Folks,
> The 3" wedge foam has practically identical sound absorption numbers according to the test
Realtraps did. I don't care if it's physical properties are the same, as long as it's sound absorption properties are. <
Since I paid for the Foam By Mail tests I can shed some light on this. I also have other data I'll share, beyond what's currently on my company's site.
First, the 3-inch wedge foam on the Product Data page of the RealTraps site is
not what we measured and reported for Foam By Mail. Rather, that is Auralex's data for their own foam. I'm sorry if this was not clear. That is completely separate from the tests we paid for to measure
corner foam to compare it to our products.
The purpose of the tests we paid for were to see how MiniTraps compare with typical corner foam when mounted in corners. Corner mounting is not one of the standard ways acoustic absorbers are tested, yet it's the most reasonable way to assess products that are meant to go in corners. Since we have tested our traps in corners, we also needed to test corner foam in corners to get a valid apples-to-apples comparison. So we bought 16 pieces of corner foam from Foam by Mail for the same reason everyone else buys from Foam by Mail: They claim identical performance to the foam Auralex sells but for a much lower price.
After we tested the FBM corner foam and posted the data on our site, Auralex's chief engineer Jeff Szymanski told me the foam we measured must be inferior quality, because Auralex LENRDs are a lot better than that. So more recently we bought 16 genuine LENRDs and tested those in the same lab under identical conditions in corners.
My tests have now established beyond all doubt that Foam by Mail uses fraudulent data. It appears they simply copied Auralex's data and changed each number up or down by 0.01 to make it seem like they actually tested their foam and got "similar" numbers. However, it's now clear that this was intentional manipulation on the part of Foam by Mail - fraud with an intent to deceive.
I have all the data, and plan to put it on the RealTraps web site soon, so people can see in one place the absorption of MiniTraps, MondoTraps, Auralex LENRDs, and Foam by Mail's corner foam. In the mean time, to address this post, I just put the same data as a graph on my personal site, shown below.
--Ethan