A wonderful day was had yesterday in the air-conditioned paradise, on the hottest day of the year so far (with today being even hotter), at Pulse Cinemas.  Based very conveniently near Stanstead Airport, Pulse Cinemas is a leading installer and distributor of Ultimate Home Cinema solutions.  Our hosts were the particularly engaging Kapes Patel and MD, Mike Beatty and their rather knowledgable sales and marketing guys.

‘Snug’ Garage sized Cinema Room

The Pulse Cinemas solutions are underpinned with a comprehensive range of audio-based products from Canada based Anthem AV and Paradigm Speakers, as well as others, including seating solutions, screens, projectors and the like.  I was invited along to look at the AV solutions on offer but of course, I was most taken by the very first box I saw, the Anthem 2 channel STR Integrated Amplifier driving a pair of Paradigm Persona B ‘bookshelf’ speakers.  Watch this space for a look at this box in the coming period, it is beautiful.  The second 2 channel highlight for me was the appearance of the Paradigm Persona 9Hs with four active subwoofers, facing fore and aft and the full Berylium engineered mid-range and tweeter.

Pulse Cinema

Lifestyle ‘Moroccan’ Room

Pulse Cinemas has a suite of different home cinema solutions in one space with all of the home comforts you need to make your cinema investment choices, not least a really nice cup of coffee, air conditioning and lovely toilets (link to the reception area with the excellent John Bagby, underneath Frank)!  The first room I saw was a garage-sized ‘snug’ style cinema room that was priced near £6k I think.  It was very special indeed.

The second room, a more lifestyle offering with a coffee table, normal sofas and a general a Morrocan feel, was priced at a £30,000 price point.  It sounded and looked spectacular, showing off an Anthem 1120 9.1.2 AV solution with Dolby Atmos and featuring a Seismic 110 subwoofer.  Everything was running of an iPad.  It was a most spectacular room showing off what is possible with technology, imagination and, of course, money.

Reference Cinema Room

The main Reference Cinema Room, I’m not even talking about the incredible conference room which was also stunning, was a ten-seat tour de force coming in at a full £360, 000!

Here, as I lounged on a leather Fortress Seating chaise longue, John Bagby, son of Scott, co-founder of Paradigm, introduced us to the story of Paradigm, Anthem, and Martin Logan* over the last thirty years.   The story is one of the pursuits of excellence and their state of the art in house manufacturing techniques have culminated in the Persona 9H which is available in your choice of colours, finishes and the like.  Beautiful.

ARC Genesis

The Paradigm products and many of the Anthem features ARC Genesis technology that is a full room correction system designed to adjust the characteristics of the finest high-end equipment with the characteristics of the room.  This was fascinating as John Bagby noted his team can produce the finest output but if it is in a room of, say stone and wood, the speaker may not perform optimally.

ARC Genesis technology uses several (between 5-10) microphone readings positioned by you or your room consultant to optimise your sound output using various algorithms and learnings from room correction based over several years of experience.  The ARC Genesis technology then creates a target output for the amplifier to follow.  There is no hint of flattening or clipping output unduly so there are peaks and troughs in the output curve, it all seems to lovingly add tonal balance to output, a degree of vocal clarity (very necessary in the cinema) and a smoother bass output, so it is not dominating your cinema experience.

Paradigm Reference 9H

Eash of the Anthem cinema products can be controlled on an App with ARC Genesis on or off and 4 different program settings are possible, for example, solo cinema or family cinema.  The whole thing seems to be rather intuitive.

A good day, great people, brilliantly easy to access location, great products, and outstanding cinema experience.  More info is below, the Pulse Cinema site is well worth a look.

Pulse Cinemas is here.

Anthem is here.

Paradigm Speakers are here.

*Martin Logan electrostatic speakers are part of the Anthem Paradigm Group of companies as well.