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

Without a purpose-built listening room it's unlikely most homes have a floating room with very good ratios and built with multi-layer, heavy, damped construction. My current listening room has those qualities and it still required 32 tuned Helmholtz resonators in the corners, broadband membrane traps against the front wall, RPG Diffractal arrays across most of the back wall, and 4" 703 clouds over about 80% of the ceiling and 70% of the side walls. That treatment takes into consideration that the low frequency modes will already be well spaced and the treatment only enhances what is already a very even room.

What is required in a recording studio though is different from a listening room.  A listening room has the benefit of fixed speaker position and listener.

In a listening room as well, and as it suits personal preference, some reflections are a good thing to enhance sense of space that is often preferred over what can be a flat presentation from the recording. To that end, I would expect most people would not find ideal to have 70% of their side walls covered with thick absorption and probably not 80% of the ceiling, though you have not described the floors.  Covering that much ceiling but leaving the floors "live" can create an unnatural presentation depending on the speakers.

Your implementation of the 32 Helmholtz resonators really speaks to the alternate implementation of a bass array for controlling the lowest nodes. For most users and their rooms, when cost, looks, space, etc. is taken into account, a bass array will be a better, more cost effective implementation. 

Dennis Foley runs a business. He has a business model and a target demographic for his clientele.. My entire system, including room treatments, is under 50K. On the whole, my system/room is to my ears the best I have ever personally heard, and I’ve auditioned systems that retailed for over 200K in rooms that were well set up and treated. He has some products that are very intriguing. I don’t discount him as a complete quack. I don’t agree with everything he says, but that doesn’t make him a charlatan. There can be a number of effective solutions to any problem. Some are more efficient and cost effective than others.

GIK has a different model and different target clientele demographic than Foley does. They also have some worthwhile products, and I’ve got over 2K invested in GIK products.

RealTraps falls somewhere in between GIK and Foley models. Their limp membrane traps are very good, and I have about 1.5K invested in them. I wish I had used more of them and fewer of the velocity traps sold by GIK.

This stuff is not so much a buyer beware situation as it is a buyer be informed situation. These guys are going to sell you what they make. GIK won’t tell you when RealTraps makes a better product for your need.  The buyer has to figure that out himself.

Being ill informed and unwilling to learn about room acoustics and treatment designs is costly. As always, stupid is expensive.

I know from experience!

I have watched maybe 10 of his vids.  It was worth the time and provided food for thought.  But he completely lost me when in the last one I watched he went off on the "industry" selling extremely harmful substances like fiberglass and Roksul.  He was claiming that they are as harmful as asbestos.  Went on to say that playing music would shake fibers loose (even if covered) and of course you would breath them.

He stated that he uses granulated charcoal as a sound barrier between walls.  I will admit if you are soundproofing his wall design did look very well thought out and of course uber $$$$.

Regards,
barts

 

Yes it's true. Asbestos miners working ten hour days breathing a gram per cubic meter asbestos dust develop lung disease in as little as 20 years. The microscopically infinitesimally immeasurably few bits of fibers you might inhale listening to music an hour or so a week is dead certain to give you cancer, and probably only in five or ten thousand years. 

The one thing this bozo is right about is no way you can put a panel on the wall for less than a grand. They can't be anyone else's panels, those guys don't even know about all these invisible astronomically non-existent non-risks. We cannot even begin to estimate the cost of room treatment until we know your net worth.  

And I know what you're thinking, but we already know your gullibility and susceptibility to BS is sky high, or you'd never watch these stupid videos. So all we need now is your money.

My last home had a concrete acoustic ceiling. No asbestos laden soft material. It was heavy and would require a rebuild of the entire ceiling to remove it. But why do that? 

That kind of ceiling makes for a great sounding room. It was 19 x 29. It was a den/living room that was my dedicated listening room. The issue: Stone and wood and one side wall and nothing but drywall on the other side wall. But it was a fixable problem.

Sometimes what you are dealt with, by sheer luck, is a great sounding room.  The bass response I got from a pair of salk Songtowers was simply evil...and not boomy at all...just deep and clear as sin. Then I moved.

I think we gotta work with what we got. Each room has it's sonic signature..and is unique. 
Some just require a lot more work.