Bose’s House of Sound is an audiophile’s playhouse

On the lower west side of Manhattan Island, in the Chelsea district, there is an unassuming, concrete-looking townhouse whose previous owners include Lady Gaga and basketball player Kevin Durant. If you ever get the opportunity to saunter through its doors, you’re stepping into a tower of sound.

That’s because the House of Sound, operated by Bose after its acquisition of the Sonus Faber brand, is an ode to audiophile and luxury tastes.

Through six floors of the townhouse, there’s a cadre of McIntosh and Sonus Faber kit, with each room designed to give a taste of what it’d be like to have this hi-fi equipment in your home. As the House of Sound website puts it, it’s a “destination where audio, art, and design intersect to create a truly immersive experience”.

And for once, the hype is well met.

A tower of sound

Not to be confused with BBC’s KeyStage learning exercises, or the music studio in the north of England, Bose’s House of Sound is designed to demonstrate what “a luxury audio experience can really be in your home”. If you have deep enough pockets, of course.

It wants to promote the idea that audio can be considered in the same aspirational league as travel, watches, cars, and haute couture fashion. And that it can be a form of creativity as well, whether that’s through the form it takes – the materials and aesthetic that goes into Sonus Faber and McIntosh products – or how it brings other creative works to life, whether that’s through two-channel stereo or a private cinema install (that Questlove from The Roots rents for the Oscars). It’s the Met Gala for sound systems.

It’s a place that desires to be the apex of what hi-fi can be – without limitation. It’s not so much a consumable thing that, while enjoyable as an experience, is in ways designed to be disposable. Without trying to sound like an advertisement, you go to its listening rooms to luxuriate in high-fidelity sound, or as it was put to us on the tour, to connect “yourself and your own emotions and the people around you”. Lofty, but why not reach for the stars?

I’ve been to hi-fi demo spaces before, such as KJ West One, which is literally wall-to-wall of high-end hi-fi equipment, or ventured to hi-fi shows such as High End. But the House of Sound obviously feels different from either of those two because it takes place in an actual home space.

If you need to be convinced of parting with money into the six or seven figures, it certainly helps having an idea of how it would look in your own well-appointed home. It all helps to add to the sense of immersion because the space you’re listening in is a familiar-ish one.

Hi-fi with no limits

Of course, this would be rather moot if the products didn’t sound great. I’ve limited experience with Sonus Faber products, having tested the Omnia all-in-one system several years ago, but Sonus Faber doesn’t really deal with products that tend to be easily shippable.

I’ve heard Amati Supreme hi-fi loudspeakers at events such as 2025’s Paris AV Show, and thought they sounded “phenomenal”. This time I got to hear the Suprema, which is essentially Sonus Faber’s no-holds-barred loudspeaker.

And they sounded phenomenal. They’re a bit on the crisp side of neutral, so at times can sound a little thin to my ears, but they generate huge levels of transparency, insight and naturalism, as well as power and energy in a stereo image that’s wide and deep, with minimal, if any, distortion.

We got to play a selection of tracks*, to just sit there and listen to the speakers. Some people didn’t want to leave.

*(If you want to know my choices, they were Slipknot’s Duality and Illit’s K-pop Magnetic in an attempt to try and ‘break’ the speakers. I failed.)

My own private cinema

We then descended to the ground floor (first floor for any Americans reading) and had the opportunity to listen to the private home cinema install.

Past a large, nondescript door that doesn’t hint at the excitement that awaits, is a reference standard private home cinema with a sound system that will blow your Sonos Arc Ultra surround system away.

Dotted around the room is a 29-channel system that includes Sonus Faber Arena 20 in-wall speakers, Arena 10 in-ceiling modules, and Arena 30 speakers behind the screen in a left, centre, right configuration with a dual-tweeter design similar to the Amati Supreme for clearer dialogue. In total, there are 16 (sixteen!) subwoofers.

It’s powered by 19 McIntosh amplifiers that, apparently, provide a whopping 22,400W of total power to the system. All amps have a THD of less than 0.005% for absolutely minimal distortion, and the amps power on in a trigger sequence to avoid a massive on-rush of current when you’ve got 20,000+ watts waiting to be released.

An interesting little titbit was the reveal that in films, there’s generally only 8-9 minutes of true LFE (Low Frequency Effects) in a typical two-hour film. 12 of the sixteen subwoofers are then repurposed with the other channels, with the front left/right receiving a dedicated cluster of subs, and the sides, rears, and even the ceiling arrays partnered with a sub.

The result of this configuration was full-range sound from infrasonic to beyond audible high frequency, allowing for precise placement of bass in an area of the room rather than just shaking the entire floor.

This private cinema is placed on the first floor under the kitchen, and apparently, you can feel the rumble in the kitchen even if you can’t hear what’s playing. That’s the power unleashed by this cinema.

Kaleidescape is the source for films, with an Apple TV nearby for sports and streaming, plus a PS5 for gaming.

And we were treated to Top Gun: Maverick, which has become a staple of Dolby Atmos demos (everyone from Sonos, Yamaha and Focal uses it, moving on from Mad Max: Fury Road being).

It is probably (memory aside), the best I’ve heard the film since watching it in Dolby Cinema at the West End Odeon (the better of the Odeon Leicester Square cinemas). It sounded immense, the nuance of the smaller details that might be lost in a home cinema set-up are rendered crystal clear. The system has even been given the thumbs up by the Oscar-winning sound mixer of Maverick, who watched the film there at an event.

The best home cinema systems can put you in an immersive bubble, whether it’s object-based or channel-based. The private cinema in this townhouse is an experience where you feel it too… and you don’t have to bother with people talking or a crisp packet rustling in the darkness, as it did when I watched The Drama a few weeks ago and annoyed another patron in the cinema.

Head out on the highway

So I’ve written about hi-fi and home cinema. Why not cars too?

On the same first floor as the private cinema is a Lamborghini tucked away in the corner. Inside is a Sonus Faber sound system that’s been tuned for the (tight) interior environment. I’ve written in the past how, for many people, a car might be the best way to listen to music, and it’s the same case for this Lamborghini system.

The system itself is not as numerous in speakers or has quite as fancy custom technology as the Bowers & Wilkins kit in the Polestar 3, but the sense of immersion convinces me that cars make for a pretty excellent hi-fi room. The low end produced, despite there being no dedicated sub (if memory serves), brought genuine bass to the proceedings, but the best thing about the whole experience is how balanced it all sounded.

I’m still unnerved by my own anxiety that bass would distract during a car trip, but then wouldn’t the roar of the engine distract too? Perhaps they’d cancel each other out.

Luxury, aspirational sound

It was a great few hours at the House of Sound alongside seeing Bose’s Lifestyle Collection, products which aim for premium but for a mainstream audience. The House of Sound shows the potential for hi-fi to move into more luxurious realms (if it hasn’t already).

Of course, this is not an area that I or most people who happen across this article would ever find themselves inhabiting. The Aida sound system, along with all the McIntosh equipment in the room, is an easy seven-figure cost. These are sound systems that would exist in people’s dreams.

But for a few hours in Bose’s House of Sound, those dreams can become reality.