Browns Luxury Boutique

Challenges

By far the biggest challenge was striking the right balance between sound coverage and the designers’ aesthetic expectations. K-array’s physically minimalist profiles and the readily available choice of standard cabinet finishes made this an easy task, with the polished silver treatment allowing the speakers to disappear into the starkly modern décor, and in many cases be completely invisible. A few are finished in black, while in one area, white finished line arrays are fully integrated into the surrounding white ceiling light fixtures.

Because of the building’s Grade II status, all the showrooms are essentially designed as self-contained shells as nothing is allowed to touch the original structure. Some speakers are recessed into the metal framework, while in the larger areas the KZ14 mini line arrays are mounted on custom brackets with a pre-determined angle and with only one fixing into the re-plastered ceiling.

The Solution

Based on positional drawings and initial acoustic predictions, we specified a selection of K-array speakers that would fit the impossibly small physical spaces from the Lyzard, Truffle and Rumble sub-compact ranges.

While we are able to demonstrate quite easily that the coverage and SPL would be exactly as required, the designers insisted that we integrate most of the speakers into their railing structures, either forward-facing or upward facing for reflection. Subwoofers were hidden into floor vents as again no visible speakers were permitted.

The audio experience at Browns’ flagship London store is total. Every one of the 26 individually Extron-controlled zones, including the changing rooms, enjoys the same high level of sound quality from Browns’ own specially curated playlists, produced by the 22 Lyzard-KZ1XP mini point source and 72 Lyzard-KZ14 ultra-miniature line array loudspeakers. These are supplemented by 17 Truffle-KTR24 compact subwoofers and 19 Rumble-KU44 compact subwoofers.

Distributing faultless audio to so many loudspeakers and to a labyrinth of discrete spaces simultaneously required a creative power amplification infrastructure, which was only made possible by multi-channel intelligent amplifiers from Innosonix, another of 2B Heard’s UK distributed brands. Offering the world’s highest channel density, two MA32/D 32 channel models with built-in Dante networking power the entire speaker system.

In the main event space, known as the Yellow Room, a pair of Thunder-KMT18P 18” subwoofers lay down the low-end foundation for a formidable Kayman-KY102 portable line array system with sufficient grunt to prompt a well-known visiting DJ to enquire where he could get a system to tour with. From someone who lives and breathes music that is indeed a strong testimonial.

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