A question for Ethan and others.

G

gatorhaus

New member
Ethan,

I was looking at your website at the bass trap plans. I have a small room (10 X 8)

1) Can I build these in 2' x 4' panels and hang them on the wall horizontally (sideways) and still be effective at controlling the low frequencies?

2) Is there a preference of the material that these are covered with?

3) I was also thinking about using these as a backing to hang pictures on, would this reduce the effectiveness as a bass trap?

Thanks in advance and I really do appreciate all the information you gurus give us.
larry
 
Larry,

> Can I build these in 2' x 4' panels and hang them on the wall horizontally (sideways) and still be effective at controlling the low frequencies? <

Why 2x4? You're much better off building them as tall as your ceiling allows. They work fine on the walls, but make sure you have as many as possible near the room corners.

> Is there a preference of the material that these are covered with? <

The wood panel traps are not covered with anything.

> I was also thinking about using these as a backing to hang pictures on, would this reduce the effectiveness as a bass trap? <

Probably.

--Ethan
 
FWIW, I just finished treating my 'control' room (ie bedroom) with some modified versions of Ethan's bass traps and some panel absorbers.

I made two different size bass traps. Both were 2'x4' and built to be portable, since I'm renting and can't exactly build these directly onto the wall. I used 3/4" plywood for the back and 1/4" on the front. The sides were either 1x4's or 1x6's (I made 4 of each). Each bass trap has one piece of 1" 703 insulation in the center of the trap - ie suspended about halfway between the two sheets of plywood. I put 3 of each in the control room and left one of each for the 'tracking' room (ie dining room).

The panel absorbers are all based on 1x4 frames with either 1 or 2 layers of 703 on the front and wrapped in burlap. These should be a fairly decent broadband absorber with some extension into the bass frequencies as well. I have six of these in the control room and a couple extras for the tracking room.

My control room is VERY irregular in shape, but I have my mixing position set up as symmetrically as possible, with the longest dimension front to back. However, before treatment there were major bass problems. Just moving your head a foot or two around, the bass response changes were dramatic. I always had trouble judging bass during the mix and had to burn mixes and reference elsewhere constantly. Also, the stereo imaging was always off, presumably due to early reflections and such.

After treatment the difference is just amazing. The bass response changes as you walk around the room are negligible. In general, it sounds like I added a subwoofer because the base is so much tighter and extended. Everything sounds so 3-dimensional now. It sounds like I'm listening to the music now, not just listening to the speakers (if that makes sense). It makes listening to CD's so much fun, its hard to break myself away and actually record anything.

Anyway, it would probably help if I posted some images and drawings of the room, which I will try to do shortly. Hope this helped some.
 
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