Immersive audio is driving the future of custom install – but it’s a hotly contested term spanning hyperreal soundscapes, home cinema, hi-fi systems and more. In conversation with the experts, Layla Laidouci finds out how it’s shaping residential environments in 2025.
Imagine the orchestra behind John Williams’ Harry Potter score leaping to life in new and profound ways, its strings and brass soaring around you with concert-like precision. Imagine its delightful, dreamy dynamics delivered in such detail they’re almost visual; and now imagine this magnificent sound coming from a four-walled, lowlit room.
This is the magic of HYRISS, the Hyperreal Immersive Sound System at L-Acoustics’ showroom in London, UK. “I describe controlling HYRISS like controlling light,” says Nick Fichte, global business development director for home & yacht at L-Acoustics. “You can paint a room with sound, in the same way a lighting control system allows you to paint a room with light for different uses of a space.”
Created to merge concert-grade sound with architecture, the solution has disrupted the industry since its launch in 2024: integrated speakers work with a L-ISA Processor to transform a single room into ‘endless’ spaces, from a live orchestral soundscape to wellness environment, nightclub and cinema.
“We want people to walk into the space and not really understand where they are,” says Fichte. “As they enter, they immediately start wondering: is it an art gallery? Dining room? Living room?”
HYRISS has come to represent hyper-immersive quality, a critical selling point as traditional home automation increasingly gives way to ‘desmarting’.
As the immersive audio landscape evolves, others in the industry are reaching similar conclusions from different angles.
“We constantly receive enquiries about removing home control systems,” says Katie Sparrevohn, founder of London AV Solutions and new brand Immersifi. “The myth of complexity still holds sway over end users, who don't want or need to pay thousands for new equipment.
“Over the last 24 months, we observed the mid sector moving on from smart home automation. We started looking at some of our best clients and went on to launch Immersifi, a venture into immersive experiences ‘for those who seek more’ in the residential sector.”
The search for novelty
With its Anima machine learning and Ambiance room correction, HYRISS is a beacon of inspiration to Sparrevohn. “I think AI is helping to fast-track the pace of hyper-immersion,” she says. “We’re using every inch of machine learning available in our scope of work, for example, because we want to stretch ourselves at this stage in our careers.”
Fichte agrees that knowing these technologies keeps smart home professionals in demand. “You're doing yourself a disservice by not coming and experiencing it, not telling your clients and interior designers about it,” he says. “This is the kind of solution which elevates you as an integrator, because it’s out of the ordinary.”
Credit: L-Acoustics
The high-end clients known to the industry are usually creative minds who have found success by going against the grain in their own sectors. “They’re typically the best at what they do,” says Fichte. “And most are incredibly private. I’ve noticed many up-and-coming superyacht owners are younger generations making their money through technology – they’re utterly fascinated by it. They don't just want a vanilla experience.”
Sparrevohn adds: “Our clients are looking for experience. The bar’s moving now, and I think people want to feel something; they want quality, customisation, a system built for them rather than out-of-the-box.
“We’re driven by the concept of awe. I'm after that lump in the throat, the overwhelming emotion that demands a visceral reaction. We've done cinema handovers before where the clients literally hopped with excitement.”
The birth of hyperreal
That hunger for heightened, emotional experience has also inspired new definitions of what ‘immersive’ really means.
Fichte suggests the immersive market is moving towards audio that feels ‘more realistic than reality’. Global research would chime with his thoughts; scientists from Western University in Canada recently found that ambisonics technology can reproduce sound at a spatial scale beyond human perception.
“The bar’s moving now – clients want quality, customisation, a system built for them rather than out-of-the-box.”
Published in The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (JASA) on April 15, the findings emerged from an experiment using the AudioDome – a loudspeaker array reproducing the sounds precisely in space. Could this extraordinary breakthrough be the future of immersive experiences?
“If you look at the word ‘immersive’ in the dictionary, it’s defined as something which transports you to another place,” says Fichte. “I’m not convinced that’s achieved fully by a TV or soundbar. We're using the term hyperreal to describe HYRISS, because we’re pushing the envelope of reality.”
The AudioDome, credit: sonible GmbH, Graz, Austria
Dry vs wet sound
Fichte continues: “Cinema rooms aren't new anymore. When delivered properly, they are immersive; but they’re dedicated to movies and TV, not music or active entertainment. People do try it, because typically that's where their best sound system is, but it's not a particularly suitable environment.”
Cinema rooms are known for dry acoustics to support reference-level performance, whereas HYRISS starts with a dry space that can be adapted into a wet reverberant soundscape using active acoustics, ‘Ambiance’. Users select different audio presets and speaker positioning to switch from Dolby Atmos to concert sound in seconds, without limitations on where sound is placed.
"We're using the term hyperreal to describe HYRISS, because we’re pushing the envelope of reality.”
This breadth is the product of L-Acoustics’ longstanding heritage in live audio: founder Christian Heil explored immersion in live events to pioneer L-Acoustic Immersive Sound Art (L-ISA), a 3D audio software giving engineers the ability to mix object-based audio anywhere.
Inspired, Heil went on to research this experience in the home. Island Prestige, launched in 2020, was a self-contained, ‘personal auditorium’ with 18 speakers and two subwoofers to create a sense of immersion while sitting or lying down.
“This solution was disruptive, but we had limited rights to the content demoed and sold,” says Fichte. “Island had a total catalogue of about six albums and was very niche, architecturally and practically. The experience taught us a lot about how sound and architecture should combine perfectly to support audio quality.” And four years later, HYRISS was born.
“If you go to a concert hall or theatre, the space is reflective to amplify the instruments naturally,” adds Fichte. “As human beings, we're used to hearing reinforcement systems to lift natural sound ever so slightly.”
From content to environment
Although highly specialised, home cinema is becoming more attuned to the nuances of natural sound. Trinnov, for example, shares L-Acoustics’ vision of reimagining vast stereo systems for personal and versatile spaces.
Technical sales manager David Meyerowitz explains how WaveForming technology uses delicate acoustic filters to enable viewers to sink into a cinematic world: “This technology harnesses multiple subwoofers to control modal behaviour and bass,” he begins. “When implemented with the appropriate number and placement, the result is a consistently smooth low-frequency response across all seating positions.
“Historically, designers had to strike an uneasy compromise between ideal seating positions for image viewing and acoustics. Modal peaks and nulls dictated where you could place seats, not where you wanted to. But WaveForming changes that paradigm. With modal behaviour under control, seating placement becomes far more flexible.
“Traditional bass treatment requires large volumes of space, deep wall cavities filled with bulky materials to absorb low frequencies. But WaveForming is not constrained by physical absorber depth; it’s governed by the depth of the subwoofer cabinet.
“With Trinnov's hardware platform, users can create and recall customised profiles – what we call Presets – tailored to different content types or listener preferences. This level of sonic personalisation was just simply not possible before.”
WaveForming technology, first publicly presented at ISE 2023, is ripe with promise as Trinnov transitions to its new R&D headquarters later this year. “We have a robust pipeline of projects already in place,” says Meyerowitz. “We are continuously advancing the technology to enhance its flexibility – and the new HQ will significantly expand our ambitious research initiatives.”
"WaveForming offers a level of sonic personalisation not possible before.”
The Trinnov website says this facility near Paris in France will include an immersive sound and active acoustics lab, full-size anechoic chamber, critical listening room and more.
Trinnov's new R&D facility in France, credit: Trinnov
Tailored soundscapes
At the other end of the spectrum, brands like Bluesound are innovating with wireless surround sound to accommodate various household spaces. “Wireless pairing is one of our core values,” says Morten Nielsen, associate product manager at Bluesound. “Every single product is built on premium audio quality, user friendliness and hi-res technologies.
“End users can multiply products in the living space and play them independently or together. Yes, they can have a sound system wired up in the room as a full immersive solution, but it requires help from installers to hide all the speakers: why go through this when you can have an all-in-one product, prioritising quality over quantity?
“We’re trying to do something versatile on the new Powernode stereo amplifier. Users can add a centre channel speaker as well as left and right channels.”
The Powernode, developed over three years, offers 100 watts per channel in stereo mode and 80 watts in a 3.1 system configuration. It’s built with multiroom streaming platform BluOS to support more than 20 music streaming services. While the BluOS controller is important, full functionality lives inside the products: “We are 12 years into the company's lifespan,” Nielsen says. “And our initial products are still receiving updates today, running the same software as the current products.”
Collaboration = innovation
Neilsen continues: “We partnered with Dirac to harness its room correction software via BluOS since 2021, so clients don't have to go out and buy something new to get that functionality.”
Following up on Bluesound’s collaboration efforts, product manager Matt Simmonds points to the brand’s sister companies and their shared engineering opportunities: NAD Electronics, for example, boasts a 55-year history in amplification design and many long-term team members who have helped pioneer modern amplification methods. “We really lean into that expertise,” he says. “The engineering team is based just outside of Toronto in Canada.
“When it comes to the entertainment experience at home, a lot of our thinking lately has been about making that process simpler. If you look at the history of AVRs and their heyday in the early 2000s, wired home cinemas required a dedicated room and brands couldn't keep pace with the demand.
“We’ve seen that shift in the consumer’s mindset since. Smaller and even busier spaces are where people are living their daily lives. I like the Powernode because it’s a touchstone product for audio, music, TV movies and gaming.”
The PowerNode, credit: Bluesound
The bottom line
Bolstered by rapid developments in multiroom sound and spatial separation, immersive audio is offering heightened freedom as well as fun to the end user. “It’s rewarding to speak with architects, designers and developers about HYRISS,” says Fichte. “They see how it can manipulate space and increase value as a property investment.”
"Bluesound thinking lately is all about simplifying the home entertainment process.”
With a shared enthusiasm, Sparrevohn is keen on getting clients involved in the curation of their immersive and unbridled experiences. “You need the right client to embrace your suggestions,” she says. “I love that engagement, it’s seldom found through a construction chain. We want the client’s buy-in during the sales and design process to give us absolute clarity. And the result from them is real pride in making a dreamlike environment come to life.”
Main image credit: DC Studio/Shutterstock.com