The room is the instrument
From our studio in Palma de Mallorca, we design, build and calibrate private cinema rooms for houses and superyachts across Mallorca and the Balearics: the acoustics, the isolation and the sightlines resolved first, and the equipment specified to the room rather than the other way round.
Two rooms, the same equipment, nothing alike
Put an identical specification into two rooms of different proportions and you get two different cinemas. One has dialogue you lean forward to follow and bass that disappears in the third seat. The other sounds the way the mix was meant to. The equipment did not change. The room did everything.
That is why we design the room first. Proportions, treatment, isolation and seating geometry are resolved on the drawing, against the industry's recommended practice rather than against taste, and the specification follows from what the room can actually support. It is also the only sequence that lets us tell you, before you commit, what that space will and will not do.
Audio & VideoDedicated rooms
And rooms that convert
Designed to standard
Four levels, chosen openly
Marine and residential
One standard
Mallorca
Our studio in Palma
Who designs and builds private cinema rooms in Mallorca?
Halo · Beyond AV/IT & Lighting designs, builds and calibrates private cinema rooms from its studio in Palma de Mallorca, for houses across Mallorca and the Balearics. We take the room before the equipment: the acoustics, the isolation from the rest of the house, the sightlines and the seating layout are resolved on the drawing, and the specification follows from them. The same engineers commission systems on superyachts, where failure is not an option, and that discipline carries into every room we build.
What does a dedicated cinema room need that a living room with a large screen does not?
A dedicated room is designed as an acoustic and optical space, not as a place to put equipment. That means controlled reverberation, so dialogue stays intelligible at reference level; seats far enough from the walls that early reflections do not blur the image the speakers are drawing; isolation, so the room does not broadcast into the bedroom above it; and a geometry where every seat sees the same screen and hears the same balance. A living room can be made to sound very good. It cannot be made to do those four things, because its job is to be a living room.
Can a cinema room be built into a house or a yacht that is already finished?
Often yes, and what decides it is the room rather than the budget. The constraints that matter are ceiling height, the proportions of the space, what sits above and beside it, and how much of the structure can be touched. A basement or a garden room that was never finished is usually the best candidate in a house; on board, the limits are deckhead depth and the weight any treatment adds. We survey the room and resolve its geometry and treatment on the drawing before anything is ordered, so you know what performance that space will reach, and whether the room is better placed somewhere else in the house.
Four levels, and an honest conversation about which one
The industry's recommended practice for immersive audio design defines four performance levels. They are useful long before anything is specified, because they turn a vague ambition into a decision you can make with the architect in the room. Most of what separates them is space, not budget.
Level 1
The entry point. Conveys the basic artistic intent of the material, with a minimum of five discrete channels and seating at least half a metre clear of the walls. The level most converted rooms reach without structural work.
Level 2
The same intent with meaningfully more fidelity. Eleven discrete channels and seats no closer than 0.8 m to a boundary, which is usually where a well proportioned dedicated room lands.
Level 3
Meets or exceeds the commercial exhibition reference. Fifteen discrete channels and 1.2 m of clearance behind the seating. At this point the room has to be designed for it from the beginning.
Level 4
The highest performance achievable across every parameter, with 1.5 m of clearance. It asks for a room built around the cinema rather than a cinema fitted into a room.
The number of front speakers follows from the geometry rather than from preference: three across the screen up to a viewing angle of forty degrees, and five from seventy degrees upward, because beyond that a three-speaker front cannot keep a sound anchored to the part of the picture it belongs to.
Everything that matters is decided before the equipment list
Four things decide what a cinema room will sound like, and all four are architecture.
Reverberation. A room that rings turns dialogue into effort, and the usual instinct, a few acoustic panels on the back wall, does almost nothing. Treatment is a question of surface area and placement calculated for the volume of the room, and in a domestic cinema that surface is substantial. It is designed at the same time as the joinery, because afterwards there is nowhere to put it.
Early reflections. Sound that arrives from a nearby wall a few milliseconds after the direct sound blurs the position of everything on screen. It is why the recommended practice puts a minimum distance between the seats and the boundaries, and why a row of seats pushed back against the rear wall undoes a great deal of expensive equipment.
Isolation. A cinema is a machine for making low frequencies, and low frequencies travel through structure. Without decoupling, the room broadcasts into the bedroom above it and the cinema stops being used after the first time someone complains. Decoupling is structural work and it cannot be added later.
Background noise. Air conditioning is what makes a room usable in a Mallorcan summer and it is also the loudest thing in it once the film is quiet. The ductwork is sized, routed and attenuated as part of the cinema, not inherited from the rest of the house.
All four are resolved on the drawing, with the architect and the builder, before the first piece of equipment is specified.
A cinema on a moving vessel
On board, every constraint tightens. Depth above the headlining is measured in centimetres, every kilo of acoustic treatment is weight that has to be justified, and the structure itself transmits sound to the cabins either side. A saloon that converts is often the right answer, with a screen that disappears and a layout that works as a room for the rest of the day.
What does not change is the sequence: the space is analysed first, and the specification follows what it can support.
Marine Refit & UpgradesThe best room in the house is usually the one nobody uses
Island houses are built for light, which makes most of their rooms poor candidates for a cinema and one of them ideal. A basement, a semi-buried garden room or a space under the terrace has what the rest of the house does not: no glazing to control, mass in the structure already, and nothing above it to disturb. If a room like that exists, it is almost always the right answer, and it is usually the cheapest one as well.
Where the room has daylight, the light is dealt with properly rather than apologised for. Blackout is its own discipline, and a blackout fabric alone still leaks down both sides and over the top, which in a cinema is exactly where it shows: see our motorised shading page. The lighting in the room is a scene rather than a switch, and it has to dim to very low levels without flicker or stepping, which is a specification decision made with the lighting design rather than after it.
The last two days are the ones you paid for
A cinema is not finished when it is installed. It is finished when it is calibrated, and that is a measurement exercise rather than a matter of preference. Each speaker is set to its correct level and distance from the seats. The subwoofers are positioned and aligned so that the bass is even across every seat rather than strong in one and absent in the next, which is a placement problem first and an electronic one second. The projector and screen are aligned and the picture set so that it holds detail in shadow instead of crushing it.
We measure the result, document it, and come back to re-check it once the room has settled and the treatment has done whatever it was going to do. A calibration that nobody recorded is a calibration nobody can restore.
The room answers to the house
A cinema that lives on its own set of remotes is a cinema that gets used less. The room sits on the same control platform as the rest of the property, so that one press starts the projector, selects the source, sets the sound and takes the lights down in sequence, and another puts the room back as it was.
For the control layer itself, see our Crestron control and automation page.
The room is part of the house
Lighting scenes
Aisle and step lighting, a dimmed hold for conversation and a true blackout for the film, all on one press.
Blackout shading
Where the room has glazing, shading detailed so that no light reaches the screen from the edges.
Climate
Cooling sized for a full room and quiet enough to disappear once the film is quiet.
The rest of the house
The same sources available in the cinema and everywhere else, without a second subscription.
One interface
The room on the same keypads and the same app as every other room.
Remote support
Settings corrected and content issues resolved without a visit.
The cinema is one room of a larger system. See home automation in Mallorca, or how the sound reaches the rest of the house on our multi-room audio page.
From an empty room to a calibrated one
01
Survey and feasibility
We measure the space, look at what sits above and beside it, and tell you which performance level that room can reach. Sometimes the useful answer is that a different room in the house is better.
02
Design and documentation
Geometry, seating, treatment, isolation, screen and projection resolved on the drawing against the recommended practice, and issued as documentation the architect and the builder can work from.
03
Build and installation
Treatment, decoupling, cabling and joinery coordinated with the trades, then the equipment installed into a room that was built to receive it.
04
Calibration and handover
Levels, distances, subwoofer alignment and picture set by measurement, documented, and re-checked after the room has settled.
Designed by the people who calibrate it
The room comes first
We will tell you what a space can reach before you spend anything, including when the answer is a different room.
Designed to a published standard
Performance levels and geometry taken from the industry's recommended practice, not from a preference.
Marine and residential, same standard
25 years across superyacht refit, new build and luxury villas, from a studio in Palma de Mallorca.
Calibrated and documented
Measured at handover and recorded, so the room can be restored exactly if anything is ever replaced.
Tell us about the room you have in mind
Its dimensions, what sits above it, whether it has windows, and how many people should be able to watch comfortably. With that we can tell you what level that room will reach and what it would take to go further.