Finnkino Tennispalatsi SCAPE Theater in Helsinki, Finland has been awarded ICTA’s “Classic Screen of the Year" award. The award will be presented at the ICTA conference in Barcelona later this summer.
After the ISE, we visited this amazing cinema room, which uses a rather unique system to get both very good video quality and very good audio quality, called AS2.
This system was developed in-house by Finnkino technical experts, and the premium cinema rooms that they equip with this system are called SCAPE. The five screen channel loudspeakers are placed above the screen, which is a non-perforated, 8.8 x 21.0 meter screen. This ‘solid’ screen offers the very best video quality from the Barco DP4K-60L projector, as there are none of the usual million+ holes/perforations in the screen. This means of course that the loudspeakers cannot be behind the screen. After years of testing in collaboration with Dolby, they concluded that above the screen is the next best location. This has the immediate benefit that the speakers are not at all ‘muffled’ by the projection screen, resulting in the very best audio quality from the purpose designed Procella Audio loudspeakers.
The calibration in this room is world-class and they play at (and above) reference level!
Throughout the development of AS2, Finnkino asked Procella Audio designer Anders Uggelberg to design the required loudspeakers for them. This has now resulted in the Procella Professional Cinema loudspeaker range and significant expertise within Procella in designing loudspeakers that can be placed above screens.
So is this the best commercial cinema room in the world for video and audio quality? The demo was extremely impressive, the audio quality was stunning, the Dolby Atmos 3D presentation was amazing! So yes, I’d say so, this is the best commercial cinema room in the world today. Let us know if you know of a better room…
Dolby Atmos: 61 channels in total, using 71 Procella loudspeakers and subwoofers, in a 32.2.20 configuration.
- Five screen channels: 5 x Procella C124 + 5 x P18
- Main subwoofers: 8 x V18
- Surrounds: 20 x ceiling surrounds, 27 x side/back wall surrounds
- Surround subwoofers: 6 x P18
- Amplifier continuous power: approx. 95kW…
