Remedial Acoustics

or
I thought I told you to get it designed first.

It happens all the time actually, and surprisingly often, a totally cocked up room can be put right without going to enormous expense. Of course, sometimes it's just not possible, and you have to start from scratch.

If you're looking for a remedial solution for your room's internal acoustics, the first step is to carry out some simple experiments with a synth or bass guitar to identify which notes sound over-loud or too quiet. Make a list of which notes seem loud and quiet. Does the treble scorch your eardrums? Is the bass floppy? Is there a funny twang in the mid, or is it just boxy? Jot it all down, even if you can't exactly quantify any of it.

Next, run over the room with a tape measure, preferably making your measurements accurate to the nearest centimetre, and don't forget to include the heights. If the shape's at all complicated, sketch it out and fax it to us.

Descriptions of the construction of and materials on all the walls will also be needed, and the position of your speakers and any major pieces of furniture.

This information will enable us to model the room, and see what problems we'd expect you to have in it.

If the notes you made about the room performance are in agreement with the predictions of the model, then we're half way to fixing it, because we'll KNOW what's going wrong.

Nine times out of ten, this approach is sufficient to identify the problems in an under-designed control room, without even the need for a site visit, let alone the hire of thousands of pounds worth of fancy test gear.
Now that makes sense in anyone's book, but especially at the lower end of the market, which is where most remedial work happens.

As for cost, as with everything else ESS do, the design day rate is £3000 +vat, and, except in exceptional cases, the modelling process usually takes about half a day. It's impossible to say how long the solution will take, as each job brings its own special set of "opportunities to demonstrate our genius" (no such thing as a problem).

It may well be that once you know what the problem is, you can sort it out yourself. That's fine, we don't want to lock you in to buying more services from us than you actually need.

If, on the other hand, you want us to spec it all out to the last tin-tack, or actually come and do the joinery, that's fine as well, just call us.