Home Cinema Installation — Manchester’s Highest Penthouse

Kaleidescape-Equipped Media Room in Manchester’s Beetham Tower Penthouse

As part of the extensive audio video system we installed in the Beetham Tower Penthouse — the Crestron Integration Award-winning installation atop Europe’s highest residential living space at the time — we also installed a bespoke media room. A dedicated Kaleidescape 1080p player draws films and music from the whole-apartment server, feeding a Classe decoder and amplifier combination that drives Bowers & Wilkins Signature 8NT speakers built into a custom media wall. The result rivals the best floor-standing speaker systems available — with the aesthetics of a designed interior.

Custom Media Wall

The media wall was custom designed and built to accommodate every specific component precisely — including cabinets of the correct volume for the Signature 8NT speakers and subwoofer, all lined with acoustic material. Rear channels are built into the marble rear wall. A huge Bowers & Wilkins Custom Theatre subwoofer is concealed behind custom speaker fabric on a fitted frame. The Classe components have a special back plate encouraging airflow, ensuring reliable operation over extended listening sessions. All speakers were finished in the client’s chosen colour.

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Crestron Control

The room benefits from a Crestron control system with a remote touchpanel — picking a film from the apartment’s Kaleidescape library is as simple as switching on a standard TV. The panel also controls all room lighting, with mood scenes programmed for viewing, entertaining and standby recalled at a single button press.

Media Room at the Top of Manchester

The Beetham Tower is Manchester’s most iconic residential building. The penthouse media room is one of our most celebrated installations in the North of England. The combination of Bowers & Wilkins Signature 8NT speakers in a custom-built media wall with Classe amplification and Kaleidescape source delivers a performance standard that most dedicated cinema rooms cannot match — in a living room that looks as if it was born this way. This room is one part of the wider whole-penthouse Crestron installation, which also controls the apartment’s rooftop swimming pool and olive grove irrigation 169 metres above the city.

Frequently Asked Questions — Beetham Tower Media Room

Can a media room match the performance of a dedicated cinema room?
Yes, in the right circumstances. This media room uses Bowers & Wilkins Signature 8NT speakers built into a custom acoustic media wall, driven by Classe amplification and fed by a Kaleidescape source — a combination capable of outperforming many dedicated cinema rooms, in a space that still functions as a living room.

Is this media room connected to the rest of the Beetham Tower penthouse system?
Yes. The Kaleidescape player in this room draws directly from the whole-apartment server that is part of the wider award-winning Crestron installation across the entire penthouse, which also manages lighting, climate, security and a rooftop olive grove.

How are speakers built into a media wall without compromising performance?
The media wall in this installation was custom designed around the precise internal volume each Bowers & Wilkins Signature 8NT cabinet requires, lined with acoustic material, with the subwoofer concealed behind acoustically transparent fabric — engineering the joinery to the speakers’ requirements rather than the reverse.

Project Details

• Location: Beetham Tower Penthouse, Manchester
• Audio: Bowers & Wilkins Signature 8NT + B&W Custom Theatre subwoofer
• Amplification: Classe
• Source: Kaleidescape 1080p player
• Control: Crestron lighting and room control

Beetham Tower Whole-Penthouse Installation → · Media Room Installation → · Kaleidescape → · Crestron → · Cheshire Office →

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