Wow, tough crowd.
Guys (Ben and Jay):
Quote:
Originally Posted by BenLoftis  The decay time of the highs becomes even shorter than the bass ... this is bad ... they must recognize some of the fallacy of "absorbing everything". |
Yes, and this is a huge advantage of RealTraps compared to foam and plain rigid fiberglass. Starting with our very first MiniTrap model, a controlled, lesser amount of absorption at higher frequencies was part of the design. I have 43 panels in my 25 by 16 living room home theater, and it is absolutely not too dead. Yet the bass is as tight and flat as you can imagine.
Quote:
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The "Q" of the nulls change... they become wider, and easier to perceive... this is bad
|
Not so. The
peaks become wider which is good. And some nulls may
appear to get wider, but only because the nulls are less deep and the adjacent peaks changed shape. I have never observed bass traps removing null energy either at the null center or on either side - the energy is
always increased.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jayman I guess I've never walked into a Russ Berger or John Storyk designed studio where all they did was bass traps. |
Just to be clear, the rooms those guys design have much larger budgets than most of my customers. We also do rooms where cost is no object, and in those rooms I specify diffusion as well as bass trapping. But the majority of people here cannot afford that, and in most cases they are retrofitting an existing room that was never meant to be a control room. Also, good absorption costs a lot less than good diffusion, so for most folks absorption is the more practical choice.
I stand by my contention that you cannot have too much bass trapping in a room. At least not a room the size most folks here have. You simply cannot make any small room perfectly flat, so the more bass traps you add, the closer you'll get. I assume you've heard of Fran Manzella, yes? He does very high-end rooms and also smaller rooms. Go to his forum at ProRec and read through some of the posts where he talks about the extensive bass trapping he
always uses. You'll also find dozens of posts where I happened to reply first and suggested extensive bass trapping to someone, followed by Fran posting later to agree with me.
--Ethan