"Oh God — how trite," Howard Stern once told him. "Every guy in radio collects old radios."
Indeed, some 8 years ago, his Stern boss responded to Gary's new hobby by practically calling him the c-word: a "cliché." But Gary defended himself. "I wasn't collecting them because I work in radio," he says. "I collected them because I thought they were cool. I'm more relaxed about it now, but at first I wouldn't buy them unless they worked."
Since then, his collection has expanded to antique microphones and phonographs, and he plans to start gathering up vintage TVs as well. Not exactly what you'd expect from a guy who makes his living orchestrating the antics of porn stars, flatulence experts, and angry dwarves.
Yes, this would be the castle ruled by (with apologies to Stern) the real king of all media: The guy who now has no fewer than four brand-new TiVo Series3 high-def DVRs and who loves to slide a movie into a DVD player or barricade himself in a room to listen to new CDs or — when the weather chills — park himself in front of the plasma TV all day ("like a lunatic") to take total advantage of DirecTV's NFL package ("every game, every Sunday," as the slogan goes).
"It's unbelievable," Gary says of his life's audio/video makeover, which includes a Russound-powered music system in every first-floor room as well as in the second-floor master bedroom and bathroom. "I feel like I got everything I wanted. And my wife was really cool — she was just like, 'Go do it.' I love having audio in all these rooms — it's all the stuff I always wanted to do but wasn't able to before. I would have liked automated lighting at our last house, too, but I wasn't going to start snaking wires through the walls — it wasn't that important."
In the past, Gary says, "I would always splurge for a good TV. I always tried to do research — that Sony XBR up in the kids' playroom was a top-of-the-line TV in its day. I just got rid of an RCA TV. It wasn't as cool as I thought it would be, but it had all these features, like freeze-frame, and you could watch 20 channels at once. I've always been into weird gadgets and stuff."
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Then, through a mutual friend, Gary met installer Gerry McCabe, co-owner of Ace Multimedia in Orange, Connecticut. Gary remembers that "Gerry was the only one who came to me and said, 'Here's a proposal to just wire the house. If you don't do anything now, I can come back later and do this, and this, and this.' So I feel like I'm fully wired now — and that's the big difference."
As far as McCabe's concerned, Gary's been pretty easy to work with. "He's technology-savvy," McCabe says. "Sometimes I have to sell a client on something. A lot of people will say, 'What do I need automated lighting for?' He was an easy sell because he can actually appreciate these things. He's into his sound and he likes to record TV shows and come home and watch them when he wants. He's a typical-to-high-end user."
When it came time to design the system, the question was: Would Gary keep down with the Joneses? ("Down" rather than "up" in that most folk in this part of Connecticut play down the conspicuous consumption.) "Some people like to have high-end A/V cabinets so everybody can see the polished aluminum and shiny chrome inside," McCabe says. "But where we live, everything is colonial and traditional — there are very few contemporaries. It's like, we like technology but we don't want to see it. That's how my customers are."
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And just how would this jibe with the guy who's appeared on The Howard Stern Show wearing nothing but tighty-whities and a set of headphones? As with McCabe's jobs for other customers, Gary's system is pretty unobtrusive. The lighting control keypads on the walls are barely noticeable, and the Preference ceiling speakers blend right in with the décor. Meanwhile, almost all the A/V gear is stacked downstairs in a basement closet, operated via remote controls and the Russound wall controllers.
One piece of gear Gary's definitely not hiding away is the Panasonic TH-58PZ700U 58-inch 1080p plasma TV, which is new on the market this spring. Some of McCabe's customers actually have cabinets built over fireplaces to hide their flat-screen TVs. And while Gary's Panni does indeed rest over the great-room fireplace, the set is out, proud and unenclosed. (Hey, he never claimed to be an old WASP from Newport.)
"You know, if I'd gotten the 65-inch plasma, I'd have had to move the sconces," Gary muses, referring to the light fixtures mounted to the right and left of the set. "The TV wouldn't have fit. Guys don't think about that stuff; it's 'Just give me the largest TV you have.' The biggest issue people have with the Panasonic 103-inch TV — aside from the fact that it's 70 grand and that they're on back-order — is that they buy them and then literally can't get them in the house. It's like the size of a mattress, but you can't bend it around the corner."
Setting out some sandwiches on the kitchen island, Gary's pretty blonde wife Mary pipes in: "Then I wouldn't have ordered sconces. I would have said, 'Just fill the whole top of the mantle with the TV.'" (Seriously, is this woman a total babe or what?)
But Gary uses the room for more than just TV and movie watching. "It's also a great place to listen to music," he says. "When I was unpacking, I found two DVD-Audio discs someone had given me. One of them was Fleetwood Mac's Rumours, so I put it on and it sounded fantastic in this room."
But the A/V setup isn't the only sophisticated system in the house. For instance, the lighting controls have been programmed to help get Gary out of the house early in the morning with maximal ease and with minimal disruptions to the other family members. When he rises in darkness at 4:30 a.m. to get ready for the commute to Sirius HQ in midtown Manhattan to do the Stern show, he makes his way out of bed and into the master bathroom, and from there, into his closet, where he dresses and checks his e-mail on a laptop stationed there. (He designed this whole regimen with the help of his architect.) At that point, he brings the lighting into play via a button on the control panel labeled "to kitchen." When Gary presses it, a path lights the way from his closet — which opens out into the second-floor hallway — to downstairs.
And really, this is just one example of well-planned lighting. Each panel contains multiple buttons, each controlling the different lamps in each room, allowing for switching on and off or just dimming — all conveniently labeled. And each panel also contains a switch for turning on the lights in the next room as well.
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And Gary's hardly done yet. "About 7 or 8 months ago, while we were in the process of doing our house, we went over to Mike Smeriglio's place to get some ideas, since they're good friends of ours," he says. (For a look at the Smeriglios' home installation, see Custom Fit.) "We saw their home theater — which I thought was the coolest thing — and, as we were leaving, my wife said to me, 'God, if anybody in this world should have a home theater, it's you.' And she's right. She knows me. I watch a ton of DVDs."
Gary has definitely been bitten hard by the home theater bug. "I think a lot of people get one because, when they're building a big house, they think it's just another element you should have — a status symbol. Some people say to me, 'You're never going to use the home theater.' And I say, 'No, you're talking to the wrong guy.' I'll definitely have the guys down here to watch football. And I get a lot of movies — like, I was sent an Academy screener of Dreamgirls, so we invited some other couples over to watch."
At this point, Gary's trying to figure out exactly where in the basement to build his theater, whether the speakers should be visible or hidden behind a perforated screen, what kind of projector to get — stuff like that.
Still, he might just be most excited by that all-room audio. "I tend to turn it up more when everybody's gone," he says. "We hung a disco ball upstairs in the kids' playroom. When I took my son Lucas up there, I was like, 'Wait — we're going to turn on the ball and the strobe.' And I went over and tuned the satellite radio to the classic disco channel [The Strobe]. We just cranked it, and he was cracking up." All hail the new King.
See the next page for the Equipment List.
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Equipment List |
| Multiroom Audio System Russound CAV6.6 system controller Russound SMS3 Smart Media Server Russound ST2S AM/FM/Sirius satellite-radio tuner Russound iBridge Dock iPod dock Russound R1250MC 12-channel amplifier Russound UNO-TS2 color touchscreen controller (kitchen) (5) Russound UNO-S2 keypads (master bedroom, bonus room, home office, playroom, basement) (7) Russound ALTX2D volume controls (8 pair) Preference Audio Architectural Series K-625 ceiling speakers (kitchen, office, living room, dining room, master bedroom, master bath, bonus room, playroom) Great-Room Home Theater System Panasonic TH-58PZ700U 58-inch 1080p plasma TV (6) Preference Audio K-6LCRS ceiling speakers SoundMatters SubStage 100 subwoofer Toshiba SD-K760 DVD player DirecTV HR 10-250 satellite-TV receiver/DVR Denon AVR887 digital surround receiver Universal Remote MX-700 Home Theater Master remote control Niles MSU140 IR repeater system Other Gear Panasonic TH-42PX60U 42-inch plasma HDTV (master bedroom) Olevia 537H 37-inch LCD HDTV (bonus room) Sony KD2 32 XBR 32-inch CRT TV (playroom) Dell E157FP 15-inch LCD monitor (basement equipment rack) (4) TiVo Series3 high-def DVRs (master bedroom, bonus room, playroom, basement equipment rack) Panamax M5100-EX surge protector Middle Atlantic equipment racks IXOS interconnect cables Windy City Wire structured wiring Lite Touch automated lighting |
For more on Howard Stern's radio show, visit HowardStern.com and Sirius.com
Read the interview with Gary.
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