Yamaha Opens State Of The Art Audio Solutions Centre in London

Late March saw Yamaha open its brand new Audio Solutions Centre in London’s Soho, at an event attended by guests from a wide variety of industries for whom high quality sound is important. Located at the heart of the city’s audio post-production industry and close to West End theatres, it offers state of the art facilities where professionals and end users can meet Yamaha applications specialists and clients for demonstrations, discussions, hybrid meetings and training.

The first Audio Solutions Centre in Europe is part of Yamaha Music London, located in the former headquarters of music publishers Novello. It was built in 1906, to a design said to be an exact copy of a rathaus (municipal building) in Bavaria. Highlighting their special architectural importance, the façade, entrance, staircase and piano hall are all Grade II listed, with the piano hall still featuring the special cabinets designed to display Novello’s sheet music, which included composers such as Handel and Bach.

Yamaha has had a presence on the site since 1980 and it became Yamaha Music London in 2015 - still Yamaha’s only direct-to-consumer music retail operation outside Japan. The Audio Solutions Centre brings the past and the present together with a cutting edge AV system created by Yamaha, with key installation partners Purify Technology, designLED UK, Studio Nero, Eclipse Integration and F&L Electrical.

The system showcases how comfortable, fully interactive meeting experiences can be created by combining Yamaha audio and networking products with those from third party lighting, video and décor manufacturers, incorporating furnishings as well as the comfortable audio, mood lighting, high quality video and straightforward control which are important to avoid meeting fatigue.

The system’s foundation is Yamaha networking hardware, which is specifically designed for the Dante networking environment. It can automatically detect peripherals and choose network settings to suit.

The full range of Yamaha ADECIA hybrid conferencing solutions are installed, working in combination with products from the Yamaha Commercial Installation Solutions ecosystem and advanced video, lighting and networking products by Legamaster, Lenovo, Lightware, Lumens and Lutron.

Overall system management is by the new DME3 digital signal processor, which also performs advanced audio signal processing. The installation also highlights the versatile control options offered by Yamaha, including the wireless ProVisionaire Kiosk iPadOS app with a fully bespoke GUI, plus the MCP1 and new MCP2 wall mount controllers.

With all products working seamlessly together, the system can operate in Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR), Bring your Own Device (BYOD) and Bring Your Own Meeting (BYOM) formats.

After the venue had been introduced by Nils-Peter Keller, Senior Director for Yamaha’s European audio business in Europe, it was formally opened by Yuumi Yoshida, Yamaha European Strategy Manager, and Tobias Weich, European Pro Audio Director, before guests were shown around the facilities and invited to sample the audio quality with recitals by Codyy and Cian Downing.

They were then invited to visit the nearby Jack Solomon’s bar, where a Yamaha SoundxR system brings high quality immersive sound to aficionados of jazz, DJ sets and cocktails.