Our clients clearly have vision. Extensively renovating and refurbishing a large Victorian house is no mean feat - their home was to be redecorated and furnished throughout - but the build for them wasn't purely aesthetic. In redesigning and rebuilding the kitchen and master bedroom suite, they wanted to marry the old and new, in technological as well as architectural terms.

Our clients wanted music throughout the house, with the ability to use each area independently or together. Our distributed audio system allows their music collection, streamed music and internet radio to be accessed from any audio zone in the house. The same source can also be played simultaneously in sync across all or some of the zones, ideal for the parties now regularly held at the property. With all of this controlled via an app on tablets or smart phones, our system couldn't be easier to use.

In addition to the music requirements and wall-mounted TVs in certain areas, the house was to have a designated TV room, where its owners wanted to enjoy an exceptionally high performance. Equally exceptional was the designer's vision; "big black boxes" would not be tolerated.

The strong design ethos continued throughout. We may want to hear music, but we don't want its source to be intrusive, and thus we were determined to prove that speakers can be beautiful and / or discreet. Confident that Artcoustic speakers could provide a solution for every audio zone, whatever its function or layout, we took our clients to a short demonstration at the Artcoustic UK showroom. It wasn't just the performance of the speakers that impressed. Their impeccable design was crucial too. With the products matching tonally across their wide range, we were able to select different yet complementing models that all adhered to the design aesthetic of the build: discreet in-wall speakers for the dining area, for example, and bookshelf speakers for the study.

Artcoustic's standard finish is of such impressive quality that it was used in most areas of the house. In the dedicated TV room, however, our client's desire for a cinema-grade sound system required bespoke speaker options. With cabinets painted to provide an exact match to the walls and built to an impressively shallow depth so as not to appear overly imposing, the speakers are subtle. The centre channel speaker was built to a bespoke width exactly matching the TV under which it sits, thereby giving clean lines and and continuing the understated nature of our installation. The same goes for the subwoofer. Traditionally the biggest fattest black box of them all, it can be a rather ugly elephant in a designer's otherwise exquisite room. Not so here. Colour coded and wall mounted, the sub woofer is a sympathetic addition to a system which is as refined as it is powerful.

After calibration, the sound system in the TV room easily meets reference standards used in commercial cinemas. Needless to say, the clients (and their designer) are delighted.