Rives Audio Consulting - Advice?

Goatwuss, welcome to my world. I too have ended up with a small 2 way monitor, it's the only thing that works sans a dozen plus traps (which tame the room modes but killed dynamics). Live and learn, caveat emptor, et cetera.

I had a Rives designed level 3 room, which I ultimately ripped out and replaced with one designed by Matts Odemalm, of SMT, in Sweden. I also witnessed the same transformation of another local room (Rives Level 3 room to SMT). My experience was quite similar to those of Mes and Goatwuss noted above. I too spent a tremendous amount of time/money on a Rives design, yielding what I would classify as "unlistenable" results.

My advice - Select your room designer very carefully. Discuss issues such as broadband diffusion vs. absorption of mids/highs. Discuss actual volume, design, and placement of necessary bass traps and procedure for in-room tuning of traps. Ask who will be present to oversee the installation and tuning of acoustical treatment products. If possible, see and hear a room treated by the designer you are considering.

The products and design capabilities of SMT are now available directly in the US through Performance Acoustics Labs. Contact Mike Latvis of Harmonic Resolution Systems (HRS) to inquire.

We had a Level 4 done from the ground up and we have nothing but praise for Richard and Chris. We even got a second opinion from Bob Hodas who came out and set the speakers up and measured both rooms. The build was over $300k. Having a designer/acoustician is paramount in getting it right from the start. If you don't have that, then everything else is just a band-aid.

I'd like to echo Rlapporte, Tom and Mike from PAL /HRS just finished my dedicated 2 channel listening room and I couldn't be more thrilled with the results. The peaks and suckouts that were present prior to redoing the room were completely controlled and the room know has a presence and life that it has never heard. Do your homework, check out different rooms because there are different schools of thought. If you do your work upfront, you will save yourself a lot of aggravation. Good Luck!!

At this stage of the game, anyone who knows what their doing, what all the options are for your room/system, knows acoustics front to back, understands your associated gear and life-style - and how all that plays in with the setup and room acoustics - will be far ahead of where you are, knowledge-wise! Basically, hiring someone is going to "get you there" much more likely than simply doing it yourself, with limited knowledge and experience with all this stuff.
On that note, at the very least, Rives will be able to work with you on your room acoustics, setup, and likely knows what would be best with your gear, room, and life-style (which, BTW, includes listening habits, types of music, social life-style, number of seating options, etc)
I've talked to Richard on many occasions in the past, and he knows what he is doing, at the very least on setting up 2 channel systems, yes.
If it were me, my experience however suggests you need to have someone come out and go through the complete system, do extensive tinkering, listening, and experimenting with all your variables, and dialing it all in! Simply having someone draw you some diagrams/blue-prints, and then possibly coming over for a couple of hours and taking a measurement, and having "a listen", isn't enough! When I spend time setting up rooms, I start from scratch (considering pre-existing room structure) with the speakers and listening seat(s), get everything engineered for best fundamentals, THEN I do the acoustics around that foundation, then the fine-tunning of the system!
Can't really remember the last 2 channel system I did that didn't take me less than 12 hours to simply place some basic treatments, move speakers and listening position(s) around, dial all that in, and go through the system for noise, EQ, phase, whatever. You can litterally spend days going over every single issue from fundamental response from the listening position, loud speaker toe-in, aim, image height and perspective, sound staging and balance of soundstage width, for imaging - image tightness, presence, proper tonality - room reverb, dealing with all the acoustical issues (slap echo, first and second order reflections, base modes - dips, peaks - etc), sound/noise considerations, dealing with system hums, and on and on!
Bottom line, is theres a lot of considerations for dialing in your race car for the track your driving on, given all the variables that even a basic 2 channel system consists of.
I guess what I'm saying is that I think the most effective Rives proposition is going to be the more full scale system package, where they come out and do some actual hands on tweaking - on top of actual acoustic design, recommendations and consulting.
Um, so yeah, Rives would be better than most you're likely aware of out there. They do professional work...recommended