Tempe Theater

The Tempe theatre is built the way a cinema should be built when the people specifying it care as much about sound as about picture. The front stage is Wilson rather than a purpose-built cinema loudspeaker, which is the decision everything else in the room follows from.

A two-channel front stage doing cinema duty

Alexia V as mains with the Mezzo CSC centre. That means dialogue and score are reproduced by the same class of transducer a two-channel listener would choose, rather than by a loudspeaker designed to be hidden and to survive being driven hard.

Most dedicated cinemas make the opposite choice, and there are reasonable arguments for it — behind-screen placement, higher sensitivity, easier integration. What that trades away is the last degree of tonal truth on voices and instruments, which is most of what a film soundtrack actually contains. This room takes the other side of that trade.

Why that choice drives everything else

Putting Alexia V at the front of a cinema is not simply an upgrade over a dedicated screen channel; it changes what the rest of the room has to do. The mains are large, visible and not designed to hide behind an acoustically transparent screen, so the projection geometry and the seating had to be planned around them rather than the other way round.

It also raises the standard every other channel has to meet. A surround array that would pass unnoticed behind a conventional cinema front stage becomes the weak link when the mains resolve at this level, which is why the surrounds are planar and the subwoofer count is six rather than one or two.

Surrounds, heights and bass

Behind and above, Wisdom Audio 5C7a in-wall planars and Focal 1000 Series in-walls carry the surround and height layers. Planar drivers in the surrounds are an unusual specification and a deliberate one: their low moving mass and even off-axis behaviour suit channels that nobody is pointed at.

Six Ascendo 2-19 subwoofers handle the bottom end, with a JL Audio d110 alongside. Six is not about volume. Multiple subwoofers distributed around a room average out the pressure peaks and nulls that any single position produces, so the bass is consistent across every seat rather than correct in one and wrong in the others.

Processing

Processing is the Trinnov Altitude32, which corrects the room rather than equalising it and renders Dolby Atmos at its full channel count. The Optimizer works on loudspeaker and room response together, and the patented Remapping measures where each loudspeaker actually is before steering sound elements to where the mixer intended.

In a room where the surrounds are in-wall and the heights were placed around the structure, that distinction stops being academic — the processor is correcting for an installation that had to accommodate a building.

Amplification and source

Amplification is McIntosh throughout, led by a pair of MC1.25KW monoblocks on the mains — 2,000 watts of two-channel reference amplification doing cinema duty, which is consistent with the loudspeaker choice rather than an indulgence. An MC8207 seven-channel amplifier covers the remaining channels.

Source is Kaleidescape, so films arrive at bitrates no streaming service will deliver, with lossless audio intact. A system built to this standard fed by a compressed stream would be wasting most of its capability, and the difference is audible rather than theoretical. Projection is by Sony VPL-VW995ES.

The system in this room

• Wilson Audio Alexia V loudspeakers — mains
• Wilson Audio Mezzo CSC centre channel
• Wisdom Audio 5C7a in-wall planar loudspeakers × 4
• Focal 1000 Series in-wall loudspeakers
• Ascendo 2-19 subwoofers × 6, with JL Audio d110
• Trinnov Altitude32 immersive audio processor
• McIntosh MC1.25KW monoblock amplifiers — mains
• McIntosh MC8207 seven-channel amplifier
• Kaleidescape movie player and server
• Sony VPL-VW995ES projector

Hearing it

The result is a room that rewards good material and is unforgiving of poor material, which is the correct behaviour for a system at this level.

This is the room for anyone who listens to music as seriously as they watch films and does not want two separate systems to do it. It is the direct Tempe counterpart to the Scottsdale cinema rooms, and it argues a different case from either of them — not scale like the Grand Cinema Suite, not disappearance like the Cinema Suite, but a reference two-channel front stage asked to carry a soundtrack.

The Tempe Theater is in the Tempe showroom. Walk in during business hours, or book ahead if you want the room prepared with your own material.