seeking a sound consultant in New York Area

Dean:

That's good of you to offer to help, but please don't spread the rumor that room treatment means aesthetic compromises. While it's true it CAN, and often does because so many people have been led to believe that strange shaped foam works better than fine fabric wrapped (not burlap wrapped) Owens Corning 703 fiber board. And that strange shapped things protruding from the ceiling works better than integral diffusion placed within the ceiling and covered with fabric. I think the aesthetic issue is one of the biggest barriers to dealing with sound quality--but the truth is acoustical treatment can look like almost anything you want it to (or don't want it to). You can make it almost invisible and we have in many rooms we design--in fact most of our rooms aesthetics is a major issue. I just don't want people to continue to believe that acoustical treatment necessarily means you have to aesthetically compromise a room--only in very rare circumstances would this actually be true (such as a room with 3 glass walls--hard to get around that acoustically without some significant aesthetic changes).

As you have only recently purchased what is a good system it may be that the set up is responsible for your lack of satisfaction. Your room is less than ideal in that it is square rather than rectangular and Quads are very sensetive to placement. That saidI am in nyc and have owned Quads(crosby) for more than ten years. You can email me with more specific system/room details and perhaps I can help before you go to the expense and aesthetic compromises that room treatments create. Dean

Kjl: It's true our headquarters are not in New York. However, we provide our services nationwide and even worldwide through our dealers. Our dealers take the measurements with our acoustical test kits and then we do the analysis and design and work. In our level 3 work we travel to the client and take all the measurements and work directly with our client. We do not sell any acoustical treatment products--all we sell are designs and knowledge. Every design is custom because every room and every client's preferences are different. By preferences I mean the three aspects of design that a client has to consider: sonic benefit, aesthetics, and budget. These work in a balance and every client has a different threshold for each of these--thus every room is different.

The one thing about a large design group such as ours, is that we design more than 25 rooms a month--and it's all custom--no cookie cutter approaches. That's more than many companies design in a year or even 2 years. Small room acoustics is ALL we do.

I hope that's helpful. Please visit us on the web or call us if we can answer any questions.