Inkjet printing is VERY expensive, per square foot. Used to be a consultant for Roland
and a beta tester for Epson. If you take a tour of Roland's facility in Irvine, you'll still
see some of my work up on their walls.
Just like adding premium capacitors to an amplifier, doing this kind of thing, while perhaps
making it more appealing to the mrs., will add a lot of cost. And if we are going to make
these panels "art", how does the artist get compensated?
I don't know any photographers or artists that are going to give their stuff away for free.
That's why Dan Wright's father in law's stuff is so expensive. The guy is an established
fine artist. What you're paying all the money for with those panels is compensation to
the artist. (and rightly so)
Having worked in high end fine art digital printing for years, moving to this opens up
a whole new can of worms for the acoustic treatment mfr. Now you are becoming an
art vendor and what happens when the guy on the other end says "This doesn't look
like the picture on your website and my wife hates it because it doesn't match the couch""
Or, my 200 dollar an hour interior designer says, "can you make this a shade darker/
more green/more red"
Trust me, I've been down this path before.
I've done plenty of printing of almost every kind of material imaginable. One of the
biggest problems with printing on fabric (inkjet or dye sub) is getting the color to pop
because you don't get the ink build up you do on a sheet of paper or canvas.
While I see the basic concept of making acoustic treatments more environment/wife
friendly, I think the can of worms being opened up is huge.
If you think your wives were grumpy when you bought a 700 dollar pair of interconnects,
wait till she wants to change the color in the living room and says "those panels will have
to go because they won't work with the new color I'm painting the living room".
Glenn, you make awesome products at a very reasonable price.....
I wish you the best of luck on this one!
