Single-touch control and fully immersive audio-visual design for boutique fitness studios.
1Rebel: UK & International Studios
This case study looks at how the Middlesex Sound & Lighting team delivered immersive, fully integrated audio and lighting systems across 1Rebel’s boutique fitness studios, creating distinct sensory environments for each class concept while keeping day-to-day operation as simple as a single touch.
About 1Rebel
1Rebel is a boutique fitness brand built around high-energy, experience-led workouts. Rather than a traditional gym floor, the concept is delivered through a series of dedicated studio environments, each with its own class format, atmosphere and identity, from calm and considered to full-intensity.
The brand has grown steadily over the years and now extends beyond the UK, with international sites including a studio in Saudi Arabia. Throughout that journey, MSL has been the trusted audio-visual partner, evolving the in-studio experience as the brand has expanded.
Our relationship with 1Rebel began around six years ago, working closely with the brand from an engineering and design perspective. What started as a single working relationship grew into a long-term partnership built on trust, collaboration and a shared appetite for doing something different.
The Project
1Rebel’s studios are tech-heavy environments, combining audio, video and moving lights to turn each class into a fully immersive experience. The brief across the estate has been consistent: deliver serious technical capability behind the scenes, while making the system effortless for instructors to operate live, mid-class.
At the heart of every studio is a single touchscreen control point. With one press, the entire environment adapts. Instructors have independent control of their microphone and the music, wear a headset to deliver instruction, and animate the lighting directly from the touchscreen as the class progresses. The result is an interactive setup where one person can run the room, the sound and the visuals all at once.
Because 1Rebel runs several different class concepts, each studio is designed around the energy of its format:
- Reformer: a calmer, Pilates-style studio. Distributed audio provides even coverage without subwoofers, paired with LED tubes set at varying heights and angles that map and change at the touch of a button, LED halo rings around the mirrors, and backlighting. The effect is clean, considered and immersive.
- Reshape and high-intensity studios: treadmill running, weights and box-style training. These rooms run at much higher energy, with full-range speakers backed by subwoofers for genuine impact, colour wash fixtures firing down onto the floor with zoom control so beams open and close, and pixel detailing across the ceiling so the whole room comes alive with the workout. Lighting is sequenced to the music, with slower chases for lower-tempo sections and faster chases as the energy builds.
Across the studios, the audio is built on Martin Audio loudspeakers, chosen and configured to suit the demands of each room.
The Challenges
The defining challenge of any 1Rebel site is running multiple studios simultaneously, often with very different energy levels, without any sound bleeding from one room into another. A high-intensity class and a Reformer class can take place at the same time, just metres apart.
Working alongside 1Rebel over the years, the solution has been a box-in-box studio design, with each room fully acoustically isolated and treated as its own self-contained environment with its own templates and presets. While MSL does not supply the acoustic isolation itself, we advise on the right approach and coordinate closely with the appointed acoustic consultants and other trades to make sure the audio system and the room treatment work together.
Internationally, the brand’s expansion brought a further layer of complexity. The Saudi Arabia studio was delivered during travel restrictions – which meant supplying and shipping all of the equipment from the UK, programming the system remotely, and carrying out site visits only as and when travel restrictions allowed. Despite the distance and the constraints, the studio was delivered to the same standard as the UK sites.
The Solution
Each studio is delivered as a complete, self-contained audio-visual environment, designed so that the technical complexity is invisible to the people using it.
The control philosophy is built around a single touchscreen per studio, giving instructors instant, intuitive command of sound and lighting without any technical knowledge. Audio is delivered through distributed Martin Audio loudspeakers, with subwoofers added in the higher-energy rooms for impact and omitted in the calmer studios where even, comfortable coverage matters more.
Lighting is designed concept by concept, from the considered tube and halo lighting of the Reformer rooms to the immersive ceiling pixel effects and floor-facing wash fixtures of the high-intensity studios. Every lighting state is pre-programmed and mapped so that it can be recalled and animated live from the same touchscreen, keeping the experience seamless from the instructor’s point of view.
Training and Support
Each studio is built around its own dedicated control server, with venue staff set up to operate the system day to day. Crucially, this also allows MSL to dial in remotely to support the whole venue, adjusting levels or refining the programming without needing to be on site.
This remote capability has proven especially valuable for international and multi-studio sites, where ongoing support and fine-tuning can be delivered quickly and efficiently from the UK. Where a client does not already have dedicated control hardware in place, MSL can also supply a compact server preloaded with standard content, making it straightforward to bring a new studio up to the brand’s standard.
Why Middlesex Sound & Lighting?
1Rebel has worked with MSL for years because of a partnership built on trust, collaboration and a genuine understanding of the brand. Across the estate, that relationship has delivered:
- Fully immersive, concept-specific studio design across audio and lighting
- Single-touch control that any instructor can operate live, mid-class
- Acoustically considered, box-in-box studio environments that allow multiple classes to run at once
- Proven international delivery, including a fully shipped and remotely programmed studio in Saudi Arabia
- Ongoing remote support and programming to keep every studio performing
Want to create an immersive studio experience that runs at the touch of a button? Talk to us about designing something unforgettable.
