What do you guys make of this? Is this just marketing bullshit or would it work?

[shred101]

http://www.auralex.com/partscience/spacecoupler.asp

The blurb in my recentish studiospares catalogue says that it helps to create "a natural large sound in a small room area". To cynical ikkle me, it looks like a few spare bits of mdf held together with wood glue and these things are seriously expensive for what they are (£400 for two in my latest catalogue. Yes im serious.). Obviously im thinking about nicking the idea and building em myself if its worth it . but question is, would it be worth it and if the blurb is accurate how does it work?

 

[ahjteam]

http://www.auralex.com/partscience/spacecoupler.asp

The blurb in my recentish studiospares catalogue says that it helps to create "a natural large sound in a small room area". To cynical ikkle me, it looks like a few spare bits of mdf held together with wood glue and these things are seriously expensive for what they are (£400 for two in my latest catalogue. Yes im serious.). Obviously im thinking about nicking the idea and building em myself if its worth it . but question is, would it be worth it and if the blurb is accurate how does it work?

How much does 34 pieces of that kind of woodpanel cost? If it is say 5£ per piece, then add storage, shipping and manufacturing costs and taxes, you get 10£ per piece easily, so that makes 340£, so I can clearly see why it costs so much.

 

[demirichris]

The company that makes those is actually based out of my city. I run the technical department at the local art museum and they did some work for us in one of our theaters. Not to mention a close friend of mine interned for them. There stuff is good, but INSANELY overpriced. Plus some of the stuff has very little real science behind it. All in all I think you would be better to just make acoustic treatments on your own.

 

[shred101]

£5 per piece? wtf... I can get a single 2000 mm long hunk of pine for £6.99 and those things are only just over 600x600 mm. I could get even more quantity for money if i used mdf.

 

[shred101]

very little real science behind it

Yeah thats the vibe i got... especially considering its called the p-ARTScience Spacecoupler

 

[BLUElightCory]

They're just diffusers made of wood.

 

[ahjteam]

£5 per piece? wtf... I can get a single 2000 mm long hunk of pine for £6.99 and those things are only just over 600x600 mm. I could get even more quantity for money if i used mdf.

So that is a little under £3 per piece, but it still easily adds the £5 on top of it per piece when all the other expenses are counted in I listed in the first post.

 

[B36arin]

How do you manage to count 34 pieces? I count 18 pieces for every "spacecouper". Making it 36 pieces for two, if you can get a 2m long piece for 7 pounds then you only need 12 pieces, meaning the wood for building those would cost you 84 pounds. That's about 20% of what they cost.

 

[ahjteam]

How do you manage to count 34 pieces? I count 18 pieces for every "spacecouper". Making it 36 pieces for two, if you can get a 2m long piece for 7 pounds then you only need 12 pieces, meaning the wood for building those would cost you 84 pounds. That's about 20% of what they cost.

I just miscalculated that it was 9x8 and not 9x9. And the thing is that it's different to do them yourself vs manufacturing them for selling. For example fou can make tenfolds the amount of candy for the price that you can buy a premade candybar. And you can get 200 litres of tapwater for the price of one bottled water.

 

[shred101]

Yeah Im just looking through the acoustics section of one of my studio gear catalogues and some of the rip-off shite in here is ridiculous... little tiny bits of studiofoam for average £10 each just because they look like someone used a pastry cutter to make them.

 

[B36arin]

I just miscalculated that it was 9x8 and not 9x9. And the thing is that it's different to do them yourself vs manufacturing them for selling. For example fou can make tenfolds the amount of candy for the price that you can buy a premade candybar. And you can get 200 litres of tapwater for the price of one bottled water.

Yeah, obviously, there are all those factors that you mentioned which will make it more expensive to produce. I'm no business expert, and I don't know anything about taxes in Britain or about what kind of profit margin businesses like that usually look for. Let's say that two of those things cost as much to make and store as the material costs(which is probaby a gross overstatement), you're still looking at a pre-tax profit margin of 150%. And that is hugely, hugely overpriced in my opinion.