small room acoustics

[hollywood_steve]

I've finally ordered my furniture for the new space I recently leased. I'm now locked into a gear/furniture layout plan for the room and I'm investigating where I can sneak in some acoustical treatment into this already overstuffed little room.

Today's question concerns corner bass traps and whether they should be symetrical. I only have one open corner in the room; two others have tall bookcases in them and the fourth corner has only 3 inches of wall surface before the entry doorway. This one corner seems like an ideal location for some floor-to-ceiling corner bass traps. But should this type of treatment be symetrical around the room? Can I configure this one corner as a black hole for all of the low end in the room, or do I need to come up with a more balanced approach somehow?

Thanks.

Steve
lex125@pacbell.net

[Ethan Winer]

Steve,

> This one corner seems like an ideal location for some floor-to-ceiling corner bass traps. But should this type of treatment be symetrical around the room? <

Bass trapping works best when it's spread evenly around the room. It doesn't have to be perfectly symmetrical in the sense that a control room needs to be symmetrical for proper imaging. But if you treat only one corner the low frequency waves will bounce around a bit before they find their way to that corner.

There's a good explanation of corner trapping in the Acoustics FAQ, second in the list on my Articles page:

www.ethanwiner.com/articles.html

There's additional information and suggested placement drawings on my company's site:

www.realtraps.com

--Ethan

[hollywood_steve]

Thanks, Ethan, I was hoping to get a reply from you. Although I was also hoping that the answer would be that bass is mostly non-directional, so bass trapping could be placed almost anywhere, sort of like a sub-woofer. Damn .....

[Ethan Winer]

Steve,

> I was also hoping that the answer would be that bass is mostly non-directional, so bass trapping could be placed almost anywhere, sort of like a sub-woofer. <

Yes, bass preception is non-directional, but that's an unrelated issue. Not that one big bass trap in one location won't help, because it will. But if you want good results you need plenty of them, and spread all around the room.

--Ethan