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Originally Posted by Wes Lachot  No, it would not be better to do that. If you need proof that massive basstraps many feet thick are not the answer for the back of a control room, just take a trip to Nashville where you can hear plenty of rooms built along those lines. Typically, when you sit on the couch in these rooms, a kick drum sounds like it has the EQ of a pencil on a shoebox. Not the way a kick drum should sound, and quite misleading to the listener. |
Agreed that a massive trap as described is not the best answer here, but that doesn't mean some manner of sizable trapping in the rear of a control room isn't a valid and very workable approach in the right application. Using some of that space for trapping may be appropriate if designed right, but as always, it needs to be part of the whole room plan, and you can't simply open up a huge amount of space, moving the structural boundary back (essentially moving the wall), and maintain the ratio's predicted effects.
Re: the low end response in the rear of the room, I hate how the couch in the back of most control rooms is a boomy mess with unrealistic bass reinforcement. You don't need a wall behind you to hear big bass from a kick drum in a good room with good monitors. If the pressure wave passes you before getting trapped behind you (as much as is possible from a few feet of fiberglass), you will hear it, variables such as proximity to nodes/antinodes (areas of constructive and destructive interference due to boundary effect) and monitoring issues not withstanding of course.
I suppose what I'm saying is that there is some middle ground. The primary seating area for the engineer is most important, but the client often listens on the couch, so it shouldn't be ignored, whether too bassy or too dry. One or two of those Nashville rooms sound OK too, BTW. The good ones don't put the couch in the middle of a nasty node due to the depth of the trap in relation to the actual structural depth of the room. There are good and bad examples to be found of many techniques.