Author Archives: Jim Lee

Outdoor Media Center

This has definitely been one of my all time favorite projects. Good friends and clients decided to add to their beautiful home some outdoor entertainment. It was a bit of a challenge as we didn’t want the screen and speaker system to distract from their beautiful view or their custom built fireplace.

So we brainstormed and came up with the idea to install a motorized swing hinge for a 65″ Samsung flat screen TV. We also installed 5 of the new Focal in-ceiling 300ICW8 speakers. For the Bass, we used an Episode outdoor subwoofer which was hidden inside the firebox.

All the other electronics are housed in the adjacent living room entertainment cabinet. The new Marantz’s New SR 7013 was used along with Kaleidescape’s Strato ULTRA HD movie and concert digital library system. To automate the system we installed URC’s new MX-990 universal remote.

This system sounds so good and certainly has that “James Bond” affect when you see the TV magically come out of the ceiling.

Thanks to you two again for allowing us to work with you all these years. It just keeps getting better.

Jim Lee

Seattle’s brightest new original music star – Whitney Mongé

Whitney Mongé just released this beautiful recording, “Carry On”. Everyone we have shared this with feels it is possibly her best work to date. The intelligent heart felt lyrics and overall feel of this album is one you most likely play over and over again.

If you don’t know who Whitney is, The Seattle Times recently said this about her.. “Seattle artist Whitney Mongé might just be our city’s next big star”.

This was an unusually special “all analog” project recorded at Robert Lang Studios along with Studio Litho. It has a rich natural musicality that
showcases Whitney’s beautiful voice but also allows the the instruments to
seem suspended in their own space and time.

This is truly one of my favorite albums of all time.

Please stop in our showroom for a demo. Donate to her future as an artist and receive a free copy.

Jim Lee

And here is one of her previous video productions:

Introducing the Newest Speakers from Focal

The long awaited Focal Kanta No.3’s have just been announced! The Kanta No.3’s have the same beautiful design as the Kanta No.2’s. This version of the Kanta line will have the added fullness of dual 8″ woofers. With how good the Kanta No.2’s sound, we can’t wait to get our hands on a pair of Kanta No.3.

Billiards Room Entertainment System

Here are a few pictures of a recently installed billiards room entertainment system we did for one of our customers.

I thought the faux finished walls really set off the Focal Sopra 2 speakers. We installed an Anthem AVM 60 for the preamp/processor and an Aesthetix Atlas stereo amplifier. For the video we wall mounted the top of the line Samsung 65 inch screen. All the cabling and interconnects are from our friends at Nordost. We are sourcing the music from our Meridian/ Sooloos library system which also provides music throughout their home. To make life easy we tied all the control functions together using a customized URC RF remote control system. Sure makes for a great place to relax and shoot a few games of pool.

It sounds wonderful by the way but can’t say it improves my game.

The Best Garage Audio-Video System We Have Ever Done

Yesterday Matt and I installed the best garage system we have ever done. This customer has worked with us on building some truly spectacular sound systems for the past 27 years. We have installed systems for him now in 5 homes. He has an uncompromising approach to everything he does and obviously loves his music. When he recently built this garage we had originally planned to do a much more “basic” system, but as usual we found ourselves getting carried away.

We have another client in Texas that has similar tastes and is constantly on the path of upgrading. He decided to trade-in his Krell amps and preamps which he purchased from us several years ago. I approached my client on buying these and he said “why not?”. So now he has a system about 150 feet away from his main house with no neighbors in ear shot. This gives him a place to go and enjoy listening to his music and movies at any volume levels he wishes.

We are using a Meridian/Sooloos system for the music library. This is also tied to several rooms in his main house. For the movie processor we use the Anthem AVM 60. This ties in to a Anthem p5 amp and drives the the Focal Sopra center channel and surround speakers. So we are taking the main left and right channels out of the AVM 60 and sourcing them to the Krell dual mono preamps, which in turn source the big Krell amps and drive the main left and right stereo speakers. The Sooloos now provides an independent music source on a secondary input source to the Krell preamps. For the speaker system we are using a pair of Focal Sopra 3s, Sopra Center and surround speakers. For the subwoofer we employed one of our favorite bass buddies, a JL Audio F113 series 2.

The acoustics in the garage are very interesting to me. To look at the concrete floor and plywood walls you would not expect it to work that well. However when we fired it up for the first time, we all three couldn’t quit grinning. I got a text this morning from my customer and he spent almost 3 hours playing some of his favorite tracks and confirms it is amazing. We have now decided to take it to the next level.

Stay tuned.