L-Acoustics Soka Hits New Heights in London Cinema Room L-Acoustics Soka Hits New Heights in London Cinema Room...

 Homeplay creates an immersive home cinema space that delivers pure escapism thanks to professional quality audio from L-Acoustics

LONDON, UK – August 2025 Tucked away inside a London townhouse in Westminster, what was once a lacklustre media room has now been reborn as a fully immersive cinematic sanctuary, thanks to Surrey-based integrator Homeplay.

The transformation began after the client – already impressed with Homeplay’s lighting and automation work throughout the property – decided to overhaul the underwhelming media space. Poor sound quality, rattling walls, and intrusive pipe noise had made the room virtually unusable.

“The room was pretty uninspiring and as such was completely unused,” recalls James Ratcliffe of Homeplay. To meet the client’s ambitious vision, the team at Homeplay stripped the room back to its bones, took on the role of main contractor, and re-imagined the space from the ground up – integrating advanced acoustic treatments, managing structural upgrades, and ultimately delivering a state-of-the-art home cinema powered by the rich, authentic sound of L-Acoustics.

One aspect of the project that was less challenging, however, was the choice of audio system. The client is a seasoned audiophile and has some very high-end speakers in another room that Homeplay had supplied, but he wanted something with a more dynamic, mid-forward sound for this space. He’d already heard the L-Acoustics system at the Homeplay showroom and was excited to visit L-Acoustics in Highgate for the full experience.

“The client is a music lover and was blown away by the experience at L-Acoustics,” adds Ratcliffe. “The sound creates such an intimate, immersive feeling of being there, right at the heart of the performance or in the middle of the action, that it’s hard to beat. He loved it, and that was that.”  

The cinema room system now features three Soka on-wall loudspeakers, two Syva Subs, and ten X4i, six for surrounds and four for height in a 9.1.4 Dolby Atmos configuration. For the LCR channels, Soka were chosen due to their slim profile and shallow depth, the screen wall has two windows on it, which the customer wanted to keep in place. Homeplay created a fabric wall around the windows with wooden trim, which meant the Soka could be positioned perfectly with the left channel being beside the left window, right beside the right window and the centre being perfectly centred between the two windows. To make sure the subwoofers were in the right place, Homeplay created two window seats beneath these sash windows and hid two Syva Subs within these traps for the LFE channel so that again they were not seen but certainly heard and felt.

The whole system is powered by one L-Acoustics LA7.16i amplified controller. This powerhouse delivers 1,300 watts per channel but only takes up 2U of rack space, which is perfect when space is at a premium, like it is in this central London home.

The audio system also includes a StormAudio Evo digital immersive sound processor, which offers up to 24-channel decoding and upmixing of Dolby Atmos and other immersive sound formats. Both the LA7.16i and Evo support AES67 (the audio over IP format) so both devices are connected to one another over the network, which reduced cabling time for the Homeplay team and ensures a fully digital signal path. The audio is complemented by a Screen Research 3.3m 16:9 drop-down screen with black backing and a Sony 4K laser projector. Acoustic treatments are by Cinema Build Systems and the system is controlled by Control4 integrated with lighting and shading control by Lutron.

The installation, programming and configuration of the new system passed without a hitch, resulting in a very happy customer for Homeplay.  “The client is really pleased with the result,” says Ratcliffe. “He uses the room for gaming, watching films, and also enjoying his favourite music. It’s become a space where he genuinely enjoys spending time and relaxing. In fact, he loves the room so much that he’s just installed a desk behind the sofa and uses it as his home office now! We’re proud of how it turned out – especially the L-Acoustics audio system we’ve delivered. It sounds fantastic.”  

For more information on Homeplay, visit www.homeplay.tv.