$1,000 to spend on room treatment....

Aside from the 7 ft high ceiling, you have a near ideal room size.

Before spending money on 'room treatments' per se, I would suggest the following:

o That your floor is covered with a thick carpet pad and a thick berber or pile type of carpet.

o Remove any hard reflective surfaces from the room, ie leather furniture, glass tables, picture frames, table and floor standing lamps, etc..

o Consider using overstuffed cloth-covered furniture, ottoman, etc., recessed or small floor-based lighting, draperies, etc..

o And most important is the speaker placement within the room.

Only then would consider proper room treatments. But hopefully at that point your room would no longer be a concern.

-IMO

If you have the interest or time I would recommend trying some DIY treatments first. There’s a lot of good information on the web - check out Audio Asylum’s Room Acoustics Forum, Rives Audio and Ethen Winer’s sites.

After doing research, I made a number of effective bass traps and absorbers for my dedicated listening room based on Owens Corning 703 and 705 rigid fiberglass products. With a few basic shop skills you can build custom panels that are attractive and work as well as, or better then, many commercial products.

Going this route is more effort, but you learn a lot about acoustics and save enough money to be able to treat your whole room instead of just part of it. I have 2'x8’ bass traps in all four corners, absorbers at the first reflection points and enough material left over to try several other options. You can also test some options just by placing or stacking the rigid fiberglass in corners or reflection points. If you can't find a local source, there are several online suppliers, including the sensiblesound site mentioned above.

I agree with the DIY if you can. You're money will go alot farther. Base traps are what you want to start with. It can take more than 1 in each corner depending on the room.

Contact Scott at Obsession Audio. THis guy is absolutely fantastic to work with and I am nearing the end of my room design with him. He has designed my room from the ground up and I am currently at the treatment phase. I can't say enough good about Scott. Friendly and very accomodating. His prices are very fair.

Randy Doyle
Newfoundland, Canada

I agree with uppermid.

Rives Level 1 costs about what you want to spend. You can tell 'em you want to focus on DIY (that's what I did) and then walk through implementing the design one step at a time (I've been working on mine for 18 months and still have one major & one minor project left.

I think you'll get better results this way than hit or miss design/matching/products.