What kind of audio/video system could demand thrice the power that a typical suburban home draws? I soon find out. Griffith leads me up a flight of stairs and opens a pair of huge bronze doors decorated with cast figures of lions. Behind the doors lies one of the most ornate—yet apparently simple—home theaters I have ever seen. Its character lies in the details. "The fabrics are hand-screened and hand-embroidered," interior designer Mark Cravotta points out. "All of the sconces were cast from original antiques. The carpet is handmade in a single piece.""And all of that gilding you see is 24-karat gold," Griffith adds. "We were all walking around with gold flakes in our hair for a couple of weeks."The decor quickly fades from my consciousness when Griffith taps the Crestron touchscreen to bring down the lights and fire up the home theater system. A few seconds of King Kong are enough to tell me that this theater is to a typical media room what an F-16 fighter is to a Gulfstream business jet: something in the same basic category, but at the same time totally incomparable. My theater chair shakes violently as brontosauruses stampede across the screen. I look down, wondering if Griffith might have added some sort of tactile transducers to shake the seats; he notices and turns the sound down to explain that the theater hosts an astounding 24 subwoofers. "They're all 12-inchers," he says. "I'd rather use a lot of smaller subs than a few large ones because the smaller ones are quicker and more efficient."
