"Was it worth the expense?"
You will have to evaluate your system and your future plans goals to know if the services are worth the expense as far as maximizing your system. E.g. if you've got a $1k pair of minimonitors (their basic analysis is like $800) and you're going to be moving anyhow or have a bad room I wouldn't do it. So "to try do it myself" isn't a bad idea depending on your system. It never hurts to educate yourself as much as possible and I think you can certainly get results on your own (through careful speaker/listener placement and liberal amounts of acoustic treatment). If you've got some big dollars in your rig then the services would most likely be worth it and the pros will probably do a better job. Especially when it comes to acoustic treamtent. Rules of thumb (foam at first reflection points) will get you some mileage but for serious acoustic treatment if the room isn't measured you'll probably be wasting money on things that aren't helping. Measuring rooms is important because its almost impossible to write an equation for every conceivable thing in your room (whether or not your walls have standard studs or box bracing, floor materials, windows, etc.)
Look at your system, your goals with it (are you going to upgrade speakers later), and how much money you plan to invest total.
You will have to evaluate your system and your future plans goals to know if the services are worth the expense as far as maximizing your system. E.g. if you've got a $1k pair of minimonitors (their basic analysis is like $800) and you're going to be moving anyhow or have a bad room I wouldn't do it. So "to try do it myself" isn't a bad idea depending on your system. It never hurts to educate yourself as much as possible and I think you can certainly get results on your own (through careful speaker/listener placement and liberal amounts of acoustic treatment). If you've got some big dollars in your rig then the services would most likely be worth it and the pros will probably do a better job. Especially when it comes to acoustic treamtent. Rules of thumb (foam at first reflection points) will get you some mileage but for serious acoustic treatment if the room isn't measured you'll probably be wasting money on things that aren't helping. Measuring rooms is important because its almost impossible to write an equation for every conceivable thing in your room (whether or not your walls have standard studs or box bracing, floor materials, windows, etc.)
Look at your system, your goals with it (are you going to upgrade speakers later), and how much money you plan to invest total.