Chicago Dream Garage: Two MicroLED Walls, Golf Sim & Eleanor with Trifecto

Okay, this one was wild. I rolled into Horizon’s Chicago garage in an officially licensed Eleanor from Gone in 60 Seconds. We hit the turntable, the garage door opened, and I genuinely did not know where to look first.

There were incredible cars stacked everywhere, a recessed 163″ Just Video Walls MicroLED, theater seats sitting in the middle of the showroom, Full Swing golf, hidden rooms, a wash bay, and custom tech in literally every direction. Chris from Trifecto Audio Video walked me through it all, and the deeper we went, the crazier it got.

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First up: a 163″ video wall in the middle of the garage

The first thing that grabbed me was the main wall. It’s a 163″, 1.2 mm pitch MicroLED built for a massive room with tall ceilings and a ton of light. The client wanted something big, bright, and impossible to ignore. Yeah, I think they nailed that.

Theater seats sit right in the middle of the showroom, so this is not a wall people admire from across the room. They actually use it. Four-source multiview, Apple TVs, and camera feeds can all share the canvas, and the picture still looks fantastic from the kitchen and office. Even turned off, the matte face nearly disappears into the wall instead of becoming a giant black rectangle.

Of course, a room this big needed serious sound too. Trifecto used eight large-format Klipsch speakers, DSP amplification, and two ceiling-hung subwoofers. Control4 ties it all together, so music and video still feel simple even though an enormous amount of technology is working behind the scenes.

And somehow, that was only the first room

Upstairs, the loft looks out over the entire car collection. There’s a pool table, a bar, KEF Reference audio, and a recessed 97″ LG OLED. Even the kitchen doubles as a Teams-ready meeting space with a DTEN display, Control4 lighting, and Lutron shades. Everywhere I turned, another part of the building had been designed to do more than one thing.

Back downstairs, the Full Swing golf simulator sits in its own sunken bay with the sensors, projector, pipework, and PC tucked away. Then there’s the wash bay, where Sonance all-weather speakers keep the game or music going while you clean a Hennessey VelociRaptor. Totally normal garage stuff, right?

Hidden rooms, outdoor living, and another video wall

Outside, the motorized louvered roof opens for sun and closes for rain. Heaters and outdoor audio make the patio usable far beyond perfect Chicago weather. Back inside, doors disappear into the millwork and lead to a private conference room with another DTEN display, a custom-width Leon soundbar, and motorized shades. I love stuff like this. The technology is everywhere, but the rooms never feel like they were built around a pile of gear.

Then Chris showed me the second Just Video Walls MicroLED in a dedicated dark theater. This is what made the project so interesting to me. The showroom wall was tuned below 100 nits so it stayed comfortable in that bright, open space. Here, the same product family could stretch its legs in a completely different room. Same technology, completely different experience.

This all started as an old automotive garage

The finished space is so polished that it’s easy to forget where it began. This was an old automotive garage. Service pits came out, floors went all the way down to dirt, and new rooms and a mezzanine had to be carved into the existing building.

Chris told me Trifecto spent about a year here from start to finish. That meant a ton of project management and constant coordination with designers, electricians, and every other trade on site. Existing concrete above the ceilings made even basic speaker placement a challenge. All of the piping and infrastructure had to be planned early so the finished technology could disappear.

And then we opened the rack room. Three full-size racks handle the network, audio, and video. Trifecto built and tested them at the shop before bringing them to the site, which is exactly how you keep a project this complicated under control.

There are nine Apple TVs, AV Pro Edge 10-gig MXNet video distribution, and separate NovaStar processors for the two video walls. The MX40 runs the giant showroom wall, while the MX2000 handles the theater. This is the kind of work nobody notices when it’s done right, and that’s the point.

The best part of this project was the trust behind it

Chris and the Trifecto team first worked with this client about ten years ago on their home. They were not looking for another transactional installer. They wanted a personal technology partner who would understand how they live and stay with them as the projects got bigger.

A decade later, that relationship turned into this place and somehow got me behind the wheel of Eleanor in Chicago. That kind of trust is also what a MicroLED project needs. The mounting, alignment, processing, control, and commissioning all have to work together. I’m incredibly proud that Trifecto trusted Just Video Walls for both walls in a garage this ambitious.

Want a wall like this? Start with Just Video Walls. Chicago-area clients can find Trifecto at trifectoavp.com. Integrators who want the same partnership can become a dealer.