By George McClure
All photos courtesy of Cinergy Construction
Cinergy Construction specializes in building high-performance acoustic spaces, secure environments, and specialty finishes. We recently sat down with Willem Eskes, Cinergy’s Business Development Manager.
George McClure: Give us a little background on your company.
Willem Eskes: The two Founders, Greg Francis and Graham Osborne, were originally in high-end residential construction. About 14 years ago, they discovered a niche building dedicated custom theaters that checked all the boxes of the specialty-type work they love. Over time, they started taking on more and more of these dedicated home theater projects and eventually shut down the other parts of their business. They became a specialty contractor for these high-end spaces. Because of the nuanced assemblies and acoustic work involved in this specialized type of construction, it swiftly extended to building recording studios and even secure environments (aka panic rooms). For instance, a client recently purchased Whitney Houston’s former New Jersey residence. The professional recording studio in the home had been deteriorating over a number of years and we just completed a full restoration and transition to immersive, bringing it back to its glory days.
George: That’s exciting.
Willem: Because of our expertise in creating custom home theaters and recording studios, over the past decade we’ve also been called upon to fix acoustic problems in other areas of residential homes. Most architects and interior designers think visually of course, but you can’t hear sound on a set of plans! So, they create their beautiful designs, the general contractor comes in and builds the designs, and then you’ve got all these hard, reflective surfaces such as drywall, glass and stone with no damping effect in these gorgeous-looking homes. Everyone goes away, the family moves in, and they can’t hear each other because they’re now living in a reverberative box, and no one thought about how it would sound.
George: I’ve definitely been in places like that.
Willem: Sound waves interact with a room’s surroundings, resulting in a distinct aural experience. Hard surfaces and open spaces naturally reflect, duplicate and amplify sound, so it actually gets worse before it gets better. Sometimes an acoustic consultant is called in, but a lot of them purely make recommendations and don’t implement them. We’ve seen expensive solutions proposed where more economical solutions exist, and we’ve even seen unfeasible solutions proposed in terms of constructability. Today, we not only acoustically consult, but we include how much it will cost to install the recommendations as well. We aim to be a one-stop shop for architectural acoustic solutions.
George: Let’s talk about your custom home theater business. I understand that you can be involved at a number of different levels on those, as well.
Willem: Exactly, yes. That’s what Cinergy is best known for. The theaters are always interesting, because we’ve built million-dollar-plus theaters, and I also field calls from people without much experience in what is required to make it happen, so having that qualifying conversation about what the potential client is looking for, and the budget to accomplish the goal, is always illuminating.
Cinergy works around the country with leading GCs, architects, theater and interior designers, A/V integrators, and even owner’s reps and the clients themselves to build incredible high-performance theaters. If clients have their own team in place, we’ll work with them; if they need us to find the necessary designers and integrators, we’ll find them. We will manage all the parts and players and act as a single point of contact from start to finish.
The high-end custom theaters use acoustic modeling and analysis to create a science-based acoustic layout. This delivers clients a thoroughly immersive experience customized to the room capacity, seating layout and overall configuration.
George: Can you give us a brief rundown of the process?
Willem: Absolutely. There are four stages to creating a high-end theater or recording studio. Number one is the design itself, and that gets everybody on the same page, literally and figuratively. The second stage is what we call soundproofing or isolation, where you build a room within a room, and you decouple the entire inside room. That’s to keep you from hearing the fire engine driving by — keeping the outside world out. But it’s also to keep the inside world in. So, if someone is gaming in the space, the explosions aren’t rattling grandma’s bed in her room above the theater. This step is incredibly important and requires serious technical expertise to get right. The third step is the acoustic engineering of the room. It’s easy to conflate steps two and three, but really the isolation is one thing. And the acoustic treatments on the inside of the room are another. They are the secret sauce that makes you feel comfortable in the room – we’ll speak more to that later. And the fourth and final step are the specialty finishes. And that’s obviously everything that you see, fabric walls, sofas, curtains, carpet, sconces, etc.
George: I understand you do custom millwork, as well.
Willem: Yes, we have a relatively small, but mighty shop where we design and fabricate custom millwork, lighting and upholstery. With all our work being so custom, we focus on bringing these one-of-a-kind designs to life in everything including trim, ceiling treatments, wall details and decorative accents. They produce some unbelievable creations that could easily live in a museum. We recently completed a theater with a backlit onyx bar, lights and steps. It really needs to be seen to fully be appreciated.
George: What’s the most interesting non-theater project you’ve ever worked on?
Willem: That’s a great question because we’ve built so many wonderful custom projects and there are many contenders. We built this brilliant combination golf simulator/listening room for Chris Pratt, some incredibly organized podcast rooms for national treasure comedians, and even the vocal booth where the South Park folks record their voices. Still, one of the most interesting projects involved a client building an indoor basketball court in their home that they wanted to convert to a disco at night. In terms of acoustics, you probably can’t think of two more disparate scenarios. In short, we used some of the most resilient treatments and acoustically transparent fabric on the market so it could withstand errant basketballs and cleanup relatively easily. We installed LED lighting into the seams of the fabric. And as it was such a large, open space, we went so far as to install acoustic treatments inside the fashionable custom lighting over the court. And I’ll tell you, it’s now a fantastic place to play basketball or get your groove on [laughs].
George: In the Southern California market, you have a lot of entertainment industry people who are still interested in dedicated home theaters. But I know some integrators and dealers say that a lot of people are now looking for a media room that’s maybe a little bit more of a multipurpose area. I’m assuming a system like that probably has even more demands to make sure the acoustics are good.
Willem: You’re absolutely correct. There has been a movement towards more multipurpose media rooms, and those can be a challenge. Sound basically travels in three different ways: vibrationally, which is through the structures of a building; impact, like when you hear footsteps above you; then obviously the last one is airborne. So, if you have drywall hallways and you’re in your unsealed media room, you could easily end up with a noise issue at the other end of the house as the sound builds while traveling down the hallway. So, to your point, yes. Media rooms, and homes in general, are something where you really want to put a lot of acoustic forethought into how it’s constructed.
George: It seems like proper acoustics throughout the home have become almost a wellness component.
Willem: Absolutely. In fact, they are absolutely a wellness component. Understanding the factors contributing to poor acoustics is crucial to addressing health and sound quality issues. The example I always give is, we’ve all been in that restaurant where you can hardly hear the person across from you. So even if the food was enjoyable, you come out of there feeling uncomfortable and weary at a cellular level.
Starting as little kids, our palettes are trained so you can be in that noisy restaurant and clearly know what you may or may not like from the menu. But our ears are never “trained” for this kind of thing. You leave that noisy restaurant feeling it was cold or uninviting or uncomfortable.
George: Yes, that’s one of my pet peeves. I was at a highly recommended restaurant in Santa Monica a couple of years ago. It was visually beautiful, but there were tons of hard surfaces, and they really packed you in there. The food was fantastic, but it ultimately wasn’t a great experience because I felt bombarded and overwhelmed.
Willem: Sound is such an important and very often neglected aspect of comfort. What we all experience in that noisy restaurant, or anywhere else for that matter, is our human condition of fight or flight, even at its most banal. Our brains are always working and registering all that incoming noise, the clanging of silverware, the plates, the music, straining to hear the conversation, that kind of thing. Cortisol is flowing in our bodies. We become tired. And we are unable to relax at a biological level. A lot of modern homes suffer from this same problem.
For example, we worked on a new home up in Bel Air with exactly that issue. After several years of construction, the home was complete. The architect, interior designer, and GC were long gone and the family finally moved in. They excitedly held their first dinner party in the 16-seat dining room, and it was a fiasco. The guests were struggling to hear each other, some were getting headaches, and it was simply unpleasant.
We were brought in to solve the issue. We observed the stone table and walls, the glass windows, even the floor was stone. There was wood on the ceiling. The room was magnificent to look at, but an echo chamber. In that case, we retro-installed an acoustic plaster cloud over the dining room table to try and mitigate some of the reverberations. That’s the easiest way to talk about sound issues. You can get deeper into the science of sound, but at its base, that’s what makes our bodies tired and uncomfortable — you need to mitigate sound reverberation. Acoustic plaster is one method, treatments and fabric are another – that is what you would typically see in our theaters and recording studios. Perforated woods are another superb tool.
When we’re consulting on a new space or remodeling an existing one, we use treatments to improve the architectural acoustics. This is vitally important when the space was not conceived with sound considerations such as sound transmission and sound amplification in mind. Note to your readers, it’s a lot more economical to address these issues before the space is built than after!
George: Clients must be really happy when you’re able to tame the reverberations a bit.
Willem: They definitely are! Poor acoustics significantly impact the quality of a space. Again, because of our “untrained ears”, acoustics are one of those things you probably didn’t know you were missing, but your brain and body recognize -and thank you- when acoustics are properly addressed. We had built a dedicated theater for a celebrity client up in Malibu. Months later, I received a handwritten note in which she said, “Thank you for building my favorite room in the house!! Not only do I watch movies in there, but I go in there to do yoga. I go in there to read, I go in there to rest and relax and reenergize.” What she was really saying to me was, thank you for reducing reverberations in that room to a level that allows the human body to be at ease and comfortable.
Here, we pride ourselves on creating spaces — be it dedicated theaters, media rooms, great rooms or anywhere else in a residence — with exceptional acoustics to enhance the overall experience in that space. Architectural acoustics is a win-win.
The Cinergy Process
Detailed Evaluation and Expert Solutions for Noise
Whole home acoustics begin with a comprehensive acoustical evaluation to identify potential noise and reverberation problems throughout the entire structure. Cinergy creates customized solutions at every level — design, construction and installation — that integrate seamlessly with the aesthetics of the client’s space.
Exterior Sound Isolation
Create a building façade and site design to adequately shield interior spaces from exterior noise sources.
Interior Sound Isolation
Identify noise-sensitive adjacencies and spaces for which sound privacy is desired.
Floor/Ceiling Assembly Sound Isolation
Establish spaces for which vertical airborne sound isolation is needed.
Floor/Ceiling Assembly Impact Noise Control
Design flooring system to minimize impact noise from footfalls.
Interior Finishes to Minimize Sound Reverberation
Apply specialty finishes and materials to eliminate sound event reverberation.
HVAC Noise Control
Design HVAC systems to provide appropriate air velocities and to attenuate fan noise propagation.
Building Vibration Control
Mitigate structure-borne vibration noise felt and heard from HVAC air handlers, pumps, elevators, washing machines, transformers, exercise equipment and audio systems.
Sound Leakage Paths
Seal sound leakage paths from penetrations in walls, floors and ceilings.
Plumbing Noise Control
Design solutions to minimize vibrational noise and airborne noise from supply and waste plumbing pipes, showers, dishwashers, washing machines and toilets.
Site Noise Containment
Apply measures to attenuate nuisance-level sound from outdoor backup electrical generators, HVAC air handlers, chillers, spas, pool equipment and audio systems.
