Gajgmusic: While your situation is unique--it is not so unique. Everyone has certain things about the room they can not or will not change for one reason or another (WAF, kids, aesthetics, etc.) This is very normal and must be considered in any type of design. I think this is one of the main barriers to hiring an acoustical design group, and something that I really feel compelled to respond to. In any group that is worth their salt there should be several important stages in the process. The first is the "discovery" stage. That handles what we are dealing with, what is the room like, what does the client want, what things can or can not be changed. The second is a preliminary concept (or ate least understanding the boundaries and the possibilties within those boundaries), i.e. "We can do this, but you might need to move this or add a rug etc". This stage is just to see if the client is willing to do what is necessary to get a rewarding listening environment. At this point either there can not be a good compromise to get good acoustical results, or there is agreement on what needs to be done. If there is agreement in principle, then it is time to come up with a full plan including a budget, schedule and payment. If not, then nothing else is done, and no one has paid anything. What I am basically saying is that you should have nothing to lose in giving a acoustical group a design and saying "can something be done to help me?" They might say, "Yes if you move the piano"--which you aren't willing to do and thus they may not be able to help. We use an "application form" to start our design processes and the reason is so that we can understand if we really can help our client--if not we let them know.
the Listening Room
Many of you may know us, we design listening rooms. While we offer fixed prices for different levels of consultation, no two listening rooms are the same and some vary wildly. I am interested in hearing what you all want to get out of your listening room. I have my own biased opinion, that the listening room is often the most important component of any system (and unfortunately frequently ignored to a large degree). Let's suppose that you could get an acoustical engineering group like ours for free, but you still had all other constraints. You could a great deal on materials to impliment the design but you still had whatever other considerations you have in your life (I don't have space for a dedicated listening room, I can't have ugly acoustical treatement in the room, I can't move walls in my house). Try to be qualitative rather than quantitative. I'm not really that interested in hearing about the specifics of rooms--I'm more interested in hearing about end result goals, such as: I need sound isolation (I like to listen loudly at night and don't want to wake up my wife), or my room sounds dead--I feel like I have a head cold when I walk into it. The other aspect that would be very helpful, at the end of the post, please put a percentage of 2 channel vs HT or multi-channel you listen to. You may even be in the camp: "the room doesn't matter much, I like buying new pieces of equipment instead" That okay too--I'd like to hear from you as well. Some people may not understand the importance of room interaction on the sound, that's okay too--if you had free consultation what would you do or ask in order to get a better listening room.
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- 27 posts total
- 27 posts total