My friend and I were impressed with the Rives demonstration rooms, but we were already believers because we both had the benefit of seeing him transform my own untreated basement listening room into an acoustically engineered masterpiece. All I can say is, what he did in that room, he can do to any room, as evidenced by how my room now sounds. My basement room was basically a murky sounding bomb shelter and now it sings and is alive with clear, airy, and localizable music... The only problem for me now is that it makes me more aware of weaknesses in my current equipment, but that is OK, because I can correct those by upgrading my speakers (which I have already done - now if only it didn't take time to order them and have them voiced...). :)

Did anyone else here think that the untreated room was the better-sounding of the two? It seemed livlier, with a greater sense of clarity and detail. The treated room just sounded muffled, as though someone had thrown a blanket over the equipment. Don't get me wrong, I have heard plenty of treated spaces I've liked. Our friends at Rives just went a little overboard.

My friend and I didn't. The first room didn't sound bad, but the music was muddy (the bass was indistinct and flaccid), details were incoherent, stereophonic localization of the instruments were lacking (imaging was fuzzy), the highs were hard on my ears (they rang), etc. At least that is what I experienced. Listening preferences are a subjective thing, so to each their own, but I was able to enjoy the music more in the second room, especially since I could hear more of it. It is funny that you mentioned "muffled" though, as the problems, that my friend and I noticed (listed above), made the sound seem muffled to us in the first room. Moving from the first room to the second was like coming out of a fog, in my experience.

Actually, this is exactly what I found so cool about this. You don't have to drink the Kool Aid, you can decide it's not worth it -- but at least you get to judge.

There was obvious improvement. Unpleasant resonances in the first room were cleared up in the second, and the bass was tighted up. But who wants to live with that amount of acoustic treatment? Ugh! How about a few Acoustic Resonators instead?? I did not like the Talon's. They look like just another Watt/Puppy clone and did nothing spectacular as far as I am concerned. Give us back the Firebirds, please.

Talon is still manufacturing the Firebird. In fact we just did a production run and have a new woofer with greater extension and dynamics than the original Firebird. It is still the statement reference speaker. However, the Firebird requires a larger room, not the best choice for this hotel room, particularly considering we needed to seat 7 or 8 people at a time. As to treatment aesthetics, I agree, this was not "pretty", but that is a limitation of a temporary setup in a hotel room. A permanent installation in the home can actually add to the aesthetics of the room rather than detract. Please see some of the examples on the Rives Audio website. Lastly, the RT times in the treated room were very short. Considerably shorter than those for most rooms, but this is a function of such a small room size. Larger rooms would have extended RT times and more high frequency air.

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