How did Wavetrain come to be?
Wow. Okay, that's a long one! I'll try to shorten it.
My background originally was high end residential architecture. About 2 weeks after starting in the industry I met Anothony Grimani and realised there was a lot more to audio design. Thus stared my journey into cinema design & acoustics. I had been in the industry for about probably 10 years or so and I decided to take a brand that I was working with, Triad Speakers, and start a distribution company, called Wavetrain Acoustics. A huge part of that company was providing engineering/design services for our dealer network!
For around 5 years or so, I engineered cinemas for dealers around the country, but decided to start a new company—Wavetrain Cinemas—to formally create the cinema design service, as the design service had grown and we felt it needed it own branding due to confusion in the market. At the time, everyone who sought my services for design assumed that it was free, since they were buying speakers through my other company called Wavetrain Acoustics. Wavetrain Cinemas has morphed quite a lot from there.
What motivated Wavetrain to enter the high-end world of home cinema?
We’ve always done higher end, as it’s part of who I am. I really think that the story of Wavetrain Cinemas is really the story of the industry in Australia, because we’ve always been at the forefront of pushing cinema design and doing high end projects. I have always felt that we were at the forefront of what was happening in the industry and that as we push further and higher with each project, so do dealers around us. This is where a pragmatic view of the industry is important.
A lot of companies would probably prefer that we didn't exist so that they weren't competing with us. I sort of look at it and think that whether it's Wavetrain Cinemas or other companies that are doing good work, it doesn’t really matter. Any company that's out there doing good work is elevating the industry. At Wavetrain, we have found that it’s our clients that are pushing us to go further with each project, as they see and experience what we have done on previous projects. I expect the same will be true for ‘The Cloister Cinema.’ As a result, other companies will also elevate their offering, which is exactly what the industry needs.
Considering that Australia—like a lot of markets—is huge and considering that we're only doing a very small number of boutique projects per year, we represent such a minute section of the total market. We just happen to be at the very ultra-high end of the market, we win awards and things get published, so people see what we do. But, yeah, we're tiny in comparison to the entire market.
How did the D-BOX & Wavetrain partnership come to be?
I experienced D-BOX at my first CEDIA event in the USA and was blown away by the experience!
I would describe my first experience in D-BOX as just sitting there with a huge smile on my face going ‘this is awesome - I can’t believe this is available for home cinema!’
Ultimately, the partnership came to be as we wanted to offer our clients the full cinema experience. Any client relationship is built on trust. Without full faith that a designer can deliver what is being discussed, we would never be able to deliver high end projects and D-BOX is no exception. Value for money with these high-end clients has nothing to do with what something costs. It’s got to do with whether or not the client can actually appreciate the money they’re going to spend on the project, and D-BOX is one of those products, that when demonstrated correctly is always an instant sale. You simply must have D-BOX in your system, for the full cinema experience. I love it and it’s a critical part of our industry.
After a demo, I would say about 90% of our clients want D-BOX. If they don’t purchase D-BOX from the get-go, they’ll usually get D-BOX-ready seating, so that they can add it on later and keep the upgrade path open! We would never sacrifice audio or video quality for D-BOX. It is always an add on to a reference cinema solution.
What exactly does a D-BOX demo look like for your clients?
I don’t talk about D-BOX because the only word I can use to describe D-BOX is motion, and the client is going to immediately think of a ‘theme park ride.’ No one wants to experience a theme park ride for two hours.
For this reason, D-BOX is an integrated part of my demonstration to a client. I’ll reach a point where I'll sort of say, “now you’re going to experience something different. Don’t worry about it. Don’t overthink it. Just go with it. I’ll stop what I’m playing for you a few times just so we can talk about it in detail.”
Then I'll play them something subtle without any big movements and with the motion set at about 50%, so it’s not too overbearing. I'll pause it after a few minutes and that’s when I can talk about D-BOX. However, the selling point for D-BOX is saying “well now that you’ve experienced it for a few minutes, let’s go back and play it without D-BOX.” Then you play the clip without D-BOX and they’re like, “oh my God, there’s this whole section of the movie missing,” and that’s when I say “yeah, and that’s what D-BOX is adding. Now would you like me to turn it up or down?” Once the client is in control of their experience and what D-BOX offers, the sale is done.
What makes the D-BOX and Wavetrain duo so special?
I just think it's a great product. D-BOX is part of the cinema standard for movies and is being delivered as part of the DCP into cinemas directly. Picture, sound and motion create the whole immersive experience. People shouldn’t be ignoring something that’s a major part of the industry!
Can you explain the CEDIA awards for those who may not know what they are?
They’re awards that are delivered by our industry body. CEDIA is the only real global body for the custom electronics industry, and the awards are judged by a representative group of people in each region—so Asia Pacific, Europe and the Americas have their own group of judges which judge the opposing regions to eliminate bias. This is an incredibly involved job, with judges giving up approximately 1 week of their time to sift thought every detail of the projects up for judging.
The winners of those awards go into a worldwide pool where then a group of representatives from those three groups of judges come together to decide the winner of the Global award.
How did it feel when you found out you were given the honour of the Global award?
It felt fantastic. I’ve been doing this for a very long time and I’ve won a lot of awards (over 30 awards in the last decade), but you’re always happy to find out that you actually won. These are awards require a lot of work to enter and you never know who you’re up against. The Global award is just the pinnacle of achievement for us and it’s also a good recognition for what we do within the industry worldwide!
I feel like Australia or Asia Pacific as a general sort of area aren’t necessarily looked at by the rest of the world as a region that’s delivering projects on par with the rest of the world. Even in Australia, people overseas are viewed as rock stars. I think it’s great for the industry as a whole when we pick up these global awards, as it elevates the entire region. We may not have the same level of clients available overseas, but the expertise is certainly here. To be the first company in the Asia Pacific region to win this award is a huge honour and not something we take lightly!
How is Wavetrain going to continue to elevate the home cinema industry?
Bigger and bigger projects. We're continuing to push the boundaries on what we can do both aesthetically and what we can do technically within our cinemas! We already have incredible cinemas nearing completion, so look out 2024 and beyond.
For us, our clients see the work that we've done in the past and sort of go, “wow, you've done something like that? Oh, my God, I'd never thought that was possible. I'd like to do something like that,” so the more you keep on showing high end work, the more clients are going to be inspired to sort of go down that route, and the more the industry will continue to be elevated.
What separates Wavetrain from the rest of the industry is that we’re very much a creative house, a design house. We do everything—the interior design, lighting design, mechanical engineering, architecture, acoustic engineering, we design custom carpets & furniture, pretty much anything and everything required to design and complete a project. There’s nothing outside of our scope that we won’t get involved in if we feel like it could be improved and we don’t allow other trades into our space.
What advice would you have for other people who want to launch their own business?
I would encourage them to continue to push boundaries and continue to learn. To continue to learn by experimenting rather than just going and doing courses, getting an acronym on your title to certify that you did a specific course. That’s great, but it doesn’t really mean anything. It takes years to become a professional on any one topic in our industry, so I just encourage more and more people to go out there, keep experimenting, and keep pushing yourself to get better.
That’s the reason I lecture—I know they can’t learn everything in that time period I have available to teach them, but hopefully it will inspire them to keep going further. The more people keep pushing themselves and pushing their company and their clients, the more it elevates the entire industry.
The passion of Wavetrain: paving the future of home cinemas
The Global CEDIA award is far from just a trophy on the shelf—it's a testament to Wavetrain’s passion, expertise and to the sheer artistry embedded in every creation. Wavetrain has worked hard to situate themselves at the intersection of technology and creativity, and today, they remain the guiding force for the future of home cinemas!
While the future is bright for Wavetrain, they’ve already cemented their legacy as one of the industry’s finest. They also serve to teach a valuable lesson to the world: true cinematic brilliance isn’t just seen—it's felt, experienced, lived in and remembered long after the credits roll.
