8 grand to treat a home theater room. Too much?

The first guy probably isn't, and the second may or may not be but you can't know without him detailing exactly what he plans to do.

Call GIK Acoustic and talk to them. They can custom make any size/color panel and you can hang them. It will be W A Y less than $8000 unless your room is the size of a banquet hall. There are other suppliers out there as well.

see http://gikacoustics.com/

This is not a good way to treat a room. First "acoustic fabric" is not treatment, it's a type of fabric used to cover treatment.

Absorbers for the side-wall reflection points should be at ear level, about half-way up rather than the top or bottom half of the wall. Rooms also need bass traps for best results. This short article explains the basics in plain English:

Acoustic Basics

As for not wanting the look of acoustic panels, with acoustic treatment you can have:

1) Effective
2) Affordable
3) Attractive

Pick any two.

So you can have effective and attractive, but it costs more. The typical approach is to treat the room as usual, then build false fabric walls to cover all the panels. Only you can decide how to balance those three factors.

--Ethan

^^^ Not to turn this into an ad, but my company helps people all around the world by phone and email:

RealTraps Forum Page

I like the look of burgundy and black panels.

It all depends what kind of quality level you are aiming for.

For best results you would measure your room (or work with a company to measure your room) and then from there you would work out the right solution for you. That solution will nearly always involve acoustic treatment but may also involve EQ and more subwoofers. If you don't measure your room then you are just going to get generic recommendations that don't factor in the issues your room really has. A good example of this would be the need for bass trapping. Some rooms need a ton, others need very little. It depends on (amongst other things) size, wall construction and whether the space is enclosed (a standard room) or open plan.

The good thing about panels is that installation is quick and therefore cheap. However on the flip side you are paying for finished materials that have a fabric wrap. If you are going to put a fabric stretch wall in your theater, as is common in most high end theaters, then the materials used for acoustic treatment do not have to be finished and therefore you can save quite a bit of money. Installation is obviously more expensive though.

I recommend looking into room correction components along with treatment. Products like the Tact RCS and Lyngdorf RP-1.