Private Residence, Hyderabad

Space: Home theatres
City: Hyderabad
Year: 2025
Services: Acoustic design Sound isolation Acoustic treatment AV integration

Home theatre in Hyderabad with a 180-inch acoustically transparent screen and fabric-covered side walls

Goal

A 180-inch image and full immersion, with nothing in the room that looks like a loudspeaker.

Challenge

A glazed opening running from the front wall to the middle of the left side, in a room that had to stay quiet.

Approach

Every loudspeaker behind acoustically transparent fabric, and the window rebuilt as an acoustic element rather than simply covered.

Result

Measurements to follow

01 · Brief

What the client asked for

The client wanted the largest image the room could carry and the deepest immersion the budget allowed — without a single visible speaker. The room was already built, 29 feet long, with a large window along the left side running from the front wall to roughly mid-room. In a theatre, that glazing is both an acoustic weak point and a hole in the isolation.

Room spec

Room size	29 × 16 × 11 ft (8.8 × 4.9 × 3.4 m)
Volume	≈ 145 m³
Seating	Two rows of recliners, plus floor seating
Speaker layout	7.2.4
Screen	180 in diagonal, acoustically transparent
Front speakers and subwoofers	Behind the screen
Completed	2025

Constraints

Existing glazed opening on the left wall, front to mid-room
No loudspeaker to be visible anywhere in the room
Fixed budget, to be spent where it changed the sound

02 · Challenge

The acoustic problems we found

A window where the acoustics wanted a wall
Glazing reflects, it flexes, and it leaks. Running from the screen wall to mid-room, it sat exactly where the early reflections from the left front speaker land.
Immersion with nothing to look at
Eleven channels in a room where no driver could be seen meant the loudspeaker positions had to be decided first and the finishes built around them, not the other way round.
A 180-inch image in a 16-foot-wide room
At that width the screen defines the whole front wall, so the front three channels and the subwoofers had to live behind it.

03 · Design approach

How we engineered the room

The loudspeaker layout was set before any finish was chosen. The front three channels and both subwoofers sit behind the acoustically transparent screen, which puts the dialogue where the image is rather than above or below it. The surrounds and overheads are mounted at their correct positions and then disappear behind acoustically transparent fabric stretched across the side and rear walls, so the visible surface of the room is continuous and the speakers behind it are acoustically untouched.

Absorption and diffusion were placed behind that same fabric, which let the treatment be sized by what the room needed rather than by what the client was willing to look at. This is where the budget went: into the wall build-up behind the fabric, not into visible product.

Isolation construction

Isolation was addressed at the three places an existing room leaks most. The window opening was fitted with acoustic glazing units and curtained. The standard door was replaced with a sound-blocking door set. The ceiling was closed in gypsum board over an insulation-filled cavity.

The walls carry the acoustic treatment behind the fabric, sized for the room rather than for what would be visible.

Materials

Material	Where	Why
Acoustically transparent fabric	Side walls, rear wall, screen wall	Hides every loudspeaker and all the treatment without filtering what passes through it
Acoustically transparent screen	Front wall	Lets the front three channels and subwoofers play from behind the image
Acoustic glazing units	Existing window opening	Addresses the opening itself instead of covering it
Heavy curtain	Over the glazing	Blackout, and absorption across the upper frequencies

04 · Results

Verified results

Measurements to follow

This project's verification measurements haven't been published yet. Results appear here only from real measurement files with a date, instrument and method.

05 · Gallery