Yotsukaido is half-an-hour’s travel east of Tokyo. Here, clients of new health and fitness centre Verdi Viale have a comprehensive range of amenities to help them achieve ‘life balance’.

Specifically, Verdi Viale comprises three studios: cardio, yoga and machine room. Morimoto Naniwa Sound Projects of has equipped each with its own powerful sound playback and instructor reinforcement system, using One Systems 108im loudspeakers powered by a four-channel Ashly nX4004 four-channel programmable output amplifier. Each One Systems 108im hangs on a custom bracket, while dbx processor mixes inputs from various background music sources – a CD player and an instructor mic for each studio.

‘The main purpose of the system is to allow for background music or for program music with instructor reinforcement,’ says Morimoto Naniwa Sound Projects co-owner Masaki Morimoto, who, along with Makoto Akashi, helped select the sound reinforcement products, specified their placement and tuned the installed system. ‘Most of the facility is surrounded by glass walls, which led to long reverberation times. Intelligibility is very important, and the Ashly amplifiers are excellent in this regard.’

Kazuhiko Hosoi, President of S and A Planning, oversaw the installation of the system, making sure that it blended into Verdi Viale’s interior design: ‘This aspect of the job is very important in Japan,’ he says. ‘There is a premium placed on making sure everything in the interior design is consistent, and Mr Hosoi has a lot of experience making sound and video systems work with the interior designs of restaurants and retail stores.’

Within each of the three separate studios, a four-channel Ashly nX4004 amplifier delivers 400W each to four One Systems 108im full-range loudspeakers. ‘The large-format compression driver of the 108im contributes to the high intelligibility of the system despite the reverberant character of the glass walls,’ Morimoto explains. ‘And the one-to-one pairing of loudspeakers with amplifier channels allows the system to operate with plenty of headroom for undistorted playback. In addition, the Ashly amplifiers are robust to the area’s poor power supply – most commercial facilities have less than 100V AC, and there is no grounding point. Despite this, the Ashly amplifiers perform reliably and sound excellent.’