Kaleidescape and Keith Yates Design Partner to Elevate the Home Theater Experience

(April 21, 2022) Two giants of the high-end home theater world, Kaleidescape and Keith Yates Design (KYD), have announced a new strategic partnership intended to further promote reference-grade home theater experiences. The marriage of Kaleidescape's tantalizing lineup of extraordinary movie players and KYD's award-winning acoustics and room design work isn't necessarily new, as KYD regularly specifies Kaleidescape systems for clients that range from major directors and producers to sound specialists and cinematographers. This latest partnership, however, finds Kaleidescape's content team gaining access to a KYD-designed movie lab to ensure all movies released on its movie store deliver a world-class reference experience.

“Kaleidescape makes the industry’s best movie servers and players, and we use the system for all our calibrations when we do quality control on a commissioned KYD home theater,” said Keith Yates, president and chief creative officer, Keith Yates Design. “A KYD designed and engineered cinema experience is enhanced and further resolved with the performance advantages only available with Kaleidescape’s higher fidelity video source material and lossless audio, making everything in the theater optimized to deliver the best performance.”

Kaleidescape's CEO, Tayloe Stansbury, adds, “Keith Yates Design and Kaleidescape have a common goal in delivering a deeply inspired immersive theater experience that is unique, customized, and shapes the entertainment space. KYD’s design, combined with Kaleidescape, delivers unrivaled acoustical movie magic, which is why we are working with them to design the Kaleidescape Movie Lab at our corporate headquarters.”

In celebration of this new partnership, every KYD theater commissioned with a Kaleidescape system will come with a unique, one-of-a-kind, bound book highlighting the design and engineering of the KYD theater. “This partnership is a natural fit as KYD and Kaleidescape are aligned to provide the best-in-class private cinema experience, one our customers will be proud to commemorate by putting this book on display,” Yates concludes.

 

[NBPK402]

This is great news that he is now partnering with Kaleidescape!
I remember back in the 80s when Keith Yates had a high end Audio Store out of his house in Sacramento, and had affordable high end audio equipment as well as the really good stuff. By the time I finally made it to his store (a few years later) it was a custom built store next to a Dry Cleaners...the wall next to the Dry Cleaners was AIR 6' deep concrete wall filled with sand, and the auditioning room was setup just like a typical living room, The room had a coffered ceiling and behind the MLP was cabinets with all the equipment. All the speakers were stored on the left side of the room in a small room (behind a small glass door), and you entered the listening room through a glass sliding door on the right side of the room. Absolutely an awesome room! ears later he expanded into a custom built store with multiple listening rooms and it was a very high end build...sadly a few years later he closed the doors. Next he started doing custom Home Theaters and I see he is still doing them...so it appears to be a market that he is able to make a good business out of. He is a very knowledgeable person, and if you ever get a chance to meet him, you will be glad to you had the opportunity to talk with him.

 

[Todd Anderson]

Great post! Really cool that you were able to meet him and explore his now-defunct store!

I'm surprised to hear there was a glass sliding door incorporated into the listening room... seems like large pieces of glass aren't conducive to great audio playback.

What years are we talking?

 

[NBPK402]

Great post! Really cool that you were able to meet him and explore his now-defunct store!

I'm surprised to hear there was a glass sliding door incorporated into the listening room... seems like large pieces of glass aren't conducive to great audio playback.

What years are we talking?

I believe it was around 1987 to 1990....after that he opened a new custom store on Ardennes and it only lasted a few years. The final store was very expensive to build and the best of the highend. I think if he would have not went so exhorbent with the store...he would have still been in business.

One thing I will always remember is his policy for sales..you never say anything bad about a clients setup. You only show them what you have for them and let the customer decide.

 

[Todd Anderson]

I like that policy... nothing worse than gear shaming OR feeling pressured as a buyer.

 

[Travis Ballstadt]

Next he started doing custom Home Theaters and I see he is still doing them...so it appears to be a market that he is able to make a good business out of.

Jump over to AVS and search for the Rob Hahn Theater build thread. I remember coming across that as he was posting it, thinking, wow, that's a pretty good sized room, this will be good. Only to discover the room they were showing was only the equipment room! It's a massive build for a Hollywood cinematographer.

RE: Sacramento, I lived there for about 10 months in the mid-90s, working for KTXL. I spent a lot of time at AudioFX, drooling over their Pioneer Elite widescreen displays - they made laserdisc look GLORIOUS! I also bought a pair of NHT 2.5i speakers from there. Had a lot of great conversations, but sadly I was on a budget of "less than zero" at the time.

 

[RyanDSM]

Jump over to AVS and search for the Rob Hahn Theater build thread. I remember coming across that as he was posting it, thinking, wow, that's a pretty good sized room, this will be good. Only to discover the room they were showing was only the equipment room! It's a massive build for a Hollywood cinematographer.

RE: Sacramento, I lived there for about 10 months in the mid-90s, working for KTXL. I spent a lot of time at AudioFX, drooling over their Pioneer Elite widescreen displays - they made laserdisc look GLORIOUS! I also bought a pair of NHT 2.5i speakers from there. Had a lot of great conversations, but sadly I was on a budget of "less than zero" at the time.

You mean this massive gob of awesomeness?!

Rob Hahn Theater build

About 8 years ago, I went to Detroit to visit Art Sonnenborn and Jeff (thebland) so I could experience their theaters, hoping to pick their brains about the best way to approach building my own home theater. I also went to Texas to see Ash Sharma's theater and Lon's (LJG) theater in Long Island...

www.avsforum.com

One of like 5 build threads that I read through front to back and back to front again.