Auralex Room Analysis Plus Review

Auralex Room Analysis Plus Introduction

Acoustics. Next to your speakers, your room is probably the biggest contributor to the quality of the sound. We here at Audioholics care about acoustics as we understand that it is one of the major factors affecting your listening experience. Personally, I'd recommend spending $1000 on speakers and $1000 on room acoustics over spending $2000 on speakers and $0 on the room. You close your eyes and I'm betting that first room sounds better than the second 9 times out of 10.

Background

At the Audioholics State of the CE Union event, I had a chance to talk to Sean Bowman of Auralex. I've got enough experience in my room to know I have problems. Heck, my introduction into writing for Audioholics was a DIY absorber article. Years later and my room treatments haven't really changed and now I know that I've got some pretty bad bass suckouts. My solution? Some sort of diaphragmatic resonator or something. I asked Sean if they had DIY plans for such things. I figured I started with DIY, why not continue the trend?

Sean had another idea.

Auralex was starting up a new kind of service. At the time they called it an "off-site analysis." This was a way of getting real feedback on your room and suggestions on how to fix it without having to pay a consultant to come out with a bunch of equipment and the accompanying large bill.

Sounds good to me.

Room Analysis

Auralex has introduced three levels of consultation. There is the Room Analysis, Room Analysis Plus, and Room Analysis Pro. The Pro version involves someone coming to your home with equipment. If you have the money for that (it starts at $1500 a day plus travel and expenses), stop reading and call Auralex. It's probably worth it. For the rest of us, the other two options are much more accessible.

The basic Room Analysis involves a form. You fill it out. It asks you stuff like type of room, dimensions, listening preferences, speaker setup, and what you think your problems are. They also ask you to draw a picture of your room. If you have CAD drawings, blueprints, digital pictures, etc., they'll take them as well. You fax/email in the form and they plug it into a program and tell you where your room problems probably lie and what they would suggest you do about them.

Cost? Zero.

Oh baby, that's the kind of price I'm talking about. If you care even one iota about how your system sounds, you should have already done this. This is a no-brainer of epic proportions. Sure, they are going to suggest that you spend money but they aren't requiring you to spend it with them. Heck you can do it yourself if you want. That's where I started.

The Room Analysis Plus takes this service a step farther. You fill out of the form, draw your room, etc. just like before. On top of that, they send you an audio sweep file and you play it through one of your speakers while recording it. You'll need to specify exactly where your speakers and the mic is in the room including measurements from the wall, the type of mic, and the make/model of speakers. You measure one speaker at a time - more on that later. Once you send all that in, they run it through their analysis program and send you a report. They also promise an hour or two of on-the-phone consultation for the inevitable questions you have. Price? $250 for up to five measurements (when I began this article, it was $250 for the first measurement, $100 for each additional measurement, they've apparently decided that this wasn't enough bang for your buck. Better for you I say). The report you get will have all the measurements combined into the analysis (not a separate report for each).

What You Need

For the Room Analysis, all you need is the ability to describe your room correctly. A tape measure is mandatory with a digital camera being a very helpful bonus. I'm sure you could use something like Google Sketchup if you wanted to. Any additional information would probably be welcome. After that, all you need to do is fill out the form and send it in.

For the Room Analysis Plus, you're going to need some sort of recording setup. This is where a lot of the Home Theater crowd is going to get lost. Having an omni-directional mic is not a problem for musicians who probably have them lying around but for the average consumer it is a different story. Auralex is now offering a package called the Room Analysis Plus Kit. In it you'll find a mic and a USB thumb drive with the appropriate test tones. What you'll still need at a minimum is a preamp and an XLR cable. You'll probably want a mic stand as well (though I'm sure you could rig something up). The cost of the kit is $299 and it includes a five position analysis (so you are basically getting the mic for $50).

Trying to figure out how to do this on the cheap, I can't really see how you're going to get away with a cheaper mic than $50 so I'm going to start with that. If you can (perhaps used or something), fine. Just be sure you're not buying cheap, just getting a deal on something quality. If your mic is low quality, your measurements will be affected and the analysis will be affected. Better to spend a few dollars up front on the mic than end up with an analysis with a bunch of caveats.

The preamp is the real problem with costs easily escalating. What you need is a way to transfer the XLR signal to USB to get it into your computer. With that, you can use a free program like Audacity and do the recording (that's what I used). A quick search online revealed a couple of devices like this which might work. You could possibly get a used preamp for about that as well. You'll need to look around. All in all, I estimate if you have no equipment you're going to be out about $350 to get the analysis done. That's not too bad but then again; don't forget that the standard Room Analysis is free. It just doesn't include any measurements.

The other option (and this was suggested to me by Auralex) is to contact your local dealer and see what they're willing to do. The assumption is that a person that is paying for an analysis will eventually buy something. Some dealers have suggested to Auralex that they would be willing to do the Room Analysis Plus measurement for free. Since the dealer is doing the measurement and not a representative of Auralex, it is still considered a Plus service and not a Pro. I wouldn't bet on anything for free though if the price is around $100 it might be worth it.

What You Get

Obviously, you get a report. But what's in it? You'll see frequency graphs and waterfall charts. This will show you what your room sounds like and more importantly where the problems lay. Of course, what you're looking for is a mostly a straight line between 20Hz and 20kHz (technically it should taper off on the low end and slightly boost on the high - for more info check out this article). You'll be lucky if you don't see something that looks like an EKG. These are room affects and speaker nonlinearities working in conjunction. If you have a perfect speaker (and let's pretend you do for the time being), this is the additive and subtractive affects of the size and shape of your room including what materials the walls are made out of plus the affects of any treatments, furniture, and other items.

The real value (it's hard to talk about value with the standard Room Analysis since it is free) of the report is that the report gives you suggestions of where and what type of treatments you need and possibly locations of speakers and seating. So, if the measurements indicated that you have a bass suckout at a particular frequency and the room size would have predicted it as well (confirmation), then Auralex will tell you not only that you have the problem but what and where you should put treatments to remedy it. On top of that, if placement of speakers or seating is a contributing factor, they'll let you know where you could move your speakers or seating for a better listening experience.

The real question here is how much of a value added is the Room Analysis Plus over the standard Room Analysis. Well, if you are one of those guys that don't trust theory, you're going to want the measurements. My opinion is that the difficulty of your room is probably the deciding factor. If you have an enclosed rectangular room and have good attention to detail, you can probably get away with the standard Room Analysis. Just be overly descriptive. Triple check your measurements. Take lots and lots of pictures. Make sure you include the materials your furniture is constructed out of. Don't assume that any item won't make a difference. The effectiveness of the suggestions will be directly proportional to the accuracy and quality of your description. The Auralex rep said that with a more normally shaped room and very good descriptions, he's found that his analysis was up to 90% correct when afterwards he went in with his equipment and measured it directly.

While enclosed rectangular rooms are fairly easy to model, anything other than that becomes much more difficult. Openings to other rooms, vaulted ceilings, odd shapes… anything that deviates from a box makes modeling much more difficult. That's not to say that doing a Room Analysis is useless, if you can't afford the Analysis Plus, something is better than nothing. Plus… free! But if you have the money and the equipment, the best thing (regardless of room shape) is the Analysis Plus. This gives you real information about your room. No matter how good your description, there will always be that X factor - that element of the unknown that can and very likely will affect Auralex's recommendations. Is it worth the money? That depends on how much money you’re willing to spend and how "different" your room shape.

Auralex Room Analysis Plus Initial Assessment and Fixes

I have an irregularly shaped room… Actually, it pretty much is a nightmare acoustically. It is open on two sides with the openings offset making the side walls non-symmetrical. The room opens up to the rest of the house which isn't helping the acoustics any. The DIY acoustical treatments I built many moons ago were helping (subjectively) but I knew I needed more. I've done some tests with the Velodyne SMS-1 with the treatments in and out of the room and tested a lot of different positions. I felt I had done everything I could within the limits of spousal tolerance and my own sense of aesthetics. Since this room is right next to the front door I really couldn't do anything too extreme as it is literally the first room people see when they enter the house. On top of that, I have grand plans for a new home or an addition to my current home which will include a dedicated home theater. This means I'm not really willing to do anything too permanent to the room.

The thing to remember is that most people have non-optimal rooms. Auralex was very excited to test out their service in a room such as mine as it really does represent most consumers. In any room, Auralex suggests measurements from every listening position. The way it works is you hook up one speaker to a source that can play the test tones. Auralex suggests the most direct route possible which probably means just setting your receiver to "source direct" and unplugging your second main speaker. In a rectangular enclosed room you can imagine that the modeling would be fairly easy to flip for the second speaker provided your speakers are fairly symmetrically placed in the room.

Yeah, that sounds likely.

OK, even if your speakers aren't symmetrically placed the real key to "easy" modeling is an enclosed room of rectangular shape. When you have openings or weird shapes (like octagons) you're introducing problems that give the poor acoustical engineers migraines. And that's if they are in the room much less when they are trying to fix your problems via email. Auralex would like to see a measurement from each seat in your home theater. My suggestions is at a minimum in an enclosed rectangular room do a single measurement at the prime (i.e. where you sit) listening position from either speaker. In a non-optimal room, at least two measurements - prime listening position one with each speaker. Save the rest of the measurements for the sub and some sort of post (after changes) measurement. If it comes out good enough, print the two graphs out and have them framed. I would.

You may be wondering what is the deal with the single speaker? I wondered the same thing. Why don't they use a speaker and the sub? The bass is where all the problems lie, right? Well, if you did the Room Analysis Pro (where they have an Auralex representative come out and measure for you), they'd do just that. But over the phone (so to speak), they need a single source. If you included the sub or a second speaker it would be two sources and they wouldn't be able to tell from the measurement which source was causing the issue. That being said, you can add a separate measurement of just the sub which Auralex can add into your analysis and report.

I decided to do a number of measurements (much more than you would ever possibly want to do). I have three listening positions - left, right, and center. With two main speakers and a measurement a piece, that gave six separate measurements. Plus I wanted to see what the difference would be between the treated and untreated versions of the room would look like. That doubled the number of measurements. The full report can be viewed here. This report is the EXACT report I received. It has not been edited in any way.

For the tests, I burned the test tones to a CD and played them back through an Oppo 970HD into a Sherbourn 2/75B amp plugged directly into a Salk SongTower QWT speaker. They asked for a direct path, I gave them one. The Sherbourn has a volume control on it. I used the omnidirectional mic included in my Sencore SP395A FFT Audio Analyzer package and the recording equipment from my AV Rant podcasting setup to record directly onto my laptop with Audacity. I then exported each of the recordings as a wav file (about 2 megs a piece) and sent them to Auralex. It took about a week to get the results. You can probably expect a quicker turnaround since you'll more likely be sending in one or two measurements and not 12.

The preliminary results suggest a few things. First, I have bass problems. This was no surprise as that was my concern from the beginning. Not only that, but the bass problems were exactly where I expected them to be from my tests with the SMS-1. The room treatments in general made improvements but mostly above 100Hz and mostly subtle. Does that mean that subjectively the differences were minor? No. But with this type of measurement we can see that not only do the effects change based on your seated location but also between the speakers. What is missing is a summative report which is really the downfall of this type of service. With a representative on site with specialized equipment, they could do that but with a single measurement it becomes much more complicated (if not impossible).

Dark - With Treatment, Light - Without Treatment 

What was encouraging overall was the flatness of the frequency response of the room above 100Hz. While not the graph I was hoping for, it could have been a lot worse. The report from Auralex also shows that the bass problems don't just stay in the bass region but have harmonics higher up. Fix the bass and watch the line flatten out even more. Note - Part of the drop in the bass region is also the response of the speaker falling off so it's hard to interpret (other than grossly) exactly what is going on in the region. The multiple measurements do really nail down that I have a main suckout between 75Hz and 90Hz depending on the measurement. From my experiences with the SMS-1 and other measurement equipment, this was exactly what I was afraid of. In fact, when I approached Sean Bowman at the beginning of this process, I was asking how to build a resonator right in that range!

Author's Note - What I have (and what most people employ) for room treatments are what is referred to as broadband absorption. These are panels, usually constructed out of fiberglass or rockwool insulation, which absorb a multitude of different frequencies to varying degrees of success. A resonator is a very targeted room treatment that vibrates (or resonates) at a specific frequency. Think tuning fork. A 90Hz resonator will take the bass energy at that frequency and use it to "power" the vibration which in turn stops that energy from reflecting around the room. When I asked Auralex about building my own resonators for some of these bass issues, they were hesitant to give me plans (though they said they had them). Why? Tolerances on resonators are very tight. If you are off even a little it will resonate at the wrong frequency and instead of removing sound, will actually create more. And that would be bad.

The Fix

Now that I have a report of my problems the question becomes what to do about them. Most of the suggestions on the report include increased bass trapping in the corners. Had I not contacted Auralex, I would have thought this to be the case as well. In addition, they suggested closing off the room or at least putting up thick curtains across the openings. Additional absorption on the back wall seemed to be warranted and a suggestion was made about adding some diffusion panels on the ceiling between the listening position and the speakers. All good suggestions and all (I'm sure) would make a big difference in the sound of my room. Let's take them one at a time.

Closing off the room
As you can imagine, this requires the most money, time, and convincing of the significant other. Before I ever started working for Audioholics I considered this option and rejected it as costing too much money, destroying the "flow" of the house, and generally reducing the resale value of what is probably not the last home I'll ever own. The one way I thought I could get this done is with pocket doors but the wiring/venting system in that room pretty much makes this an impossibility. Good idea though.

Curtains across openings
I've suggested this idea to the wife before and met with skepticism and reluctance. I've let it drop… until… one night she's complaining about not having a TV in the bedroom. Well, contrary to popular belief, I don't have piles of extra TVs to put back there. What I do have is a bunch of projector companies that would love for me to review their latest projector. I can't though because I have no light control in my main room. But if we had curtains… Sometimes, a suggestion that is met with reluctance needs only good timing to become a plan. We are now in the planning stage. Score one for the AV Geek!

Increased absorption on the back wall
This one is really not a big problem and was quickly implemented. Unlike most people, I do just happen to have extra insulation just lying around. Part of the perks of the job I suspect. Now, instead of having a 4" think panel with 2" of insulation and 2" of air gap I have a full 4" of insulation. In addition, I removed the two 2' by 2' panels from the front wall and filled one with 4" of insulation and added it to the back wall and added the second below the absorber on the left wall to help catch first reflections. I considered putting up larger (than 2' x 2') panels in the back of the room but nixed it for a couple of reasons. First, the wife just agreed to curtains (eventually) and I didn't want to push my luck. Also, and in some ways more importantly, I like the diamonds on the back wall. If I switched them out for rectangles, I'd miss the diamonds and the room would lose the one element that isn't rectangular. To me, the diamonds make the room almost acceptable to guests and I didn't want to mess that up.

Diffusion panels on the ceiling
Umm… no. This is an 8 foot high room and hanging panels from the ceiling is something only a madman or a bachelor would consider. I'm sure it would help with the sound but my popcorn ceiling will have to be good enough diffusion.

Addition bass trapping in all the corners
If you read through the recommendations, the single common theme was additional corner trapping. I have two 1' wide, 8' tall panels straddling the rear corners now. In many of the measurements, they are already making a difference. The reason I went with the 1' wide panels is clearly detailed in my DIY articles but to recap - didn't think 2' wide would fit, worried about interfering with the rear/back speakers, and I have outlets/vents nearby that I didn't want to cover. Fast forward a few years and I've moved slightly the side speakers and removed completely the rears (just didn't add enough for the size of the room and I thought actually messed up the rear soundstage as compared to a 5.1 setup). I've also removed the foil from the insulation as I felt it was resonating and I added 2" of insulation to the corner panels to beef them up a little. Auralex's suggestion was to add a LOT more absorption and to all the corners.

Enter GiK Acoustics. GiK makes a Tri-Trap which is essentially a triangular shaped trap that is made for corner placement. They extend about 17" from the corner and can be stacked. While the stats say they are 4' tall, they are really just shy of 47". This is perfect as my 8' ceilings are really a little less than that once you factor in the popcorn ceiling and the carpet. A perfect fit.

Auralex Room Analysis Plus Implimentation and Conclusion

Auralex wanted additional bass trapping in all four corners. There's a problem there. First, in my left front corner I keep an equipment rack. This is for all the gear that doesn't fit in the component rack. It is easier to get to and frankly, I need the extra storage. While most people have a receiver and a few sources, I have a receiver, processor, amp, two DVD players, an HD-DVD player, the Veloydyne SMS-1, two APC power conditioners (the H15 and the H10), a cable box, an Xbox 360 and various other equipment and accessories to make the whole thing work (see my reference system on Audioholics for specifics). An AV Geek's dream? Sure. But there isn't a display stand big enough to hold all of it without the interior getting as hot as the sun. The best I could do was to move one of my 8' tall panels to that corner. A tri-trap just would have been too big.

The right front corner has two problems. First, there is an outlet in use there. The second is that the sub is located near there. While it is theoretically possible to get a Tri-Trap in the corner, it wouldn't look right and it would make an already cluttered corner (what with the sub and the speaker) just too tight. Again, I was only able to get one of my 8' panels in there. The back corners already had panels in them so switching them out for a GiK Tri-Trap is not a problem. No outlets are covered and the one vent is only partially covered so I don't care.

Everything's fixed right? Case closed.

Not exactly. I've harped over and over again about a rectangular enclosed room. This is because modern modeling techniques rely on this shape in order to predict room interactions. Additional measurements were taken in the room and the results?

Green - before Auralex suggested changes, Red - after

Please remember that the "after" measurement was taken at a later date and while I tried my best to match the before speakers/mic/furniture placement, it could very well be that some of the differences are due to my placement inaccuracies. As you can clearly see, in almost all areas, the changes were positive. The peaks and dips while not eliminated are reduced in severity in almost every case. It this a flat line? Not by a long shot but this also isn't an ideal room nor has the room been professionally treated. This is more akin to a DIY project that just about anyone (with a little recording equipment) can do. That being said, I decided to take a measurement at the (subjectively) worse seat in the house. The results? No real difference between the treated and untreated versions. Sure, there were some changes, some good and some bad but overall the summary is above 200Hz things got a bit better but below, things stayed about the same.

How could this be?

Too often on the forums and with the uninitiated you'll get the impression (if not the outright assertion) that placing passive room treatments in your room will ALWAYS help. That may be partially true, but not as much as you'd think. Passive room treatments are broadband absorbers. Their function is to absorb sound from a multitude of frequencies. The problem is that you have no control over the absorption and where it is applied. In my room, there is a lot going on. There is sound bouncing around the listening space but also out into the adjacent rooms some of which is reflected back in. When broadband absorption is applied, it is affecting all those frequencies. Some of the reflected sound is causing problems by adding or canceling other sound. Other reflections are actually helping through the same process. With an odd shaped room, it is near impossible to tell what is happening and what to do about it without a more hands on trial and error approach. One thing is sure, broadband absorption is not the panacea that some make it out to be.

Backup Measurement

One thing lacking from the Room Analysis Plus measurement is the sub. While I could have sent them a reading with just the sub and had them try to put them together (and this may be something that is worth spending one of your five measurements on), I didn't. Plus, you really aren't getting a picture of the whole room - it is one speaker at a time from one seated position. As a backup, I decided to bust out the mic for the Velodyne SMS-1 and recalibrate and measure my room. While my speakers have changed and so has the room treatments, the sub is the same and the basic layout hasn't changed much. In addition, Auralex sent me a SubDude HD. This is basically a 15" x 15" x 2.5" platform for your sub. The idea is to reduce vibration transmission through the floor cutting down on vibrations from other objects in the room like windows and such. While this makes my Axiom EP500 look a little like it is wearing one of those wooden shoes from samurai movies, it did seem to reduce vibrations. This was especially noticeable with a light fixture (another thing I've been meaning to replace - so many projects, so little money) in the foyer and a loose windowpane in an adjoining room. While the vibrations weren't completely suppressed, I was able to turn the sub up louder before they became noticeable. When I reviewed the Mic-5 add-on for the SMS-1, I took a lot of measurements. The best I could do at the time with a single mic at the prime listening position was this:

SMS-1 1 Mic Calibration Before Auralex

Now remember the Velodyne measures at 1/3rd octave smoothed rather than 1/12th of the Auralex graphs. The 1/3rd smoothing really hides a lot more of the problems than the 1/12th. That being said, here is the post Auralex graphs:

SMS-1 1 Mic Calibration After Auralex

The Velodyne really only affects sound below the crossover (which is set at 80Hz). Other than the expected (and Auralex predicted) dip around 75Hz, the line is remarkably straight.

Listening Evaluation

I often use Yello - the eye during my reviews because of a bass run that often shows the deficiencies with a speaker's low end response. I've had to compensate because of a suckout in my room - no longer. While I can still hear the room's affect on the sound, it is not nearly as pronounced. The improvement on this one song - 200%. Easy. Maybe more. My next step was to bust out an oldie but goodie - Star Wars: Attack of the Clones. While I don't accept that Episodes 1-3 were in any way connected to 4-6 (why, oh why George did you abandon us?), the fact remains that the flyover of the ship at the beginning of that movie is not only an easy and accessible extended bass run, it was also one of the earliest hints to me that I had a problem in my room. It wasn't until I visited Gene and Clint's rooms that I discovered what it was really supposed to sound like. My own room treatments and the SMS-1 helped tame some of the suckouts and inaccuracies from this scene - but it was far from perfect. With the GiK panels and the Auralex Room Analysis Plus? Wow. Just wow. While there was still the ~75Hz suckout, the rest was so clear and linear - something that I've not experienced in my home before. The uninitiated would come over and marvel at the bass - me, I would scowl knowing how much better it could be. And now it is. Much better at least if not perfect.

Without gross effects like the one above, it is hard to say with any degree of certainty that the Room Analysis Plus changes were making the difference. With a 3 second memory for audio, I'm loath to make the sort of attributions that other magazine reviewers seem to have in their "big chocolaty dancing cable" speaker review thesaurus. What I will say, without reservation is that imaging in general seemed to be better. The overall response of the room seemed to be cleaner and more uniform. But the biggest change was the smoothing of the bass response.

Sometimes you don't "know" you have a problem until it's fixed. In this case, I knew that I was getting additional reverb in some of my bass. Diana Krall's Love Scenes has a stand up bass that often seemed to make my room ring. With the changes made to the room based on the Room Analysis Plus I was hearing much tighter and less reverberant bass. The bass guitar was more lifelike and cleaner and the reduction in reverb allowed didn't cloud the soundstage as much (didn't realize it was until now but apparently it was) or obfuscate the other instruments.

Next Steps

Auralex remains convinced that the curtains will make a fairly impressive difference. I'm honestly a bit skeptical (though they are the experts and I'm not about to argue with them) but I'm really at my wife's suffrage on this one. Of course, they wanted to close the room off completely but as stated, not an option. Second, and more importantly, they suggested targeted absorption.

Diaphragmatic absorbers are sealed (or sometimes perforated or vented) boxes that vibrate at a specific frequency. This is a targeted approach to room treatment that will take a specific frequency (or small grouping of frequencies) that are problem areas and address them specifically. It will not help in any other way. The problem is that the tolerances on this type of absorber are very tight. If you are off as little as a 1/16th of an inch you could be not only not treating the frequencies you want to but also will be adding noise to your room. While I may be waiting for a while for the curtains, the diaphragmatic absorber will be underway very soon.

Word of Caution

One thing that is often overlooked with adding absorptive material to your room is the affect this will have on your receiver or amplifier. In order to pump out the same volume in a treated room versus untreated, an amplifier will have to put out more power. That's because some of the energy is being absorbed. Makes sense when you think about it. Too much absorption and you may find your mid level receiver is having a hard time reaching reference level with your moderately efficient speakers. Case in point - when my room was untreated, I could barely see the cone move on my Axiom EP500 subwoofer. Now, the EP is working much harder and I can tell. While far from reaching the limits of its capabilities, I am certainly happy that I overbought a sub for my room. If I had gone smaller, who knows where I'd be now?

Conclusion

The standard free Room Analysis service is a no-brainer for any home theater enthusiast. The Room Analysis Plus requires either the user own, purchase, or borrow a mic and preamp setup. The Room Analysis Plus Kit gives you a mic and easy access to the test tones for just about $50 over the price of the service. You'll still need a preamp, cables, recording device, and stand however. If you have some or all of this additional equipment, I can't recommend the Room Analysis Plus enough. It gives you real feedback about your actual room. While Auralex is going to make suggestions to optimize your room, you probably won't be able to do all of them. What you will be able to do is make intelligent purchasing decisions based on actual data. Of course, Auralex will be happy to sell you any of the treatments you'd like.

Auralex Room Analysis Plus
$250 for up to 5 measurement locations

Auralex Acoustics, Inc.
6853 Hillsdale Court
Indianapolis, IN 46250
317-842-2600

About Auralex Acoustics, Inc.
Located in Indianapolis, Auralex Acoustics was founded in 1977 with a mission to provide top-performing acoustical treatment products at the best value. Since then, thousands of satisfied Auralex customers have experienced improved acoustics, expert advice and exceptional customer service. Auralex products enjoy widespread use among prominent artists, producers, engineers, corporations, celebrities and government agencies.

The Score Card

The scoring below is based on each piece of equipment doing the duty it is designed for. The numbers are weighed heavily with respect to the individual cost of each unit, thus giving a rating roughly equal to:

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Audioholics.com note: The ratings indicated below are based on subjective listening and objective testing of the product in question. The rating scale is based on performance/value ratio. If you notice better performing products in future reviews that have lower numbers in certain areas, be aware that the value factor is most likely the culprit. Other Audioholics reviewers may rate products solely based on performance, and each reviewer has his/her own system for ratings.

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