Layla Laidouci is immersed in sonic sensation when she visits HYRISS (Hyper Real Immersive Sound Space) at the L-Acoustics showroom in London, UK.
Nestled on a tree-lined road in a quiet corner of Highgate, London, is a showroom unlike any other. HYRISS uses unique technologies like L-ISA spatial audio and Anima machine learning to diversify a single space into different sound modes, known as ‘signatures’: cinema, sports stadium, wellness retreat and concert hall. The combined software ensures sound is no longer secondary to visual design, asserting a prominent role in mood and action for custom applications.
Masterminded by L-Acoustics, HYRISS removes the need for dedicated media rooms in an ‘endless’ entertainment offering. I head into the surreal soundscape to find out why L-Acoustics believes hardware like the L-ISA Processor II is poised to transform personal listening and, by definition, the residential market.
Before we begin the HYRISS demo, I’m struck by the psychedelic interiors of the room: a Gothic chandelier presides over purple furniture in a design that speaks to different periods. Elegant and vaguely domestic, the walls throw out subtle light and AI-generated artwork to coordinate with the audio signatures.
Nick Fichte, business development manager at L-Acoustics, opens the demo in mid-speech. I gasp as his voice cuts through the sounds of life – people next door, adjacent offices, murmurs of traffic –with freakish immediacy. He sounds out the world with one button, combining sound and storytelling to trigger the sensing microphones around the room.
Removed from reality, we begin with a dry home theatre suited to intimate audio and soundproofing. We are stirred by Lady Gaga’s gutsy vocals from‘A Star is Born’, before Tom Cruise makes his hypersonic ascent in‘Top Gun: Maverick’ in a sequence flexing the room’s discreet Storm Audio installation. The system supports mono and Dolby Atmos formats in a carefully placed, three-dimensional network of speakers. Both movie clips showcase a whole-room aesthetic, customising the walls with virtual posters to immerse us in a cinematic microcosm.

The display panels are crucial to the wellness showcase too, our next signature bringing the sounds of nature indoors. We witness the cocoon-like environment transform into a sprawling rainforest, brought to life by the surrounding displays – Fichte explains these were modelled on car windows to offer variation on a single landscape. As we soak up the visuals, Anima technology uses AI algorithms to make elements of the rainforest intelligible across a 3D field: birdsong, breeze and rainfall travel in various channels in the room, washing over us with the ‘emotional resonance’ HYRISS promises.
Fichte leads us to the centre of the room, where there are a total of 60 concealed speakers placed in every direction at 15-degree angles. We kick off the live demo with an orchestral rendition of the Harry Potter score by John Williams; the HYRISS ‘Ambiance’ feature kicks in here to change the room’s acoustics to a reverberant concert-hall setting, using microphones and the L-ISA Processor II to spatialise and separate multiple sources. Together these position instruments in space to replicate live concert from various points in the room. The in-wall speakers and subwoofers deliver stereo amplification to tease nuances from the music, isolating low frequency sound and audio components to highlight the multiplicity of the orchestra. Our next track is a similarly ambitious take on an original recording, Bon Iver’s live performance of ‘Holocene’. The studio version, themed around adventure, is tailored to our discerning ears as we unpick the horn and snare arrangement with our own sense of rediscovery.
Our final showcase arrives: nightclub mode. EDM thunders through high power amplification, integrated with the spatial processing hardware to optimise volume and frequency for custom listening. Fichte uses a control interface to ensure sound goes to individual speakers, explodes into a preset nightclub scenario or offers voice enhancement according wholly to preference.
This single room solution not only uses technology to adapt art over time, but also brings substance to high spends as a versatile home entertainment package. It comes as no surprise that residential applications of L-Acoustics are growing in the US to boost the existing appetite in the UK and Switzerland. HYRISS uses acoustic engineering to transcend time and space, awakening our instinct for audio with purpose.
