CE Pro January 2023 - 15

into the kind of room you'll
want to see. It's incredibly
modular, and that's how we
manage to put this together
in a day-and-a-half. "
On the power side of
the equation, the reference
theater room incorporated
an overload of glowing blue
- 19 McIntosh pieces of
gear all beautifully stacked
to fill the exterior wall. That
included 11 MC611 amplifiers
to fuel the LCRs and
surround speakers.
Speaking of loudspeakers,
the complement featured a
Sonus faber array of Arena
30 LCRs, 14 Arena surrounds
and height speakers
and 12 Sub S15 (eight
up front, four in the rear)
models for LFE and bass
management.
" We need to create
something that is exceptional
... when the customer
pays for something, we
need to give the best, " says
Roberto Gamba, business
development manager,
Sonus faber (McIntosh
Group).
Kaleidescape's 4K Strato
C and Terra movie player/
server system - one of
about 30 sound rooms or
booths featuring Kaleidescape
as a source at CEDIA
Expo 2022, CEO Tayloe
Stansbury notes - provides
the demo content.
" We love working with
Trinnov and McIntosh
Group, Barco. Particularly
Trinnov - all of our
movies that we get for
cepro.com
review, particularly the
studio masters, we process
them and review them
before we send them out
to our customers, and
they're actually reviewed
on a Trinnov. So it's been
a delightful partnership, "
Stansbury adds.
A Barco Njord Cinemascope
3-chip laser projector
beamed up to 9,000
lumens of brightness onto
the roughly 14.5-foot-wide
Seymour-Screen Excellence
screen. The vaunted madVR
Labs Envy video processor
optimized the image quality
so the video was on par
with the audio.
" With the video processing
you saw here the
whole idea is to be transparent
and look amazing, "
says Richard Litofsky,
co-found and CEO, madVR
Labs. The Envy does HDR
dynamic tone mapping
on a frame-by-frame
basis, he notes, and other
advanced technology such
as non-linear stretch is
highlighted in the demo.
" Maverick is actually in
1:85, but you watched it
at Scope, " he says of the aspect
ratio. " You watched it
at full screen and probably
didn't even notice - that's
our non-linear stretch plus
platform. ... What we're able
to do is expand it in such
a way that the distortion
is so minimal, unlike what's
been done before, you can't
even really tell that it's
happening. "
Longtime Audio
Industry Executive
Sterns Calls It a Career
ONE OF THE MOST auspicious careers in the custom electronics
industry recently came to an end as Frank Sterns,
president for Polk Audio and Definitive Technology brands
at Sound United, retired at the close of 2022. A wine connoisseur,
Sterns undoubted will have many bottles of wine
awaiting him after his departure. " It's been one hell of a ride
and I'm incredibly humbled
to have been a part of so
much audio/video history, "
says Sterns.
Sterns' industry legacy of
leadership is hard to match.
In 1983, he started his career
at The David Hafler Co.
helping to launch the brand
into the pro audio business.
From there, he ascended to
the role of GM/vice president
of sales and marketing for
Acoustat, which was sold to
Rockford Corp. in 1986. That
same year he became the
Frank Sterns most
recently served as
president of Sound
United's Polk Audio and
Definitive Tech brands.
national sales manager and product marketing manager at
Harman's Infinity Systems speaker division where he tripled
the company's sales during his 6-year tenure and became a
founding member of CEDIA.
Starting in 1992, Sterns served for the next 18 years at
Niles Audio Corp., where he rose through the ranks to become
president and CEO, following a run as executive vice
president and vice president of sales. There, he oversaw the
sale of Niles to Nortek in 2005.
After stepping away to run his own wine vineyard from
2006 to 2013, Sterns was back in the industry as the vice
president of AV specialty/custom integration for Sony Electronics
where he focused on sales of Sony's premium 4K
TV, projector and ES audio receivers through a network of
factory authorized premium AV retailers, custom integrators
and custom distributors. He was instrumental in Sony's renewed
success in the CI channel having more than quadrupled
sales in six years. He joined Sound United in 2019.
" I would especially like to thank my colleagues at Masimo
Consumer/Sound United. These past three years have been
among the most exciting and rewarding years of my career.
What we've accomplished... is truly remarkable, " he notes.
January 2023 CE Pro | 15
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CE Pro January 2023

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