Acoustic treatment question: do you agree with Dennis Foley that $46k to $65k is required?

I like Dennis, and appreciate his knowledge, especially regarding room issues, and what to look for, or, look out for. But understand, his career has mostly been in high end design, fabrication, and installations. As I understand, he is getting out of the absolute designing and installing a complete room as a turn key solution (mostly due to health issues). He is concentrating on on making and selling his products going forward.

Obviously he believes in a quality level for his products and services that will solve issues in they way he thinks they should be solved. Fine. I’m in the design/build field and understand that desire as long as there are clients to spend money and pay the bills, but understand, his products are not for any or everybody. But I’m sure they work, and work very well. I would certainly trust his knowledge, expertise, and his products. But could I afford them. Again, as I am in the design/build business, you would probably be shocked at what some clients are willing to spend on a single room vs the ‘norm’. Some would say ‘that’s crazy’ and another ‘that’s what I want and I’ll spend the money to get it’. Geez, we have some in this hobby we who will spend $60,000+ for speakers or an amplifier, so why not the same or similar on room treatment? Most folks will think it’s crazy to spend even $1,000 for speakers, let alone a phono cartridge.

Are there cheaper solutions? Yes, just as there are cheaper speakers. Will they be as good as his products? Well, he doesn’t think so, so is only going to cater to those clients who believe in him, his products, and that comes with a certain cost.

If you can’t afford Dennis’ products and solutions, go elsewhere. But if you want his products, expect to pay a premium for them.

I’m certainly not going to beat him up for that, nor believing in his products and knowledge. 

Oh, not sure who brought this  up but yes, floor and ceiling are hugely important places to consider room treatment.

Also, keep in mind that even if you can't get everything where you want it, room acoustics are statistical, not absolutes.  You can make up for deficiencies in one spot by adding more in another.  More or less. Of course, early reflections are hard to compensate for if you can't fix them, but they are only a small part of the story. Controlling bass modes, and the overall decay of signals in the room is as if not more important.

GIK makes art panels and I am thinking of having ceiling panels that look like a night sky.  Or white to disappear on the ceiling.

You can reconstruct acoustically a room at high price...

Or create for example at low cost a grid of different Helmoltz resonators and solve the problem of room bass modes...

You can use cheap Schumann generators and small passive resonators and ionizer to act more on the high frequencies...

You can use cheap materials well chosen to treat.... You ears will say if it is good or not....

But it will takes time and experiments.... But it is way more fun than buying anything costly...

It cannot work only in my room ! 😁 but it is not easy in a living room ... I always forgot that cheap solutions are ugly.... Sorry i will mute myself....

No, I don't agree. I've had a recording engineer and the owner of a high end stereo salon over to my humble one bedroom apartment and they both loved the acoustics and my set up. When asked, they both said not to bother with any room treatment as I listen in a somewhat, near field perspective. One even walked around, clapping to see if there's any bad echos and couldn't elicit one.

It could be that I'm lucky with the room dimensions. Who knows. But to spend that kind of money is going way overboard, IMHO. At the high end salon owners house, his listening room is large and at first glance, you don't see any treatment, anywhere and yet, he told me it took awhile before he got it to where he likes it. The first thing you notice is there's lots of space around the speakers.

After a long listening session at his place, I come home to hear mostly the same thing. Goes to show you that nothing is an absolute. If I ever get lucky enough to have a larger place, with a dedicated listening area, I'd try this out first: http://www.mother-of-tone.com/acoustic_panel.htm to see if it works. It's relatively cheap and can be done by oneself, or by someone who can put it up for not much. The use of the organic lacquer used to treat the wood reminds me of what that recording engineer told me of what he offered to Disney Hall to improve the sound there: some kind of treatment to the panels they use being all it would take. They never took him up on it.

All the best,
Nonoise

It is categorically impossible to adequately acoustically treat a high end listening environment for less than $65k. I can tell you precisely what it will cost. PM me your complete financial statement and I will get right on it.