Alpha Certification^® is the first acoustical certification program for home theaters. Formerly called "Component Acoustics", Alpha Certification unbundles home theater certification from validation and treatment.

Before Alpha Certification, home theater acoustics was a hit-or-miss business. Top home theater designers recognized the need for high quality acoustics, and used trained acousticians to help plan their premium theaters. No matter how good a home theater looks, it must have great sound to be a great theater.

But how do you judge theater acoustics? The commercial film industry has objective acoustical quality requirements.  Alpha Certification applies these same standards to home theaters.



We have the toughest home theater standard in the industry. Alpha Certification uses proprietary technology to give a professional acoustician access to your home theater. We do objective, scientific tests to measure the most important acoustical characteristics of your room. These include reverberation times, dialog intelligibility, and early reflection levels.

To achieve Alpha Certification, you need a "medium dead" room - low reverberation. This provides the highest fidelity to movie surround sound. The European Broadcasting Union specifies a maximum reverberation time (RT60) of 4/10 of a second for a surround sound listening room of 100 cubic meter (about 3500 cubic feet). Dolby Laboratories specifies a time of under 3/10 of a second for the same size theater. We adhere to the same high standards as professional cinemas and dubbing stages.  A typical Alpha Certified home theater will have carefully balanced acoustical treatment applied to most of the wall surfaces.

If your home theater doesn't achieve Alpha Certification, we'll tell you why. As part of your testing, you receive a detailed 6-page acoustical analysis.



Alpha Certification is not for everyone. It is for those who want the highest quality home theater sound. We won't lower our standard in order to certify more theaters. But often, a home theater is used for other things - stereo music listening, for example. In this case, recommended acoustical treatment is not as aggressive.  Reverberation times should be higher, to allow the room's sound to enhance a "dry" music recording.

Acoustical accuracy should still be very high, and we can qualify mixed-use rooms via our Alpha Multimedia^sm program. The same measurements are performed as for Alpha Certification, but the requirements are not as strict.



We continue to build a network of local representatives who can record the data which we analyze for Alpha Certification. A laptop computer and relatively simple hardware and software are all that are needed.

Alpha Certification can now be done from data collected using widely available acoustical measurement tools. We now support:

• Acousti Soft ETF 5
• Gold Line TEF20 Analyzer with Sound Lab^® MLS
• SIA SmaartLive^TM
• SIA AcousticTools^TM
• Rives Audio Standard Test Kit
• Rives Audio Professional Test Kit
• WinMLS 2004
• Sencore SP495 SoundPro Audio Consultant Handheld Audio Analyzer
• NEW!  Room EQ Wizard V4