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

Do you really think people are going to spend that kind of money on room treatments when they balk at spending 10K on a whole system?

:)

Some people really do spend this amount of money....

Why?


Essentially if you own the best amplifier already, the best speakers, the best turntable and Dac that money can afford, you already know something about the POWER of acoustic science, if not you had enougth money to be ready to discover it.....

But when you know how to do it, or learn how to do it, to some "relative extent" like i learned without being in no way an acoustician, you know how POWERFUL acoustic is.... Then if your are rich, you are ready to pay for something which is no less quality improvement than your high quality costly gear....

That is my experience...

But it is not necessary to invest money at all to reap the benefits of acoustic science at least some % of this science improving laws and put them at work with homemade materials and devices using your own ears for sure....

But it is not necessary to invest money at all to reap the benefits of acoustic science at least some % of this science improving laws and put them at work with homemade materials and devices using your own ears for sure....

I think this is exactly right, and given what I have made myself and have gotten used or via GIK, I think Foley is really bilking people.

I would say that it depends on the specific room. If you set up your system in a bedroom, apparently a large bed makes a great bass trap. 

It is a matter of doing things right.  I know of a system where the dealer removed much more than $50k in treatments from a client's room to get it to sound right (there was a whole room on the side that stored the massive quantity of tube traps, etc).  I heard a dealer room that had been specially designed and treated by "experts" that sounded terrible (this was during the live-end, dead-end era of treatment).  Among the better rooms I've been in have been rooms with very minimal treatment (mostly decorative wall hangings, book cases, etc).  In sum, among serious setups, I've heard more rooms that sounded dead from overtreatment than I've heard rooms that were undertreated.  

By far, it is MUCH more important to get the placement of the speakers right.  This is actually much trickier that most people think, and one can experiment for a really long time before the right placement of speaker, listening chair and furnishings is accomplished.  But, when it is finally achieved, the results are usually better than one gets by stuffing the room with absorbing panels, diffusers, etc.

@larryi you are correct. Start with an untreated room and set up the speakers properly. I have used several different methods, but the one that has worked best for me is the Wilson Audio set up guide using your actual voice to determine the preferred location of your speakers. The mathematical guides are ok for a starting point but they don’t consider the other variables such as existing furnishings in a room. Add room treatments slowly such as bass traps and first reflection point absorption. It’s easy to overdue the room and I prefer diffusion myself.