Value – What’s Your Sound Worth?

In the current American economy, we see “value” mentioned frequently, and while the word “cheap” isn’t used, it’s often implied. No one wants to own cheap products, but no one wants to spend more than they should to get the performance they want. There’s a wide range of quality and price, from $99 “recording-studio-in-a-box” and “home-theater-in-a-box” to multi-million-dollar custom studios and screening rooms. Stereo speakers can range from $30 a pair to $300,000 a pair. Where’s the value?

Let’s trot out the dictionary (or thesaurus) – value, n.

1. The regard that something is held to deserve; the importance, worth, or usefulness of something; the material or monetary worth of something.
2. A person’s principles or standards of behavior; one’s judgment of what is important in life.

Most rooms – recording studios, hi-fi setups, home theaters, and even larger performance venues – need acoustic treatments to maximize audio performance. If there’s ‘sound in air’, acoustic products will improve it. And in the acoustic-products category, we see a range of quality and price, but curiously, not nearly as wide as we see in other product categories. You can buy a “room kit” for $99, and get a box of one-inch-thick foam panels to glue on your walls (don’t – the glue lives forever). These will absorb a bit of the higher frequencies and will work about as well as the $99 “junk-in-a-box” system. Which is actually a very high cost-to-quality ratio for a $99 audio system – or put another way, a bad value.

Not that there’s anything wrong with $99 stuff. Ya gotta start somewhere. Hopefully, though, you’ve long outgrown the low end of the audio world, and for anyone who cares about sound, you owe yourself, and the investment you’ve made in your system, to consider the great value Acoustic Geometry products represent. For about 10% of the cost of your electronics and speakers, you can really improve the sound of your system by treating your room. We make the World’s best diffusors – the Curve, which is surprisingly affordable – and our highly-effective absorbers are also very affordable. If you’ve moved past $99 audio systems, the cost of a well-treated room represents a terrific cost-to-quality ratio – it’s a real value.