Total Fusion Morningside | Gym AV
Creating an immersive flagship fitness & wellness experience at Total Fusion Morningside
Total Fusion · Fitness & Wellness · Morningside, Brisbane
In a nutshell:
Challenges Addressed:
A sprawling 5,000 square metre, multi-level facility where every studio, common area, office and treatment room needed independently controlled audio and lighting on one platform, simple enough for any staff member to operate, automated enough to run itself, plus a showpiece Cycle Room to engineer against a solid concrete ceiling and a brief to make the room feel far larger than it is.
Solution Highlights:
A facility-wide Q-SYS platform running room-matched audio, phone-based streaming, touchscreen control and show lighting as one system, with a fully automated Cycle Room adding grandMA3, a Pixera media server and a 6m curved LED wall to deliver pre-programmed classes closer to a nightclub production than a spin session.
Results Achieved:
Total Fusion Morningside now runs its studios, wellness floor, head office and signature Cycle Room from one connected platform, with staff shaping rooms in the moment, automation carrying the day-to-day, and members getting a class environment beyond anything else in the market.
The Overview.
Following the success of Total Fusion Platinum in Newstead, Alliance Wellness Group returned to Ampd for their most ambitious build to date: a flagship facility in Morningside, Brisbane.
The new site would become Total Fusion’s home base, bringing the fitness and wellness venue together with the company’s corporate head office. The brief was to carry the quality, control, and systems integration established at their Newstead location across a larger footprint, and to set a new benchmark for the category.
The Background.
Total Fusion's mission is to build inspiring spaces that empower people to reach their full potential, and Morningside is the clearest expression of that mission yet: a premier fitness and wellness destination that redefines high-performance training and recovery in the Australian market.
The facility brings together a fully equipped gym and Strength Zone, personal training, and a dedicated wellness centre. Members move between six studios: Yoga, Functional, Fusion, Cycle, Run Club, and Reformer, with the Refuel Cafe and reception tying the ground floor together. A lower level, Wellness and Total Fusion Beyond, houses health treatment and spa rooms, while the upper floors hold the corporate head office.
At the heart of the facility is the Cycle Room, built around a 6m curved LED wall that has become the venue's signature design feature and the most technically demanding space in the building.
The Challenge.
Total Fusion Morningside was an opportunity to build something on a scale, and to a standard, the category hadn’t seen yet. Realising that vision meant solving four key challenges.
01. Footprint
The first was footprint. Total Fusion Morningside spans more than 5,000 square metres across multiple levels, with each environment serving a specific purpose. The Refuel Cafe, reception, offices, studios and treatment rooms each demanded audio and lighting engineered for the space, with every zone able to operate independently of the rest.
Unifying the zones was the true test of the design. These environments had to run on one platform, centrally controlled, monitored and maintained, while each zone retained independent command of its own audio and lighting. Every room needed to support its own purpose, schedule and atmosphere, while still feeling connected to the broader Total Fusion experience.
02. Control
The second challenge was control. The system would be operated daily by instructors, trainers and front-of-house staff. Any team member needed to be able to walk into a room and adjust audio, lighting and room settings without training or interruption. This meant designing in-room touchpoints that were immediately understood, simple to operate and unobtrusive to the experience.
03. Automation
The third challenge was automation. Alongside hands-on control, Total Fusion required a venue that could run without it. A set-and-forget system in which audio, lighting, and room settings perform consistently across every class, shift and operating hour. The technology had to manage itself, leaving staff free to focus entirely on their members.
04. Cycle Room
The fourth, and most demanding, was the Cycle Room. Its high-ceiling and split-level layout places riders on both the main floor and a mezzanine, with both levels requiring the same quality of sound and the same visual experience.
The structure of the room imposed its own constraints. A solid concrete ceiling ruled out conventional mounting, which meant the LED wall, lighting fixtures and audio equipment had to be supported on purpose-engineered rigging.
Beyond the technical requirements, Total Fusion wanted the room to feel far larger than its physical footprint. Ampd needed to deliver that sense of scale without compromising performance.
SOLUTION 01
Platform, Control & Automation
Facility-wide Platform
At the heart of Total Fusion Morningside is a single Q-SYS platform running audio, video and lighting for the entire facility. A purpose-built fibre network links equipment racks across the site, placing every zone on one centrally managed system while keeping each one independently addressable.
In-Room Control
QSYS 8-inch touchscreens throughout the studios and shared spaces put full command of each room’s sound and lighting on the wall beside the door. Any team member can walk into a zone and make adjustments with nothing to learn and no menus to navigate. This is the day-to-day face of the system, designed to be read at a glance.
Automation
Behind the hands-on controls, the venue runs itself. The system was commissioned as a true set-and-forget solution with audio levels, lighting states and presets maintained automatically across classes and zones, so each space is ready the moment it’s needed. Staff can step in when they choose to, while day to day operation is managed by the technology itself.
SOLUTION 02
Lighting, Audio & Streaming
Lighting
Lighting was treated as part of the sound and atmosphere of each space, not as a separate system. Every studio's lighting is driven directly from Q-SYS using sACN to DMX, engineered so there is no lighting desk anywhere in the building: it runs from the same touchscreens as the audio, one panel commanding the whole room. Staff have full RGBW and intensity control across Run Club, Functional, Fusion, Strength, Yoga, Reformer and the foyer, with presets they can store, edit and recall, so the character of the lighting shifts as easily as the music does.
Audio & Streaming
Audio streaming runs on Spotify Business, with MusicCast streaming adapters fitted centrally to distribute audio through the building. Instructors and staff can stream music to any space directly from their phone, with hardwired auxiliary inputs held in reserve as backup.
Speaker selection was matched to each room. Martin Audio carries the studios and common areas, with every existing ceiling speaker upgraded to Martin Audio during the works. In the Strength Zone, QSC speakers are reinforced by four Martin Audio SX215 dual-15-inch subwoofers, engineered to drive sound through the largest training space in the building. Quest was selected for the Yoga and Reformer studios, where warmth and low-end presence suit quieter sessions.
Instructor microphones run on a mic-priority mode that automatically lowers room audio slightly whenever an instructor speaks. Spoken cues land clearly over the full track, which allows instructors to run their class without competing with the music to be heard.
SOLUTION 03
Projection, Wellness & Head Office
Projection & Virtual Classes
Four of the studios, Functional, Fusion, Reformer and Yoga, carry projection as standard. Each is fitted with an Epson EB-L series laser projector, delivering 9,000 ANSI lumens at WUXGA resolution onto a fully motorised screen, running on-screen instruction and Total Fusion's Virtual Classes from a local input or an incoming stream. As with everything in the building, the video hardware answers to Q-SYS, so screens and projectors are part of the same room control staff already know.
Wellness & Total Fusion Beyond
On the lower level, the Wellness and Total Fusion Beyond treatment and spa rooms run as their own quiet retreat. Each room carries an individual wall-plate volume control, allowing therapists to set the levels to suit the treatment space. The area runs on its own dedicated MusicCast streaming device, fully separated from the rest of the facility so it can hold its own calm and tranquil soundscape regardless of what is happening elsewhere.
The Head Office
Morningside also serves as Total Fusion's corporate headquarters, where the working floors were given the same treatment as the member-facing spaces. The offices carry Martin Audio speakers with the same venue-wide streaming and zone control, alongside smart LED TVs and individual Q-SYS touchscreens, with the meeting room and creche fitted to match.
SOLUTION 04
The Cycle Room
The Cycle Room is the centrepiece of the project, and the space where every discipline came together.
The room's height and mezzanine gave our team the opportunity to build a full production environment, but the solid concrete ceiling meant nothing could simply be fixed overhead. Every element was engineered onto suspended truss, T-bar droppers, and floor mounts designed to carry the load safely and route cabling without touching the structure.
The visual anchor is a 6m x 3.5m Event Pixel VD4 curved LED wall, suspended from the ceiling to wrap around the instructor's podium and command the room. A Pixera dual-output media server feeds the wall, alongside more than 40 moving and effect fixtures and an MDG atmosphere hazer. Lighting runs on a grandMA3 with a dedicated network node, the same platform used in touring and theatre production. To make full use of it, Ampd engaged Dulio Design to develop the lighting and video package with our team.
Q-SYS sits at the heart of the room as the single interface, with a 24-inch touchscreen mounted at the instructor's bike. Communicating via OSC with both the grandMA3 and the Pixera server, it drives lighting, video, audio and haze as one synchronised system. Fully automated 45-minute classes run at the press of a button, every cue pre-programmed, making the experience feel closer to a nightclub production than a spin session.
Instructors are not locked into a fixed show however. They can build their own cues for each class, set visuals and colours against their playlist, then use timecode or beat-sync to time the room to the ride and create their own unique and fully customisable sessions.
Sound in the room is handled by a Martin Audio CDD12 system on the main floor, with a pair of CDD8s matching it on the mezzanine. And to grant the room the sense of scale Total Fusion wanted to achieve, a series of mirrors were worked into the design, positioned to avoid distortion and stray reflections while lending the space a depth well beyond its walls.
A full production rig, a large-format LED wall and a tuned PA, integrated so completely that the entire show runs as one.
The Equipment.
Video
- Epson EB-L series laser projectors, 9,000 ANSI lumens at WUXGA, with motorised screens
- Event Pixel VD4 curved LED wall, 6m × 3.5m
- Pixera dual-output media server
- Smart LED TVs
Lighting
- grandMA3 lighting control on PC with a dedicated network node
- More than 40 moving and effect fixtures on suspended truss, T-bar droppers, and floor mounts
- MDG atmosphere hazer
- RGBW studio lighting driven via sACN to DMX from Q-SYS (studios facility-wide)
Audio
- Martin Audio speakers throughout the studios and common areas, with all existing ceiling speakers upgraded to Martin Audio
- Martin Audio CDD12 and CDD8
- Martin Audio SX215 dual-15-inch subwoofers
- QSC speakers
- Quest speakers
- MusicCast wireless streaming adapters, including a dedicated unit for Wellness
- Spotify Business streaming
- Instructor microphone system with automatic mic-priority ducking
- Wall-plate attenuators in the treatment and spa rooms
Control & Network
- Q-SYS ecosystem (core processor and networked peripherals), the central control platform for audio, video, and lighting
- Fibre-linked equipment rack network purpose-built for the facility
- Q-SYS 8-inch touchscreen controllers throughout the studios and shared spaces
- Custom 24-inch touchscreen for the Cycle Room instructor position
A CONNECTED VENUE THAT PERFORMS EVERY DAY
The Results.
From first design to final commissioning, our partnership with Total Fusion produced a one-of-a-kind venue that performs for staff and members alike. Across more than 5,000 square metres, audio, lighting, video, and control now operate as one connected system, while each zone retains its independence.
For staff, the complexity sits behind simple controls. Instructors, trainers and front-of-house teams can shape a room in the moment without breaking the flow of a class or shift. The rest of the time, the automation takes over, keeping rooms ready throughout the day and letting the venue run consistently without constant staff intervention.
For members, the technology disappears into the experience. Background music carries naturally through reception, the cafe and common areas. Studios are equipped for in-person and virtual classes. Treatment rooms hold their own quiet atmosphere. In the Cycle Room, audio, lighting, haze and large-format LED combine to create the project’s defining experience: an immersive class environment unlike anything else in the market.
The result is a system that does more than support the building. It shapes how the venue feels, how staff use it and how members move through it. Ampd delivered a platform that brings the entire site under central control while preserving the character of every space.
The technical foundation for a high-performance wellness venue built to run every day and with room to move. As Total Fusion grows its programs and its spaces, the platform is ready to grow with them.
For more on digital signage at Total Fusion, read Fusion Signage’s Total Fusion case study.
Bring your vision for fitness & wellness to life
Creating an exceptional fitness and wellness facility takes more than great equipment. It takes audio, video and lighting designed around the experience you want to deliver, the demands of each space and the people who run it. Talk to Ampd today about what your project needs.
sales@ampd.com.au · 07 3311 6049