Case Studies
Finished projects in real buildings, across London and the South East
These case studies cover the audio visual, sound, lighting, hearing loop and voice alarm systems the OBAV team have designed, installed and commissioned in churches and listed buildings, town halls and other public buildings, restaurants, bars and clubs, schools and higher-end homes, and each one is written to show what the building needed, what we specified and why, and what the finished system is like to use. We publish them as clients confirm what we are allowed to show, so this section grows steadily rather than all at once.
More details
131 projectsWhat most audio visual case studies leave out
Most project write-ups in this trade are equipment lists. They name the loudspeakers, count the amplifier channels, list the control processor, and tell you nothing about whether the hall is easier to run on a Sunday morning than it was before. Our own earlier case studies were written that way, by engineers, for engineers, and we are rewriting them, because the person reading them is almost never another installer. It is a churchwarden, a facilities manager, a general manager or a homeowner, someone who has to live with the system long after we have driven away, and who wants to know whether the money was well spent.
What you will find in each of our case studies
Each study takes the same shape, because these are the things you would ask us if we were sitting in front of you. We describe the building as we found it, awkward parts included, then what was not working and why the building itself was causing it, whether that was a reverberant hall swallowing every consonant, a loop that had never been measured, or four remotes on a table and nobody willing to touch them. We set out what we designed, and we say plainly why we made that decision rather than the easier and cheaper one, because that choice is usually the whole story of the job. We describe what the system is like to use now, in the ordinary way it gets used, so a member of staff pressing one button on a Monday morning matters more in the write-up than the model number behind the wall. And where the client is happy for us to say so, we give a broad indication of what it cost, because a study that goes quiet about money is only half useful to somebody trying to budget. The studies are grouped by building type below, since the problems repeat by building far more than they repeat by equipment.
Church, heritage and listed building projects
These are buildings never built for amplified speech, where the words are lost in the stone long before they reach the back, and where loudspeakers have to be close to invisible and every fixing agreed before it is made. Expect projects that went through the faculty and diocese process, ran to longer lead times than commercial work, and were designed so a visiting speaker with no technical help is still heard clearly. See churches and heritage.
Public building and town hall projects
Here the studies cover halls and chambers that have to serve a wedding, a council meeting and a public consultation in the same week, usually with an aging system nobody can be trained on and a hearing loop signed off years ago without ever being measured across the seating. Designing for several different uses rather than for the loudest one is what earns the money back. See public buildings.
Restaurant and hospitality projects
These are rooms where hard floors, glass and a high ceiling mean guests lean in to be heard and staff end up shouting, and where the music is too loud at one end and inaudible at the other. The decisions worth reading about are zoning and level control across a whole trading day, and treating the room rather than fitting a bigger sound system. See restaurants and hospitality.
Bar and nightclub projects
These venues need real weight on the floor without shaking the flat above or bringing a noise complaint down on the licence, and they need a system a DJ or a duty manager can take over safely at eleven at night. Expect designs where the limits and the coverage were settled before the loudspeakers were chosen. See bars and nightclubs.
School and education projects
These are halls, drama studios and teaching rooms where speech has to be intelligible to a room full of children at the back, and where the installation has to be finished inside a holiday and to a main contractor’s programme. Many came through tender, so the design sits alongside the documentation and sign-off a school or local authority needs. See schools and education.
Home cinema and residential projects
These are cinema rooms and multi room audio in higher-budget homes, most designed alongside an architect or interior designer before the plasterboard went up, which is what makes a plastered-in architectural loudspeaker possible at all. What they are really about is a family room that works as a cinema without looking like one, and control simple enough that a guest can put music on. Residential and home cinema is the way into this work, and the cinema systems service covers the cinema room itself in detail.
Why some of our work appears without a name
Not every project can be published, and we do not press clients on it. Some organisations do not allow suppliers to name them, some buildings cannot be identified for security reasons, and a good number of our residential clients have no interest in their homes appearing online, which we think is entirely reasonable. So some of the strongest work here appears without a name, described by building type and by what it needed rather than by who owns it, and some of it does not appear at all. We would rather show fewer studies we have permission for than more that put a client in an awkward position. If discretion matters to you, that is worth knowing before you appoint anybody.
Our own photography, of our own jobs
Every photograph in this section is ours, taken on our own projects. We do not use images from other websites or from manufacturers’ brochures, partly because they are not ours to use and partly because they would not be showing you our work. It means the photography here is honest rather than glossy, and that a study sometimes waits until we have been back to shoot the finished room. Work in progress stays off the public pages, so what you see is the completed installation as the client received it, not a rack with the lid off and cable ties still to trim.
Accredited, and used to being checked
We are SafeContractor approved and ISO [[NUMBER: exact ISO standard to confirm]] accredited, our engineers are employed and long-serving rather than subcontracted, and we have the heritage and faculty experience listed buildings ask for. A good deal of the work in this section was specified with architects and interior designers, delivered for main contractors, or won through tender, all of which means it was checked by somebody other than us before it was signed off.
What clients say
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Why clients choose the OBAV team
The pattern running through every study here is the same team from the first survey to the aftercare, rather than a salesperson handing you to a fitter and then to a call centre. We are family run and owner led, our engineers have been with us for years, a real person answers the phone at any hour, and clients are looked after after handover with warranty and IT support. We survey before we quote, and we set out the full scope and cost before work starts, so there are no additions part way through. We are not the cheapest, and we do not pretend to be. What you pay for is the design, the specification and a system commissioned correctly, backed by the team that installed it.
Project questions answered
Can we speak to one of your past clients, or see a system working
Often, yes, but that depends on the client rather than on us. We will always ask, and where a client is happy to take a call or have you visit, standing in a finished room and hearing it working tells you more than a page of description. What we will not do is promise you somebody else’s building or somebody else’s time before we have their agreement, and some clients and some buildings are out of bounds altogether. Tell us what you are planning and we will ask the clients whose systems are closest to it.
Have you worked in a building like ours
Very probably. Our work concentrates on churches, heritage and listed buildings, public buildings such as town halls, schools, restaurants and hospitality, bars and clubs, and higher-end homes, so if your building is one of those we will have met the same problems before, often the same structural awkwardness. If it is not, ask anyway, because the design questions in a difficult room are much the same whatever the building is called.
How does a project run from first survey to handover
It starts with a site survey, or with the architect’s and designer’s drawings where the building does not exist yet, and from that comes the design, the specification and a full scope and cost. Once it is agreed we plan the cabling and containment, work to the main contractor’s programme as a finishing trade, then install and commission the system in the finished rooms, including the private dedicated network with fixed IP addresses fitted as standard on every large project. Handover means showing the people who will actually use it how it works, and after that you have the same team on the phone, with warranty and IT support and remote diagnostics over that network.
How do you price the work, and will you say what a project cost
We price after the survey rather than from a rate card, because the building, the structure, the existing cabling and how the rooms are used all change what the system needs. There is a short viability and budget conversation early, which saves everybody time, then a full scope and cost before anything is agreed. In the studies we publish broad cost ranges wherever the client is happy for us to, and leave them out where they are not, rather than quietly printing a figure nobody agreed to.
Talk to us about your project
If one of these projects looks like the job you are planning, the next step is a conversation about your building, then a survey so we can see it ourselves. If you want to see something similar working first, ask, and we will find out which of our clients is willing.
Planning something similar? Request a quote. Prefer a chat first? Get in touch, or call and speak to one of us directly.
Old Barn Audio Ltd
Unit 15, Wylands Farm
Powdermill Lane
Battle
East Sussex TN33 0SU
01892 752246
enquiries@oldbarnaudio.co.uk
We work across London, East Sussex, Kent, Surrey and the rest of the South East, and travel further across the UK for larger commercial and specialist projects.