Neil Young famously sang about the two ways a rock career can end: “It’s better to burn out than fade away.” But it turns out there is another way — create a residential integration firm with your bandmates that lets you continue to share your love of high-end audio. At least that is what Jason Barth did when it came time to step away from Push Down & Turn — an Indiana-based rock band that toured extensively and opened for the likes of Peter Frampton, Kid Rock, and the Counting Crowes.
“I like to say I turned my hobby into a profession, and I turned my profession into a hobby,” says Barth, CEO of The Premier Group in Carmel, Ind. “I toured in a national rock band for 12 years. We played over 200 shows a year all over the country. Now, the drummer is my business partner, who runs the entire operations side of Premier, and the bass player is a senior project manager.”
There was some overlap of passions, as Push Down & Turn toured between 1990 and 2002 and Premier was founded in October 1999. Today, the integration firm has a full-time staff of 51 people, with 17 of those employees being with Premier for 20 years or longer. The company provides a full suite of services including security, networking, automation, lighting, shades, and, naturally, audio/video entertainment.
With so much time on the stage and in recording studios, Barth has a proclivity for well-produced audio, whether that be in music or movies, and when one of his favorite pro-audio brands moved into residential, he had to add it to the list of high-end audio products he supports.
“On the pro side, L-Acoustics is the most approved audio systems on the planet — there’s not a single artist that would decline to play through an L-Acoustics system,” says Barth. “We brought L-Acoustics in a couple of years ago when they came into the residential space. I’ve been doing audio demos for 25 years — thousands of audio demos. When we demo L-Acoustics, every single person in the room perks up.”
Premier’s evolving showroom currently has a theater with an 11-channel L-Acoustics system as well as a 2-channel Syva tower system. “There’s a very different reaction when we demo L-Acoustics,” Barth explains. “When we demo any of the other brands that we sell, everybody is always critiquing and thinking about it while taking it all in. When we put the L-Acoustics on, you see them smile and you see them start to get excited. It generates an energy and excitement in the room that’s indescribable. I’m not saying it’s the best-sounding speaker you’ve ever heard — that’s not it. They’re plenty of audio systems that have better imaging and more fidelity that can provide a true high-end audiophile experience. But these have energy — they have two little 4-inch speakers with a compact 10-inch sub, and it just hits you in the chest. I don’t know how they do it.
“I’ve been passionate about the brand for my whole career — more than 35 years. I didn’t expect anybody else to care, but I was pleasantly surprised.”
Generating Excitement Through Sound
When a Premier client sold his home, he recommended Barth and his team to take over any electronic alterations that needed to be done for the new owner. This new client only needed a little bit of work done on the house, but this place was a temporary home. A short time later, they moved to a highly affluent neighborhood that Barth describes as “Billionaires Row.” There, they brought in Premier, and what started as a simple service call involving a security system hook-up and a few televisions turned into a $1 million-plus whole-home installation that included a stunning high-end home theater. It was the L-Acoustics-generated excitement that opened up a bigger opportunity.
Once in the home, it was decided to add whole-home audio, which is when Barth visited the client to discuss something that had been on the client’s wish list.
“He had said he wanted a theater downstairs and was thinking of just throwing in a TV and some speakers,” he says. “I offered a different idea of what could be accomplished, and I painted the picture of the space and how we could bring up the sunken floor in the back of the room and add a bar and then have it step back down into the theater.
“We had several audio plans for the room that ranged from $65,000 to $380,000. He had asked why he should spend $380,000, so I asked him if he knew the top speed of the Porsche 911 Turbo S that he drives. He did — 205 miles per hour. I asked if he had ever gone that fast, and he replied, ‘No.’
“I told him that the high-end audio system is admittedly more horsepower than he would need to fill the room with sound, but why would you want to run a system with the pedal to the floor? We want it to breathe. We want dynamic range. This is not me overselling you — I’ve spec’d the appropriate size and performance for the space. This is just going to give you that real cinema quality. The moment we did the car analogy, he signed off on it. Of course, hearing the L-Acoustics theater in our showroom helped.
“If you’re not going to love it, why would you spend any money? We have to get to a point where they are excited — we’re not just going to do something for the sake of doing it. If you can get to the point where they love it, well now they’re hooked. One of my favorite phrases is, ‘People don’t buy what something is, they buy how it makes them feel.’ That’s important to remember. So, the moment you’re doing an audio demo, and the hair starts standing up on their arms, you found the right solution.”
A Great-Sounding Theater
This home theater project started with a large concrete rectangle with a sloped floor and a 12-foot ceiling at its deepest part. Barth’s concept was to create an 18- x 18-foot bar area on a level floor with a 10-foot ceiling in the back of the room, and then create the theater one step down along the sloped floor. In doing so, he created two unique media spaces.
“When you’re in the theater space, it feels like a full-blown private theater — there’s just no wall right behind you,” says Barth. “Behind the theater, you’ve got the bar, high-top chairs, four club chairs, and a TV that shows whatever is being played on the big screen. We also have a pair of stereo speakers that play a downmixed version of the surround sound mix, but that doesn’t get heard in the theater.”
In the theater, the 7.1.4 Dolby Atmos sound system features a combination of L-Acoustics X8 and X4i 2-way passive coaxial loudspeakers and Syva Low 12-inch subwoofers. Three X8 8-inch in-wall speakers provide the LCR channels with four X4i 4-inch in-wall speakers acting as the surround channels and another four X4i 4-inch in-ceiling speakers providing height channels. Four additional L-Acoustics Syva subwoofers bring the bass in the low-frequency effects channels. The speakers are fed by two LA4X and two LA2Xi amplified controllers.
“The left, center, and right speakers are behind the Screen Innovations acoustically transparent screen, and four of the 12-inch subs are also behind the screen. If the space was fully enclosed at the back wall, we would’ve moved two subs to the back and used audio processing for the low-end cancellation to get the waves off the side walls, but we had to calibrate it differently. So, we spread the four subs out across the front wall to get that even coverage.”
Video is provided by a high-end Sony projector and a madVR processor.
Initial drawings for the space were created in The Cinema Designer, which is the typical first-pass procedure for Premier because, as Barth explains, “it’s quick and easy to illustrate the concept — plug in the size of the room, the seats, the riser heights, and the screen size, and you get site lines and speaker placement. It’s not perfect, but it’s a really good guide. Then, if it is an upscale customer, we either do it in-house or send it out to CinemaTech for the acoustic design, which is what we did for this project. We took The Cinema Designer results, ran it through L-Acoustics’ software, and then sent all the data to CinemaTech, who designed the acoustic treatments and also all the custom seating.”
Related: The Free-Rein Theater
When the room was finished, L-Acoustics came out to tune the theater — which is mandatory. “Another benefit with L-Acoustics is that we cannot sell a system and calibrate it ourselves,” says Barth. “We are required to sell their calibration. They fly an engineer in for every installation and they spend a half to a full day tuning, depending on the system. They want to be able to protect their brand and guarantee a high-quality result with their products, which we appreciate.”
The Result
The theater project was so successful that it inspired the client to make even more changes to the home — lots of them. “They got real excited and ended up ripping the house to the studs,” says Barth. “They spent another $700,000 on the rest of the house.”
Additional services included whole-house audio, motorized shades, improved network, retrofitting a Lutron HomeWorks system for the entire house, and adding all-new lighting that required ripping all the ceilings down and adding fixtures from DMF Lighting and Lucifer Lighting.
But the real stunner outside of the theater for Barth is the home gym. “The fitness room is outrageous,” he says. “There is a dry sauna, a wet sauna, a cold plunge, and cardio and weight training all in one massive space. We did a giant Cooledge fabric ceiling that offers fully tunable lighting with no shadows. It has dual Crestron Zoom systems so the client can interact with his personal trainer who is located remotely in California. There are two 55-inch displays, two Crestron touchscreens, four cameras, and two beamforming microphones. So, he just walks in, joins the Zoom, and his trainer can see him from every angle and tell him what to do when he works out.”
Overall, Barth is not surprised at the upgrades the client asked for, after all, “our life is music and lighting,” he concludes. “They tell the same story, and they evoke the same emotions. They go hand in hand.”
Surprisingly Effective Demo Songs
By Anthony Savona
Song choice is key to an effective 2-channel audio demo, which is why eyebrows were raised when Jason Barth, CEO of The Premier Group, revealed two unique choices that result in giving the listeners an arm-hair-raising experience.
“You Don’t Bring Me Flowers”
Yes, the Barbra Streisand-Neil Diamond adult contemporary classic. “I always preface it with, ‘Two grown men should not stand in a room and listen to this track together,’ and we laugh about it,” says Barth. “But then I play the demo, and when Neil Diamond comes in…if you don’t get shivers then you are just not alive. Everybody has some reaction, whether their arm hair stands up or they elicit some type of gasp or other sound comes out of their mouth.”
“Vogue”
When was the last time you spun Madonna’s “Vogue”? It’s time to give it another listen. “I don’t care who the artist is — the better it’s recorded, the more enjoyment I get out of it,” says Barth. “One of the guys in my office played ‘Vogue’ for me a year and a half ago, and it has been my go-to demo ever since. The stereo imaging is incredible. They must have had a riot in the studio with all the layers and how it moves around like a dance track. It is an unbelievable song. When Madonna starts singing, she’s right there in the center of the room.”
