“It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them.”
Mark Twain

RPG® is proud to be chosen by Mix Magazine to participate in Mix StudioPro99 and to receive a TEC Award Nomination for Room Optimizer™. In addition, it is an honor to be asked to participate in the Lutron Ultimate Home Theater Experience.

Lutron Ultimate Home Theater Experience (UHTE)
The UHTE site and Epcot attraction was conceived by Lutron Electronics, known for their lighting systems, to introduce the ultimate home theater experience to the general public and increase the awareness of the magic of this wonderful experience.The UHTE exhibit is an interactive home theater exhibit at Epcot Innoventions at Walt Disney World that showcases the most innovative home theater products and services in the industry. As you tour the UHTE site, you will have the opportunity to virtually "visit" the UHTE exhibit, learn about the most advanced products in the home theater industry, and locate home theater dealers and installers in your area who can bring the magic and excitement of home theater into your own home.

RPG® was proud to be appointed as an Alliance Partner in the Lutron Ultimate Home Theater Experience. Thanks to Lutron for putting on a wonderful show. RPG®’s Skyline® diffusor was selected to provide acoustical diffusion in the two high end home theaters located in the Innoventions section of Epcot. The June 21, 1999 opening celebration was a festive and fun activity for all of alliance partners. Dr. D’Antonio was on hand and indicated, “I want to thank Lutron and Russ Herschelmann for selecting our Skyline® diffusor for the UHTE exhibit. The launch party was very generous and a lot of fun. It was interesting to discuss the numerous facets of home theater with all of the alliance partner principals. RPG® will continue to collaborate with other manufacturers in this important industry and also continue our acoustical education. This year we will be contributing two presentations on Acoustical Distortion in Home Theaters and Auralization in Home Theaters at the next CEDIA show.”

Cinerama
Historically commercial Cinema design has relied heavily on absorption as the primary acoustical treatment. Since its founding RPG®, has fostered the idea of using all of the ingredients in the acoustical palette (absorption, reflection, and diffusion) to create optimal listening and performance environments. So it was a welcome challenge when acoustician Neil Grant of Harris-Grant Associates asked if we could create a ceiling surface that would backscatter sound from the cinema loudspeakers to uniformly cover the audience.

The idea was to form a synergy between the room and the loudspeakers so that the room would enhance the surround sound envelopment experience, which is the goal in today's digital surround formats. To provide this acoustical performance, a new diffusing surface had to be created. BOORA Architects was interested in exploring our new optimized curved surfaces as a new Archousthetic™ element. RPG® utilized its proprietary boundary element Shape Optimizer software, which provides an optimized surface shape to satisfy acoustical requirements, while maintaining a desired architectural shape. If the shape can be expressed mathematically, the Shape Optimizer can acoustically optimize it. The resulting OptiCurve™ resulted in a strikingly beautiful ceiling design that satisfied the architecture, the acoustics, and the aesthetics.


In addition to the ceiling, Harris-Grant was also interested in providing significant diffuse lateral reflections from the side and rear walls to enhance the immersion in the audio/visual experience. For this, RPG® utilized its Diffractal®, the first fractal diffusor within a diffusor, which offers broad bandwidth sound diffusion. Boora Architects integrated the custom finished Diffractals® with matching velour curtains to create an interesting Archousthetic™ texture. The final result satisfied all THX® criteria and is now making history as the first commercial digital cinema using RPG®’s surround sound diffusor technology. Cinerama is yet another landmark facility that RPG® is proud to have been associated with.

Learn more about the Digital Acoustics revolution
RPG®’s BAD™ Panel, the first digital binary amplitude diffsorber, is gaining growing acceptance by acousticians, architects, and home theater system integrators as the panel of choice for surround sound listening environments. The BAD™ Panel surpasses the performance of traditional absorptive fabric wrapped panels in surround sound applications and its thin, flat profile make it suitable for the most demanding aesthetic designs. Contact RPG® if you would like to learn more about the digital acoustics revolution.

Room Optimizer™
RPG®’s Room Optimizer™ has been nominated for a Mix Magazine TEC Award for new software. We are very proud of this honor and encourage our friends and users to support the program with your ballot in the August issue.

The Room Optimizer™ is the first automated program that determines the optimum location for loudspeakers, listener, and acoustical surface treatment material. It accomplishes this by coupling a geometrical acoustics image model with an intelligent search engine to simultaneously minimize the speaker-boundary interference and the modal response.

Also of note: The Room Optimizer™ has been reduced in price to $99.99, so don’t delay, find out what proper location of your loudspeakers and listening position can mean to the sound in your room.

A review in Mix Magazine (June 1999) by Chris Pelonis describes the benefits of the first automated listener and loudspeaker placement program: “Retailing at $99.99, RPG®’s Room Optimizer™ is a highly useful tool for acoustically orienting a listening environment.”