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acoustics, mixing, monitoring, music, music education, music technology, proaudio, recording, schools, studio technique
So, do commercially available soft bass traps work?
Today I visited a client who had purchased £500 worth of soft material bass traps from a ‘reputable’ company. Each was around 600mm x 1200mm – 3 traps in total.
These traps were advertised to have function in the range of 40-600Hz, but as we can see, they have no significant function below 500Hz. Bearing in mind that a room will generally need to see corrections of greater than 3dB (otherwise, why would the operator even notice it was wrong?), then the fact that these alleged ‘wide range’ traps are only capable of occasional 3dB changes over very narrow bands in the top of the LF range shows that effectively these traps DO NOTHING to the sound of the room.
Before we tested we removed an old double mattress from the back of the room – I’d put money on the fact that that old mattress was absorbing more bass than these flimsy little traps!
So there you have it – the King is wearing no clothes, and the Studio Wizard told you first.
I’ll be loving the comments on here when they come! ht
About the Author:
Howard Turner has over 30 years experience in the studio business, and for the last 2 decades, his Studio Wizard Organisation have been at the forefront of the development of effective & affordable designs and solutions for studios. We design and troubleshoot studios worldwide. Further information: +44(0)7803666789 web: www.studiowizard.com
