Bass Traps

[nolitan777]

Bass traps does wonders but double stacking them works even better.

[chessman]

I have been using foam - Auralex and LENRD - and it helped a lot. What I did not realize was how much more benefit was yet to be realized.

Today I took delivery of four ASC tube traps (3' x 11"). I have them stacked and placed on the front wall behind the speakers. The effect has been transformational!

The 11" diameter starts to roll off at 90H so I had expected a subtle improvement. What I got was much more authoritative bass without sounding louder, sharper stereo image, even more dynamic transitions, and an overall sense of greater musicality. The mid-bass/mid-range improvement was the biggest surprise and took a while to identify what was sounding so much better. I have concluded that the "decay" of each note sounds more natural, combined with the removal of a bit of haze that I guess was mid-bass bloat.

At any rate, I now have top end sparkle at the same time as low end authority. In the past it always seemed I could have one, but not both. Now, of course, I am wondering if I need more treatment.

[PHC1]

I know I have 4 full rounds but I have seriously lost count of the half rounds and all the smart traps and panels.

[chessman]

I just added five 3' x 11" full rounds (two stacked columns and a short single), two 3' x 16" full rounds, and two 3' x 11" half rounds to what I already had. The improvement to the sound has been wonderful.

[jimtranr]

As indicated in another thread, I have stacked 16" Super Traps in the rear corners of my living-dining "listening room". Since I have no left front corner and a practical inability to trap the right one, I use a modified "attack wall" trap-speaker-trap configuration with 9" traps suggested by ASC's Michael Adams. How it looks:

[Michael TubeTrap]

I asked Jim to post the "after" photo because this is an approach we have used for years, as our secret "we can fix any room" strategy. I wanted this idea to be available for anyone, not just the special people who call our office.

All you do is place two thin Tubes (9" or 11" for most speakers, 13" for the largest speakers) flanking your speakers. Reflectors (silver buttons) face away from you, towards the front of the room. With a tower, the Tubes can be as tall as the speakers. With a tapered-top speaker (think Wilson Sasha, photo attached) the Tubes only have to extend to the "shoulder".

BTW, Jim's starting post is at "Long & Skinny's a Piece Of Cake Compared To This".

We call this design an "Attack Wall" based on our original design for recording studio control rooms. The basic approach is to separate the good sound you want (direct sound) from the indirect sound you don't want. Ambiance leaks around the edges, time-delayed so it doesn't interfere with articulation. Bass gets stronger and tighter, without the odd cupping or honking sound you would get with a horn. Because noise is reduced (early off-axis reflections) you gain an improvement in the mids & highs, both in clarity and imaging. Essentially this is horn-loading, without the horn or the bad noises you get with a horn.

The room still benefits from additional calming, in this case Jim has Tubes at the front center, rear corners, and quieting a bumpout mid-room. But he has fewer Tubes now, and much improved sound.

If you have some smaller diameter Tubes, try it out and see what happens! As always, seek me out if you'd like to know more.

Michael Adams

[jimtranr]

First, based on a few more days of critical listening to a variety of classical, jazz, and vocal recordings, I'm going to go way out on a limb and state that the "attack wall" variant configuration Michael suggested for my setup is by far--way ahead of whatever's in second place--the most effective system tweak I've ever tried in over 45 years of audiophiling.

Of course, I should qualify that by acknowledging that I don't consider getting room acoustics right a "tweak," but rather an essential to eliciting as much as we possibly can from the sometimes insanely expensive gear we stuff our listening rooms with. In any event, the configuration's a keeper in my listening situation. Among its many plusses, it renders the highly-reflective 40" flat screen near the front right corner a virtual non-factor in terms of imaging and focus.

As it turns out, I have quite a number of traps left to "play" with--not just those Michael suggested I "move out" with the new arrangement, but several more, including five pairs of Studios, that inhabited the "old" dedicated listening room, now a mini-gym of sorts. (It was a big surprise to me to find that a "before" photo graces the Studio Traps section of the ASC website.)

Today, I decided to take advantage of some of the surplus by positioning three four-foot 9" traps aft of my listening position in a configuration similar to that pictured on the ASC "Attack Wall" Web page. The diffusor side of each points at the listening position, as indicated in the diagram below:



The traps in question are dotted because they're parked there only when I have the house to myself. The leading edge of the center trap is about 40" behind my ears, with the outer ones about 30".

The sonic bottom line: A perceptible expansion of soundstage inner space (where the recording hasn't been multimiked to death) that provides instruments and voices more room to "bloom" and imparts more dimensionality and mike-captured (or engineer-mixed) "realism" to the overall presentation.

There are still those 10 Studio Traps. Hmmm...

"Dear, how would you like to go visit your relatives for a while?"