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

The string of phenomena is a daily revelation, hearing included...



«Only an idiot will ask for a miracle to be an habit»- Groucho Marx 🤓


« Sorry but hearing is my job» -Harpo Marx studying acoustic

One can only imagine what mahgister could do with $65k worth of embeddings. Who knows, that might be enough to make even him give up and upgrade a component or two?

Knowing what i had learned , which is little that all there is to know for sure in acoustic, but learning what i had leaned i will never use 65k bucks for embeddings controls...

For upgrade ,believe it or not, i could do it in few years, my wife will approve, why not?

My system is by far not the "best" there is...Then why not upgrade?

But my ratio S.Q. /price is so owerwhelming, i am AFRAID to buy anything, even if they are a better piece of gear ...

Like i said to really upgrade will cost me 15 k bucks....Not less....

You may ask why not upgrading then ?

Because when you had a MINIMAL very good acoustic audiophile experience already, you dont feel the urge to buy NEW product for the sake of a NEW sound...

My sound is NATURAL to my ears it is enough....

Are you able to hear and listen to the 3-d micro- dynamic envelope of each piano note like if each note was a real 3-d object living in space in the middle of your room with his own color and physionomy? are you able to "see" this note?

I can....


Upgrade to what? More fatiguing details? For what? I listen music, i dont investigate studio recording with a sonic microscope and dont want to do so.... And reviewing different gear has no appeal to me...

I think if you give me 15 k bucks to upgrade i will cheat your gift purpose and buy a motorcycle for my old age.... 😊

When young the money i had put beside my pillow to buy a motorcycle was finally used for my stereo system and for books... I never own alas! a motorcycle...

Books and music are way more important for me....Now more than ever....

But now my system is enough to my satisfaction, trust me, i will then betray your gift of money to buy secretly a motorcycle instead of upgrading....


Audiophile experience is embeddings controls implementation not upgrade of gear....

But you already know that.......

For the cost it may vary, for me it was peanuts...

Acoustic science dont mind about the price, a piece of junk can be used.....Only matter his acoustic properties....

It’s required for Dennis Foley, obviously - sure ain’t required for ME! I don’t go nuts with this kind of stuff....

I dont know for the price, i make it myself at low cost, but Dennis Foley is damn right about the HUGE improvement acoustic give that no UPGRADE will ever replace....

You cannot say i need NEW speakers but not so much acoustic treatment and controls...

Most of the times we need acoustic work more than new speakers.... Save if they are bad, very bad one or not the right one for the room...

If you dont go "nuts" for acoustic you will never listen to what your audio system can do....

The point of this is not that this or that treatment works, but that it is nearly impossible to make any sort of generalized recommendation--proper treatment involves careful listening and application of products or practices after trying them out.

Very wisely said.... Thanks...


All industrial recipe may improve a room, but optimizing a room is not and never a result of a general recipe...I speal here of an usual and normal room use for music.... Anybody with money can redesign the acrchiecture of a room ONLY for music.... The cost then will be very high and possibly higher than the audio system itself.... My advices are for "poor" auddiophiles, about normal room used for music and treated and acoustically controlled at LOW COST.... It is possible....


No room has the same proportion, geometry, and topology and the same acoustic content ...These 4 factors make it impossible, especially if i add a fifith one, the specific speakers demands, to mechanize the acoustic work... EARS is the tool and the main one here....

No general recipe so costly it is will succeed in optimization, only a variable improvement at best....

We must use in a dedicated room not only passive material treatment, but also active mechanical Helmholtz controls to do so .... The room must be treated for the sound circulation waves, but also especially controlled for some specific demand and specific lack from the speakers specific "colored" band emmission.... I use a grid of Helmholtz resonators and diffusers precisely located to "sculp" the room pressure zones FOR the speakers sonic  physionomy TO MY SPECIFIC EARS...

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.

The first part of your post make perfect sense...

Because anybody who treat a room must use his EARS, be him an acoustician or not, to know when to stop and to know what material device to put and where to put it...

Any room must be tuned by our ears or the acoustician ears, not with only an equation, or an electronical equalizer.... The human EARS ca perceive GLOBALLY whow the room sound....Nothing else can.....Id the acoustician dont use his ears correctly it is too bad.... 
😁😊





And yes it is important to put speakers at the right spot in the room and very precisely so...

BUT it will never replace by itself the almost always necessary passive treatment, the right balance between diffision/absorbtion/ and reflection... Especially in an acoustically complex content , geometrically, and topologically in a complex small irregular or small square room...

Most people also ignored the necessity for an optimalization of the relation between the room and the specific speakers with an active mechanical acousticl control by Helmotz method...With it you can create various different new pressure zones in the room and greatly modify the way the sounds is perceived at will....

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.

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....

All posts about audio acoustic is ABOUT money spending.... Hundred of them... 

When i was beginning my seach the only post useful would have been advice to not spend big money but to listen...

Sorry if the truth is so much not in the rolling current flows.... 

In my case, I spent $118K with Dennis for an unsatisfactory resul

Have i read it correctly?

118,000 US dollars?

If yes, this confirm my experience and conclusion with 2 years of experiments at almost NO cost, in my room 13x13 square with 81/2 feet height... Irregular topology and irregular geometry ....One of my speaker is even in the corner a few inches of the walls.... The other not.... The imaging is no more affected at all now.... The balance between my 2 speakers is perfect instead of that....

Any small room NEED treatment and controls, especially if you think it is good... 😁 Because people have no idea what is the S.Q. impact adition.... They are never experience it how could they imagined it?

Acoustic retailer for reason of business economy must add customers, they dont need the time to cure a room, if this room is out of the ideal norm...

My experience with small room is that they need special, specific, listening attentive care with attentive ears...No rule easy to go with mechanically will cure a difficult small room with a not ideal geometry, a not ideal topology and a varied acoustical complex content... You cannot replace EARS experiments with charcoal or any "magical" costly materials....That post confirm my point...

But really you are unsatisfied after 118 k bucks?

I am totally in heaven in 2 listening positions in my room at peanuts cost.... Am i deaf?

No, the proof is there for me, acoustic controls and treatment need only careful listenings and incremental working.... It takes me 2 years of fun.....It is finished and i am stunned each day....

Trust your ears, keep the money, have fun.....

A good room will need very little treatment

I am not by far an acoustician and i speak only from my experience in my room...

The change induced by acoustic passive and active treatment and controls are so huge in SMALL room, that there exist probably no small room that will not benefit from them...

The decisive point is what is a small room and a big one? Reverberation time flows are key...

The reason why people think they dont need now treatment neither controls in their small " good" room is because they never lived the experience of total transformation of the S.Q.before in their audio live...

If you have not live it you cannot imagine it....We are conditioned by the market to buy speakers and thinking they are good or bad in themselves by virtue of their design and this in ANY room...This is completely false... Speakers change dramatically in different room...

I will repeat that give me almost any speaker i can make it sound great in a good room adapted to it...

Give me the best speakers there is in a bad small untreated and uncontrolled room, they will sound bad or at best not very good....

 THis is only my opinions after my limited but very real experience.... I dont think that any acoustician will contradict me....

I spoke with him once about my room - he basically said the dimensions and layout are both unfixable ("Don’t bother trying to fix it, buy a different house.").

I am not an acoustician...

BUT

if i read this advise coming from an acoustician, i doubt a lot... "This is a Bad room sell your house" or next customer please!

That gives me doubts....

No room is unfixable, some room are very difficult...Yes...

My room is a 2 litlle rectangulars in a square central puzzle piece geometry, 13x 13 feet x 8 1/2 height , one of the speaker is almost glued in a corner the other not... 2 windows, one door...

I succeed to compensate completely for the distortion of the soundstage caused by the very bad location of the speakers...

The bass for a 7 inches drivers touch my stomach with punch....The highs are very good in the 2 positions of listenings...Timbre distinction is very good and vibraphone notes decay with changing colors hues is an experience to live....

All my gear are on my desk between the speakers, i succeed to relatively isolate them...

My imaging is stellar in 2 listening positions, and the timbre natural in the 2 positions...

The reason why some professional say this about "impossible" room to fix is simple: they work with standard regular methods, mostly some specific materials, applicable in most case to some degree and not in all case... They want to spare them the big trouble because it is one trouble... You cannot fix a difficult room with simple passive materials means only , even many simple one....it is not like reconstructing the room, it is a work piece by piece in the frequencies range with many devices to compensate.... It is not an easy job... More hours less money....

I spend 2 years with incremental experiments and UNORTHODOX devices to fix it, ( 3 different sets of Helmholtz resonators among others means ) i succeed, using my ears and remember that i optimized my room for 2 POSITIONS of listening not one.... I am in love with the 2 position, one is more detailed, the other more alive, but the 2 are almost perfect.... Impossible to chose....

I am not an acoustician at all.... I am ignorant in acoustic but less than some.... I just discovered that my ears are better acoustician than me....

I know nothing, i just try one step at a time.... I learn little but little may be big, compared to nothing....Is my room perfect? Hell no... Is it a marvel to listen music here? Hell yess... A relative optimization is not perfection but you can live with it without looking back...

i just post that, because some may think to sell their house after this advice by a pro....Or enter into despair and resignation...

My best to all...






By the way thinking like some that "near listening" spare for them the necessity of an acoustical treatment in a small room, is true to a very small degree only....In a small room the reflected waves comes very swiftly into play.... I know then very well by experience that acoustical treatment will change the near listening timbre perception and imaging and soundstage....
Except for rare case of some miraculously well set room already good acoustically this is the rule for me....



The only question is NOT to know if the room is good or too difficult to use..... The only difficult question is :

Do you have a room ONLY for audio purpose? Anything is acoustically workable...At peanuts cost and i proved it for myself... Is it not good news? The ONLY COSTLY thing will be discount your ears advice from the work to be done... Acoustic in its "basic" form is only learning to hear....Read also the basic about waves....

Then saying to someone "too bad room", next customer, speak less about acoustic science than about simplification of work by business methods....Business management it is called not acoustic at all....

It cost me nothing but nobody believe it ..... 😁

They think it is a joke and that are valid only what is sold officially by an acoustic company....

The true point is without room controls most system could not work at their optimal level....

 Many  system very costly i listen to youtube are fatiguing with harsness, and people are not conscious at all about acoustic....I prefer my 500 bucks one.... What does it say about acoustic?

You can reconstruct acoustically a room at high price...

Or create for example at low cost a grid of different Helmoltz resonators and solve the problem of room bass modes...

You can use cheap Schumann generators and small passive resonators and ionizer to act more on the high frequencies...

You can use cheap materials well chosen to treat.... You ears will say if it is good or not....

But it will takes time and experiments.... But it is way more fun than buying anything costly...

It cannot work only in my room ! 😁 but it is not easy in a living room ... I always forgot that cheap solutions are ugly.... Sorry i will mute myself....

When my children and wife look at my room they refrain themselves to call a psychiatric unit, but when they listen to my music, they forgot to call the medic and thyy "this is so good"... Then this is the reason i walk free....But she dislike my audio room....But she like the fact that no more costly upgrades  are in my backhead at all...She keep me...

😊

I suspect with your low ceiling the biggest problem is ceiling and floor bounce/reflection.

i think so also... try a diffusive element like big green plant....

For those here who have treated their rooms to their own satisfaction, what do you think of his numbers?

Perfectly sound and at the same times rubbish....

Sound if you wanted a PERFECT pro treatment ...

Rubbish for me....I need only a relatively good one for my perceiving ears...

I create mine at no cost....By the way his video explanation are very good... I dont doubt his competence... I had no competence in acoustic....But....

The goal is the vibraphone and piano sound must be simultaneously distinctly perceived in their own space with a distinct timbral tone and his aural varying colors and hues and his decreasing decays, all that filling the room 3-d and not coming from the speakers.... Now i have it with a 500 bucks system ....Could it be better? yes...Does i wanted to pay for an improvement? are you silly? Never....I am too busy listening music now.... 😁


It cost me 2 years of listening experiments but it was fun....

He sells his product.... It is Ok.... It is a pro and must be paid...But who can afford 45 thousand dollars for room only ? And how for the system? 😁

Audio is more a snake pit for money when you dont know how to do than it is a snake oil problem ....

But is all the truth contained in this advertisement? No....

By the way we can use non orthodox acoustical tools that are not even in his box tool...And i use some at no cost....


The truth is this: i could create my thing BECAUSE i could afford one room only for audio use... That is the main factor....without this specialized room i could not have made a so good result.... some of my device are awful or not convenient in a common room....

Then a room is the main important factor in audio for me not the dac or the turntable or even the speakers.... Sad truth for many.... But the good news is acoustic controls could be low cost....