Miro

Brief

A Mayfair dining room with an unconventional plan and an exposed ceiling, requiring even coverage and low frequency support across a layout that does not divide into the neat zones a system design would prefer.

Constraint

We were appointed after the banquette seating had been designed, built and installed. Banquettes are where subwoofers belong in a room like this. Built into the seating, a subwoofer is invisible, coupled to a structure that suits it, and positioned exactly where the audience is. That option was gone before we arrived.

What remained was minimal floor area for enclosures, an exposed ceiling with nowhere to conceal anything, and a plan shape that makes conventional coverage geometry unreliable.

This is a common situation and it is worth naming plainly. Audio is specified late more often than not, and the honest answer is not that the result is compromised, but that the design has to work differently.

Design response

We inverted the usual ratio. Rather than a small number of large subwoofers in a few positions the room could not offer, we specified a larger number of smaller bass enclosures distributed evenly through the space, recovering across many positions what could not be achieved from a few.

We then reduced the room's dependence on floor mounted bass altogether by increasing full range coverage at ceiling level. More full range points, positioned against the actual plan rather than an idealised one, carry more of the range and lower the demand on the bass system that the seating had made difficult to place.

The result is a system shaped by where the room would actually allow hardware, rather than one designed for a room that did not exist.

Integration

Positions were resolved against the exposed ceiling and the completed interior, working within the finished scheme rather than asking for it to be altered.

Outcome

Even coverage and low frequency support across an irregular plan, delivered without altering completed joinery and without visible floor standing hardware in a finished Mayfair interior.