Every great private home theater starts the same way: a client describes a feeling, and the design-build team translates that feeling into a room. AcousticSmart has been doing that translation, at the highest level, for more than two decades. From a Merrick, New York studio at 52 Benson Lane, the company designs and builds custom theaters all over the country and internationally — and the portfolio reads like a magazine.
The roster includes Max Weinberg's private theater (Conan O'Brien's longtime musical director and Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band drummer), JBL's corporate showroom, and dozens of named projects with their own design language: Symphony of Light, The Nashville, The Jaffe, Hamptons Elegance, The Norman, Cinéma Vérité, The Bozza, The Gold, The Southampton, The Ellipse, The Reyes, The Palm Beach, and many more. Each has been published with full photography and design notes on the AcousticSmart theaters page.
How AcousticSmart began
The story, in the founder's own words: Richard Charschan was manufacturing acoustic panels and architectural specialty products when he got a call from a high-end audio dealer. The dealer's client wasn't satisfied with the sound quality of his new system and was ready to return the whole thing. Could acoustic panels help? Richard arrived, placed panels in strategic positions to absorb reflections and tune the room properly, and the client kept the system.
Acoustic panels — until then, a commercial-only product — had found their place in the home. AcousticSmart was born from that single project. Richard then made the deliberate move from supplying panels to designing and building entire theaters, because controlling the acoustics is only half the equation: the room itself has to be designed around the listening experience.
Today, AcousticSmart's detail-obsessed architect Mark Sorin leads an in-house team of specialty carpenters, designers, and craftsmen — every project is designed, fabricated, and finished by people on staff rather than handed off across multiple subcontractors. That model is unusual at the top of the home-theater market and is the reason the firm can hold finish quality across rooms with very different stylistic intents.
HomeTheaterology™ — the AcousticSmart methodology
The firm has trademarked its design process as HomeTheaterology™ — a signature methodology for crafting private cinemas that are precisely engineered, visually striking, and effortlessly comfortable. From the company's own positioning on the homepage: "For those who don't just watch movies… they experience them."
It is also the title of "Home Theaterology", the book Richard Charschan has positioned as the most comprehensive book ever written about luxury home theaters — an indispensable guide for any client beginning the design journey.
What AcousticSmart actually builds
The product line is broader than most home-theater specialists. From the AcousticSmart products page:
- Custom home theaters — both new construction and renovation, in styles ranging from modern elegance to fully themed environments. Pre-designed packages also available for clients who want a turnkey path.
- Home theater seating — the proprietary Transformer Genesis seating line (quilted patterns, motorized recline, console arms with integrated remote trays and charging) and the Monroe seating line in leathers and fabrics. Front-row chaises, Transformer PODs with interchangeable attachments, lifestyle seating for multi-purpose rooms.
- Star ceilings — fiber-optic ceilings configurable as random or fixed patterns, dimmable to suit mood.
- Theater curtains — motorized stage-style curtains that physically open before the film begins.
- Smart Art — custom panoramic art panels that can be color-matched and used to conceal speakers behind acoustically transparent fabric.
- Acoustical products — proprietary acoustic fabrics, U-Boat joist isolators (cost-effective platform decoupling for THX-certified floors), Sound Shaper mass-loaded barriers, isolation clips, sound barriers, and wall panels.
- Lighting — sconces and indirect ambient fixtures designed for theater applications.
The Max Weinberg theater and the JBL showroom
Two projects illustrate the range of what AcousticSmart takes on. The first is the private theater of Max Weinberg — drummer for Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band and Musical Director of Late Night with Conan O'Brien. The second is the corporate showroom for JBL, the global audio brand. JBL has access to virtually any home-theater designer in the world; they chose AcousticSmart to build the room that demonstrates their loudspeakers. The team worked alongside JBL's own acoustician to create an environment that supports the company's sound at reference level — in a space that is also beautiful and comfortable enough to hold a meeting in.
Where AcousticSmart fits in a luxury home build
AcousticSmart is the right specification when the client wants a themed or fully designed cinema rather than a strictly technical reference room — when the theater is meant to be a destination space with its own architectural identity. The firm pairs naturally with the technical integrator who handles control, projection, processing, networking, and AV calibration. AcousticSmart focuses on the room itself: the seating, the millwork, the acoustic treatments behind the fabric, the ceiling, the lighting, the curtain, the floor isolation, and the entry experience.
How Restrepo Innovations works with AcousticSmart
On the right project — a dedicated theater in a tri-state luxury residential build, a multi-room media wing in a Hamptons or Hudson Valley estate, a screening space in a Manhattan townhouse or commercial showroom — we coordinate with AcousticSmart on the room while we deliver Crestron control, video processing, projection, screens, speakers, immersive audio calibration, lighting control integration with Lutron and Ketra, networking, and security. The handoffs are clean because AcousticSmart designs the room around the AV equipment we specify, and we calibrate the AV around the acoustic treatment they install.
Michael Restrepo on the partnership: "AcousticSmart is the right call when a client wants a theater that is a real architectural statement — not just a media room with a screen and seven speakers. Richard and Mark Sorin's team builds rooms that feel intentional from the moment you walk in, and their finish quality is in a different category than what most home-theater specialists can deliver. When we're the integrator and they're the room, the result is the kind of cinema clients show off to every guest."
If you are planning a dedicated home theater, screening room, or themed media space in the tri-state area, contact Restrepo Innovations — we design, integrate, and calibrate AcousticSmart-built rooms across luxury residential and select commercial work in NJ, NY, and CT.