operated from an iPhone through ELAN g!, it’s something people are excited to hear about.”

When Heringer says ‘the whole house’, he really means it. There are a lot of rooms, and there are a lot of TVs and speakers, video zones and audio zones to accompany those rooms. There are nearly 30 TVs from Samsung and Sharp models, three surround systems including a 7.2 home theater with an Epson 3D projector and Dragonfly screen, 26 distinct video zones with 14 available video sources, more than 30 audio zones with 12 available sources including an incredible pool audio system with six Episode subwoofers, more than 300 fully controllable lighting loads, an HAI security system, 24 surveillance cameras, an HAI HVAC system with 12 zones and nine controlled garage doors. Beyond the AV, the ELAN system integrates the driveway gate that is more than 1,000 feet away from the house, the waterfalls and lighting control for the Playboy Mansion-like pool, and commercial-grade Wi-Fi throughout the entire property.

“The system reaches into every nook and cranny of the house, from the gym to the gun storage vault to the landscaping, where there are 25 speakers alone,” Heringer continued. “When your home is this vast it’s necessary to have a way to manage it all, and simply walking around on foot to make sure all the lights and TVs are off just isn’t feasible. With ELAN g! the owners can see everything at a glance on any iPhone, iPad or one the more than 40 ELAN touchscreen interfaces installed throughout the house. We provided a combination of large in-wall touchscreen, small in-wall touchscreens, tabletop touchscreens and ELAN HR2 media remotes to ensure every family member can adjust whichever room they are in to their liking. The remotes are especially important for TV and theater control, as they are the fastest and easiest way to control TVs and the theater thanks to hard buttons combined with a 2.4-inch touchscreen. To facilitate true go-anywhere access inside and outside of the house, each family member also has the ELAN g! mobile app on their smartphone and tablet, which gives full control of the system with the exact same interface that’s on the in-wall touch screens.”

To get an idea just how enormous this house and installation is, you have to think about how many rooms there are. To start there are eight bedrooms, six of which are occupied by the family. Then there is the theater, the great room, the living room, the kitchen, dining room laundry room, barber shop, billiard room, gym, tanning room, poker room, conference room, putting green, golf simulation room, archery range, kids’ shuffleboard room, rock wall room, a deer processing plant, the gun storage vault, a 12 car garage and a separate RV garage, plus the outdoor audio, video, lighting and surveillance. Every room has its own audio zone and most have their own video zone.

“The family has complete control over every room in the home, so each person can listen to or watch what they want, where they want, when they want,” Heringer said. “And then when they call for lights out or go on vacation, all it takes is a few swipes and taps to set the home to ‘Away’ mode and turn everything off. Not only does the system make it easy to manage the large house, it also gives the parents easy access to see what their kids are watching and listening to, as well as to see who is coming and going through the surveillance cameras.”

Because every family member has different tastes, the owners filled the system to the brim with entertainment options including eight DirecTV receivers, a Kaleidescape media server, three Blu-ray players, two ELAN ViaDJ music servers, an iPod dock, a Squeezebox, two Sirius|XM receivers and an AM/FM receiver.

“I’m proud to showcase the power and flexibility of the ELAN g! system with such a tremendous home entertainment and automation system,” Heringer added. “It’s truly incredible that today a single system can control a luxurious home like this and also be a great affordable option for a small apartment.” 

After Fire Ravages Their Home, Couple Upgrades to Whole Home Audio and Video with Niles and ELAN g!

After a fire struck the home of Abe and Elina Rodriguez, sending more than half of it up in smoke, newer local building codes mandated that much of their home be brought up to date during reconstruction. When they hired an architect to help rebuild the home and make the nearly 40 required adjustments, their interest in music and home audio came up. This led to a discussion about a whole home audio system and a recommendation to talk with local integrator Digital Logic Systems, who saw that the Rodriguezes were ready to upgrade to a whole-home AV system. 

“We were very thankful that the security alarm woke us up, but it took us 20 years to get that house how we liked it and we watched most of it go up in flames,” said Abe Rodriguez. “When we set out to rebuild the home we basically had a clean slate to design and create our perfect house. For me, music is a huge part of my life and I had outfitted our home with extensive stereo systems on each floor. When I met Daniel Solly from Digital Logic Systems it was clear that he could deliver the type of whole-home music system I always wanted, and he said the best way to do it was with the ELAN g! system and Niles in-ceiling and outdoor speakers.”

But as these projects usually go, the system didn’t stop with audio. Solly won the bid over two competing integrators because of his superior knowledge and experience, in addition to the affordable nature of the ELAN g! system compared with other home control platforms. After drawing the designs and consulting with the architect, Solly and the Rodriguezes agreed that it was time for them to have a real home theater and integrated video and security throughout the house.

“Daniel gave us a real theater experience right in our home, and he was able to keep it affordable,” Rodriguez said. “When you add that to the whole-home audio and video, it’s a home run. I think DVR is man’s greatest invention, and now we can watch whatever we want, wherever we want, because all the TVs are connected to the system. We have the ELAN TV remotes in four rooms, so it works the same no matter where we are. We also use the ELAN mobile app on our iPhones and iPads to select music and set which rooms it will play in, which comes in especially handy when we are outside." 

The home now has 12 zones of audio with independent volume and on/off controls, including three surround sound systems in the theater, great room and basement family room. The theater and the great room use Niles speakers to deliver superior fidelity audio, which continues throughout the rest of the home in nine of the other ten zones, including the patio and deck. The great room and basement family room each have a wall-mounted 65” Samsung Plasma TV and the theater impresses with its JVC projector and 113” Screen Innovations Black Diamond projection screen.

“We did a lot of comparisons with different speaker brands and different speaker types, because I originally wanted big floor standing speakers,” Rodriguez remarked. “I was told they offer the best sound, but Daniel and my wife convinced me that in-ceiling speakers could not only provide amazing quality sound, but also virtually disappear from sight. This means we don't have to worry about anyone touching them, we don’t have to clean them, there’s no potential for wires to move and we didn’t have to make compromises to position them in each room. Daniel designed the speaker layout very carefully to ensure every spot receives equal volume and dynamic range, and he said the Niles directional speakers helped achieve that.”

Likewise, the couple appreciates that there are no longer cable boxes in every room, and visible wires are a thing of the past. Instead, everything is located in a single equipment rack in the basement, where it is easy to access, maintain and upgrade if necessary.

Beyond consolidated control of audio, video and security that the Rodriguezes implemented, one of the best things about a modern home control system like ELAN g! is remote access that allows the integrator to troubleshoot issues without needing to visit the home. Rodriguez learned the importance of this when there was a small glitch during a party, and Solly was able to log in to the system and fix it quickly. The party didn’t skip a beat, and it was all thanks to a reliable, responsive integrator and a high performance home control system.

By integrating the security system into ELAN g! as well, the Rodriguezes can now view and monitor their home’s security while on-the-go with the ELAN g! mobile app. They know the importance of a security system since that’s what alerted them to their fire. In the future,  the couple may add consolidated control of their home’s heating and air conditioning, among other systems like motorized window shades, surveillance cameras and lawn irrigation.

New SpeakerCraft MRA-664 Multi-Room Audio Controller Now Shipping

Furthering its commitment to innovation and product excellence, SpeakerCraft today announced the shipment of the new SpeakerCraft MRA-664 whole home audio controller. This new controller delivers up to six unique music sources for amazing sound in up to six rooms of the house, expandable to 12 zones with a second chassis. Plus, it integrates multi-room audio with networked and streamed sources and home theater control in a way that is simple to set up and superb to experience. 

The SpeakerCraft MRA-664 offers IPhone, iPad, Android and PC control. In addition to locally stored music, it incorporates streaming sources and content including Spotify, Deezer, Pandora and TuneIn Radio through its Sonos interface, all accessible within the SpeakerCraft App. Existing cable and satellite receivers or CD, DVD/Blu-ray players can all be added and controlled independently from anywhere in the home. Wired and wireless keypads, touchscreens and remote-controls are also available to complete the system.

The new multi-source, multi-zone audio controller and complementary amplifier line are designed to deliver superior sound to 6 separate zones, or rooms, which can each receive any of up to 6 different sources, providing extraordinary flexibility that will delight customers. By pairing two MRAs, a homeowner can create up to 12 unique zones with up to 6 sources in each of them.

“Simply put, this controller makes it possible to listen to any source, in any room, at any time,” explained Robert Ridenour, Core Brands Product Manager, Electronics. “It allows every member of the family to listen to their favorite music, while giving them each the option to customize the bass, treble and volume levels in their specific zone.”  

SpeakerCraft’s new installation software enables installers to quickly configure the system for sources, zone preferences, user interface customization and home theater control. A job that might have once required hours of programming has been distilled down to a simple wizard-based execution.

The MRA-664 is also extremely intuitive for the end-user, enabling homeowners to control the system with mobile devices they already use, such as smartphones, tablets and personal computers. In addition, users can control the MRA-664 by SpeakerCraft handheld remote, seven-button keypad and choice of touch panel devices.

The SpeakerCraft sHR200 is a sleek handheld remote with all of the function of a touchscreen and weighing in at a mere 6.4 ounces. Augmenting the handheld is the SpeakerCraft sKP7 7-button keypad, delivering a simple interface that enables the end user to select favorite sources, adjust volume and turn off the system—all at the touch of a button. Finally, the sTP7 touch panel is wall mountable in either portrait or landscape orientation to best suit the needs of the installation room and includes a speaker, microphone and color camera to accommodate future enhancements. The high resolution interface makes this unit one of the most popular control devices on the market.

“The MRA-664 and its interface ecosystem will be a benchmark in the multi-room audio industry,” Ridenour added. “We’re dedicated to providing our dealers with the best products for every project, and the SpeakerCraft MRA-664 is deepening that commitment. It will provide our dealers with the ideal whole-home audio solution for all of their future installations.” 

For more information about the SpeakerCraft MRA-664, visit www.speakercraft.com.