Services

A great home-theater system requires more than just great equipment. It requires thoughtful planning, professional installation, system calibration, attention to room-acoustics, and in some cases, pre-wiring. If you’re investing in a new home-theatre system, even if it’s just for your living-room, Elite Sound & Cinema knows that you want to make the most of your money. That’s why we offer a variety of services to help you get the most out of your equipment. From the installation of specialized wiring during the construction of your home or theater-room, to the calibration of your new equipment, we’re here to help you every step of the way.

Pre-wire

If you are building a new home or remolding your home then you may be in the market for pre-wiring. To pre-wire a house is to install the wiring that will connect your audio, video, telephones, computer networking, home control and lighting control during construction rather then after. Wiring your home during the construction phase will save you a substantial amount of money, and will provide you with a much neater job and future upgradeability to better future-proof your home. Pre-wiring also adds a tremendous value to your home because you are then able to take advantage of future technology. It is a smart investment. The only reason not to pre-wire is that you waited too late.

Elite Sound and Cinema offers the best pre-wire service you can get. We meet with you during your home’s design phase and go over all of your existing needs, as well as those you may have in the future. You don’t need to be an expert in predicting technology trends; our design specialists know the market, and can help ensure that your pre-wiring includes the right kinds of upgradeability options for your lifestyle. We work to make pre-wiring a simple step in building your home.

At Elite Sound and Cinema, we only use the best wiring available. For video, we use a solid copper conductor RG6Q. This is a quad-shielded coax cable that helps eliminate “ghosting” problems on your TV sets. Other companies may only use RG6U, a dual-shielded cable with a copper/tin conductor, which saves them money. However, this cable is not recommended for HDTV.

For all of our telephone, local area network and control lines we use a CAT5e cable rated at 400mhz or better. CAT5e cables are not all created equal. CAT5e is rated in bandwidth/speed from 150mhz to 400mhz, so make sure and ask your dealer which cable they are using. We only use the best, because this gives you the greatest amount of flexibility when future technology arrives. Ever wonder why your internet connection is so slow, or why you are getting cross-talk on your phone lines? It could be because the bandwidth of you phone line or network line is too low.

All the wires we run through your home are run from a structured wiring panel. This gives you all the flexibility you could ever want. You can change a phone line into a computer network line in a matter of minutes. Need a second phone line in your office? Have it there in no time flat. When you are building your home, the location of your phone, cable and network lines is often the last thing on your mind, not to mention that the location of your furniture may change where you want that computer line. A structured wiring panel makes it possible to eliminate some of those stresses.

Pre-wiring is not all common sense. Admittedly, the subject can sometimes be quite confusing. Some people believe that pre-wiring simply entails getting wires from one point to another. However, there is actually a bit of science involved. The cables we install cannot be run parallel with electrical wiring over 18 inches, and cannot share the holes the electricians drilled in the headers. Although it would save time to bypass these rules, the end result would not meet the building code in most areas, and would cause unwanted noise on your phones, slow down your Internet connection — and even worse, would cause poor picture-quality on your television. Have you ever wondered why those annoying lines appear on your TV every time someone turns on the garbage disposal or hair-dryer? It’s because someone, probably an electrician, ran the low-voltage lines parallel to the electrical lines. This is an extreme no-no. These are just a few reasons to have a low-voltage professional pre-wire your home. For more information regarding pre-wiring, you can download our free brochure by clicking here, or call us today.

Installation

Elite Sound and Cinema is one of a few custom installation providers in Tulsa. Our clients not only expect, but demand, a higher level of service — a level of service that few companies can provide, or are willing to attempt to provide.

The best-laid plans will fall short of expectations unless they are perfectly executed. At Elite Sound and Cinema we know that you expect more. The fact that you have considered us to provide you with equipment and services tells us this. You have the freedom to shop where you like, and do business with whom you prefer. The fact that have considered doing business with us tells us that you’re interested in the best the industry can offer.

From the most basic installation to the most exotic, every project we handle is given the same careful thought and consideration. “What’s best for you?” we ask. Materials, fabrics, colors, interior-design and equipment are all considered. We look at your space and your lifestyle and ask, “How can technology improve your quality of life?” It must be easy to use, and easy to maintain. We know that Dad wants it to have big sound and a big picture, and Mom doesn’t want the system itself to be an eyesore. We give every project the attention we’d give our own projects for our own homes. We make adjustments and decisions according to what is best for you and your family, based on open discussion with you.

Our installers have years of experience, in fields ranging from installation and system-programming to acoustics and calibration. They don’t work on commission, and they will spend all the time needed to make sure your system is everything you expect. We are passionate about what we do, and are honored when you invite us into your home.

We look forward to working with you, and know we can provide you with a complete and satisfying Home Entertainment Experience.

Calibration

Have you ever wondered why some video displays produce sharper, more brilliant images than others? While it’s true that there are differences in hardware, and that a high-definition display will produce a cleaner, more stunning picture than a standard-definition set, there are other factors at work which can keep any video display from looking its best.

The light surrounding a video-display can affect its image. Indoor lighting ranges widely in terms of hue and luminosity. Incandescent bulbs, halogen bulbs, and fluorescent tubes all generate different colors of light, which can interact with the way your eyes perceive the images on your video-display. Outside light, filtered through windows, has its own effect on video images. And lack of light produces its own unique viewing environment.

In addition, DVD players, VCRs, cable or satellite receivers, and off-air antennas all produce their own unique color-spectrums and brightness levels. These variances may be small, but when combined with differences in lighting conditions, they can cause your picture to look wildly different under the different kinds of conditions you’re likely to encounter in your home-theater or living room.

If you’re investing money in a high-quality video display, you’ll want your picture to look its best at all times. So, how do you address these issues? Fortunately, you don’t have to spend thousands of dollars on renovations and special equipment. The answer is simple, and often overlooked: If you want to get the most stunning, lifelike picture out of your video display, you need to have it professionally calibrated to industry standards.

When TV programs and movies are shot, produced, and broadcast or transferred from film and cut to DVD, the process is precisely monitored on video displays calibrated to specific industry standards. Therefore, if you want to see movies and TV shows the way they were meant to be seen, your display should be calibrated to those same industry standards.

We want you to have the best entertainment experience possible in your home. That’s why we employ professionally-trained calibrationists, who can calibrate your video equipment to look its best under any conditions. We use a multimedia generator to generate precision test and calibration patterns on your screen. We precisely calibrate your display’s user control default setup (black level, white level, saturation, hue, sharpness) and technician service controls (white balance, focus, SVM, color decoder, geometry, etc.) to industry standards for both night and day viewing. We use a color analyzer to analyze the background “canvas” color of your display at all brightness levels. We calibrate the background color to be accurate to the D65 industry standard. We perform these procedures on every active video-input on your display, and at every signal-scan format you will normally be viewing. This may include standard TV, progressive-scan DVD, satellite TV, digital cable, computer games, gaming consoles, and off-air HDTV. We make sure that every picture you view, no matter the signal-source, looks the best it can — just as it was intended to look.

Your calibrated home theater video display will:

Display a sharper-focused, full resolution image.
Show full detail in the darkest and brightest areas of all scenes.
Be properly matched to your video system and viewing environment.
Maintain accurate color balance at all picture light levels.
Produce a full range of accurate colors, including flesh tones, grass, sky, and sports jerseys.
Have a cinema theater “film look.”
Minimize picture artifacts (distortions).
Be easier on your eyes.
Last up to twice as long as a display with factory-default settings.

Many of our customers ask, “Why doesn’t the manufacturer properly calibrate their equipment at the factory?” The fact is, the manufacturer doesn’t know what lighting-conditions exist in your home, and doesn’t know what kind of equipment you’ll be connecting to your display. In most cases, manufacturers adjust their models to look as appealing as possible next to competing models on a showroom floor. This usually means the controls are set for a very bright, very saturated picture. While this kind of picture might look eye-catching in a store, it doesn’t accurately reproduce the wide color spectrums and brightness levels most filmmakers and TV broadcasters want you to see.

With proper calibration from Elite Sound & Cinema, your video display will look sharp, crisp, and brilliant. Movies will look like they do at the cinema. TV programs and video games will look better than ever before.

Calibration is one of the most effective and least expensive upgrades you can make to your video system, so don’t miss out! If you have an existing system you’d like to have calibrated, contact us for a quote. If you’re planning a new system, let us calibrate it for you! We promise, you will see a significant difference immediately.

Acoustics

If you’re interested in improving the sound-quality in one or more rooms in your home, there’s something you should consider besides the kind of audio-equipment you want to install: You should consider the acoustical quality of the room itself.

Acoustics, of course, is the science of how sound travels — and more importantly, how it reacts to different surfaces. Sound is absorbed by some surfaces, and bounces off of others. Because most rooms in most homes are not designed with acoustics in mind, even the most cutting-edge audio equipment won’t sound its best without some acoustical adjustment of the listening-space.

Sadly, most people avoid making any acoustical adjustments to the listening-spaces in their homes because they’re afraid it will cost too much, or because they think they won’t have an item of tangible value to resell. The fact is, if you’re interested in making your entertainment sound as good as it can, then the acoustics of the room must be addressed.

Building the room properly and making the proper acoustical provisions can be every bit as important as the equipment itself. We’ve seen customers spend over $50,000.00 on equipment, spend nothing on the room itself, and then wonder why it doesn’t sound as good as they’d hoped? On the other hand, we’ve seen customers who properly prepare the room spend only $20,000.00 on equipment, and find that it out-performs the equipment owned by the customer who spent 50k.

One of the most important concepts to understand is that standard fiberglass insulation will not “soundproof” your room. It most likely won’t help at all. Instead, our soundproofing engineers recommend using mineral-fiber insulation between the studs. Mineral-fiber insulation is one of the cheapest and most effective ways to acoustically treat your room. This material is designed to control sound transmission. It is an extremely effective absorber of ambient reflected sound, and helps make rooms “sound better.” Mineral wool contributes sound-isolating properties (mostly frequencies from 125Hz and up) that are needed to make your room sound great. There are several benefits to using mineral fiber:

It will keep up to 80% of the sound in the room. The more sound you can keep in the room, the less you will need to spend on equipment because you”re not losing any sound into other rooms.
You won”t annoy other people in the house with that constant bass from your subwoofers.
You”ll achieve a cleaner, tighter bass response.

Mineral fiber is just the beginning of what can be done to improve the sound of your room. Truthfully, the subject can get pretty involved, but that’s why we are here to help. To find out more, come talk to one of our design professionals. We’ll be happy to discuss ideas for improving the acoustics of your dream theater or listening room. Or, go to one of our favorite web sites for very detailed instructions on how we build our rooms. Click here and you will be re-directed.