Client:
Sofa Workshop is one of the UK’s leading premium-brand furniture manufacturers and retailers.
Founded in 1985, Sofa Workshop – trading under the name of Sofa Workshop by Timothy Oulton – now has 20 stores located throughout the UK and prides itself on providing high quality, stylish and customisable sofas and home furnishings.
System Requirements:
The Sofa Workshop Tottenham Court Road store is the brand’s flagship showroom to showcase the entire product collection in the UK’s capital.
With an 8,000 sq ft store in this prime location, ensuring that the atmosphere reflects the premium branding is a key factor in the design. Providing high-quality, reliable background music throughout both floors of the store is integral to the store aesthetic. Professional music service provider – Altaura – were brought on-board to design and curate an audio strategy to reflect the Sofa Workshop brand.

The Solution:
CIE’s audio system design team specified and supplied a flexible background music system, powered by leading professional audio brand – Inter-M.
The Sofa Workshop flagship store uses Inter-M’s most flexible mixer amplifier – the PAM340A – to power a series of discreet music loudspeakers and ceiling speakers installed throughout the two floors of the retail space.

The Inter-M PAM Amplifier allows for multiple audio source inputs and 5 zone loudspeaker outputs with individual volume control; allowing the background music levels to be independently adjusted in different areas of the store to accommodate for varying conditions such as ambient noise levels, foot traffic and ceiling heights, for example.
The loudspeakers specified and supplied by CIE were chosen dependent upon the physical installation locations and aesthetics of the rooms. A mix of Inter-M WS30 wall-mount music speakers were used on the upper floor where high ceilings and exposed cable trays allowed for variable positioning.
Downstairs, which features comparatively low suspended ceilings, Inter-M CS620 ceiling speakers were chosen to provide even distribution of sound across the lower-floor showroom space.
The addition of an SLA100 Attenuator positioned behind the reception desk allows staff easy remote volume control of the system without having to access the amplifier directly in the back-of-house facilities room.
