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There is no down time for Ray Martinez.

The combination of rampant high-end development in the Yampa Valley and the digitization of American life has led to the perfect storm for Martinez's business - that is, fully integrating the data, video, audio, heating and lighting systems of the grandest new estates popping up left and right.

Take the plans for a sprawling new residence on Ski Trail Lane, directly underneath the Steamboat Ski Area gondola. At the South Copper Frontage Road office of Paragon Technology Group, Martinez sifts through and translates the complex maze of icons on the wiring plans for this new residence, for which Paragon is under contract: Phone and data jacks, thermostat and touch panel wall mount for indoor gun range with iPod docking station and CM2 CAT5 configurable multimedia video jack for the attached bar's flat-screen TV. Check. Two flush-mount, in-water rectangular speakers for indoor continuous lap pool and temperature sensor remote with humidity control for wine room with keypad wall mount. Check.

There's a whole language of techno-jargon requiring fluency with the ever-evolving set of bells and whistles. Not to mention the miles of speaker wire and coaxial cable Martinez must keep track of.

But Martinez's passion remains incorporating the latest and greatest into the most sacred room of the house, the home theater.

"It puts me in a better place, completely relaxed in the ultimate environment to unwind and de-stress," Martinez says. "It's all about the 'Experience,' where you can truly lose yourself in a song from a CD or a concert DVD or be totally absorbed into a movie in the comfort of your own home."

Martinez has been creating that capital-E experience in Steamboat since the VHS era, when he was out there wiring speakers for his solo start-up business, Custom Design Audio. Through repeat business and referrals, Martinez built the business, merging three years ago with Paragon, which now has offices in Steamboat, Vail and Aspen and a main warehouse and AutoCAD drafting and engineering department hub in Glenwood Springs. Established in Steamboat as Paragon's vice president, Martinez was ready for the advent of the 1,800-acre Marabou luxury land preservation subdivision and with it, a theater opportunity of a lifetime.

"We needed a theater experience that exceeded what our owners had in their own homes," said Marabou lead developer and managing partner Jeff Temple. "That meant that, one, we needed the latest technology, and two, we wanted it to be a larger theater experience."

The result is the multi-use Casting Room Theater, which Temple said cost $1 million between the eco-friendly building and the system Paragon installed. Martinez could go on about the 20 stadium leather recliners (with two spots for people with disabilities), the dual projectors, the JBL Synthesis audio package and the 14 1/2-foot wide, 167-inch concave screen with multi-masking properties for three screen settings. But it's a lot easier for him to hop on the touch panel and search through the cover art of the hundreds of CDs and DVDs stored on the Kaleidescape system server, pull one up and let the four hidden dual 10-inch subwoofers do the rest.

The shaking seats and dropped jaws get to the end goal of full immersion in the images and in the sounds, whether by the impact of a blockbuster car chase or the subtlety of a jazz pianist. Paragon can take the same components of the Marabou theater, like the three-chip 1080p DLP projector, Kaleidescape and touch-screen controls, and customize them to the design requests and acoustics of a private residence.

But it's all for a price, and suddenly there's a lot more people in Steamboat who can pay that top dollar and who are attracting the gaze of other custom theater and media room design firms.

Conundrum Technologies already has an office set up in the Clock Tower building in Ski Time Square and a foothold in the Steamboat market, having created marquee theaters such as the one at a Storm Mountain Ranch residence that Conundrum CEO Jason Perez said he would "put up against any home theater in the world."

The standout feature Perez highlights is the pair of Meridian digital speakers that move out on motorized tracks from recesses in the wall beside the 10-foot screen. Although the speakers cost $55,000 together, Perez says their capacity to process 256 million instructions per second puts the sound quality on par with a theater in the half-a-million range that typically sends analog signals across speaker wires from the processor and amp to the speakers.

It all depends on the wattage you want, the sounds and noises you need, and the desire you have to capture the sights and sounds, replicating the real thing in your own private sensory den.