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Case file
Whole-home audio on Yamaha, Sonance and BluOS — invisible in-ceiling speakers, hidden subs, room-corrected and zone-routed.
— Multi-Room Audio · Zone 02
Four rooms, four speakers, one decision.
Sonance disappears behind plaster in the kitchen. KEF Reference lives flush in the lounge ceiling. Waterfall's glass cabinets sit in the theatre. Polk Reserve handles the study.
Pick a room. Tap the speaker to hear the room.
Four-zone reference home · synthesised demo audio
Specify the rooms before you specify the speakers.
Sonance, KEF, Waterfall Audio, Polk and Yamaha specified per room — not as a catalogue stack.
SONANCE · KEF · WATERFALL · POLK · YAMAHA
/ Zone Selector
/ Spec
KEF Ci-R Reference in-ceiling
Uni-Q tweeter + 6.5" mid/bass on a single coaxial axis
Zone 02 · 32 m² · ceiling-flush
Multi-Room Audio — zone graph
- Lounge: KEF Ci-R Reference in-ceiling (KEF). Stereo + spoken word.
- Home Theatre: Waterfall Niagara III glass-cabinet reference (Waterfall Audio). 7.1.4 Atmos cinema.
- Kitchen + Dining: Sonance Visual Performance VP66R (Sonance). BGM during prep + service.
- Study: Polk Audio Reserve R200 bookshelf (Polk Audio). Calls + focused listening.
/ The discipline, in detail
How we approach multi-room audio.
Multi-room audio should follow the family, not the other way around. We engineer in-ceiling and in-wall speakers that disappear into the cornice, with magnetic grilles, paint-matched bezels, and a sub channel running under the floor where the bass needs to be.
Room correction (Dirac, ARC) is run per zone. Bossa nova in the dining hall, news radio in the kitchen, the kid's playlist in their bedroom, all from one source rack — that's the design intent. Streaming sources are unified through Roon, BluOS or Rako.
Outdoor zones — pool, lawn, terrace — get IP-rated speakers tuned for distance dispersion. The whole layer is documented, addressable, and serviceable without lifting plaster.
On record
Every multi-room audio engagement is documented end-to-end — design, programming, commissioning, calibration — and handed over with the files our successors would need if we were never to return.
/ Where we deploy this
Active across 3 sectors.
Multi-Room Audio is rarely a standalone brief — it sits inside a wider sector practice with its own codes, expectations and operating rhythm.
/ Sister services
The rest of av.
A serious brief usually crosses two or three of these. Read across the discipline — we deliver them as one contract.
- 01
Home Theatre
Reference cinema, in your living room.
Custom-engineered private cinemas — projector, processor, screen, seating and acoustics designed to a single sweet-spot, certified to THX or Dolby Atmos.0 - 03
Acoustic Solutions
Rooms that sound the way they look.
Acoustic design and treatment for cinemas, auditoriums, recording studios, places of worship and conference halls — engineered absorbers, diffusers, bass traps and ceiling clouds.1 - 04
Video Walls
Pixels at the scale of architecture.
Direct-view LED, fine-pitch LCD and rear-projection video walls for command centres, lobbies, broadcast studios, control rooms and event venues.2 - 05
Smart Classrooms
Every student. Every word. Every time.
Interactive flat-panels, lecture-capture, voice-lift and learning-management integrations — engineered to NCERT, NEP-2020 and university lab specifications.3 - 06
LED Panels & Projectors
The right pixels for the room.
Direct-view LED, OLED, microLED and laser projection — selected to the room's lux, throw, sightline and content.4 - 07
Professional Audio & PA Systems
Intelligible, every seat in the house.
Public address, voice-evacuation and concert-grade audio for auditoriums, places of worship, stadia, transit hubs and event venues.5 - 08
Auditoriums & Boardrooms
Rooms that begin on time.
Turnkey auditorium, boardroom, training-room and conference-room AV — display, audio, control, video-conferencing and lighting integrated to a single touch.6 - 09
Digital Conferencing & Voting Systems
Sittings, voting, interpretation — one system, every seat.
Parliamentary-grade digital conferencing for legislative chambers, council halls and corporate boardrooms — mic management, electronic voting, 8-channel interpretation, camera control and chamber recording, integrated through Bosch DCN, Dicentis and Integrus.7 - 10
Recording Studios & Nightlife
Rooms tuned to the recording.
Recording studio design, post-production suites, broadcast booths and nightlife audio — acoustic isolation, monitoring, console integration and DJ infrastructure.8 - 11
Stage Lighting
Light that performs.
Theatre, concert, event and place-of-worship stage lighting — moving heads, washes, profiles, pixel-mapped LED and DMX/Art-Net control.9 - 12
Conference Room AV
Single-touch join. Every meeting.
Microsoft Teams Rooms, Zoom Rooms and Cisco Webex-certified meeting rooms, with auto-tracking cameras, ceiling-array microphones and one-touch room controllers.10 - 13
Restaurant, Bar & Nightclub AV
The room that the night needs.
Hospitality venue AV — JBL Professional, K-array and Kgear audio with stage lighting, façade scenes, DJ booth integration and acoustic isolation from neighbouring premises.11
Engineering toolkit
Tools to scope this work
Calculators and reference checkers we use ourselves to sense-check the engineering before any drawings change hands.
- AV · Cinema
Cinema Sizer
Room dimensions in, recommended screen size, seat layout, Atmos format and projector throw out. Reference / Premium / Media-room tiers.
Screen · seats · AtmosOpen - AV · Audio · Coverage
Speaker Coverage Planner
Engineering-grade speaker coverage and SPL planner across K-array, KGEAR, JBL Professional, d&b audiotechnik, L-Acoustics, Fonestar and Ecler. Predicts SPL at listener distance, coverage radius on the -6 dB dispersion axis and quantity needed for the room. Sources cited.
7 brands · SPL predictionOpen - Smart Home
Smart Home Discovery Wizard
For villa and apartment owners — pick your home, the zones that matter and the experiences you want, and map a coordination scope and room checklist. Not a final design, device count or security layout.
Advisory · discoveryOpen
/ Engineering concepts
Related engineering concepts
Concept
JBL Synthesis Cinema
JBL's reference home-cinema speaker and amplification line. Custom-installed Atmos arrays with Crown amplification — the loudspeaker layer behind the Trinnov + JBL Synthesis reference cinema specification.
Concept
Trinnov Altitude Processor
French immersive cinema processor. Reference 3D-audio processing with Optimizer room correction. The default specification for reference-grade 9.1.6 and 11.4.6 Dolby Atmos rooms.
Concept
Harman Pro Ecosystem (JBL · Crown · BSS · Soundcraft · AKG)
Harman Professional brand family used across our cinema, auditorium and PA deployments — JBL loudspeakers, Crown amplification, BSS DSP, Soundcraft consoles, AKG microphones.
Concept
Premium Residence Archetype
Private villa or premium apartment, architect-led, multi-system: Rako or KNX lighting, multi-room audio, reference cinema, climate, surveillance and IT — engineered as one integrated layer from the drawing stage.
/ Used alongside
Commonly deployed alongside
Sector
Hospitality
Guest experience, engineered.
Sector
Residential
The premium home, made quiet.
Service
Home Theatre
Reference cinema, in your living room.
Service
Acoustic Solutions
Rooms that sound the way they look.
Service
Home & Office Automation
One press. The whole space responds.
Service
Auditoriums & Boardrooms
Rooms that begin on time.
/ Frequently asked
Multi-Room Audio — what buyers ask first.
Yamaha MusicCast or BluOS — which whole-home streaming layer?
Choose Yamaha MusicCast for 4–8 zone retrofit homes where the family lives in Apple Music, Spotify and Tidal and wants simple, reliable streaming. Choose BluOS (NAD, Bluesound) when audiophile playback matters — Roon-ready, MQA, hi-res lossless, and a more open multi-room control surface that scales cleanly to 12+ zones. Both ride the same in-ceiling speaker layer (Sonance, KEF, Waterfall, Polk) — the choice is the streaming backbone, not the speakers. Where lighting and audio scenes need to fire together — dim the cove, fade the music to 30%, page through every zone — we bridge MusicCast or BluOS into the Rako or KNX scene graph as a separate layer.
Can speakers really be invisible?
Yes — Stealth Acoustics and Sonance Invisible Series speakers mount behind plaster and disappear entirely; for critical-listening rooms we still recommend visible reference speakers. Stealth Acoustics and Sonance Invisible Series mount behind plaster and disappear entirely. Sound quality is excellent for background and voice; for critical-listening rooms we still recommend visible reference speakers.
Yamaha vs architectural speakers — which is right for the home?
Choose Yamaha or visible speakers in kitchens, bedrooms and outdoor decks; choose architectural in-ceiling and in-wall (Sonance, Cornered, Waterfall) where the design wants the sound to disappear. We mix both freely. Yamaha is excellent where the speaker can be visible and the source is streamed — kitchens, bedrooms, outdoor decks. Architectural in-ceiling and in-wall speakers (Sonance, Cornered, Waterfall) are the right answer where the design wants the sound to disappear into the architecture. We mix both in the same home freely.
How many audio zones does a typical villa need?
A 5,000-sqft villa typically needs 8–12 named audio zones, each with independent source, volume and EQ through a BSS Soundweb, Symetrix or Yamaha MTX audio matrix. Eight to twelve named zones is typical: living, dining, kitchen, master bedroom, master bath, two guest rooms, study, deck or pool, gym, cinema. Each zone gets independent source selection, volume and parametric EQ through a dedicated audio DSP — BSS Soundweb London, Symetrix Radius or Yamaha MTX5-D. The Rako or KNX lighting bus rides alongside as a separate scene layer, so 'Dinner' fades the music and dims the cove together.
Will multi-room audio work with my existing AV receiver?
Sometimes — modern Denon and Marantz receivers support HEOS multi-room natively, and Yamaha integrates via Connect:Amp; we audit the existing receiver before quoting. Modern Denon and Marantz receivers support HEOS multi-room natively, and Yamaha integrates with most receivers via their Connect:Amp. We audit the existing equipment before quoting; if the receiver is the bottleneck we will say so rather than work around it.
What's the difference between distributed audio and zone audio?
Distributed audio sends one source to many zones with the same content; zone audio gives each zone independent source selection — we design for zone audio in any home above 3 zones. Sends one source to many zones with the same content (a single playlist heard everywhere); zone audio gives each zone independent source selection. We design for zone audio in any home above 3 zones — it costs 30% more in equipment but is dramatically more usable.
· Begin
Begin a
multi-room audio
brief.
Tell us about the building, the timeline, and what success looks like a year after handover. We will reply within two working days with a written response, not a sales pitch.