Cyber Sound

Cyber Sound, a custom electronics systems integrator based in Scottsdale, Arizona, is always looking to expand its offerings to the luxury residential and commercial markets. The company, a long-time Planar partner, recently saw its new digital art technology – the Planar® Mosaic™ architectural video wall – and believed it would generate new business opportunities and give them a competitive advantage in the market.

"To an integration business such as ours, Planar Mosaic has proven to be a game-changer," said Ben Lentz, director of business development for Cyber Sound. "When customers come into our showroom and experience it today, they imagine what it can do for their home or business and they know we are the company to make it happen. It is bringing in more new business than we ever expected."

In its newly renovated Experience Center, Cyber Sound installed a six-panel array of Planar Mosaic LCD tiles that serves as the focal point in the showroom. The architectural displays welcome customers and give them an immediate sense of the company's commitment to innovation. "The Planar Mosaic video wall fuels their creativity and inspires visions of how it would serve their unique needs and interests," said Lentz.

Makes an impressive visual impact

Cyber Sound is using two of the available Planar Mosaic tile sizes: the 46-inch rectangle tile (Planar® Pablo™) and the 21.5-inch square tile (Planar® Salvador™). They are arranged in a free-form array with a few inches between each tile. The negative space becomes part of the digital wall and adds to the effect created by the differing tile shapes and sizes. "We run both video and loops of scenic images on the video wall, and elements of each fall naturally on the various tiles, creating a really fluid picture for the viewer. With image elements flowing from one tile to another, across the negative space, the visual impact is really impressive," reports Lentz.

Planar's Mosaic Project Designer™ software was used to create the video wall design that the integrator ultimately installed. Mosaic Project Designer allowed for the custom rendering of the Planar Mosaic array, depicting how it would actually look in the integrator's space and allowing the design to be adjusted and refined to achieve the desired look and feel. "Going forward, we'll be able to use the software in order to collaborate on final Planar Mosaic video wall designs for our customers before each one is settled upon and built," said Lentz. "This ability to customize Planar Mosaic is important because it allows our customers to visualize the technology in their own space, which adds so much more to the customer experience."

Meets customers' quality expectations

Attributes of Planar Mosaic that were particularly important to Cyber Sound include its image quality. Planar Mosaic is a commercial-grade LCD with LED backlight technology. The viewer sees images with 700-nit brightness, 1920 x 1080 resolution, 4000:1 contrast ratio, and up to 16.7 million colors. "These are important to luxury customers who want the content they display to be super-bright and crystal-clear," Lentz says.

The quality of the installation experience is another important factor for Cyber Sound. Lentz gives high marks to Mosaic Mount™ which supports any desired rotation and pitch of each tile. In the Cyber Sound showroom, the mounting system allowed for an angled grouping of the six panels and the positioning of square and rectangle panels to achieve a unique design.

Each video tile attaches with easy push-in, push-out catches, and auto-alignment posts and spacer plates eliminate the need for fine-tuning adjustments. "All of these mounting features are important because luxury customers, in particular, insist on a perfect installation in which every tile is in proper position and is precisely aligned with the others. The final result has to be impeccable and the Planar Mosaic system design all but guarantees that it will be," praises Lentz.

Has been a perfect performer from day one

Finally, Lentz says the Planar Mosaic video wall has performed flawlessly and that the product has not required a single call-back or service request. "It's been the same story in our Experience Center – perfect performance from day one. No pixilation, no blue screens. It's the kind of performance we need to deliver the experience our customers demand, and Planar Mosaic ensures we will succeed."